Hosting WordPress on Amazon AWS: The Lamp Stack

March 30, 2023 By WP Helpline Off

In this article, you’ll learn about running a successful WordPress website on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. You’ll explore how to design and deploy a production-ready WordPress deployment that can handle high traffic, using a proven ‘lamp stack’ of open source technologies.

Why Amazon Web Services (AWS)?

If you’re looking to build a global brand, establish a presence on the World Wide Web, or simply want to run a business website, the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform is an excellent choice. AWS is a web service that provides you with a durable, highly available, and scalable computing platform that you can use to launch your web project. It provides you with a computing environment that is similar to ‘bare metal’ computing. That is, you have direct access to the servers that provide you with the physical computing resources (memory, storage, etc.) to run your website.

You can use this direct access to configure and monitor your AWS resources at any time. Furthermore, you have full access to an entire cloud of highly skilled professionals that you can hire to help you run your business. AWS also provides you with an extensive online knowledge base that you can use to explore tutorials, troubleshoot problems, and gain greater understanding of how to utilize their platform.

The Lamp Stack

To keep things simple, let’s use WordPress as an example web application to describe how to build and launch a successful WordPress site on the AWS platform. The name ‘lamp stack’ comes from the first 4 ingredients that you typically need to get started with WordPress development:

a laptop,
an external hard drive or USB key,
a network connection,
and software such as Notepad, XAMPP, or WAMP.

The term ‘lamp’ in the lamp stack refers to the configuration of these items. You can use these tools to create a local development environment that is identical to what you’ll have on your production site. Once you’re done developing, you can simply upload the project to AWS and launch it. When you log in to your AWS account, you’ll see a dashboard that lists your applications and their status. From here, you can easily scale your service as needed.

In our example, you’ll use the following steps to build and launch a WordPress site on the AWS platform:

Step 1: Select a Theme

The first step is to choose a unique, industry-standard theme for your WordPress site. It’s a good idea to go with a lightweight theme that is fast and easy to install. After all, you’ll be installing this theme on your production AWS server. So, you don’t want to be wasting time on details such as design and functionality while you’re setting up the server.

There are many great themes available for WordPress. If you’re looking for a free option, go with TwentyFour or Classic Theme because they are lightweight and have a mobile-first approach. You can use the Amazon App Store to quickly search for themes that match your needs. Alternatively, you can use the WordPress repository to browse for free themes. Finally, you can use the classic theme to build a simple, yet functional, website.

Step 2: Configure the Database

In the next step, you’ll need to determine the best MySQL database for your site. If you’re using the AWS free tier, you can use the RDS service to create a fully configured database without any limitations. Else, you can use your favorite MySql host to create the database and configure it with a free account. For security reasons, you should use a password protected login for your MySql database. The setup of your database is an essential step because it will determine the performance of your site once you launch it.

Step 3: Install WordPress

Once you have your database configured, you can install WordPress on your server. Follow the simple, three step guide in the WordPress documentation to set up a WordPress installation. For the first step, you’ll need to have a LAMP stack, as mentioned above. If you don’t have one, you can use an external hard drive to store your WordPress files. After you complete the steps, you can launch your WordPress site using the provided domain name.

Step 4: Set Permissions

Once you launch your WordPress site, you’ll need to assign the correct permissions to the new instance. To do this, log in to your AWS dashboard and click on ‘Configuration’. You’ll then see a list of your instances and their settings. From here, you can easily modify the user permissions for each instance. For example, you can make the WordPress login accessible to the general public, or only allow certain users to access certain areas of your site.

Step 5: Customize the Appearance

With WordPress, you have complete control over the look and feel of your site through the use of different themes and plugins. Go to the WordPress repository to browse for and install different themes to give your website a fresh new look. You can use different plugins to modify the behavior of your site in different ways, such as enabling comments, or restricting access to content.

Best Practices

Even though AWS is an excellent choice for website hosting, you should use precautions when building your site. For example, it’s a best practice to build your site on a dedicated IP address. A dedicated IP address is a unique IP address that is associated with a single customer. When you install WordPress on an AWS server, you’ll get a randomly generated IP address associated with the server. This means that every time you launch a new WordPress instance, you’ll have a different IP address. If you’d like to keep your site’s performance consistent and maximize its potential, you should get a dedicated IP address. You can use a service like Cloudflare to get a free dedicated IP address. Alternatively, you can use a domain name registrar to purchase a.com,.net, or.org domain name that is hosted on one of Cloudflare’s dedicated servers.

If you’re planning to install a WordPress site on a VPS or dedicated server, you should look into buying a quality IP address from a reputable company. The reason is simple: you’ll only have one IP address per server, and you don’t want to risk your website’s performance by using a free IP from a shared hosting environment. For a free tier customer, AWS will assign you a limited number of IP addresses that you can use.

Summary

In this article, you learned about the various steps to build and launch a successful WordPress site on the Amazon Web Services (AWS) platform. You explored how to choose the right theme, configure the database, install WordPress, and assign permissions for the site.

You can use different plugins to modify the behavior of your site in different ways, such as comments, spam, or security settings. You can also use different themes to give your website a new look.

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