The Challenge

Getting as close to completely free self hosted wordpress by combining the cheapest tiers of AWS offerings.

I run two WordPress sites, JonahDevs.com and AussieBulkBricks.com. I thought why not use this as an opportunity to learn somethings about self hosting WordPress. Most importantly I was bound to save money on getting as close to fr by trying this.

AWS Lightsail Free Tier

This one was simple enough, I followed the prompts and signed up to the free tier. Pointed my DNS records to Lightsail as instructed and I was up and running.

The Process of Setting Up AWS Lightsail for WordPress

Selecting the default option (Linux/Unix + WordPress) because it gets the Job done and doesn’t cost extra like running Windows as an OS would.

Selecting $7 Per month as I wasn’t smart enough to use my Free credit to the max.

Press the orange button

Login and follow the vanilla WordPress install prompts as usual.

Point your DNS records as described in the Lightsail docs and change the website name in WordPress settings to match your Domain Name. This part is really important.

The Pros

• It kind of just works out of the box
• Its free (to begin with)

The problems

I really couldn’t get CDN to work nicely via Cloudfront. I am sure I could by revisiting this but didn’t have the energy to push through after the initial easy setup set the bar for how easy I was expecting things to be moving forward. That bar definitely tripped me up here.

Why didn’t I settle for AWS Lightsail?

In short: Ego of a Software Developer and not having CDN working out the box irked me.

I’ll be honest, in hindsight I’m not entirely sure. It has something to do with the feeling of buying something that is ready out of the box. As a software developer I have such a strong gut instinct telling me that whatever resources are bundled up and sold as this package will have a great profit margin and that if only I was able to bundle those resources up myself I could save that difference.

Why Not Hetzner.com?

After a lot of research they really do seem to have great value VPS, If you are based anywhere near the European continent I would recommend going with them. Unfortunately I am half way around the globe from the nearest hosting locations that they offer (Germany / Finland / USA).

Why is this distance a dealbreaker for me? I like to edit files on my VPS directly via Visual Studio Code Remote extensions. The latency between your input and the file updating really slows things down when working for extended periods. Not to mention that the WordPress interface itself will be slow when updating posts, installing plugins and generally navigating around.

Maybe one day when I can afford to run my own private CDN nodes I will go back to them to serve my European traffic directly from my own server!