DEV Community: Brian Graf

Ditch Google Analytics for Plausible Analytics on Amazon Lightsail

Brian Graf — Tue, 18 Oct 2022 20:04:49 +0000

Plausible is a simple and privacy-friendly alternative to Google Analytics. It's a small (94% smaller than Google Analytics), open-source tool that allows users to either self-host or pay for the cloud-hosted version. If you want an easy-to-use tool and are concerned about privacy or you don't want Google harvesting your analytics data, this is the tool for you!

How can I start using Plausible Analytics?

You have two options:

Plausible.io - Hosted version, paid monthly or yearly, and fully-managed by Plausible.

Plausible.io - Open-source/self-hosted, free, managed by you.

We will be focusing on how to run the open-source version on Amazon Lightsail

What is Amazon Lightsail?

Amazon Lightsail offers easy-to-use virtual private server (VPS) instances, containers, storage, databases, and more at a cost-effective monthly price. Lightsail makes it easy to choose an Operating system or an application blueprint to deploy and use. We will get Plausible running on Lightsail in less than 5 minutes. Let's get started!

Login to Amazon Lightsail

If you do not already have a Lightsail account, head over to Amazon Lightsail and create one.

Once you login to the service, it will look like this:

We are going to create an instance. Click 'Create instance'

Choose the region you want this deployed. Currently you have 14 regions globally where your instances can be deployed. I'm using Virginia (US-EAST-1a).

Click the 'OS Only' button and select the latest version of Ubuntu (for me that is 20.04)

To speed up the deployment and configuration we are going to use a Launch Script, which will install and configure some of the required files before we even log in to the instance.

Click on 'Add Launch Script' and paste the following code:

sudo apt update -y
curl -fsSL https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu/gpg | sudo gpg --dearmor -o /usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg
echo "deb [arch=amd64 signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/docker-archive-keyring.gpg] https://download.docker.com/linux/ubuntu focal stable" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/docker.list > /dev/null

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install docker-ce docker-ce-cli docker-compose containerd.io -y

sudo mkdir /var/www
cd /var/www
sudo git clone https://github.com/plausible/hosting
cd hosting
sudo git clone https://github.com/TheBrianGraf/AmazonLightsail/
sudo chmod +x ./AmazonLightsail/Plausible-conf-setup.sh

The above code does the following:

Updates available packages repository
Download's Docker and additional Docker components
Download's Plausible setup files
Download's a Plausible config file

Choose an Instance Size

Lightsail offers a number of different sized instances to meet the needs of it's users. We'll choose the 4GB/2vCPU instance but you can choose a smaller or larger instance as you require.

Lastly, we'll give the Instance a name. We'll call ours 'Plausible-Analytics'. Click 'Create instance'

Add a static IP and Open Port 8000

We want our Lightsail Instance to keep the same IP address even if the instance is rebooted in the future. To add a Static IP, Click on the name of your instance.

Click the 'Networking' tab and click 'Attach static IP'

Click 'Create Static IP' and give it a name. We'll name ours 'Plausible-Analytics-IP'. Click 'Create'.

We'll go ahead and open TCP Port 8000 so that we can reach our Plausible server once it's configured. Click on your instance name again and go back to the 'Networking' Tab.

Under IPv4 Firewall, click 'Add rule'. Type '8000' in the Port box and click 'Create'

Now we are ready to login to our instance and run the last few commands to get up and running.

Login to the instance

Scroll back up to the top of the page and click the 'Connect' tab, then click 'Connect using SSH' this will open a new window that allows you to run commands in your instance.

Copy and paste (or type in) the following code into the SSH terminal:

# Run the config setup file
sudo /var/www/hosting/AmazonLightsail/Plausible-conf-setup.sh

# Change directories to the Plausible files
cd /var/www/hosting

# Kick off the Docker container
sudo docker-compose up --detach
# Wait about 10-20 seconds after the above command completes then run the final command. If it gives an error. Wait another 10 seconds and try it again.
# 
sudo docker-compose exec plausible_db psql -U postgres -d plausible_db -c "UPDATE users SET email_verified = true;"

Once you've run these commands, you will be able to login to Plausible. Copy the IP address of your instance into your web browser and include port 8000. You should now be able to login with the credentials found in the 'plausible-conf.env' file.

