How to create a subdomain on AWS Lightsail?

he_wang 2018-06-20 07:56:53 UTC #1

Keywords: WordPress - Amazon Web Services - How to - Domain Name (DNS)
Description:
Hi all, I am currently looking for a way to create a subdomain on Lightsail with Bitnami.

I found several posts and articles online, e.g. https://docs.bitnami.com/installer/components/apache/#how-to-configure-your-web-application, but the information is all broken into pieces, I tried all of them and none of them worked for me. Hopefully, I can find the answer here.

The domain is https://angel-point.life/, and I want to move this site to a subdomain called staging.angel-point.life

Steps I took:

Go into /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf and edit the file httpd-vhosts.conf to change all the default ServerName from wordpress.example.com to staging.angel-point.life and change all default ServerAlias from www.wordpress.example.com to www.staging.angel-point.life
Delete the <VirtualHost *:443> section since I don't have a certificate for this subdomain.
Delete the following line in the /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/bitnami-apps-prefix.conf file: Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd-prefix.conf"
Add a new link in the /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/bitnami-apps-vhosts.conf file: Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd-vhosts.conf"
Login to phpMyAdmin to change the WordPress site URL from https://angel-point.life/ to http://staging.angel-point.life
Restart the apache sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache

When I visit the subdomain, the browser reports an issue saying that the server IP address could not be found.

I was also wondering, do I need to set up an A record in Lightsail DNS for this subdomain?
I am also running CloudFlare on https://angel-point.life, do I need to set up something on CloudFlare?

The final httpd-vhosts.conf file looks like this:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName staging.angel-point.life
    ServerAlias www.staging.angel-point.life
    DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs"
    
    Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd-app.conf"
</VirtualHost>

Any help is appreciated. Thanks.

jota 2018-06-20 10:01:45 UTC #2

Hi @he_wang,

Some comments

You don't need to delete this entry there. You need that line there to access WordPress when using angel-point.life but the configuration of the /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd-vhosts.conf will redirect the requests to staging.angel-point.life to that new virtual host you created.

Yes, the new domain is not properly configured. As you can see when using this tool, the angel-point.life domain is properly configured but the staging.angel-point.life is not

https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/angel-point.life
https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/staging.angel-point.life

You will need to configure your DNS provider to point to your server all the subdomains of angel-point.life (*.staging.angel-point.life)

I hope this helps

he_wang 2018-06-20 23:39:58 UTC #3

Hi @jota,

Thanks for the reply. The reason that subdomain was not properly configured was that I rolled back all the setup after I post this in here.

For the first part, I've put httpd-prefix.conf back to where it was.

I am pretty new to the server configuration, please bear with me if I ask something dumb here.

I am using CloudFlare, does that mean my DNS provider is CloudFlare for now? I just add an A record in CloudFlare for staging.angel-point.life, making it point to my Lightsail IP, then from https://www.whatsmydns.net/#A/staging.angel-point.life, it seems like this staging.angel-point.life is now configured properly, but when I visit the site, the browser still shows me an IP address could not be found error, with an error code DNS_PROBE_FINISHED_NXDOMAIN.

When visiting main domain angel-point.life, it also redirects me to the subdomain staging.angel-point.life

I also found that I can configure DNS in the Lightsail instance as well, should I add the A record for staging there and point it to my static IP through Lightsail or should I just need to add A record for the subdomain in CloudFlare?

Thanks

EDIT:

I think I am just not patient enough to wait for the propagation, now the site is working at the subdomain, but the main domain angel-point.life is redirecting traffic to the subdomain.

Here is my httpd-vhosts.conf file content:

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName staging.angel-point.life
    ServerAlias www.staging.angel-point.life
    DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs"
    
    Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd-app.conf"
</VirtualHost>

Should I add one more section for the main domain in this file?

Thanks

jota 2018-06-21 10:52:55 UTC #4

Hi @he_wang,

As far as I understand, you have 2 domains pointing to the same WordPress application, don't you? If you have a single site WordPress deployment, no matter if you used staging.angel-point.life or angel-point.life, you will access to the same WordPress, is that what you want? In this case, if you configured WordPress to work using staging.angel-point.life, you will be redirected from angel-point.life to the other URL because WordPress is configured that way.

If you want to have completely different sites, you can configure WordPress to be a multi site application so you will have different sites for each domain. Here you have the steps to change the configuration of the application

https://community.bitnami.com/t/how-can-i-enable-wordpress-multisite/47708/2?u=jota

he_wang 2018-06-21 23:26:00 UTC #5

Hi @jota,

Thanks for the reply.

Having two sites separated is what I am trying to do. I want to have staging.angel-point.life and angel-point.life as two WordPress websites.

I will have a look at this article, thanks Jota.

system 2018-07-05 23:26:03 UTC #6

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