DEV Community: Babatofunmi Osho-Davies

Prestashop Deployment on AWS (Free Tier)

Babatofunmi Osho-Davies — Tue, 14 Apr 2026 13:09:54 +0000

Architecture Overview

PrestaShop is an Open Source e-commerce web application, committed to providing the best shopping cart experience for both merchants and customers. It is written in PHP, is highly customizable, supports all the major payment services, is translated in many languages and localized for many countries, has a fully responsive design (both front and back office), etc.

This project demonstrates the deployment of a PrestaShop e-commerce application using AWS Free Tier services. The architecture separates the application and database layers for scalability and reliability.

EC2 Instance (Application Server): Hosts Apache, PHP, and PrestaShop
Amazon RDS (Database Server): Hosts MySQL database
Public Access via EC2 Public IP

Implementation Steps

Step 1: Launch EC2 Instance

Create an Ubuntu 24.04 t3.micro instance.
Configure a security group.
Add an inbound rule for All TCP from Anywhere (basically Protocol: TCP, Port: 0-65536, Source: 0.0.0.0/0)

Step 2: Create Database (Amazon RDS)

Create a MySQL database using Free Tier. Configure credentials and enable public access temporarily.
Add an inbound rule for MYSQL from Anywhere (basically Protocol: TCP, Port: 3306, Source: 0.0.0.0/0)

Step 3: Connect to EC2

On the EC2 console.
Select the Instance you created and click on connect which will launch a Dashboard
Select SSH client and follow the instructions on how to connect.

ssh -i your-key.pem ubuntu@your-ec2-public-ip

Update system and install Apache Webserver

sudo apt update; sudo apt install apache2 -y

Install PHP v7.4

sudo apt install software-properties-common; sudo add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php; sudo apt update; sudo apt-get install -y php7.4 php7.4-cli php7.4-zip php7.4-json php7.4-common php7.4-mysql php7.4-gd php7.4-mbstring php7.4-curl php7.4-xml php7.4-bcmath php7.4-simple php7.4-intl

Step 4: Connect to AWS RDS using the Endpoint and Create Database

sudo apt install mysql-client

sudo mysql -h YourRdsEndpoint -u admin -p

create database db;
show databases;
exit

Step 5: Download PrestaShop

Download the zip file and then unzip the downloaded file.
After unzipping the downloaded file, you will get prestashop.zip, and then you can store it in /var/www/html

cd /var/www/html
sudo wget https://download.prestashop.com/download/releases/prestashop_8.1.0.zip
sudo unzip prestashop_8.1.0.zip
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html

Step 6: Configure Apache

Restart Apache to apply changes.

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/html/; 
sudo a2enmod rewrite;
sudo systemctl restart apache2.service;
sudo rm -rf index.html

Step 8: Run Installer

To complete the installation, go to http://yourpublicipaddress
Choose your language then click Next

Click "Next" after agreeing to the terms and conditions.
Add information about your store.
Configure your database with the credentials you created when creating your AWS RDS and test the connection.

After installation, a window will appear.

Step 9: Access Application

Finally, close the window and revisit your site using http://yourpublicaddress

Key Configuration Decisions

Used AWS Free Tier (t2.micro) to minimize cost.
Separated database using Amazon RDS for scalability.
Opened only necessary ports for security.
Used Apache and PHP for PrestaShop compatibility.

Deliverables

1 Public URL of deployed PrestaShop
2 Screenshots of AWS setup (EC2, RDS, Security Groups)
3 Installation and configuration steps
4 Working application accessible via browser

Deploying NGINX Web Server on Amazon EC2 Instance running on Ubuntu Server.

Babatofunmi Osho-Davies — Thu, 30 Jan 2025 05:15:13 +0000

Introduction

**
I started an internship journey at HNG Cohort 12 on the DevOps track.

My first task was to setup and configure NGINX on a fresh Ubuntu Server. This task will demonstrate my ability to work with basic web server configurations, and deliver a functional web server.

Project Deliverables:

Install the NGINX web server and ensure it is running
Configure NGINX to serve a custom HTML page as the default page

Plan

As an AWS Solutions Architect, I decided to make use of Amazon EC2 instances running on Ubuntu engine to configure NGINX
I also challenged myself further to provision the EC2 instance using AWS CLI (Command Line Interface). With that the majority of this project was done on a Linux terminal, no GUIs or Management Console.

STAGE 1; Provision EC2 Instance

Signed into AWS CLI using Access ID, and Keys. Specified the Region (af-south-1) and the output format. Used this command to configure CLI;

aws configure

To provision an EC2 instance, I'll need a keypair and security group

aws ec2 create-key-pair --key-name MyKey --query 'KeyMaterial' --output text > MyKey.pem
chmod 400 MyKey.pem

aws ec2 create-security-group --group-name MySecurityGroup --description "Allow SSH access"

Confirmed that the Security group was created

Allowed SSH on the security group

aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-name MySecurityGroup --protocol tcp --port 22 --cidr 0.0.0.0/0

Next stage was to launch the EC2 Instance.
The EC2 instance used Ubuntu Server 24.04 LTS (HVM),EBS General Purpose (SSD) Volume Type. Ensured that it was a free-tier instance to avoid incurring cost.

aws ec2 run-instances --image-id ami-1234567890abcdef0 --count 1 --instance-type t3.micro --key-name MyKey --security-groups MySecurityGroup

Confirmed that the instance was successfully deployed.

Also retrieved the instance details on the CLI

The next step was to SSH (connect) into the EC2 instance

ssh -i MyKey.pem ubuntu@<EC2_PUBLIC_IP>

STAGE 2
Deploy NGINX on EC2
First step is to update the system package list;

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

Install NGINX

sudo apt install nginx -y

Start the NGINX service:

sudo systemctl start nginx

Enable it to run at startup:

sudo systemctl enable nginx

At this point NGINX was successfully installed, but I encountered a problem. To test the server, I'd enter the IP address into a web browser, and it should load the NGINX default page successfully but it didn't.

I then realized that the Security group of the EC2 instance didn't allow traffic from HTTP port 80.

To allow HTTP traffic (port 80) for everyone (0.0.0.0/0): I used the following command

aws ec2 authorize-security-group-ingress --group-id sg-0abc123def456gh78 --protocol tcp --port 80 --cidr 0.0.0.0/0

Verify That Port 80 is Open

aws ec2 describe-security-groups --group-ids sg-0abc123def456gh78 --query "SecurityGroups[*].IpPermissions"

The problem was resolved

Finally to create a custom HTML page:
Remove the default page

sudo rm /var/www/html/index.nginx-debian.html

Create a new index.html file

echo "<h1>Welcome to My NGINX Server on AWS EC2!</h1>" | sudo tee /var/www/html/index.html

Restart NGINX

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Final Test

Challenges

Connecting to the server from a browser due to the firewall rules

Key Takeaways

Installing and configuring NGINX
Systems Administration with Linux and AWS Command Line

Conclusion
Working on this project has helped me better understand the functionality of NGINX. This would be of great value in my Cloud/DevOps Journey.

References