Hi there, I am looking for some advice regarding hosting wordpress sites, with my own AWS server.
I have been doing wordpress sites for a few clients as a side gig in college for about a year now. And have been reading a lot of this r/ that using shared hosting is VERY bad. Previously I had set up clients on their own share hosting plans with websites such as HostGator. I know now that, that was indeed not the best idea.
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Long story short, the point is I am trying to see/learn how I can do this with AWS, instead. Should I host all of their sites on my own AWS server and charge them to upkeep it, or should I instead, set them up with their own AWS server so that they can control it if for example, I in 7 years decide I simply don’t want to manage it anymore.
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Also regarding AWS, and the question above, I was totally unaware WordPress multi-site was a thing. I personally have several sites, would this be the option I choose to host multiple sites? **I am VERY new to AWS, and any information on it regarding hosting wordpress sites, and clients etc would be great, I will not be moving any clients to it until I am familiar with it, so my personal sites will be my testing ground.**
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I am also wondering is it possible to transfer my entire sites to AWS from HostGator? Like is that even a possibility, or would I need to recreate each one? Is there a way to do that without site down time? Or do I need to move the domain, and rebuild it as quickly as I can? **I’ve never attempted anything like this before.**
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Thank you for your help in advance!
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“AWS” is a company. What product are you using? eg EC2, Lightsail, etc?
If you’re just starting out, AWS Lightsail is a fairly simple way to go. One site per server. Small sites (low traffic, only a few basic plugins) can use 1GB, and you go up from there.
You will need to learning how to properly migrate a site and SSH commands.
It might sound super cool to host WordPress on AWS, but especially when you are inexperienced with DevOps in general, the headaches are probably not worth it at all, because you have to consider a bunch of stuff that other hosters/providers already do for you.
One good “beginner way” to offer hosting would rent a VM with something like Plesk installed. From there you can manage clients/domains and even give them access to their own hosting. The advantage is also that it already comes with all tools for serving things like mail.
Other ways would be using something like a WP Engine Agency program and profit of their comissions.
If you are really hard stuck on AWS, Lightsail might be the best option since you can setup WordPress pretty fast from there. But even then, getting autorenew SSL working, PHP Mailer does not work on EC2 out of the box, getting your boost credits bruteforced away and so on. It’s a pain in the ass if you are new to this.
If you have shell chops check out https://nearlyfreespeech.net/ They do the ops for you. There are other traditional shared hosting providers that don’t suck, too.
And, when I need to stand up a VM, I use https://digitalocean.com/ They are developer friendly and far far far less complicated to provision than AWS.
Aws is too expensive for the normal blog. I’d recommend hostinger or a 4 core slice from Siteground for $100. You could host 5-10 sites on the slice.
Don’t use AWS for hosting wp,. If you’re looking for a quality host, pick one of the handful of good managed WordPress hosts. Wpengine, siteground, pressable. Or hire an agency and use their hosting.
Multisite has solid use cases, unrelated sites though, not great.
I maintain a multisite for site resellers, with hundreds of highs hook and youth sports sites. This, solid use case. Merging all of your sites into a single multisite just for easier access, doesn’t allow you total flexibility. Use another method to manage them.