From localhost to live HTTPS URL with AWS and Laravel/LiveWire

Past few weeks, I was putting together a simple homepage with Laravel which is featuring few Livewire components such as email subscription and polling-based tables. It’s a simple, introduction-type landing page.

I thought I’ll capture steps of going from localhost to live HTTPS URL with AWS. Predominantly because content online overcomplicates this process.

Steps in a nutshell:

• Launch Amazon Linux 2 EC2.
• Setup NGINX and PHP-FPM
• Setup HTTPS with Let’s Encrypt
• Get in the code
• Resolve group and user issues
• Compile assets

Launch Amazon Linux 2 EC2

Go to EC2, make sure the Region you are in is where you want to launch the instance. Click Launch Instances.

Step 1: Choose an Amazon Machine Image (AMI)

Choose Amazon Linux 2 AMI. It’s not the only free-tier eligible AMI, however, there are inherent benefits in using Amazon Linux 2 when working with AWS.

Step 2: Choose an Instance Type

Choose t2.micro and click Next. At the moment of writing that’s the only free-tier eligible instance type.

Step 3: Configure Instance Details

Change nothing and click Next.

Step 4: Add Storage

Change nothing and click Next.

Step 5: Add Tags

Change nothing and click Next.

Step 6: Configure Security Group

If you already have a security group for public-facing EC2s, choose one, avoid creating new security groups with every EC2 launch.

If not, we want to make sure:

• we, and only we, can access the instance via SSH
• we allow HTTP and HTTPS traffic

The security group should look like this: