How to install multiple instances of WordPress on AWS Lightsail

From this point on, in this article I will guide you through all the steps necessary to install WordPress on AWS Lightsail, and it’s underlying requirements (Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc.) and how to configure it to allow for multiple instances, without using the multisite feature, and finally how to secure your installation.  I will go through these steps:

1. Installing WordPress dependencies
2. Installing WordPress
3. Configuring Apache for WordPress
4. Configure the databases for WordPress
5. Secure Apache sites
6. Configuring WordPress to connect to the database

1. Installing WordPress Dependencies

In my installation, I’m choosing to use Apache web server. Alternatively, I could use NGINX. But I’m more experienced with Apache. In addition to Apache, WordPress needs the PHP engine, MySQL database, and some additional PHP libraries and helpers.

But before installing anything, it’s good practice to make sure the server is updated and upgraded to the latest libraries. So we run the following commands:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade

After updating and upgrading, I strongly recommend rebooting the machine. Then we can install all the dependency packages at once, or one at a time. The most demanding of the dependencies is MySQL, so I prefer to install it first, and make sure it installs properly, before installing the others.

$ sudo apt install mysql-server

The above command installs the latest stable release of MySQL.  This should be fine with WordPress. If the installation succeeds, the database service should start. You can verify your installation was successful by issue the following command:

$ sudo mysql

This will log you in to the server and display the version number of your MySQL Server, as shown below.

After installing MySQL server it is highly recommended to secure your installation, by running the following script:

$ sudo mysql_secure_installation

1.1 Installing the remaining dependencies

After installing MySQL successfully, we can proceed to installing the servers and libraries.  We can run the following command:

$ sudo apt install apache2 ghostscript \
  libapache2-mod-php php \
  php-bcmath php-curl php-imagick php-intl \
  php-json php-mbstring \
  php-mysql php-xml php-zip

If all the above installs successfully, as they should, we can proceed with installing WordPress. If there are any issues thus far, please don’t hesitate to comment below.

2. Installing WordPress on AWS Lightsail

$ cd /var/www
$ sudo mkdir demo1
$ sudo mkdir demo2

We will get the latest WordPress package by issuing the following command from within the /var/www folder:

$ sudo wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

This will place a file called latest.tar.gz within /var/www. This file contains the latest WordPress release, compressed and packaged in one file.  To unpack this file we need to issue the following two commands (unpacking it to both demo1 and demo2):

$ sudo tar -xzf latest.tar.gz -C ./demo1
$ sudo tar -xzf latest.tar.gz -C ./demo2

Now within each of these two folders we should have a WordPress sub-folder, which contains the WordPress files and sub-folders.

After unpacking WordPress, we now need to assign the proper permission to the site folders demo1 and demo2, by issuing the following commands:

$ sudo chown www-data: /var/www/demo1 -R
$ sudo chown www-data: /var/www/demo2 -R

This will allow Apache to read and write to the respective folders containing the wordpress files and website content. Please note that this is not a suitable security configuration if there are more than one entity operating the websites (such as in a shared hosting environment). But for personal, and single entity operation this is sufficient.

3. Configuring Apache for WordPress

To configure the demo1 site on Apache, you need to follow the following steps.

Within the /etc/apache2/sites-available folder, use your preferred Ubuntu editor (vim or nano) to create a demo1.conf file which contains the following information:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName demo1.yourdomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/demo1/wordpress
    <Directory /var/www/demo1/wordpress>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride Limit Options FileInfo
        DirectoryIndex index.php
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
    <Directory /var/www/demo1/wordpress/wp-content>
        Options FollowSymLinks
        Require all granted
    </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

As you may notice, this is assuming you own the domain name yourdomain.com, which you can use to add the DNS entries and server IP address for demo1 to. Further explanation of how this is accomplished is beyond the scope of this article. Reach out if you need help with your DNS settings. Contact me.

Repeat the same above for your demo2.conf file.

Now you’re ready to enable the demo1 and demo2 sites by running the commands:

$ sudo a2ensite demo1
$ sudo a2ensite demo2

You also need to enable URL rewriting mod with the following command:

$ sudo a2enmod rewrite

Finally, you should restart the Apache service by issuing the following command:

$ sudo systemctl reload apache2

4. Configure the databases for WordPress

After configuring Apache, you still need to prepare MySQL to host the databases for the two sites, demo1 and demo2. To do that, you need to carry out the following:

1. Create the database
2. Create the user to access the database

You need to do the above twice, for demo1 site and for demo2 site.

You create the databases by doing the following:

$ sudo mysql -u root  
mysql> CREATE DATABASE demo1; 
mysql> CREATE DATABASE demo2; 

And you create the users using these commands (please choose your own passwords!):

mysql> CREATE USER user1@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password1’;
mysql> CREATE USER user2@localhost IDENTIFIED BY ‘password2’;

Now, you need to assign the users to the databases, using these commands:

mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,ALTER
-> ON demo1.*
-> TO user1@localhost;

mysql> GRANT SELECT,INSERT,UPDATE,DELETE,CREATE,DROP,ALTER
-> ON demo2.*
-> TO user2@localhost;

Then you need to apply these new privileges to the server by issuing the following command

mysql> FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

mysql> quit 

And finally, you need to restart the MySQL service as follows:

$ sudo systemctl restart mysql

5. Secure Apache sites

Before attempting to connect to the demo1 and demo2 sites, I strongly recommend that you install Let’s Encrypt certificates for HTTPS connectivity. To do that, we must first install the Certbot client as follows:

$ sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache

To verify the installation we can issue the following command:

$ certbot --version

To get the certificates for the domains, we issue the following command:

$ sudo certbot --apache

You will be asked to provide your valid email address and accept the term of service. And you’ll be asked if you want to share your email with the Electronic Frontier Foundation to receive news and other information. This is optional, and the choice is yours whether you wish to subscribe or not.

Finally, you will be asked to select the domain on which you want to install the Let’s Encrypt SSL, in this case you would want to select both domains, demo1 and demo2, by leaving your input blank.

6. Configure WordPress to connect to the database

We’re finally at the stage where we will start to see some results! After setting up your DNS to point to your server’s IP address, you can use your browser to navigate to https://demo1.yourdomain.com. From there you will need to plugin the information you know (from the steps above) basically to tell WordPress how to connect to your database.

You’ll start here:

After you select your preferred language and press continue, it will let you know what information is required from you:

And you need to fill out this information based on how you created your database in step 4 above. For example:

Once you enter the correct information, WordPress will validate connectivity to the database and then prompt you to install. This is the point where WordPress will build your database.

With the completion of this step, you would have completed, installation of WordPress on site demo1. You can repeat this step (no. 6) for you demo2 site, and any other instances of WordPress on your server. Each of these instances is completely independent of the others. You can install different plugins, add different content, and certainly have different admins for each site.  I use this primarily as I build web sites for client, for testing and demonstrating work progress before going live.  Once ready to go live, I like to rebuild the WordPress installation on a separate AWS Lightsail machine, dedicated for the client.  And using a good backup and restore or migration plugin, I move over the content and artifacts of the developed site to their instance. But their instance would typically be security hardened, and separate from my development server.

I hope this step-by-step article has provided some assistance to you. If you have any questions, or comments, please don’t hesitate to comment below. I will do my best to respond to your comments as soon as possible.