If you use WHM/CPanel to manage your server or hosting, then you know how difficult is to upgrade or configure a service, and how annoying is that WHM/CPanel annulled any customization that you need. I know this could be a nuisance and how it complicates the server administration, that’s why I propose you a better hosting option for your WordPress, Amazon Web Services (AWS). Here you’ll find the benefits of this cloud and, in general terms, how to migrate WordPress from CPanel to AWS EC2.

Let’s get concepts approach to specifically know what are we talking about… CPanel is a control panel with the purpose of managing your hosting and server. It takes total control of the server and installs everything that is commonly needed, like MySQL, FTP, Cron Jobs, etc. CPanel has a moderately intuitive design, but since WHM/CPanel has the server control, it is difficult to customize.

An AWS EC2 Instance is a virtual server with the following features:

To migrate WordPress, from CPanel to AWS, you will require:

1. The first step is to get the compressed directory and the database. The compressed directory, where you’re going to find WordPress, must be as a .tar.gz file; and the database would be in .sql format. To obtain the compressed directory of WordPress (document root) and the database, you can go to “Backup” section in CPanel and select the files you want to export.
After you have the database and the compressed document root on your computer, it is time to start with the creation of the EC2 instance and RDS (database server) on AWS.

2. Once you had logged in your AWS account, you must create the EC2 instance:
Services > EC2 > Instances > “Launch Instance”

After this step, you will be able to configure its size, volume size, network (VPC), etc.

3. You can create and configure RDS to your database in:
Services > RDS > Instances > “Launch DB instance” or “Get started Now”

4. Now you will be able to configure it, I recommend you to use MySQL like database manager because it is the most commonly used and a WordPress doesn’t need services or specialized features.

5. The next step is to test RDSconnection, create user and database with the wp-config.php file information of the original WordPress and import the database.

6. Afterwards, you’ll transfer the compressed document root to EC2 instance and uncompress it in /var/www/ directory preferably. Next, you need to edit the new wp-config.php file with the correct credentials and DB host (RDS endpoint, you can see it in:
Services > RDS > Instances > Select your RDS > in the displayed information you can see the ENDPOINT

7. Thereafter, will be necessary:

7.1 Update the packages.

sudo apt update

7.2 Install Nginx, PHP and PHP-FPM.

sudo apt install nginx php7.0 php7.0-common php7.0-curl php7.0-mysql php7.0-mcrypt php7.0-fpm

7.3 Configure the vhost.

server {
        listen 443;
        server_name dominio.com www.dominio.com;

        root /var/www/dominio.com;
        index index.php index.html;

        access_log /var/log/nginx/dominio-access.log;
        error_log /var/log/nginx/dominio-error.log;

        location / {
                try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$args;
                index index.php index.html;
        }

        location ~* .(jpg|jpeg|gif|css|png|js|ico|html)$ {
                access_log off;
                expires max;
        }

        location ~ .php$ {
                fastcgi_split_path_info ^(.+.php)(/.+)$;
                fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php7.0-fpm.sock;
                fastcgi_index index.php;
                include fastcgi_params;
                fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        }
}

7.4 Add the following line on /etc/hosts file in your computer/laptop (change 123.123.123.123 to public IP of your instance).

123.123.123.123	dominio.com

7.5 Test the site (example).