So, if you want have an Amazon EC2 instance to run Wordpress or simply a website you made, you can do that for cheap using Amazon’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2). So let’s get right into it! You will be using the command line for this (or PuTTY), but if you don’t know, that’s okay, because I’ll cover that.
Also, If I’m going too slow, I’m sorry, but please bare with me because I made this tutorial for people that had and didn’t have any prior experience.
Step 1: Create an Account
Obviously, you need to create your AWS account; you can sign up here. You have to provide your credit card to register and you’ll need a valid phone number because Amazon will call you as part of the process. Amazon offers a Free Usage Tier, which is great to explore the services and even host real apps without being charged. You should look at the details.
Step 2: Create an Instance
Now that you have an account, we can proceed to creating our instance.
So, go to your management console, and then click the EC2 tab (it should be under the Compute and Networking section)
What type of EC2 instance should you use? I used a Micro instance because it is free for 1 year and also very cheap. Here are the instances It may depend on your traffic. If you get a few thousand visitors a day, then you may want a larger instance. For now, I’ll go with the micro instance.
Click the big “Launch Instance” button. Make sure “Classic Wizard” is selected and click “Continue”. Then choose an AMI. I chose the Basic 32-bit Amazon Linux AMI.
Instance details: Select the Instance Type you want to use. I chose Micro because it’s free (t1.micro).
Create a new key pair. Enter a name for your key pair (i.e. shalin) and download your key pair (i.e. shalin.pem).
NOTE: DO NOT give anyone your key pair. It the access key to your whole instance. Don’t lose or delete it either, otherwise you won’t be able to connect to your instance!
Select the create new security group, give it a name and description, and then, for the create the new rule, select:
DNS (add rule)
SSH (add rule)
HTTP (add rule)
POP3 (add rule)
SMTP (add rule)
MYSQL (add rule)
Then, finally launch you instance.
Step 3: SSH into your Instance
On the sidebar, click on the tab “Elastic IP’s” and find the button that says “Allocate New Address”
Make sure EC2 is selected and click “Yes, Allocate”. Once you do that, you want to click on the address you created and select “Associate Address” and associate it to your instance.
Once your instance is running, you can ssh into it. SSH stands for secure shell. It means you connecting to something that it remote from your computer. For example, you could connect to another device or computer if you had their ip address and password.
First, you need to identify the address of your instance: Select the instance in the AWS Management Console, and look for the Public DNS in the instance description (bottom part of the screen).
Then, open up the terminal application. For mac, click ⌘ Command + Space and search terminal or open the terminal app. For linux, go the terminal app.
Once you are in terminal, enter this command
chmod 600 Downloads/shalin.pem
And change the .pem file’s full path and name.
Then Connect:
ssh -i Downloads/shalin.pem ec2-user@ec2-your-public-dns-of-your-instance.amazonaws.com
or you can type
ssh -i Downloads/shalin.pem ec2-user@your ip you just associated either one works.
Make sure you change the .pem file’s full path and name and your public DNS.
Hit “Enter”, you will be asked: “Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?” Type yes.
Step 4: The Basics
Okay, so now you’ve most likely followed everything in this tutorial successfully and now have a running instance that you’ve connected to. Lets begin the server stuff.
The command line is only confusing at first..
Here are the basic terminal commands
- The
man command is for a manual or help on something. (i.e. man ls)
- The
ls command is to view the items in the directory.
- The
cd command is to go into or out of a folder (directory) like this cd / moves you to the very very main directory and cd ../ moves you back one directory.
- The
sudo command is to become the Super-User, meaning you can do everything. Only use this when you have to, as this can be dangerous.
One of the most important command is vim or vi. It is a command line text editor. Type in man vim to read about vim. To edit something you type vim file-name.txt
More Commands…
Step 5: Useful Software
You have a server running now, but it can’t do anything useful…yet…
Installing Apache
So we will allow this server to display a simple website. For that, we will need to install Apache.
