After facing the fact that I need a faster hosting provider, I finally decided to try some of Amazon’s hosting products. Amazon has so many web services that it can be a bit overwhelming to get started, but I decided to give it a try.
The first thing I looked for was the ability to host WordPress websites. After doing some research, I discovered that Amazon had just introduced a program for WordPress. Using their new product “LightSail”, I found that it was actually quite simple to set up and upload WordPress. There are also other popular CMS applications such as Drupal and Joomla. If you are interested in an eCommerce solution, Magento is also supported.
Lightsail isn’t for large deployments, but it’s easy enough for smaller requirements. In a nutshell, you sign up, enter your domain name, set up WordPress, set up your DNS zones, assign the static IP address assigned to you, and boot up.
When you go to launch one of the applications, Amazon refers to them as “instances.” You must select the instance you are interested in (WordPress, Drupal, etc.) and follow the step-by-step instructions.
1. The first thing is to name your instance. If you don’t give it a name, Lightsail will create a name for you. Amazon works by zones and, in my case, it is usually Virginia. You can change the zone if you like, but I’ve found it’s best to leave it at the default zone.
2. You will also choose your instance plan, which is the monthly rate that suits your requirements.
3. You can also run other scripts and choose the default SSH key pair or change the key pair. As above, I always stick with the default value.
4. Then click create. It takes a couple of minutes and then a page appears with a public IP address and username to connect to the instance. You’ll need your private key from your Amazon account, so if you don’t have one, you’ll need to create one.
5. Bitnami is used to connect to the new site. But after uploading WordPress, you log in exactly the same way with any other hosting company. Bitnami is quite intuitive and it takes no more than 15-20 minutes to learn how to navigate.
There are also some project guides and videos to help with installation. According to the WordPress project guide, there are only 5 steps, but in reality, it’s more like 8 steps.
I uploaded this a few weeks ago, so I didn’t have time to fully develop it, but I had no problem uploading the theme. I’m also using an AWS plugin (free) that will copy any media file to Amazon S3 and serve it from S3 Cloudfront. Hopefully this will reduce my page load times.
It takes some getting used to not having cpanel, but overall I’d say it’s a definite “Yes” to at least try Amazon’s Lightsail to host your WordPress sites.
Next on Amazon’s calendar? HTML websites.
