Are you looking for a quick and simple way of setting up a WordPress website on AWS? This tutorial will help you set up a WordPress website on Amazon Lightsail, no prior AWS experience required!
You will need a domain name registered at Amazon Route 53 and an AWS account to get started!
For this tutorial, we will be using:
- Amazon Lightsail’s WordPress image (provided by Lightsail)
- Amazon Lightsail’s guided setup for WordPress (want to do it manually? Check out this tutorial)
- Amazon Route 53 for domain registrar (you can learn how to transfer your domain from current registrar to Route 53 here)
Looking for more beginner-friendly tutorials on Amazon Lightsail on this blog? Hop over to /lightsail!
Table of Contents
Set up a WordPress instance on Amazon Lightsail with Lightsail Image
- Open Amazon Lightsail, and create a new instance
- Pick your instance image:
- Platform: Linux/Unix
- Blueprint: WordPress (scroll down to select Lightsail under WordPress details)
- Optional: Leave on default, unless you have specific needs
- Plan Type: General Purpose
- Network Type: Dual-stack
- Size: Recommend $5/mo (first 90 days free) for testing
- Choose an instance name and add tags (optional)
You will find yourself at your WordPress instance’s dashboard!
Set up WordPress with Lightsail’s guided workflow
Amazon Lightsail has provided us with a guided workflow for setting up our WordPress website, which will help us set up:
- Registered domain name
- DNS configuration
- Static IP address
- SSL/TLS certificate
This is very cool, because you would generally have to do these manually (and be a little stressed out that you didn’t miss any steps). Let’s try it out!
- Go back to your WordPress instance’s dashboard, and go to “Set up your WordPress website,” and click on “Set up your website”
- Specify a domain name: We will use Lightsail managed domain that we have already transferred or registered with Amazon Route 53
- Configure DNS: Lightsail DNS zone (we will utilize the service provided!)
- Create a static IP address: Name our Static IP address (I named mine WPStaticIP-1)
- Manage domain assignments: click on “Add assignment” and go through the flow for “Domain name”
- Stay on the page, and click “Add assignment” again, select “Subdomain,” and enter “www” in the “Subdomain name” textbox
- You may have to wait a bit for your DNS to update, so I recommend waiting about 30 minutes – or more- before doing the next step (go make some tea!)
- Create an SSL/TLS certificate: click on the drop down menu and select both the domain and the subdomain, fill out your email address, and authorize access to create a certificate
And we’re done with creating your WordPress instance on Amazon Lightsail! How cool was that!
If you get an error message…
Once you complete the 5 steps, you may encounter an error like the one below, which says:
"We encountered an error while configuring the Let's Encrypt SSL/LC certificate on your instance WordPress-1 in the us-east-1 Region. Try again later. We are having trouble location your DNS records. If the DNS records were recently created, wait a few minutes and try again."
If you receive this error, it is likely that your DNS records need to be updated to provide domain control to Amazon Lightsail. You will go to your domain registrar (where your domain is registered: in this case, Amazon Route 53), and update your domain’s DNS records. Once the process is complete and your domain’s DNS records match what your Lightsail instance’s DNS records say, the setup should complete.
- Go back to Amazon Lightsail, and click on “Domains & DNS” on the left navigation bar to access the DNS zones
- Click on your domain name
- You will see a list of the name servers for this domain’s DNS zone; you will need to note these (don’t close this window!)
- Go to Amazon Route 53 (or your domain name registrar), and click on “Domains > Registered Domains” on your left navigation bar to find your domain
- In the top box, under Details, click on the button titled “Action,” then “Edit name servers”
- Paste in the four name servers you saw on your Amazon Lightsail’s DNS zone page, and click “Save changes”
- Wait for at least 30 minutes and retry the Amazon Lightsail guided setup for WordPress – it should go through to completion and give you a completed message
Here is documentation on how to create DNS entry from AWS’s official Knowledge Base.
Access your new WordPress website
Once you’re ready to move on, you should see this on your Lightsail instance’s dashboard:
Click on the button, “Go to website,” and visit your new WordPress website, secured with SSL/TLS certificate, and mapped to your custom domain name!
Retrieve the default WordPress administration user name and password
When you set up a WordPress website, you have a default user name and a password for the administration dashboard. We will need to retrieve these so that you can log into your dashboard and start publishing posts and editing the layout.
- Go back to the top of your Lightsail instance, and click on “Access WordPress Admin.” Make sure your log in page loads.
- Go back to your instance’s dashboard, and find “Default WordPress admin user name” (it should be “user), and note it.
- Click on “Retrieve default password” under “Default WordPress admin password.”
- Copy the command you see with the gray background, beginning with
cat <<'E0T'. - Click on “Launch CloudShell,” and paste in the command you copied once you see
~ $on the terminal. Click enter to let the command run. - Once the command finishes running, you will see a line similar to
~ $ AWS_REGION=us-east-1 ~/lightsail_connect WordPress-1 tail -n 1 application_credentials, with a line of text underneath. That is your default password. Copy it.
- Go back to your WordPress Dashboard (https://yoururl.com/wp-admin), and put in “user” for the user name, and the password you just copied from CloudShell as the password.
And viola! You’re logged into your WordPress instance, hosted in Amazon Lightsail!
If you are going to utilize this WordPress website, I recommend that you go into Users, create a new Administrator account, re-log in with the new Administrator account and delete the default “user.”
Take down/stop your Lightsail instance
Done with your test, or want to get rid of your Lightsail instance? It’s very easy to delete your Amazon Lightsail instance!
- Go to the Amazon Lightsail instances dashboard
- Click on the ellipsis icon (⋮) next to the SSH quick connect icon (>_ ) on your Lightsail instance, and select Delete
- That’s it!
You will need to delete your DNS zone and static IP as well. If you want to just pause the instance so it’s not active, you can choose “Stop.”
And that’s it! I hope this tutorial post has helped you get started with working in Amazon Web Services and creating your first Amazon Lightsail project! Congratulations!