Before you do anything, become the root user of this server, so type
sudo su
To install the Apache Web Server, type:
yum install httpd
Start the Apache Web Server:
service httpd start
Make sure it’s running.
service httpd status
Now your website is working! To test your Web Server, open a browser and access your web site: http://ec2-the-public-dns-of-your-instance.amazonaws.com (Use your actual public DNS name). You should see a standard Amazon place holder page.
Installing PHP
To install PHP, type:
yum install php php-mysql
Restart the Apache Web Server:
service httpd restart
Create a page to test your PHP installation:
cd /var/www/html
vim test.php
Type i to start the insert mode
Type <? php phpinfo() ?>
Press “Control+C” (mac, windows, and linux)
Then type :wq to write the file and quit vim
Open a browser and access test.php to test your PHP installation: http://ec2-the-public-dns-of-your-instance.amazonaws.com/test.php (Use your actual public DNS name).
If you don’t want this file, go back onto terminal and type:
rm test.php
/var/www/html/ is your root directory, meaning, that any files that you put in here, will automatically be put on your public DNS
Installing MySQL
To install MySQL, type:
yum install mysql mysql-server
Then Start MySQL
service mysqld start
Then Set A New Password:
/usr/bin/mysqladmin -u root password ‘new-password’
MySQL Security
Before using MySQL in production, you’ll want to improve your MySQL installation security. Run:
mysql_secure_installation
This will help you set a password for the root account, remove anonymous-user accounts, and remove the test database.
phpMyAdmin
We will now set up an awesome php and mysql interface called phpmyadmin
That will help run queries and optimize our databases.
Run this command to download it
wget http://sourceforge.net/projects/phpmyadmin/files/phpMyAdmin/3.5.3/phpMyAdmin-3.5.3-all-languages.zip
After it has downloaded, unzip it:
unzip phpMyAdmin-3.5.3-all-languages.zip -C /var/www/html
Then rename the folder:
mv phpMyAdmin-3.4.1-all-languages phpmyadmin
And finally remove the old folder
rm -r phpMyAdmin-3.5.3-all-languages.zip
Open a browser and access phpmyadmin/ to test your PHP installation: http://ec2-your-public-dns-of-your-instance.amazonaws.com/phpmyadmin/ (Use your actual public DNS name).
Then configure all the stuff it tells you to.
Keep MySQL In Good Shape
Over time your MySQL tables will get fragmented and queries will take longer to complete. You can keep your tables in top shape by regularly running OPTIMIZE TABLE on all your tables. But, since you’ll never remember to do this regularly, we should set up a cron job to do this.
Open up your crontab file:
crontab -e
Then, add the following line:
@weekly mysqlcheck -o —user=root —password=your password here -A
Also, you can do the same from phpmyadmin manually to verify that it works correctly.
Step 6: Security
If your going to make a website and put it on the internet, it has to be really secure. There are a bunch or people that will mess with your server or write a script to hack it. So, you have to prevent these.
httpd.conf
So first, enter this command:
vim /etc/conf/httpd/httpd.conf
Your httpd.conf file should now be open. DO NOT mess around with this unless you know what you’re doing otherwise you may screw everything up.
Scroll down and look for this piece of code:
<directory "/var/www/html">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</directory>
Press i then change this to:
<directory "/var/www/html">
Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
Allow from all
</directory>
Make sure that AllowOverride is set to All otherwise, what we are about to do won’t work.
Next hit Control+C and type :wq
.htaccess
Great! Now do:
cd /var/www/html/
and then, create a file named .htaccess:
vim .htaccess
You should get a blank text document because we haven’t put anything in it.
Here is a list of things you should put in this file to make it more secure.
