Amazon Lightsail — VPS Service
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A Virtual Private Server (VPS) is a virtual machine sold as a service by an Internet hosting provider. Superuser privilege is given to customer for operating system environment so that they can customize and install any required software. Amazon Lightsail provides a powerful and reliable VPS service that can be deployed in seconds. We will see how we can create a simple Wordpress website using Amazon Lightsail.
Amazon Lightsail Configuration
- Login to AWS web console and access Lightsail service. Select the Operating System as Linux and Wordpress Application. Click Create as you see in the screenshot.
2) The screen opens with the selection you have done from the previous window. Wait till the status of the instance changes from “Pending” to “Running”
3) Access the Networking tab and click Create Static IP. This will create a static public IP. Select the instance and attach the IP address. The static IP address assigned for me is public IP X.X.237.178(I have concealed the first two octets of IP). In the production environment you may have to add this IP against FQDN in the DNS server.
4) Now Wordpress website is ready. Now access with public IP X.X.237.178 which you get a Lightsail default website. The following steps we will see how to customize the website.
5) From Lightsail console home, access Instances tab and click the newly created Wordpress instance. Click Connect using SSH.
6) Open the file bitnami_application_password and note down the password. This is Wordpress admin’s password which is used for customizing the website.
7) Login as Wordpress Admin using username as “user” and with password, you found out using the previous step.
7) Now let us customize the page. From the Wordpress Dashboard click “Customize Your Site”.
8) We will do a simple modification only to test the changes that are reflected in the website. You may have to do a lot of changes for a production website. Change the text in two places where the arrow points in the screenshot and click “Publish”.
10) Now let us see changes are reflected in the website. Access the website from the web browser by typing the IP address.
Conclusion
Amazon Lightsail provides an easy click VPS solution in the AWS environment. We have seen how easily a Wordpress website can be created using Amazon Lightsail. Customer doesn't need to worry about download or installation of Wordpress software. Lightsail does everything for you.
