Running old wordpress themes on Lightsail

Posted on | by Ben

I do not recommend continuing to use PHP 5.6. It’s full of vulnerabilities, but I needed to buy myself some time with some old WordPress themes that error out on higher version of php.

Stop bitnami services and save the instance as a backup

sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh stop
sudo mv /opt/bitnami /opt/bitnami.back

Download and install archived instance (check the Bitnami changelog to find if you need a different version, then just update the numbers accordingly)

cd /tmp
curl -LO https://downloads.bitnami.com/files/stacks/wordpress/4.8.2.php56-0/bitnami-wordpress-4.8.2.php56-0-linux-x64-installer.run

chmod +x bitnami-wordpress-4.8.2.php56-0-linux-x64-installer.run
sudo ./bitnami-wordpress-4.8.2.php56-0-linux-x64-installer.run

for PHP 7 useupl

 curl -LO https://downloads.bitnami.com/files/stacks/wordpress/5.9.1-0/bitnami-wordpress-5.9.1-0-linux-x64-installer.run

The newest version (at writing) using PHP8 is 6.1.1-0 and can be downloaded:

curl -LO https://downloads.bitnami.com/files/stacks/wordpress/6.1.1-0/bitnami-wordpress-6.1.1-0-linux-x64-installer.run

install to /opt/bitnami/

sudo nano /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/bitnami.conf

update document root

DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs"
  <Directory "/opt/bitnami/apache2/htdocs">

to

 DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs"
  <Directory "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs">

then lower under ssl

<VirtualHost _default_:443>
  DocumentRoot "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs"  #Edit
  SSLEngine on
SSLCertificateFile "/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.crt"
SSLCertificateKeyFile "/opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/server.key"

  <Directory "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs"> #Edit

...

at the end add the following to allow for larger PHP uploads. Adjust so your All-in-One WordPress Backup file will upload.

php_value upload_max_filesize 128M
php_value post_max_size 128M
php_value memory_limit 256M
php_value max_execution_time 300
php_value max_input_time 300

sudo nano /opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/htdocs/wp-config.php

define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/wordpress');
define('WP_HOME', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . '/wordpress');

to

define('WP_SITEURL', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST]);
define('WP_HOME', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);

sudo nano /opt/bitnami/apache2/conf/bitnami/bitnami-apps-prefix.conf

#Include "/opt/bitnami/apps/wordpress/conf/httpd-prefix.conf"

sudo /opt/bitnami/ctlscript.sh restart apache

go ahead and enter ip address in browser

Update WordPress and plugins

Before using all-in-one wp migration change the a record to the new ip address and set up encryption.

https://docs.bitnami.com/aws/how-to/generate-install-lets-encrypt-ssl/

Install Let’s Encrypt

For bitnami v5.9.1 just run 

sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool

For older versions, you’ll have to install the tool first

wget -O bncert-linux-x64.run https://downloads.bitnami.com/files/bncert/latest/bncert-linux-x64.run
sudo mkdir /opt/bitnami/bncert
sudo mv bncert-linux-x64.run /opt/bitnami/bncert/
sudo chmod +x /opt/bitnami/bncert/bncert-linux-x64.run
sudo ln -s /opt/bitnami/bncert/bncert-linux-x64.run /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool

now you can run the Bitnami HTTPS Configuration Tool

sudo /opt/bitnami/bncert-tool

Remove Bitnami Banner

sudo /opt/bitnami/apache2/bnconfig --disable_banner 1