How to host WordPress on AWS (EC2, RDS, Caddy)

Amazon EC2 cost for WordPress VPS

For 1 GB of RAM and 8 GB of storage without free tier, Amazon EC2 will cost ~ $10 per month.

RDS MySQL database cost for WordPress

For a database with 1 GB of RAM and 20 GB of storage it would cost ~ $14 per month.

Here is the breakdown of RDS database cost:

Use the SSH command with IP

We will be using rsync, so it’s best to connect using the terminal.

Alternatively, you can use the connect button to directly get the command or connect to EC2 from the browser itself.

The default username for Amazon Linux EC2 instance is ec2-user.

ssh -i your-key.pem ec2-user@your-ip-address

Type yes and save the fingerprint:

On successful login you’ll see the Amazon Linux logo:

   ,     #_
   ~\_  ####_        Amazon Linux 2023
  ~~  \_#####\
  ~~     \###|
  ~~       \#/ ___   https://aws.amazon.com/linux/amazon-linux-2023
   ~~       V~' '->
    ~~~         /
      ~~._.   _/
         _/ _/
       _/m/'
Last login: Mon Jun  3 13:15:51 2024 from 49.36.180.53
[ec2-user@ip-172-31-19-82 ~]$

Verify the installation

Once PHP is installed, you can use php -v command to check the PHP version.

$ php -v       
PHP 8.3.9 (cli) (built: Jul  2 2024 15:37:13) (NTS)
Copyright (c) The PHP Group
Zend Engine v4.3.9, Copyright (c) Zend Technologies

Move the wordpress directory into www

Following the best practice you should move the wordpress directory from home to /var/www/.

sudo mv wordpress /var/www/

If there is not www directory, simply create one.

Check for service status

Now we need to make sure that php-fpm and Caddy is running without error, so let’s check their status:

sudo systemctl status php-fpm.service caddy.service 

Check for the Active value in the output, it should be active (running) followed by the date.

● php-fpm.service - The PHP FastCGI Process Manager
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/php-fpm.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2024-07-11 20:38:44 UTC; 11h ago
   Main PID: 30083 (php-fpm)
     Status: "Processes active: 0, idle: 9, Requests: 404, slow: 0, Traffic: 0req/sec"
      Tasks: 10 (limit: 1004)
     Memory: 91.5M
        CPU: 15.567s
     CGroup: /system.slice/php-fpm.service
             ├─30083 "php-fpm: master process (/etc/php-fpm.conf)"
             ├─30084 "php-fpm: pool www"
             └─33732 "php-fpm: pool www"

Jul 11 20:38:44 ip-172-31-19-253.ec2.internal systemd[1]: Starting php-fpm.service - The PHP Fast>
Jul 11 20:38:44 ip-172-31-19-253.ec2.internal systemd[1]: Started php-fpm.service - The PHP FastC>

● caddy.service - Caddy
     Loaded: loaded (/usr/lib/systemd/system/caddy.service; enabled; preset: disabled)
     Active: active (running) since Thu 2024-07-11 20:13:46 UTC; 12h ago
       Docs: https://caddyserver.com/docs/
   Main PID: 28631 (caddy)
      Tasks: 8 (limit: 1004)
     Memory: 17.0M
        CPU: 4.531s
     CGroup: /system.slice/caddy.service
             └─28631 /usr/bin/caddy run --environ --config /etc/caddy/Caddyfile

Find the UNIX socket path for php-fpm

You can do ls /run/php-fpm and look up for .sock file.

$ ls /run/php-fpm/
php-fpm.pid  www.sock

For me it happened to be www.sock, so my complete path will be unix//run/php-fpm/www.sock

Update Caddy server config to host WordPress

The Caddyfile stays in /etc/caddy.

Open it with vim:

sudo vim /etc/caddy/Caddyfile 

Now update your Caddy config with the WordPress directory path and php-fpm socket path:

example.com {
        # The path where your wordpress directory is at:
        root * /var/www/wordpress

        # The socket path which you got from previous step:
        php_fastcgi unix//run/php-fpm/www.sock

        # Enable the static file server.
        file_server
}

Caddy PHP permission denied error

ERROR	http.log.error	dialing backend: dial unix /run/php-fpm/www.sock: connect: permission denied

To fix this make sure to add caddy in the listen.acl_users config of php-fpm.

Caddy no such file or directory error

ERROR	http.log.error	dialing backend: dial unix /run/php/php-fpm.sock: connect: no such file or directory	

This happens when you specify the wrong socket path for php-fpm.

Make sure the .sock file exists in the /run/php directory and the path is correct in the Caddy config file.

Use AWS CLI to create a RDS database

Open CloudShell from top right corner if you don’t have AWS CLI installed locally in your machine:

Run create-db-instance command, pass the zone where your WordPress instance is running, e.g. us-east-1b.

You can pass mariadb or mysql in the --engine.

Here is the complete example of creating RDS database with AWS CLI:

aws rds create-db-instance \
--db-instance-identifier wordpress-db \
--db-instance-class db.t4g.micro \
--engine mariadb \
--master-username admin \
--master-user-password your-secret-pa$$word \
--allocated-storage 20 \
--availability-zone us-east-1b

After running the command, you can refresh the databases list to view the database which is being created.

After couple of minutes the database Status will be changed to Available.

Create database and user for wordpress

sudo dnf install mariadb105

mysql -h xxx.rds.amazonaws.com -P 3306 -u admin -p

CREATE DATABASE wordpress;
CREATE USER 'wp_user'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-pa$$';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO 'wp_user'@'%';

MariaDB [(none)]> SELECT User from mysql.user;
+-------------+
| User        |
+-------------+
| admin       |
| wp_user     |
| mariadb.sys |
| rdsadmin    |
+-------------+
4 rows in set (0.225 sec)

MariaDB [(none)]> 

MariaDB [(none)]> SHOW DATABASES;
+--------------------+
| Database           |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| innodb             |
| mysql              |
| performance_schema |
| sys                |
| wordpress   <--    |
+--------------------+
6 rows in set (0.222 sec)

Language selection

Once you click Continue you will see this:

This information is being used to create a wp-config.php file. If for any reason this automatic file creation does not work, do not worry. All this does is fill in the database information to a configuration file. You may also simply open wp-config-sample.php in a text editor, fill in your information, and save it as wp-config.php. Need more help? Read the support article on wp-config.php.

Click on Let’s go!

Configure database in WordPress

Put the database details you got in the above step.

Click Submit once you are done.

Create your WordPress site

Now you just need to fill in your new site and admin user details.

Click Install WordPress.

Login to your WordPress site

You will see this screen after a while. Click on Log In, fill in your username and password.

WordPress installation complete

The WordPress installation is complete now and you can start customizing the site and theme.

That’s all folks, it’s been a really long article. I hope this helped you in setting up your WordPress site on AWS.