Terraform — WordPress Stack on AWS EC2

The problem

Standing up a WordPress server by hand means a long sequence of console steps and SSH commands: launch an instance, configure inbound rules, install packages, wire up a database and deploy the application — every run slightly different, every step a chance for a misconfigured rule or a missed dependency. The task was to express that entire build as code: a main.tf with the provider and EC2 resource, variables.tf for inputs, outputs.tf for runtime metadata and an embedded user data script, producing a successful WordPress installation reachable on a public endpoint with no manual intervention.

What I built

1. 01

   Structured the project as a standard Terraform layout — main.tf for the AWS provider and resources, variables.tf for inputs, and outputs.tf to expose instance details after apply.

2. 02

   Declared input variables for the instance type and security group name (t3.micro, WordPress-sg), making the configuration reusable across environments without editing the core code.

3. 03

   Provisioned an EC2 instance from an Amazon Linux AMI with an associated security group managing inbound HTTP and SSH traffic rules.

4. 04

   Automated the application layer with a user data / cloud-init script that bootstraps the instance at launch — installing the web server, MySQL and WordPress dependencies with zero manual SSH work.

5. 05

   Ran terraform apply to plan and create the resources, then iterated: changing the instance input forced a destroy-and-recreate, proving the configuration is the single source of truth.

6. 06

   Exposed the public endpoint dynamically through outputs.tf — instance ID, public/private IP, availability zone and instance type printed after every apply — and verified the live WordPress installer over the public IP.