This book was written to achieve a single goal: to get you started. By the end of this book, you will be able to host websites on a web server that you built using Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Who this book is for

This book is for those who would like to know more about web hosting on AWS, but are not sure where to start.

Aimed at absolute beginners, this book does not expect you to have prior experience in managing a virtual server. Some knowledge on how websites work is expected, but considering you probably will not be looking into books on web hosting if you do not have at least one website of your own, this should not be a problem.

With more than one hundred screenshots and illustrations, this book will guide you in building a web server for hosting your sites in a step by step fashion. The lessons are explained by examples. As you progress from one chapter to the next you will be adding more and more components until you end up with a fully functioning web server.

Why this book is not for everybody

This is not a reference book. This book avoids using technical terms as much as possible in order to keep absolute beginners engaged. It is true that technical terms are often inevitable (we are addressing a technical subject after all), but a lot of effort has been put in to simplify them. In short, if you expect a highly technical book, this is not it.

All information covered in this book can be found online. AWS has extensive documentation and tutorials available for free. Before you buy this book, make sure you read the AWS online documentation first. If you can manage to go on by using the information available there, you do not need this book.

This book provides a fair amount of hand-holding. It is organized in a step by step fashion, chapter by chapter. That means in most parts, the latter chapters are built upon what were done in the preceding chapters. This is great for those who like to go step by step, but not desirable to some who prefer to skip some chapters and read only the parts that they need.

What you will learn from this book

The lessons start with how to launch a server in AWS and how to install Linux, Apache, PHP, MySQL and phpMyAdmin, which is a setup commonly offered by commercial web hosting providers. They are covered from Chapter 2 to Chapter 7. By the end of Chapter 7, your web server is up and ready to go.

Hosting websites involves dealing with domain names. Chapter 8 will show you how to link your domain name to your server. The lesson continues to Chapter 9, where you will find out how to host multiple sites, each with their own domain names, and to Chapter 10 where you will learn how to create a subdomain within a website. By the end of Chapter 10, your web server will be hosting your sites and you will be able to visit them by using your domain names.

The next step would be to upload the websites' files from your computer to your web server. This is covered in Chapter 11, where you will learn how to use Secure File Transfer Protocol (SFTP).

By having your own web server, you are of course free to give other users access to your server. Chapter 12 will show you how to create user IDs for other users to log in securely. It will also show you how to limit your users' access, to ensure they can only access the part that you allow them to.

Web hosting would be incomplete without the ability to host blogs. Chapter 13 will show you how to implement one of the most popular blogging platforms, WordPress.

The remaining chapters are dedicated to maintaining your server, such as managing log files, utilizing a job scheduler called Cron, and implementing updates and installing additional software.

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