Implementation

• Installing the Apache web server

  To run Drupal, you need to run a web server on your EC2 instance. A web server is a process that listens for HTTP requests, handles the request, and returns a response to users.

  The open source Apache web server is the most popular web server used with Drupal.

  To install Apache on your EC2 instance, run the following command in your terminal:
  

  sudo yum install -y httpd
  

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  You should see some terminal output of the necessary packages being installed.

  You need to change a setting in your Apache configuration file. Open the file with nano with the following command:
  

  sudo nano /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

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  There is a block about a third of the way in the file that looks as follows:
  

  # Further relax access to the default document root:
  <Directory "/var/www/html">
      #
      # Possible values for the Options directive are "None", "All",
      # or any combination of:
      #   Indexes Includes FollowSymLinks SymLinksifOwnerMatch ExecCGI MultiViews
      #
      # Note that "MultiViews" must be named *explicitly* --- "Options All"
      # doesn't give it to you.
      #
      # The Options directive is both complicated and important.  Please see
      # http://httpd.apache.org/docs/2.4/mod/core.html#options
      # for more information.
      #
      Options Indexes FollowSymLinks
  
      #
      # AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
      # It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
      #   Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
      #
      AllowOverride None
  
      #
      # Controls who can get stuff from this server.
      #
      Require all granted
  </Directory>

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  In this block, change the “AllowOverride None” to read “AllowOverride All”.

  You can save and exit from nano by entering CTRL + O followed by CTRL + X. 

  To start the Apache web server, run the following command in your terminal:
  

  sudo service httpd start
  

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  You can see that your Apache web server is working and that your security groups are configured correctly by visiting the public DNS of your EC2 instance in your browser.

  Go to the EC2 Instances page and find your instance. In the Description below, find the Public DNS (IPv4) of your instance.
  

  

  Enter this value into your web browser, and you should see an Apache test page.
  

  

  Now that your Apache web server is working, it’s time to download and configure Drupal.
  

• Configure Drupal

  In this step, you will install the Drupal software and set up the configuration.

  First, install PHP and the various PHP dependencies by running the following commands.
  

  sudo amazon-linux-extras install -y php7.2
  sudo yum install -y php-dom php-gd php-simplexml php-xml php-opcache php-mbstring

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  If you chose PostgreSQL as your database engine, run the following command to install the PHP PostgreSQL library.
  

  sudo yum install -y php-pgsql
  

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  Next, download and uncompress the Drupal software by running the following commands in your terminal:
  

  wget https://www.drupal.org/download-latest/tar.gz
  tar -xzf tar.gz
  mv drupal-* drupal

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  If you run “ls” to view the contents of your directory, you will see a tar file and a directory called drupal with the uncompressed contents.
  

  $ ls
  drupal  tar.gz

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  Change into the drupal directory and copy the files into the Apache root using the following commands.
  

  cd drupal
  sudo rsync -avz . /var/www/html
  sudo chown -R apache:apache /var/www/html

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  Then, restart the Apache service
  

  sudo service httpd restart
  

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  Your Drupal site is almost ready. In the next step, you will go through the Drupal site configuration wizard to create your site.
  

• Set up Drupal site

  Time to create your site. Once again, go to the EC2 Instances page and find your instance. In the Description below, find the Public DNS (IPv4) of your instance.
  

  

  Enter this value into your web browser.

  Note: You may have issues running the Drupal set up process with certain configurations of Google Chrome. If you have problems, try using a different web browser to set up Drupal.

  You should set the beginning of the Drupal setup wizard.

  Choose the language you prefer and click Save and continue.

  On the Choose profile screen, choose the Standard installation profile and click Save and continue.
  

  

  It’s now time to set up your database. Select the database type that corresponds with the database engine you selected in Amazon RDS. If you chose MySQL, select the MySQL, MariaDB, Percona Server, or equivalent option. If you chose PostgreSQL, choose the PostgreSQL option.

  Find your RDS database endpoint in the RDS console.
  

  

  In the Drupal setup wizard, enter your configuration for Database name, Database user, and Database password. Then, click the Advanced options arrow to expand the options. In the Host field, enter the value for your RDS endpoint.
  

  

  Click Save and continue. This will take a moment as Drupal creates your database tables and installs the necessary modules.
  

  

  After installation is finished, enter the configuration for your site.
  

  

  After entering your configuration, hit Save and continue to complete setup of your Drupal site.

  You should see a success message and the beginning of your Drupal site.
  

  

  Congratulations! You configured your Drupal website on Amazon EC2 using an Amazon RDS database. This setup will enable you to scale with low maintenance, allowing you to focus on what matters most to you.

  In the next module, you will clean up the resources you created in this module and see some next steps.