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This procedure could be the fastest if you have many websites. With one website or just a few websites it might be easier to migrate using the migration procedure as we have outlined in this post. If you are unable to migrate using UpdraftPlus Migrator using this manual procedure could help you out.

Moving many WordPress sites

Migrate the databases

• Export the databases from the legacy server
• Create empty databases on the new Amazon RDS
• Import the database backup from the legacy server into the new RDS. Use command-line or use Sequel Pro, MySQL Workbench or Navigate to create an empty database and then import the data. The easiest and safest way is often to tunnel trough EC2 to RDS using SSH.

Migrate files and folders

• On the legacy server you should create a zip file of the file and folder system using this command:

sudo zip -r website-files.zip /var/www/

Copy the zip file to somewhere on the legacy server where it is available with a browser

sudo mv /var/www/website-files.zip /var/www/html/website-files.zip

On the new server download the zip file from the legacy server

sudo wget https://www.domainname.com/website-files.zip

Unzip.

sudo unzip website-files.zip

Then move the website content to the correct place on the new server.

 sudo cd /var/www/

sudo cp -r . /var/www/

Then remove the unzipped folder

cd ..
cd ..
rm -r var

• Change ownership of the files. It should be correct. We do this just to verify

chown -R www-data /var/www/

• If you haven’t already done this in previous steps: On the new, fresh server create empty databases in Amazon RDS. Import the database content from the old server into the databases
• Change the database server name value in wp-config.php to point to the new RDS databases.
• Change the username and password values in wp-config.php  to point to the new RDS databases if required.

Migrate the Apache configuration

• Migrate the Apache config files from the legacy server to the new server a described in this post.

Test by editing the hosts file on your PC

• Here is a tip on how you can test everything without changing the DNS and go live. Prevent downtime by doing this. To make sure everything is OK before making the DNS edits it’s a good habit is to test by changing your hosts file instead of the public DNS. Editing the hosts file is often faster to do in a graphical environment than in command-line. We have made a list of graphical tools for editing the hosts file on OS X and Windows.

How to create a zip from folders and archives on the legacy server

To install the zip program:

sudo apt-get install zip

To use the zip program:

sudo zip -r compressed_filename.zip folder name

How to Unzip

To install the unzip program:

sudo apt-get install unzip

To unzip a file use this command

unzip file.zip -d destination_folder

How to change the owner of the files

After unzipping the folders, you should make sure that the owner and group of the data are correct.

chown -R www-data /var/www/html

How to improve the page loading times on your website using Google mod_pagespeed module for Apache. The Google PageSpeed module can be set to use the Amazon ElastiCache for caching of files. This takes load of Ubuntu and lets you focus the memory to run Apache.

 

After installing the Google PageSpeed module open the config file:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/pagespeed.conf

Scroll down to the section:

# If you want, you can use one or more memcached servers as the store for
# the mod_pagespeed cache.
 ModPagespeedMemcachedServers

Then add the address to your ElastiCache server.
Save the config file.
Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Change to Redis when it becomes available

Redis is a faster and better cache that memcache.

You shold change to redis when mod_pagespeed from Google starts to support Redis

Verify that PageSpeed works correctly

Your google page speed module has a web based reporting panel only available to localhost. You connect to the VPS server using SOCKS proxy through your SSHD server.

To access the Google page speed panel use the default HTTP:// access without SSL and the internal IP of you EC2 server.

The internal IP of your EC2  VPS server id displayed if you type

ifconfig

If the local IP of you EC2 VPS is 88.88.88.88 you can access the PageSpeed panel on the address:

http://88.88.88.88/pagespeed_admin/console

How to gain access to the PageSpeed panel

Check that you still have the HTML root folder

Check that you still have the default apache folder HTML

cd /var/www/
ls -a

If the necessary create the folder

sudo mkdir /var/www/html

For your reference create an index.html file

sudo nano /var/www/html/index.html

Tape some reference text in the file and then save it.

Then make sure that Apache can write to the folder

sudo chown www-data:www-data -R /var/www/html

Start the default port 80 Apache configuration

Every active Apache config file represents a potential entry point for the bad guys to your VPS. Every active Apache config drains your VPS server for memory. That is why only the config files you need should be active. In this case, you should activate the config file when you need to access the Google PageSpeed stats. Afterwards, disable the config file to block it as a possible entry point for bad guys and free up the resources.

