September 20, 2023 / Nirav Shah
This blog post provides a step-by-step guide for installing WordPress on an EC2 instance using CloudFormation template. WordPress is a popular content management system (CMS) that allows you to create and manage websites easily.
Before deploying the WordPress server using the CloudFormation template, ensure that you have the following prerequisites in place:
The CloudFormation template provisions the following software versions:
The CloudFormation YAML template automates the deployment of a WordPress server. It provisions the necessary AWS resources, configures the server, and installs the required software packages.
The key components of the CloudFormation template include:
1. Parameters: The template includes parameters for specifying the EC2 instance type, EC2 KeyPair, database details, and table prefix for WordPress.
2. Resources: The WordPressInstance resource provisions an EC2 instance using the specified parameters. It also defines metadata for configuring the instance with Apache, PHP, MySQL and phpMyAdmin.
3. UserData: The UserData section contains a script that runs when the EC2 instance is launched. It updates packages, installs Apache, PHP, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, and other required dependencies. It also sets up the WordPress database, configures the wp-config.php file, and restarts the necessary services.
The CloudFormation template installs the following packages:
Apache: A popular web server software that serves the WordPress website.
PHP: A server-side scripting language used by WordPress for dynamic content generation.
MySQL: A relational database management system used by WordPress to store website data.
PhpMyAdmin: A web-based tool for managing MySQL databases. It provides a graphical interface for database administration.
Launching the WordPress Server:
To launch the WordPress server using the CloudFormation template, follow these steps:
By following these instructions, you will have a fully functional WordPress installation running on your EC2 instance.
First code line Specifies the version of the CloudFormation template format being used. In this case, it’s the 2010-09-09 version.
AWSTemplateFormatVersion: '2010-09-09'
In addition to InstanceType and SSHKey parameters, it also defines parameters related to the WordPress database, including DatabaseName, DatabaseUsername, DatabasePassword, DatabaseHost and TablePrefix.
InstanceType: Type: String Default: t2.medium Description: Enter the EC2 instance type for the WordPress server. SSHKey: Type: AWS::EC2::KeyPair::KeyName Description: Name of an existing EC2 KeyPair to enable SSH access to the instance. DatabaseName: Type: String Description: The name of the WordPress database DatabaseUsername: Type: String Description: The username for the WordPress database DatabasePassword: Type: String Description: The password for the WordPress database DatabaseHost: Type: String Description: The host of the WordPress database TablePrefix: Type: String Description: The table prefix for the WordPress database (optional)
In this case, it creates an EC2 instance (AWS::EC2::Instance) named WordPressInstance. The properties of the instance are specified, including the instance type (InstanceType parameter), the Amazon Machine Image (AMI) ID (ImageId), the EC2 Key Pair (SSHKey parameter), the security group ID (SecurityGroupIds), and tags for the instance (Tags). The UserData property contains a bash script that is base64-encoded and executed during instance launch. This script installs Apache, PHP, MySQL, and downloads and configures WordPress.
WordPressInstance: Type: AWS::EC2::Instance Properties: InstanceType: !Ref InstanceType ImageId: ami-053b0d53c279acc90 KeyName: !Ref SSHKey SecurityGroupIds: - !Ref wordpressinstanceSecurityGroup Tags: - Key: Name Value: WordPress-DBserver
This line specifies that the script should be run using the Bash shell.
UserData: Fn::Base64: !Sub | #!/bin/bash
This command updates the package lists on the system, ensuring that the latest package information is available.
sudo apt-get update
This command installs a series of packages required for running WordPress and its dependencies. It installs Apache web server (apache2), PHP, MySQL server and client (mysql-server, mysql-client), and several PHP extensions (php-bcmath, php-imagick, php-mysql, php-xml, php-zip, php-curl).
sudo apt-get install -y apache2 php mysql-server mysql-client php-bcmath php-imagick php-mysql php-xml php-zip php-curl sudo systemctl enable apache2 sudo systemctl start apache2 sudo systemctl enable mysql sudo systemctl start mysql
cd /tmp wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz sudo tar -xvf latest.tar.gz sudo mv wordpress/* /var/www/html/
Navigate to the user’s home directory (cd) and remove the default index.html file that comes with Apache. This step is necessary to ensure that WordPress can be accessed as the main website instead of the default Apache page.
cd sudo rm -vf /var/www/html/index.html
Now change the ownership (chown) of the /var/www/html/ directory and its contents to the www-data user and group. The www-data user is the default user that Apache runs as. The chmod command sets the permissions of the directory and its contents to 755, which gives read, write, and execute permissions to the owner (www-data) and read and execute permissions to others.
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/ sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/
The script then continues with the configuration of the WordPress database.
“sudo mysql -e “CREATE DATABASE DatabaseName;”commandusesthemysqlcommand−line tool to create a new database with the name specified by the {DatabaseName} parameter. This database will be used by WordPress.
“sudo mysql -e “CREATE USER ‘DatabaseUsername′@′localhost′IDENTIFIEDBY′ {DatabasePassword}’;” command creates a new user with the provided DatabaseUsernameand{DatabasePassword} values. This user will be associated with the
WordPress database and will be used for authentication.
“sudo mysql -e “GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DatabaseName.∗TO′ {DatabaseUsername}’@’localhost’;” command grants all privileges to the previously created user (DatabaseUsername) on the WordPress database({DatabaseName}). This ensures that the user has the necessary permissions to perform operations on the database.
“sudo mysql -e “FLUSH PRIVILEGES;” command flushes the privileges to ensure that the changes made
in the previous steps take effect.
