How to Host a Website for Free Using AWS?

AWS provides a highly reliable, scalable, low-cost infrastructure platform in the cloud that powers hundreds of thousands of businesses in 190 countries around the world.

AWS offers 1-year free subscription with limited features of it. The 1year free tier service is available only for new customers. In this post, we will learn how to host a website using the basic feature of AWS.

Here is a link for how to create an AWS account & activate it. https://aws.amazon.com/premiumsupport/knowledge-center/create-and-activate-aws-account/

Step by Step Guides:

After activating the AWS account, follow these steps here are the steps by steps guides to host a website for free using AWS.

Step 01:

Step1 – Go to the AWS console page – https://aws.amazon.com/console/

Step 02:

Sign in to your root account with a login id & password.

Step 03:

Here you can choose the region. Search EC2 in services then launch the instance.

Step 04:

• You can choose server OS here, it’s called AMI(Amazon Machine Image).
• Check the free tier option. I have chosen Ubuntu 16.04.

Step 05:

• Choose the instance type. T2 micro (1vcpu, 2.5 GHz, 1gib memory) comes with free tier eligibility.
• Go to configure instances details.

Step 06:

Click on the additional storage.

Step 07:

AWS provides free SSD storage space from 8 GB to 30 GB. Here you can uncheck the delete on termination option.

• Click on the add tag option.

Step 08:

It helps you to manage your instances, images, and other Amazon EC2 resources. Tags enable you to categorize your AWS resources.

 

• Click on the Configure security group.

Step 09:

• Create a new security group.
• Add Rule such as “ssh”, “Http”, “https”, “MySQL”.

If you want to access your website from anywhere then you can choose the option anywhere under the source option.

Step 10:

Review and lunch the instance.

Step 11:

View your instance.

Step 12:

AWS gives a static IP for free.

• Go to the Elastic IPs then click on the Allocate new address.

Step 13:

Here is your static /elastic IP.

• Just Close it.

Step 14:

• You have to attach the Static IP/Elastic IP to your instance.
• Go to the Elastic IP option
• Click on the Associate address under the “Action” dropdown box.

Step 15:

• Choose your instance from your instance ID
• Then click on the associate.

Step 16:

• Associate address request succeeded
• Then close it.

Step 17:

Amazon RDS is a managed relational database service that provides you six familiar database engines to choose from, including Amazon Aurora, MySQL, MariaDB, Oracle, Microsoft SQL Server, and PostgreSQL.

• You can find AWS RDS to find services.
• Then click on the create database.

Step 18:

• Choose a database creation method.

I have chosen the MySQL database engine.

Step 19:

• Check the free tier then you can choose the MySQL version.

I have chosen MySQL 5.6.

 

Step 20:

Give your credentials just

1. Instance identifier
2. Master User Name
3. Master Password

 

Step 21:

AWS provides 20 GB storage space for RDS under the free tier.

Step 22:

• Check yes in public access under additional connectivity configuration. So that you can access it from anywhere.
• Choose an existing vpc security group. I have chosen the (lunch-wizard-1) security group because it is the attached security group of Ec2 instance.
• You can choose the availability zone.

Step 23:

• In the additional configuration, you can create a database & name it.
• You can choose the DB parameter group.
• Do not check Enable automatic backups, because it’s not coming under free tier services.

Step 24:

• Check the Enable deletion protection. It protects the database from being deleted accidentally.
• Click on the Create database option.

Step 25:

After successfully created a database user, you can review your credentials.

Step 26:

• Connection details to your database user.
• Save the credentials & close it.

Step 27:

Puttygen part of the open-source network networking client PuTTY is a crucial generating tool to create public and private SSH keys for servers. https://www.puttygen.com/download-putty

The tool is used for SSH connectivity. So users can use PuTTY to connect and securely transfer data from localhost to remote system. puttygen helps to create a PPK file from pem file.

• Click on the generate.

After click on the generates option, you have to circulate the mouse randomly.

Step 28:

• Click on the load.
• Locate the pem file from your computer.
• Choose the pem file, then save the private key as .ppk.

Step 29:

• Connect to SSH through putty. ( https://www.putty.org/)
• Enter your Elastic/static IP in the Hostname.

Step 30:

• Click on the SSH/Auth & browse the PPK file from your system.
• After that Just Save it.

Step 31:

Install Apache2 web server

1. sudo apt-get update
2. sudo apt-get install apache2

Install PHP 7.2

1. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/PHP
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt-get install php7.2
4. sudo apt-get install php7.2-curl php7.2-gd php7.2-json php7.2-mbstring php7.2-intl php7.2-mysql php7.2-xml php7.2-zip

Enable headers & rewrite for the apache2 webserver.

1. sudo a2enmod headers
2. sudo service apache2 restart
3. sudo a2enmod rewrite
4. sudo service apache2 restart

Install MySQL 5.6 client

1. sudo add-apt-repository ‘deb http://archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu trusty universe‘
2. sudo apt-get update
3. sudo apt install mysql-client-5.6

Enable Allowoverride For Apache2 web server

1. sudo nano /etc/apache2/apache2.conf
2. Change AllowOverride None to AllowOverride All

Step 32:

Open the browser & type the server URL/IP

Thank you.