To enable the config file:

sudo a2ensite 000-default.conf
sudo service apache2 restart

To deactivate the config file:

sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo service apache2 restart

Verify that you can access your server on port 80. If the local IP is 88.88.88.88, then you should be able to access the index.html file you have created in

/var/www/html/

by typing:

http://88.88.88.88/index.html

Don’t continue to the next step before this works

Allow the local IP to access Google PageSpeed panel

Open the page speed config file

sudo nano /etc/apache2/mods-available/pagespeed.conf

Use “Ctrl + w” to search for

Allow from 127.0.0.1

Then add the local IP for your EC2 VPS server.

If the IP is 88.88.88.88 then this part of the config file would look like this:

 <Location /pagespeed_admin>
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from localhost
 Allow from 127.0.0.1
 Allow from 88.88.88.88
 SetHandler pagespeed_admin
 </Location>
 <Location /pagespeed_global_admin>
 Order allow,deny
 Allow from localhost
 Allow from 127.0.0.1
 Allow from 88.88.88.88
 SetHandler pagespeed_global_admin
 </Location>

Save the config file.

Restart Apache

sudo service apache2 restart

Connect to your VPS with VPN

Finally, connect to your EC2 VPS server using SOCKS proxy VPN.

The Google PageSpeed stats and info should now be able at:

http://88.88.88.88/pagespeed_admin/console

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Ubuntu 18.04 Manual

Do you feel it’s a hassle with all the new packages that needs updating?
Typing:

sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Almost every week you log in to Ubuntu. Upgrades and updates should be automated. It’s done very easy once and for all. Just continue reading.

The unattended-upgrades package is the best practice for automating the updating of Ubuntu. For headless machines like the WordPress JeOS VPS server, this is a major security gain and a great timesaver.

You can set up unattended-upgrades by typing this in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install unattended-upgrades

Then configure unattended upgrades using this command:

sudo dpkg-reconfigure unattended-upgrades

That’s all. Ubuntu will now update itself every day.

If unattended upgrades fail, then configure manually

If not working as needed. Open the configuration files and customize to fit your needs.

Documentation on how to customize the update and upgrade are available in the Ubuntu documentation.

You can not use this tool to upgrade from Ubuntu 14 to Ubuntu 16. It will only upgrade and update packages.

First, edit the config file:

sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

Change the values to look like this:

// Automatically upgrade packages from these (origin:archive) pairs
Unattended-Upgrade::Allowed-Origins {
        "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-security";
        "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-updates";
        "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-proposed";
        "${distro_id}:${distro_codename}-backports";
};

// List of packages to not update (regexp are supported)
// Unattended-Upgrade::Package-Blacklist {
//      "libc6-i686";
// };

The second file to edit is this one:

sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic

Change it to look like this:

::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "1";
APT::Periodic::Download-Upgradeable-Packages "1";
APT::Periodic::AutocleanInterval "7";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "1";

Automatic unattended updates for Ubuntu 20.04 LTS

Test if it already installed:

sudo unattended-upgrades --dry-run

Run the upgrade:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

sudo nano /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/50unattended-upgrades

Sending e-mail:

sudo apt install bsd-mailx

sudo apt install apt-listchanges

sudo nano /etc/apt/listchanges.conf

Change to:

email_address=t@tbt.biz

Postfix log

sudo nano /var/log/mail.log

Remove log

sudo rm /var/log/mail.log

Restart Postfix

sudo systemctl restart postfix

Flush e-mail queue

sudo postqueue -f

Sources

Set up automatic unattended updates for Ubuntu 20.04

Set Up Automatic Security Update (Unattended Upgrades) on Ubuntu

Set up automatic unattended updates for packages from ondrej

Using Unattended-Upgrades on Debian and Ubuntu

"LP-PPA-ondrej-php:${distro_codename}";

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How-to articles are always a winner

Howto install WP-CLI Ubuntu 16. This is a easy and straight forward process. Takes just a few minutes.

Check for any news on the WP-cli homepage

Issue the following commands:

cd /tmp
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/wp-cli/builds/gh-pages/phar/wp-cli.phar

The file wp-cli.phar needs to be executable.

chmod +x wp-cli.phar

Set permission to copy WP-CLI to /usr/local/bin/

Important: Do not use “sudo” when moving WP-CLI to /usr/local/bin/

sudo chown -R ubuntu /usr/local/bin/

And then

sudo chgrp -R ubuntu /usr/local/bin/

Move wp-cli.phar to the bin directory.
Then rename wp-cli.phar to “wp”.
This makes it easier to use the app:

mv wp-cli.phar /usr/local/bin/wp

To test that everything works as it should issue the command:

wp --info

To update WP-CLI to newest version

As Ubuntu user run the command:

wp cli update