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Launch an EC2 Instance for WordPress

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This guide walks through launching a small Ubuntu server on Amazon EC2 that is ready for a WordPress stack. It focuses on the choices that are hard to change later.

Which EC2 instance type suits a small WordPress site? #

A 2 vCPU, 4 GB RAM instance such as a t4g.medium handles most small to mid-size WordPress sites with a page cache and Redis. Graviton (arm64) instances usually cost less for the same performance, as long as your software has arm64 builds.

Step 1: Create the security group #

  • SSH (22): your own IP address only, never 0.0.0.0/0.
  • HTTP (80) and HTTPS (443): open to the internet.
  • Leave all other inbound ports closed.

Step 2: Launch the instance #

aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx --instance-type t4g.medium --key-name my-key --security-group-ids sg-xxxxxxxx --block-device-mappings 'DeviceName=/dev/sda1,Ebs={VolumeSize=40,VolumeType=gp3}'

Step 3: Attach an Elastic IP #

Allocate an Elastic IP and associate it with the instance so your public address survives stops and restarts. Point your DNS A record at that address.

Step 4: Connect #

ssh -i ~/.ssh/my-key.pem ubuntu@YOUR_ELASTIC_IP