So, I recently joined the Amazon Web Service, which I’ve migrated Three WordPress Websites onto their Lightsail VPS.
As a Long time user of Shared Hosting, I must say the switch has really helped, from Site’s Speed Improvement, Slightly Increase in Search traffic, and the Affordability of AWS Lightsail is unmatched.
In this Article, we shall walk you through how you can create an AWS Lightsail Instance, Attaching a Static IP Address, Pointing your domain to The Lightsail Instance and also, how to Install Auto Renewing SSL Certificate.
Creating or Migrating a WordPress website onto AWS Lightsail isn’t as difficult as it might seems.
NB: If You want to migrate your existing WordPress site to AWS Lightsail, Kindly Backup/export Your Website with All In One Migration plugin first, and download the backup file into your computer before we begin.
Now Lets Begin!
What Is AWS Lightsail?
Amazon Lightsail is an Easy-To-Use VPS (Virtual Private Server) Provider that provides everything you need to create an Application or a website for cost-effective, monthly plan.
Weather you’re looking to get on the cloud quickly with AWS Infrastructure you trust or You are completely new to the cloud, AWS Lightsail Got You Covered.
How to create Lightsail instance?
Before You can Create a Lightsail Instance, You need to log in to your AWS Activate Account, You can create one here if you already don’t have one
When you’ve Successfully created your AWS Activate Account or you’ve logged in to your Existing one, you shall see a similar page shown in the Screenshot below.
Click On the Services
Now You Should Locate Lightsail in the pop up menu and click on it (It Opens in new tab)
Create AWS Lightsail Instance
Here On the Lightsail Page, Click On Create Instance To Begin the process
Select Instance Region
You should select your Instance Region, please choose a Region close your location or where most of your Website’s Visitors comes from.
I will go for Frankfurt because most of my Website’s Visitors comes from Germany.
Instance Platform & Blueprint
Your Platform should be the default ‘Linux/Unix’ – and the blueprint App + OS I will select the WordPress, However, you can select WordPress multisite if you want to run a multisite. For the seek of this guide, the normal WordPress is good to go.
Instance Plan
In this section, you should choose your Instance plan, the $3.5 should be enough for a small website, you can select a higher plan if the need be.
The $3.5, $5 and $10 Plans comes with First 3 months for free, so you can confidently test AWS Lightsail service With no fears of getting billed.
NB: You can always upgrade or downgrade your plan by Simply Taking a Snapshot of the instance and create a new instance with it.
Identify Instance
Your Should give your Instance an identification and tag it as well. After You Click On “Create Instance”.
Alright, Your Instance should be up now.
Your Instance Should be Running, Click on it to open.
Attach Static IP To Instance
Let’s Attach a Static IP Address to our Instance, It’s Important you do this because the Default IP Address of the Instance Changes Everytime you reboot or stop the Instance – Navigate to ‘Networking’.
Under Networking Of the Instance, Click On “Create Static IP”
Identify your Static IP and Click on ‘Create‘ – The Instance is Automatically Attached to it
Pointing Domain To AWS Lightsail
To Point your domain to work with the Installed Lightsail Instance, Kindly Copy the Static IP address and head over to your domain Registrar to create a new A Records.
Add a New A Record
• Type is A
• Name is @
• IPv4 Address is the Static IP you copied.. i.e. 3.127.166.227
Add another A Record and make the name WWW instead of the @.
Accessing Your Website
Now, let’s Access Our Website – Your newly created is up and running
How To Get the WordPress Website’s Credentials?
To get the website’s password credentials We need to connect to SSH Terminal –
Fortunately, AWS Lightsail comes with a handy browser terminal so there’s no need to download putty and putty gen
Just Click on ‘Connect Using SSH’
After the Terminal has pop up like this;
Type the following command
cat bitnami_application_passwordYour Password should Appear this this:
Now You can use:
Username as: User
Password: IkeVFA77XXxB (An example of the password)
How To Access WordPress Dashboard/Admin Panel?
To Access your WordPress Dashboard with the Credentials retrieved from the above step, just add /wp-admin to your domain and open in any browser.
Type In the Username and Password to login to WordPress Admin Panel
You should be able to Access your WordPress Dashboard, now you can start designing the website or you might want to migrate and Existing website? Let’s Install SSL certificate before we move to the migration part!
PS: This domain already has a valid SSL certificate issued, but I’m pretty sure yours isn’t.
What Is SSL Certificate?
SSL stands for Secure Sockets Layer and is a digital certificate that authenticates a website’s identity and enables an encrypted connection. , a security protocol that creates an encrypted link between a web server and a web browser.
Install Free SSL Certificate For AWS Bitnami WordPress
Adding free SSL certificate to WordPress Website is fairly easy process, just Go back to your instance and click “Connect using SSH” just like we did before. This time type the following command:
sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-toolThe tool might ask you to update the bncert tool. Just press ENTER – Yes and run the same script again:
sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-toolAfter you run the same script again, the terminal will lead you through the process of installing / setting up the free SSL.
Migrate WordPress Website To AWS Lightsail
To migrate existing WordPress Website To AWS Lightsail, please install the All In One Migration plugin again on the newly installed WordPress and Import the backup you exported at the beginning of this Article.
Conclusion
As i stated earlier, is not as difficult as it seems to create or migrate a WordPress website to AWS Lightsail, however, if you have any worries or you’ve got stuck along the way – Kindly comment below and I shall do my best to help you out.
Source: Techflaver.com
Nice content, big ups boss
🤩🤩🤩🤩😍