WordPress tutorial for AWS Cloud9

This tutorial enables you to install and run WordPress within an AWS Cloud9 development environment. WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that's widely used for the delivery web content.

Note

Following this tutorial and creating this sample might result in charges to your AWS account. These include possible charges for services such as Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2). For more information, see Amazon EC2 Pricing.

Prerequisites

Before you use this sample, make sure that your setup meets the following requirements:

• You must have an existing AWS Cloud9 EC2 development environment. This sample assumes that you already have an EC2 environment that's connected to an Amazon EC2 instance that runs Amazon Linux or Ubuntu Server. If you have a different type of environment or operating system, you might need to adapt this sample's instructions to set up related tools. For more information, see Creating an environment in AWS Cloud9.

• You have the AWS Cloud9 IDE for the existing environment already open. When you open an environment, AWS Cloud9 opens the IDE for that environment in your web browser. For more information, see Opening an environment in AWS Cloud9.

• You have an up-to-date EC2 instance with all the latest software packages. In the AWS Cloud9 IDE terminal window, you can run yum update with the -y option to install updates without asking for confirmation. If you would like to examine the updates before installing, you can omit this option.

  sudo yum update -y

Installation overview

Installing WordPress on your environment's EC2 instance involves the following steps:

1. Installing and configuring MariaDB Server, which is an open-source relational database that stores information for WordPress installations

2. Installing and configuring WordPress, which includes editing the wordpress.conf configuration file

3. Configuring the Apache server that hosts the WordPress site

4. Previewing the WordPress web content that's hosted by the Apache server

Step 1: Installing and configuring MariaDB Server

1. In the AWS Cloud9 IDE, choose Window, New Terminal and enter the following commands to install and start a MariaDB Server installation:

   sudo yum install -y mariadb-server
   sudo systemctl start mariadb

2. Next, run the mysql_secure_installation script to improve the security of your MariaDB Server installation.

   When providing responses to the script, press Enter for the first question to keep the root password blank. Press n for Set root password? and then y for each of the rest of the security options.

   mysql_secure_installation

3. Now create a database table to store WordPress information using the MariaDB client.

   (Press Enter when asked for your password.)

   sudo mysql -u root -p
   MariaDB [(none)]> create database wp_test;
   MariaDB [(none)]> grant all privileges on wp_test.* to root@localhost identified by ';'

4. To log out of the MariaDB client, run the exit command.

Step 2: Installing and configuring WordPress

1. In the IDE terminal window, navigate to the environment directory and then create the directories config and wordpress. Then run the touch command to create a file called wordpress.conf in the config directory:

   cd /home/ec2-user/environment
   mkdir config wordpress
   touch config/wordpress.conf

2. Use the IDE editor or vim to update wordpress.conf with host configuration information that allows the Apache server to serve WordPress content:

   # Ensure that Apache listens on port 80
   Listen 8080
   <VirtualHost *:8080>
       DocumentRoot "/var/www/wordpress"
       ServerName www.example.org
       # Other directives here
   </VirtualHost>     

3. Now run the following commands to retrieve the required archive file and install WordPress:

   cd /home/ec2-user/environment
   wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
   tar xvf latest.tar.gz

4. Run the touch command to create a file called wp-config.php in the environment/wordpress directory:

   touch wordpress/wp-config.php

5. Use the IDE editor or vim to update wp-config.php and replace the sample data with your setup:

   // ** MySQL settings - You can get this info from your web host ** //
   /** The name of the database for WordPress */
   define( 'DB_NAME', 'wp_test' );
   
   /** MySQL database username */
   define( 'DB_USER', 'wp_user' );
   
   /** MySQL database password */
   define( 'DB_PASSWORD', 'YourSecurePassword' );
   
   /** MySQL hostname */
   define( 'DB_HOST', 'localhost' );
   
   /** Database Charset to use in creating database tables. */
   define( 'DB_CHARSET', 'utf8' );
   
   /** The Database Collate type. Don't change this if in doubt. */
   define( 'DB_COLLATE', '' );
   
   define('FORCE_SSL', true);
   
   if ($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] == 'https') $_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on';

Step 3: Configuring your Apache HTTP Server

1. In the AWS Cloud9 IDE terminal window, make sure that you have Apache installed:

   httpd -v

   If the Apache server isn't installed, run the following command:

   sudo yum install -y httpd 

2. Navigate to the /etc/httpd/conf.d directory, which is the location for Apache's virtual host configuration files. Then use the ln command to link the wordpress.conf you created earlier to the current working directory (/etc/httpd/conf.d):

   cd /etc/httpd/conf.d
   sudo ln -s /home/ec2-user/environment/config/wordpress.conf 

3. Now navigate to /var/www directory, which is the default root folder for Apache servers. And use the ln command to link the wordpress directory you created earlier to the current working directory (/var/www):

   cd /var/www
   sudo ln -s /home/ec2-user/environment/wordpress

4. Run the chmod command to allow the Apache server to run content in the wordpress subdirectory:

   sudo chmod +x /home/ec2-user/

5. Now restart the Apache server to allow it to detect the new configurations:

   sudo service httpd restart

Step 4: Previewing WordPress web content

1. Using the AWS Cloud9 IDE, create a new file called index.html in the following directory: environment/wordpress.

2. Add HTML-formatted text to index.html. For example:

   <h1>Hello World!</h1>

3. In the Environment window, choose the index.html file , and then choose Preview, Preview Running Application.

   The web page, which displays the Hello World! message, appears in the application preview tab. To view the web content in your preferred browser, choose Pop Out Into a New Window.

   If you delete the index.html file and refresh the application preview tab, the WordPress configuration page is displayed.

Managing mixed content errors

Web browsers display mixed content errors for a WordPress site if it's loading HTTPS and HTTP scripts or content at the same time. The wording of error messages depends on the web browser that you're using, but you're informed that your connection to a site is insecure or not fully secure. And your web browser blocks access to the mixed content.

Important

By default, all web pages that you access in the application preview tab of the AWS Cloud9 IDE automatically use the HTTPS protocol. If a page's URI features the insecure http protocol, it's automatically replaced by https. And you can't access the insecure content by manually changing https back to http.

For guidance on implementing HTTPS for your web site, see the WordPress documentation.