Remove Access To Your Important Files And .htaccess
<filesmatch ".(htaccess|htpasswd|ini|phps|fla|psd|log|sh)$">
Order Allow,Deny
Deny from all
</filesmatch>
<files ~ "^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])"<
order allow,deny
deny from all
satisfy all
</files<
Disable Directory Browsing
No Spam (Bad Bots and Hackers)
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------^M
# No Spam (Bad Bots and Hackers)
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------^M
RewriteEngine On ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BlackWidow [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bot\ mailto:craftbot@yahoo.com [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ChinaClaw [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Custo [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DISCo [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Download\ Demon [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^eCatch [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EirGrabber [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailSiphon [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailWolf [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Express\ WebPictures [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ExtractorPro [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EyeNetIE [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^FlashGet [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetRight [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetWeb! [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go!Zilla [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go-Ahead-Got-It [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GrabNet [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Grafula [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^HMView [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTrack [NC,OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Stripper [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Sucker [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Indy\ Library [NC,OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InterGET [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Internet\ Ninja [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JetCar [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JOC\ Web\ Spider [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^larbin [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^LeechFTP [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mass\ Downloader [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MIDown\ tool [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mister\ PiX [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Navroad [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NearSite [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetAnts [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetSpider [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Net\ Vampire [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetZIP [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Octopus [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Explorer [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Navigator [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PageGrabber [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Papa\ Foto [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pavuk [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pcBrowser [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^RealDownload [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ReGet [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SiteSnagger [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SmartDownload [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperBot [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperHTTP [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Surfbot [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^tAkeOut [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Teleport\ Pro [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^VoidEYE [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Image\ Collector [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Sucker [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebAuto [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebCopier [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebFetch [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebGo\ IS [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebLeacher [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebReaper [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebSauger [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ eXtractor [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ Quester [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebStripper [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebWhacker [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebZIP [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Wget [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Widow [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWWOFFLE [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xaldon\ WebSpider [OR] ^M
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Zeus ^M
RewriteRule ^.* - [F,L]^M
Compression
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
# Gzip compression
# ----------------------------------------------------------------------
<ifmodule mod_deflate.c>
# Force deflate for mangled headers developer.yahoo.com/blogs/ydn/posts/2010/12/pushing-beyond-gzipping/
</ifmodule><ifmodule mod_setenvif.c>
</ifmodule><ifmodule mod_headers.c>
SetEnvIfNoCase ^(Accept-EncodXng|X-cept-Encoding|X{15}|~{15}|-{15})$ ^((gzip|deflate)\s*,?\s*)+|[X~-]{4,13}$ HAVE_Accept-Encoding
RequestHeader append Accept-Encoding "gzip,deflate" env=HAVE_Accept-Encoding^M
</ifmodule>
# HTML, TXT, CSS, JavaScript, JSON, XML, HTC:
<ifmodule filter_module>
FilterDeclare COMPRESS
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/html
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/css
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/plain
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $text/x-component
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/javascript
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/json
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/xhtml+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/rss+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/atom+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/vnd.ms-fontobject
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/svg+xml
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $image/x-icon
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $application/x-font-ttf
FilterProvider COMPRESS DEFLATE resp=Content-Type $font/opentype
FilterChain COMPRESS
FilterProtocol COMPRESS DEFLATE change=yes;byteranges=no
</ifmodule>
<ifmodule !mod_filter.c>
# Legacy versions of Apache
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/html text/plain text/css application/json
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/javascript
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE text/xml application/xml text/x-component
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE application/xhtml+xml application/rss+xml application/atom+xml
AddOutputFilterByType DEFLATE image/x-icon image/svg+xml application/vnd.ms-fontobject application/x-font-ttf font/opentype
</ifmodule>
Error Documents
#---------------ERROR DOCUMENTS---------------#
#BAD_REQUEST
ErrorDocument 400 /var/www/html/400.php
#UNAUTHORIZED
ErrorDocument 401 /var/www/html/401.php
#FORBIDDEN
ErrorDocument 403 /var/www/html/403.php
#NOT_FOUND (Most Common)
ErrorDocument 404 /var/www/html/404.php
Amazon EC2 is Awesome!
I hope you found my setup recipe (tutorial) for Amazon EC2 helpful. Sign up for Amazon EC2!
If you want to buy a domain, please use this link and I will get $1.00 off on my yearly plan for my domains. If not, you can use the normal link.
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