All Products
Search

This Product

    Resource Orchestration Service:Deploy WordPress on ECS and RDS

    Document Center

    Resource Orchestration Service:Deploy WordPress on ECS and RDS

    Last Updated:Sep 18, 2026

    This solution uses a Resource Orchestration Service (ROS) public template to create a WordPress instance with one click. It is suitable for personal blogs and small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) websites.

    Solution overview

    This solution uses Alibaba Cloud Resource Orchestration Service (ROS) public templates to create an ECS instance and an RDS MySQL database instance with one click, and automatically installs a WordPress blogging environment on the ECS instance. It is suitable for single-server WordPress deployment scenarios such as personal blogs and small to medium-sized enterprise websites.

    Resources created by the template

    No.

    Resource

    ROS resource type

    Purpose

    1

    Virtual Private Cloud (VPC)

    ALIYUN::ECS::VPC

    Provides an isolated network environment.

    2

    vSwitch

    ALIYUN::ECS::VSwitch

    Divides the VPC into subnets and specifies the zone of the resources.

    3

    Security group

    ALIYUN::ECS::SecurityGroup

    Controls network access to the ECS instance and allows inbound traffic on port 80.

    4

    ECS instance

    ALIYUN::ECS::Instance

    Runs WordPress as the compute node and is assigned a public IP address.

    5

    ApsaraDB for RDS for MySQL instance

    ALIYUN::RDS::DBInstance

    Stores WordPress data such as posts, users, and settings.

    Deployment results

    After the template is executed, you obtain the following resources:

    • An ECS instance that runs CentOS 7, with Apache, PHP, and WordPress installed.

    • An ApsaraDB for RDS for MySQL instance, with the WordPress database and database account created.

    • A public IP address assigned to the ECS instance, so that you can access WordPress directly in a browser.

    Architecture diagram

    Architecture diagram

    Prerequisites

    Confirm the following conditions before you use this template:

    1. Account permissions: Your Alibaba Cloud account has the permissions to create Elastic Compute Service (ECS), ApsaraDB for RDS, and VPC resources.

    2. Basic understanding: You are familiar with the basic concepts of ROS stacks. For more information, see What is ROS?.

    Solution design

    Benefits of deploying the ECS instance and the database separately

    Compared with a MySQL database that you install on the ECS instance, a separate ApsaraDB for RDS instance provides the following benefits:

    Item

    MySQL on the ECS instance

    ApsaraDB for RDS

    Data security

    You must configure backups yourself.

    Automatic backup is supported, and you can restore data to any point in time.

    Operations cost

    You must upgrade and tune the database manually.

    Alibaba Cloud manages the database and applies patches and monitoring automatically.

    Performance

    The database shares the CPU and memory of the web service.

    The database uses dedicated compute resources and does not affect the web service.

    Scalability

    You must migrate data to scale up the database.

    You can change the instance type online without downtime.

    High availability

    The database runs on a single node without disaster recovery.

    Multi-zone primary/secondary deployment and read/write splitting are supported.

    Key configurations for connecting WordPress to ApsaraDB for RDS

    WordPress stores its database connection settings in the wp-config.php file. The template fills in these settings automatically:

    wp-config.php setting

    Value source

    Reference in the ROS template

    DB_NAME

    The Database Name parameter

    DBName

    DB_USER

    The User Name parameter

    DBUser

    DB_PASSWORD

    The User Password parameter

    DBPassword

    DB_HOST

    The endpoint of the ApsaraDB for RDS instance

    Database.PublicConnectionString

    Note

    DB_HOST uses the internal endpoint of the ApsaraDB for RDS instance in the VPC, such as rm-xxxx.mysql.rds.aliyuncs.com, instead of the public endpoint. Therefore, the ECS instance and the ApsaraDB for RDS instance must reside in the same VPC. Communication over the internal network has low latency and is free of charge.

    Deployment

    Parameters

    All parameters of this public template must be specified during deployment. No default values are provided. When you deploy the template for the first time, refer to the Example column in the following table.

    Parameter category

    Template parameter

    Type

    Description

    Example

    Network

    VPC CIDR Block

    String

    The CIDR block of the VPC.

    192.168.0.0/16

    Network

    VSwitch Availability Zone

    String

    The zone in which the vSwitch and the resources are deployed.

    Zone K

    Network

    VSwitch CIDR Block

    String

    The CIDR block of the vSwitch, which must be a subnet of the VPC CIDR block.

    192.168.0.0/24

    ECS

    Instance Type

    String

    The ECS instance type.

    ecs.c5.large

    ECS

    System Disk Type

    String

    The category of the system disk.

    cloud_efficiency

    ECS

    Instance password

    String

    The logon password of the ECS instance. The password must be 8 to 30 characters in length and contain uppercase letters, lowercase letters, digits, and special characters.

    -

    ApsaraDB for RDS

    Instance Class

    String

    The ApsaraDB for RDS instance type.

    rds.mysql.t1.small

    ApsaraDB for RDS

    Engine Version

    String

    The MySQL version of the ApsaraDB for RDS instance.