# Create the WordPress database
sudo mysql -e "CREATE DATABASE ${DatabaseName};"
# Create a database user and grant privileges
sudo mysql -e "CREATE USER '${DatabaseUsername}'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY
'${DatabasePassword}';"
sudo mysql -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON ${DatabaseName}.* TO
'${DatabaseUsername}'@'localhost';"
sudo mysql -e "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"
sudo mysql -e "exit"
“sudo touch /var/www/html/wp-config.php” command creates a new wp-config.php file in the /var/www/html/ directory. This file will store the configuration settings for WordPress.
“sudo mv /var/www/html/wp-config-sample.php /var/www/html/wp-config.php” command renames the wp-config-sample.php file to wp-config.php, which is the actual configuration file used by WordPress.
“sudo sed -is/database_name_here/DatabaseName/”/var/www/html/wp−config.php” command replaces the placeholder value ′databasename here′in the wp−config.php file with the actual {DatabaseName} value, which is the name of the WordPress database.
“sudo sed -i “s/username_here/DatabaseUsername/”/var/www/html/wp−config.php” command replaces the placeholder value ′username here′ in the wp−config.php file with the actual {DatabaseUsername} value, which is the username of the WordPress database user.
“sudo sed -i “s/password_here/DatabasePassword/”/var/www/html/wp−config.php” command replaces the placeholder value ′password here′in the wp−config.php file with the actual {DatabasePassword} value, which is the password of the WordPress database user.
“sudo sed -i “s/localhost/DatabaseHost/”/var/www/html/wp−config.php” command replaces the default value ′localhost′ in the wp−config.php file with the actual {DatabaseHost} value, which is the host of the WordPress database.
“sudo systemctl restart apache2” command restarts the Apache service to apply the configuration changes made during the installation of WordPress.
# Configure wp-config.php
sudo touch /var/www/html/wp-config.php
sudo mv /var/www/html/wp-config-sample.php /var/www/html/wp-config.php
sudo sed -i "s/database_name_here/${DatabaseName}/" /var/www/html/wp-config.php
sudo sed -i "s/username_here/${DatabaseUsername}/" /var/www/html/wp-config.php
sudo sed -i "s/password_here/${DatabasePassword}/" /var/www/html/wp-config.php
sudo sed -i "s/localhost/${DatabaseHost}/" /var/www/html/wp-config.php
sudo sed -i "s/wp_/${TablePrefix}/" /var/www/html/wp-config.php
# Restart services
sudo systemctl restart apache2
sudo systemctl restart mysql
It is a web-based tool for managing MySQL databases.Navigate to the /tmp directory, download the specified version of phpMyAdmin as a .zip archive, install the unzip package, and extract the contents of the archive to the /var/www/html/ directory.. Move to /var/www/html/phpmyadmin for better accessibility.
The configuration file config.inc.php is copied from config.sample.inc.php, and a sed command is used to update the host value in the configuration file with the value from the DatabaseHost parameter.
Restarts the Apache service to apply the changes made during the installation and configuration of
WordPress and phpMyAdmin.
cd /tmp
wget https://files.phpmyadmin.net/phpMyAdmin/5.1.1/phpMyAdmin-5.1.1-all-languages.zip
sudo apt-get install -y unzip
sudo unzip phpMyAdmin-5.1.1-all-languages.zip -d /var/www/html/
sudo mv /var/www/html/phpMyAdmin-5.1.1-all-languages /var/www/html/phpmyadmin
sudo cp /var/www/html/phpmyadmin/config.sample.inc.php
/var/www/html/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
sudo sed -i "s/\['host'\] = 'localhost'/\['host'\] = '${DatabaseHost}'/"
/var/www/html/phpmyadmin/config.inc.php
# Restart Apache
sudo systemctl restart apache2
Creates an EC2 security group (AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup) named wordpressinstanceSecurityGroup that allows incoming traffic on ports 80, 443, and 22. This allows access to the web server and SSH.
wordpressinstanceSecurityGroup: Type: AWS::EC2::SecurityGroup Properties: GroupDescription: Enable ssh http https and mysql ports SecurityGroupIngress: - IpProtocol: tcp FromPort: '80' ToPort: '80' CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0 - IpProtocol: tcp FromPort: '443' ToPort: '443' CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0 - IpProtocol: tcp FromPort: '22' ToPort: '22' CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0 - IpProtocol: tcp FromPort: '80' ToPort: '80' CidrIp: 0.0.0.0/0
There is an output named WordPressInstancePublicIP which retrieves the public IP address of the WordPress instance.
WordPressInstancePublicIP is the logical name given to the output. You can use this name to reference the output value in other parts of your infrastructure or templates. Value: !GetAtt WordPressInstance.PublicIp specifies the value of the output. The !GetAtt function is used to retrieve the value of an attribute from a resource.
In this case, it retrieves the value of the PublicIp attribute from the WordPressInstance resource. So, when you access the value of WordPressInstancePublicIP, you will get the public IP address of the WordPress instance, allowing you to access your WordPress website using that IP address.
Outputs: WordPressInstancePublicIP: Value: !GetAtt WordPressInstance.PublicIp Description: The public IP address of the WordPress instance.
As a Director of Eternal Web Private Ltd an AWS consulting partner company, Nirav is responsible for its operations. AWS, cloud-computing and digital transformation are some of his favorite topics to talk about. His key focus is to help enterprises adopt technology, to solve their business problem with the right cloud solutions.
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