From here you can begin your journey using Plausible instead of Google Analytics. For more information on how to get started with adding your website, you can continue with your setup HERE.

What is Amazon Lightsail and Who is it for?

Brian Graf — Fri, 07 Oct 2022 02:40:35 +0000

What is Amazon Lightsail?

Amazon Lightsail is an AWS service that offers virtual private server (VPS) instances, containers, storage, and managed databases at a cost-effective and predictable monthly price. It is meant to be the easiest way to get started with AWS for small businesses, students, developers, and others who want to host their website or general-purpose applications in the cloud.

Unlike other AWS services that offer more advanced configurations, Lightsail comes with a simpler interface, less configurable options, and bundled compute (vCPUs), storage (SSD), and networking (data transfer allowance) into a single monthly price. With EC2 for example, users have the ability to configure additional settings for their deployments including their desired instance type, type of EBS storage, storage volume size, and provisioned IOPs, while also paying per gigabyte of egress data transfer.

Lightsail has been designed with simplicity in mind, making it easy for users to deploy websites and applications who may not have much cloud experience. The simple interface provides users with a minimal number of options to configure, allowing them to deploy their resources quickly and reliably without additional knowledge or AWS experience.

Lightsail uses burstable performance instances. Many general purpose workloads on average have a relatively low CPU utilization and do not require a high level of sustained CPU performance. These instances are provided with a baseline amount of CPU performance for their workloads, but also have the ability to provide additional CPU performance above the baseline as needed. For more information on how CPU burst capacity works on Lightsail visit Understanding Burst Capacity

Lightsail is available in 14 regions globally allowing users to select their desired region as well as choose their preferred availability zone within regions, giving them the ability to deploy their workloads closest to their end-users.

How is Amazon Lightsail different than AWS Amplify or Amazon EC2?

AWS Amplify is beneficial to users when they are building full-stack application on AWS and want to leverage the provided open-source client libraries to integrate with additional AWS services quickly and easily. It also provides fully-managed CI/CD pipelines for fast deployments of code changes while building or updating their application.

Amazon EC2 is a desirable destination for workloads when users have additional requirements not satisfied by Amazon Lightsail. Generally, if a workload requires moderate-to-high sustained CPU performance, instance sizes not offered by Amazon Lightsail, or additional configuration like creating auto-scaling groups, choosing specific storage performance and sizes, multiple elastic IPs per instance, or custom security groups, users would choose to deploy the workloads to EC2.

Amazon Lightsail differs from EC2 and Amplify in the simplicity of deploying and operating pre-built applications and focusing on VPS hosting. As mentioned above, Lightsail removes the majority of advanced configuration options to provide a simple-to-use console for launching websites, small business applications, web apps, and dev/test environments, all at a predictable monthly price.

What can I run on my Lightsail Instance?

Lightsail offers 32 application and operating system pre-configured blueprints to help users launch their instances faster. Not all users want a pre-configured application and would rather configure their instance with the software and settings that they choose. Those users tend to deploy blueprints from our ‘OS Only’ selection, which include Amazon Linux 2, Ubuntu, Debian, FreeBSD, openSUSE, CentOS, and Microsoft Windows Server & SQL Server.

Users who prefer to have pre-configured application blueprints can choose from our selection of Content Management System (CMS) offerings including WordPress, WordPress Multisite, Joomla, Ghost, and Drupal. Users wanting to setup an e-commerce site can choose from our Magento and PrestaShop blueprints, allowing them to begin adding products to their stores quickly. Developers can choose a pre-configured development stack such as LAMP, Node.js, MEAN, and Django, to begin developing after deployment. And lastly, several other pre-configured applications for project management (Redmine), Continuous Integration (GitLab CE), and WordPress control panels (Plesk Hosting Stack and cPanel/WHM).

Once an instance is deployed from the selected blueprint, builders are able to then add any additional software, or begin developing on the instance as long as it adheres to the Lightsail Terms of Service.