    8.0

    ApsaraDB for RDS

    Instance Storage

    Number

    The storage capacity. Value range: 5 to 2,000, in 5 GB increments. Unit: GB.

    5

    ApsaraDB for RDS

    DB Name

    String

    The name of the WordPress database.

    wordpress

    ApsaraDB for RDS

    DB Username

    String

    The database account that WordPress uses.

    wpuser

    ApsaraDB for RDS

    DB Password

    String

    The password of the database account. The password must be 8 to 30 characters in length and contain uppercase letters, lowercase letters, digits, and special characters.

    -

    Deployment methods

    Method 1: Deploy by using the ROS public template (recommended)

    1. Log on to the ROS console.

    2. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Templates > Public Templates > Entry-level templates.

    3. In the search box, enter Deploy a WordPress Environment on ECS and ApsaraDB for RDS to find the public template.

    4. Click Create Stack.

    5. On the Configure Parameters page, enter a Stack Name and configure the parameters described in the preceding table.

    6. Click Next: Check and Confirm, and then click Create.

    7. Wait until the stack status changes to CREATE_COMPLETE.

    8. Click the Output tab to view the stack Outputs and obtain the WordPressUrl value, which is the URL of your WordPress site.

    9. Open the URL in a browser and complete the WordPress installation wizard.

    Method 2: Deploy by using ROS IaC Code

    IaC Code is an AI infrastructure-as-code assistant for cloud infrastructure. It generates ROS templates from natural language descriptions and deploys them. For more information, see IaC Code quick start.

    # Prompt
Create an ECS instance, install a WordPress blog environment on it, and use an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL instance as the database backend. Requirements:
1. Create a VPC and a vSwitch as the underlying network.
2. Allow inbound traffic on port 80 (HTTP) and port 22 (SSH) in the security group.
3. Use CentOS 7 for the ECS instance and assign a public IP address to the instance.
4. Create an ApsaraDB RDS for MySQL 8.0 instance in the same VPC as the ECS instance.
5. Install Apache, PHP, and WordPress automatically by using a UserData script.
6. Configure wp-config.php of WordPress to connect to the internal endpoint of the ApsaraDB for RDS instance.
7. Configure AssociationProperty for ZoneId and InstanceType to filter values dynamically.
8. Return the URL of the WordPress site in the stack outputs.

    Post-deployment operations

    Complete the WordPress installation

    1. On the Output tab of the stack, obtain the WordPressUrl value. The value is in the http://<public IP address of the ECS instance> format.

    2. Open the URL in a browser.

    3. In the WordPress installation wizard, specify the following information:

      • Site title: the name of your blog.

      • Username: the WordPress administrator account.

      • Password: the password of the WordPress administrator account. This password is independent of the ECS instance password and the database password.

      • Email address: the email address of the administrator.

    4. Click Install WordPress.

    5. After the installation is complete, visit http://<public IP address of the ECS instance>/wp-admin to open the WordPress admin console.

    View the created resources

    1. Log on to the ROS console. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Deployment > Stacks.

    2. On the Stacks page, click the ID of the target stack.

    3. Click the Resources tab to view all created cloud resources and their status.

    FAQ

    Q1: The deployment fails and the “The specified InstanceType is not available” error is returned

    Cause: the selected ECS or ApsaraDB for RDS instance type is out of stock in the specified zone.

    Solution:

    • Select a different zone and deploy the template again.

    • Check the instance types that are available in the target zone on the ECS pricing page.

    • Similarly, for ApsaraDB for RDS, check the RDS pricing details to make sure that the instance type is available in the target zone.

    Q2: The deployment succeeds, but the WordPressUrl page is blank or returns an error

    Perform the following checks:

    1. Check the security group: make sure that an inbound rule allows access over TCP port 80.

    2. Logon check: After you connect to the ECS instance, run the following commands to troubleshoot.

      # Check whether Apache is running
systemctl status httpd
# Check whether the WordPress files exist
ls /var/www/html/wp-config.php
# Check whether PHP is installed
php -v
# Check the connection to the ApsaraDB for RDS instance
mysql -h<internal endpoint of the RDS instance> -u<database account> -p

    3. Check the UserData log: run cat /var/log/messages | grep cloud-init to find out whether the initialization script returned errors.

    Q3: How do I release all resources after I delete the stack?

    1. Log on to the ROS console. In the left-side navigation pane, choose Deployment > Stacks.

    2. In the Actions column, click Delete and set the deletion method to Release Resources.

    3. After you confirm the operation, ROS releases all resources, including the VPC, the ECS instance, and the ApsaraDB for RDS instance.

    Warning

    After you delete the stack, the WordPress data in the ApsaraDB for RDS instance is lost. Before you delete the stack, create a final backup in the ApsaraDB for RDS console, or log on to the ECS instance over SSH and run mysqldump to export the database.

    For more questions about resource deployment, see ROS FAQ.

    References