🚀 Building a WordPress Site on AWS EC2 (Amazon Linux): A Comprehensive Manual

Fed up with one-click WordPress installers? This comprehensive guide walks you through setting up WordPress manually on an AWS EC2 instance, giving you full control over your server environment. Perfect for developers who want to understand the underlying stack!

Setting up WordPress on an EC2 instance manually gives you full control over your hosting stack. In this post, I’ll walk you through the complete process of installing WordPress on AWS EC2 using Amazon Linux, Apache, PHP, and MariaDB — all without automated tools.

Whether you're a DevOps beginner or just prefer doing things manually, this guide has you covered.

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🔍 What We’re Building

We’ll manually set up a WordPress site on an Amazon EC2 instance using the LAMP stack:

LAMP stands for:

• Linux – OS running on your EC2 instance (Amazon Linux 2)

• Apache – Web server

• MariaDB – MySQL-compatible database

• PHP – Server-side scripting language that powers WordPress

By the end, you’ll have:

✅ A working WordPress website
✅ Database and credentials securely configured
✅ Apache and MariaDB running and enabled at startup
✅ Everything accessible via your EC2 instance’s public IP

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Before you begin, ensure you have:

• An AWS account

• A key pair for EC2

• Basic familiarity with the command line

• Open ports for HTTP (80), SSH (22), and optionally HTTPS (443)

To start we created a ‘stack’ with preconfigured parameters from the manual below:

Alternatively, you can use AWS CloudFormation to create a stack by inputting the necessary parameters.

Navigate to EC2 on the AWS console and click on the Instance created alongside the stack.

Connect to the instance using AWS linux terminal

🛠️ Step-by-Step Installation Guide

🔐 Step 1 – Set Database Credentials as Variables

DBName='a4lwordpress'
DBUser='a4lwordpress'
DBPassword='4n1m4l$4L1f3'
DBRootPassword='4n1m4l$4L1f3'

You can verify them with as seen above:

echo $DBName

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📦 Step 2 – Install Required Software

sudo dnf install wget php-mysqlnd httpd php-fpm php-mysqli \
mariadb105-server php-json php php-devel -y

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🔌 Step 3 – Enable and Start Web & Database Servers

Make sure the services start now and on reboot:

sudo systemctl enable httpd
sudo systemctl enable mariadb
sudo systemctl start httpd
sudo systemctl start mariadb

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🔐 Step 4 – Secure the MariaDB Root Account

Set a password for the MariaDB root user:

sudo mysqladmin -u root password $DBRootPassword

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🌐 Step 5 – Download and Install WordPress

Download and extract WordPress into your web root:

sudo wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz -P /var/www/html
cd /var/www/html
sudo tar -zxvf latest.tar.gz
sudo cp -rvf wordpress/* .
sudo rm -R wordpress
sudo rm latest.tar.gz

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⚙️ Step 6 – Configure WordPress

Create the configuration file:

sudo cp ./wp-config-sample.php ./wp-config.php

Replace placeholders in the config with your variables:

sudo sed -i "s/'database_name_here'/'$DBName'/g" wp-config.php
sudo sed -i "s/'username_here'/'$DBUser'/g" wp-config.php
sudo sed -i "s/'password_here'/'$DBPassword'/g" wp-config.php

Ensure Apache owns the web root:

sudo chown apache:apache * -R

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🧱 Step 7 – Create WordPress Database and User

Generate SQL statements:

echo "CREATE DATABASE $DBName;" >> /tmp/db.setup
echo "CREATE USER '$DBUser'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY '$DBPassword';" >> /tmp/db.setup
echo "GRANT ALL ON $DBName.* TO '$DBUser'@'localhost';" >> /tmp/db.setup
echo "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;" >> /tmp/db.setup

Execute them:

mysql -u root --password=$DBRootPassword < /tmp/db.setup
sudo rm /tmp/db.setup

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🌍 Step 8 – Launch in Browser

Visit your EC2 instance's public IPv4 address in a browser:

http://your_instance_public_ipv4_ip

You should see the WordPress setup screen. Complete the installation from there.

Set up page to set your login details

Then login to your Wordpress account

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This takes you to your landing page on Wordpress

✅ Final Result

You now have a fully functional WordPress site running on a manually configured EC2 instance with:

• Apache, PHP, and MariaDB installed

• WordPress files deployed and configured

• A secure database connection

• Web access via your EC2 public IP

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🚨 Troubleshooting Tips

• 403 Forbidden? Run:

  bash

    sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html
  

• Database errors? Double-check wp-config.php.

• Apache not running? Restart it:

  bash

    sudo systemctl restart httpd
  

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🎯 Conclusion

Congrats, You’ve successfully installed WordPress manually on AWS EC2!

Manually installing WordPress gives you insight into how your server works and flexibility in customizing your deployment. This method is great for learning DevOps fundamentals or creating a lightweight, self-managed WordPress host on AWS.

In conclusion, manually setting up a WordPress site on AWS EC2 provides a deep understanding of the LAMP stack and offers full control over your server environment. This approach is ideal for those looking to learn DevOps fundamentals or customize their WordPress hosting. By following this guide, you have successfully installed WordPress, configured a secure database connection, and ensured web access via your EC2 public IP.

This method not only enhances your technical skills but also allows for greater flexibility in managing security and performance and gives you:
✅ Full control over your stack.
✅ Better understanding of the LAMP environment.
✅ Flexibility to customize security and performance.

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👉 Want to take it further?

• Secure your site with HTTPS (use Let’s Encrypt)

• Add a domain name

• Create an AMI to replicate the setup

• Secure your site with HTTPS (Let’s Encrypt).

• Set up automated backups.

  Questions? Let’s discuss in the comments!

  #WordPress #AWS #EC2 #WebDev #Cloud

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  📚 Further Reading

  • How to Secure Your WordPress Site on AWS

  • Scaling WordPress with Amazon RDS

Let me know in the comments if you'd like a guide for any of these next steps!