Additional Lightsail Resources

Building websites and applications may require more than a single Lightsail instance, either for scalability, high-availability, or multi-tiered workloads. Lightsail provides additional resources for our users to be able to grow and scale their applications and websites as they need.

Lightsail Containers

Lightsail Containers are an additional offering that bundle computer (vCPU), memory (RAM), and data transfer bandwidth into a predictable monthly price. Currently our smallest container bundle includes 512MB of RAM, 0.25 vCPU, 20Gib ephemeral storage, and 500GB of monthly data transfer allowance, while the largest container bundles include 4 vCPU and 8GB of RAM. By default, Lightsail Containers include a Load Balancer, manage the updates and security of the host OS, create HTTPS endpoints to access the application on their containers, and manage the TLS certificates. Lightsail Containers provides a simple and straight-forward solution for customers who are newer to containers to be able to deploy and configure their workloads without needing additional AWS knowledge or experience. Scaling container deployments is as easy as selecting the number of containers either during the initial deployment, or modifying the deployment afterwards to increase the total count.

Lightsail Databases

Amazon Lightsail offers managed MySQL and PostgreSQL databases in both standard and highly-available plans. These databases allow builders to create a dedicated managed-database instance that can be used by one or more Lightsail instances. Each Lightsail database instance that is deployed can host one or more databases, although by default the instance will create a single database at deployment. Because these are managed databases, Lightsail will configure and deploy the database engine and make sure it is patched as needed through the lifetime of the database.

Lightsail Buckets

Lightsail Object Storage is an object storage service that allows builders to store and retrieve objects independent of their instances. Buckets by default start in their most secure settings and are private, meaning only the bucket owner and the Lightsail account that created it, can access the bucket and its objects. You can give programmatic access of your bucket to applications, plugins, resources such as Lightsail Instances, or other AWS accounts either through associating the bucket to an instance in the Lightsail Console, or using Access Keys. Buckets are a convenient way to store files that are accessed by more than one container or instance and are retained even if the instance associated with the bucket is deleted.

Lightsail CDN

Amazon Lightsail content delivery network (CDN) makes requests faster for visitors to your application or website by caching your content at locations around the world. When visitors request content that you're serving through a distribution, the request is routed to the nearest cache of the content in terms of latency, providing an optimized experience for them. Lightsail distributions use the Amazon CloudFront global network, which currently allows caching content to locations in more than 84 cities across 24 countries. Lightsail distributions make it easy for customers to configure with three different caching presets, making it simple to select caching behaviors for static content, dynamic content, or WordPress as well as choosing the default behavior of either caching everything or caching nothing. Lightsail users get 50 GB/month data transfer free for the first twelve months.

Putting Lightsail resources together

Lightsail makes it easy to deploy applications and websites, and it also makes it easy to use multiple Lightsail resources together, creating a highly available architecture for your workloads. Applications running on Lightsail instances can easily connect to Lightsail managed databases using the database endpoint URL shown in the console or returned from the CLI. Additionally, Lightsail storage buckets can be attached directly to Lightsail Instances, allowing the applications running in that instance to access objects from the bucket without having to manage credentials, like access keys.

Can I try Amazon Lightsail for free?

The short answer is yes! Currently, Amazon Lightsail has several ‘free tier’ resources available for you to try. Lightsail Databases gives the first 3 months free on the smallest database instance, Lightsail Object Storage offers a 5GB bucket for free for the first 12 months, Lightsail Containers offers the micro bundle free for the first 3 months, and Lightsail Instances offers 3 instance sizes that are free for the first 3 months for first-time Lightsail users. This gives new users an opportunity to try out the service and get comfortable with the settings and performance before the charges begin. Click here to see the free tier

Conclusion

Amazon Lightsail provides pre-configured cloud resources for users to deploy quickly and begin focusing on their applications, websites, and code, with predictable pricing. Whether you are spinning up a test or dev environment, creating a website, or launching a web application, Amazon Lightsail is here for you.

Check out our 'Getting Started' page that has tutorials nad step-by-step guides for using Lightsail

For more information on Amazon Lightsail, see Amazon Lightsail