1. Free WordPress Hosting On Amazon EC2: Amazon EC2 (Elastic cloud) is an infrastructure service provided by Amazon AWS. EC2 deals with virtual servers. You can deploy a server of your choice within minutes. Amazon offers a free tier package, which includes one year free usage of a micro instance. You can deploy both windows and Linux based servers which comes under the free tier usage. The best thing about cloud hosting is that you can control the whole server, unlike shared hosting. Amazon also provides s3 storage under free tier, using which you can host your images related to your website.
Steps to Host WordPress on EC2:
1. Sign Up for Amazon AWS: You need a credit card to sign up for Amazon AWS. Initially you will be charged $1, just to check the credibility of the user. It will be credited back once your account is verified by Amazon.
2. Launch an Ubuntu instance: launching an instance is pretty easy. Amazon has a nice documentation for launching instances. You don’t need to be a geek to do this. All you need is a little Linux OS knowledge.
3. Install Lamp Server: Install lamp server just like you do it in your windows or Ubuntu desktop.
4. Download the WordPress file to the www folder of lamp server.
5. Install WordPress using the public DNS of your instance.
6. Create an Elastic IP for the instance you created and point to your custom domain to the elastic IP.
Tutorial: How to Setup WordPress on Amazon EC2
2. Appfog: Appfog is an excellent app hosting service, You can host eight applications for free and you don’t need a credit card for signing up. It means you can host eight WordPress sites for free using appfog. You can setup the WordPress site with a few clicks. The Appfog WordPress app will be hosted on amazon, windows azure and Rackspace platforms. We can choose the service and the region. Mysql database service will be automatically bound to the WordPress app when you configure WordPress. WordPress installation is like normal installation. You will be given a subdomain of the appfog for your WordPress site. You can point to your custom domain to the appfog subdomain.
Steps to Host WordPress on Appfog.com:
1. SignUp for Appfog.com
2. Click create app and select WordPress and then select the infrastructure service and region.
3. Give a name to for your app and hit the create app. Thast it !! Your WordPress site will be up and running in minutes. See a demo site created on appfog. Appfog Demo
Tutorial: Setting Up WordPress On AppFog
3. Owncloud Storage: Owncloud storage is an open source toolkit to deploy your own cloud storage. You can deploy it on amazon EC2 and you can host and share your images. It is almost same like other cloud storages eg, Dropbox, box, etc,.
Tutorial: Setting Up Owncloud On Amazon EC2
The advantages of cloud hosting:
1. Load balancing and failover features: You can set up a loadbalancer by hosting your sites in different regions, so that your website will never see a downtime.
2. Highly scalable: Handles high traffic by scaling in and out by setting up the autoscale option.
3. Firewall Options, data privacy, free security features and full root access.
4. Pay-as-you go model lets you pay only when the server is up. You can stop and start the service anytime. You will be billed only for what you used.
5. Customized billing alerts.
