Build a WordPress website on an ECS instance - Elastic Compute Service

WordPress is a free, open-source content management system (CMS) that allows you to easily create and manage websites, including blogs, news websites, e-commerce websites, and social media websites. WordPress has a rich library of themes and plug-ins that allows you to customize the appearance and functionality of your websites. This topic describes the architecture of a WordPress website that is built on an Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instance and the modes and procedure for building a WordPress website.

Architecture

The following figure shows the architecture of a WordPress website built on an ECS instance.

Modes

The following table describes the method for building a WordPress website.

Mode	Method	Example operating system	Description
Manual building	Build a WordPress website on a Linux instance	Alibaba Cloud Linux 2 or 3 CentOS 7 or 8	You can run CLI commands to install an LNMP stack that includes a specific version of each component and build a WordPress website of a specific version based on your business requirements. You must be familiar with Linux.

You can also use Docker to deploy WordPress. For more information, see Use Docker Compose to deploy applications.

Procedure

The following flowchart shows a high-level overview of the procedure for building a WordPress website on an ECS instance.

Perform the following steps to build a WordPress website on an ECS instance:

Create an ECS instance.
Different types of websites have different requirements on ECS instance configurations. Prepare a suitable ECS instance based on the website scale and the number of potential visitors. In most cases, you can configure only basic configurations for ECS instances to be used by small websites. For information about how to create an ECS instance, see Create an instance on the Custom Launch tab.
- To learn about instance families and how to select instance types, see Overview of instance families and Instance type selection.
- You can upgrade or downgrade an ECS instance based on your business requirements. For more information, see Instance types and families that support instance type changes.
Build a WordPress website.
Select a method described in the Modes section based on your business requirements to build a WordPress website.
Note
You can use the methods described in this topic to build a WordPress website in the following environments:
- LNMP stack. You can build a WordPress website in an LNMP stack on a Linux ECS instance.
- WIMP environment. WIMP stands for Windows, Internet Information Services (IIS), MySQL and PHP. You can build a WordPress website in a WIMP environment on a Windows ECS instance.
You can select other web servers and database services.
- Web servers, such as Apache and NGINX.
- Database services, such as MariaDB and ApsaraDB RDS.
(Optional) Configure a domain name for the WordPress website.
If you allow users to access the WordPress website by using the public IP address of the ECS instance on which the WordPress website is built, the security of the instance is compromised. To improve security, perform the following steps:
1. Register a domain name.
  You can register a domain name on Alibaba Cloud. For more information, see Register a domain name on Alibaba Cloud.
2. Apply for an Internet Content Provider (ICP) filing for the domain name.
  If the WordPress website is built on an ECS instance that is located in a region inside the Chinese mainland, apply for an ICP filing for the domain name before you use the domain name for the website. For information about the ICP filing process, see ICP filing process.
  Note
  - You can apply for an ICP filing for the domain name of a website hosted on an ECS instance only if the instance is a subscription instance that has a subscription duration of at least three months. If the ECS instance on which the WordPress website is built does not meet the preceding requirements, perform one of the following operations:
    If the ECS instance is a pay-as-you-go instance, change the billing method of the instance to subscription and set the subscription duration to at least three months. For more information, see Change the billing method of an instance from pay-as-you-go to subscription.
    If the ECS instance is a subscription instance that has a subscription duration shorter than three months, renew the instance. For more information, see Renew a subscription instance.
  - The entire ICP filing process requires 1 to 22 business days to complete. The actual amount of time required may vary.
  - For the frequently asked questions about the ICP filing process, see FAQ.
3. Resolve the registered domain name
  to the public IP address of the ECS instance. For more information, see Get started with Alibaba Cloud DNS.
  Note
  For the answers to frequently asked questions about the DNS resolution issues, see FAQ about DNS resolution issues.

What to do next

After you build a WordPress website, you can use the website. For more information, see the WordPress documentation.