Recently on a client site I had to deploy it onto Amazon Web Services or as the hipster kids call it, AWS and I decided to use the wonderfully functional Bitnami WordPress AMI which comes with a pre-installed version of WordPress, Apache, Varnish and a few other nice little additions.
While it is mostly install and use, there are a few caveats you can easily overcome:
Default WordPress admin details
When you deploy the Bitnami AMI for WordPress it comes already installed, which means that a username and password for the WordPress admin panel has already been created. It can be a pain in the butt finding these details, so the defaults are:
Username: user
Password: bitnami
Changing the URL to be the root directory
By default WordPress in the Bitnami AMI image comes installed in a sub-folder “wordpress” which means when you first visit your installation, you will notice a /wordpress in the URL. If you’re using WordPress for your main site, this isn’t ideal.
Changing it fortunately doesn’t require copying or moving files, simply run this command in your console:
sudo /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/updateip –appurl /
Making all folders and or specific folders writeable (like the uploads folder):
You might have eventually realised by default, the uploads folder and other folders in your WordPress installation are not writeable. This is simply a matter of changing the group and owner of the files/folders.
To make the uploads folder writeable:
sudo chown -R bitnami:daemon /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-content/uploads
To make all folders writeable:
sudo chown -R bitnami:daemon /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs
Setting up PHPMyAdmin Access:
Out of the box, PHPMyAdmin is locked down for security reasons. The process is documented here and fairly straight-forward for Windows and Mac users to set up SSH tunnelling.
Thanks for the valuable tips, Dwayne, they were very useful. There are always undocumented idiosyncrasies when dealing with services like AWS, and practical dissections of what they are and how to deal with them can and do save really significant chunks of time!
Also, FYI, when changing the default URL structure for the WordPress install by using the command supplied, I got the following error:
“Error: There has been an error.
Expected option but got “–appurl”. Options start with a leading “–” prefix
Use –help to get a list of valid options”
When I used “sudo /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/updateip –appurl /”, it appeared to work correctly. I wonder if your “–” got changed into a “–” by auto-correct when publishing your post?
(I see that WordPress appears to be modifying two dashes into one en-dash by default:
One dash: –
Two dashes: —
Two dashes, separated by a space: – – )
Oh, and finally, if you use the Marketplace to deploy the Bitnami AMI, the password won’t be applied using the default credentials, and will instead be randomised during the deployment.
You can get the randomised password via the instance’s System Log: https://wiki.bitnami.com/Amazon_cloud/Where_can_I_find_my_AWS_Marketplace_credentials%253f
Thank you so much your post helped me a lot!
Thank you for sharing these valuable tips and tricks for using the AWS Bitnami WordPress AMI Image! Your insights on default WordPress admin details, changing the URL structure, making folders writeable, and setting up PHPMyAdmin access are incredibly helpful.