ClassicPress

Launch the image from the Azure Marketplace. When the VM is running, connect over SSH as azureuser:

ssh azureuser@<vm-ip>

The first-boot service generates the per-VM credentials within a few seconds of the instance starting.

Run the following to confirm that Apache and MySQL are active and listening:

sudo systemctl is-active apache2 mysql
sudo ss -tlnp | grep -E ':(80|3306) '

Run the commands below to print the installed versions. wp core version reports the WordPress-compatible base version that ClassicPress tracks. The ClassicPress release itself is the $cp_version value in the version file.

grep "cp_version = '" /var/www/html/classicpress/wp-includes/version.php
sudo -u www-data /usr/local/bin/wp core version --path=/var/www/html/classicpress --allow-root php -v | head -1 mysql --version

List the users, posts and plugins. The image ships with the standard first post, the SecureAnyCloud administrator and the bundled ClassicPress plugin:

sudo -u www-data /usr/local/bin/wp user list --path=/var/www/html/classicpress --allow-root sudo -u www-data /usr/local/bin/wp post list --path=/var/www/html/classicpress --allow-root sudo -u www-data /usr/local/bin/wp plugin list --path=/var/www/html/classicpress --allow-root

The per-VM credentials are written to a root-only file. Read it to get the CP_ADMIN_USER and CP_ADMIN_PASSWORD values you need to sign in:

sudo cat /stage/scripts/classicpress-credentials.log

Keep this file secure. After your first sign-in, change the administrator password in the admin area.

The site responds on whatever address you reach it on. Confirm that it serves locally, then browse to http://<vm-ip>/ in your browser:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'HTTP %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/

Browse to http://<vm-ip>/wp-admin/ (or http://<vm-ip>/wp-login.php). Sign in as SecureAnyCloud with the password from Step 5.

After you sign in, you land on the ClassicPress dashboard. The At a Glance panel confirms ClassicPress 2.7.0, and the classic, streamlined admin menu is on the left.

Open Posts to create, edit and organise your content. Pages, Media, Appearance, Plugins and Users work as they do in the WordPress ecosystem, so existing themes and plugins install unchanged.

Component and path:

ClassicPress install /var/www/html/classicpress/

wp-config.php /var/www/html/classicpress/wp-config.php

Apache vhost /etc/apache2/sites-available/classicpress.conf

Apache logs /var/log/apache2/classicpress-{access,error}.log

MySQL data /var/lib/mysql/

WP-CLI /usr/local/bin/wp

First-boot script /usr/local/sbin/classicpress-firstboot.sh

Credentials /stage/scripts/classicpress-credentials.log (mode 0600 root:root)

• Change the administrator password. After your first sign-in, update it under Users in the admin area.
• Enable HTTPS. Install certbot and request a certificate: sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-apache then sudo certbot --apache.
• Restrict the network security group. Open ports 80 and 443 only to your CDN or load balancer, and port 22 only to your management network.
• Keep ClassicPress current. Update core, plugins and themes from the admin area, or run wp plugin update --all and wp theme update --all.
• Point your domain at the instance. The image is host-agnostic, so no site URL rewrite is needed. The admin area follows the host you sign in on.
• Patch the OS regularly. Run sudo apt-get update and sudo apt-get upgrade.

Sign in to the AWS Management Console and open the EC2 service. Select Launch instance. Under Application and OS Images, choose AWS Marketplace AMIs and search for ClassicPress. Select the SecureAnyCloud listing, choose Select, then choose Continue on the subscription summary.

Pick an instance type of m5.large or larger. Choose your EC2 key pair under Key pair (login). Under Network settings, select your VPC and subnet. Create or select a security group that opens port 22 from your management network and ports 80 and 443 for the website. Leave the root volume at the default size or larger, because the database and web volumes are attached automatically.

Select Launch instance. First-boot initialisation takes a short time after the instance state becomes Running and the status checks pass. During this time the database is created, ClassicPress is installed and the per-instance administrator is provisioned.

Run the command below to launch an instance from the SecureAnyCloud ClassicPress Marketplace AMI into an existing subnet and security group. Replace the AMI ID with the one shown on the Marketplace listing. Replace the key name, subnet ID and security group ID with your own. The security group must open ports 22, 80 and 443 as described above.

aws ec2 run-instances \
  --image-id <ami-id> \
  --instance-type m5.large \
  --key-name <key-name> \
  --subnet-id <subnet-id> \
  --security-group-ids <security-group-id> \
  --tag-specifications 'ResourceType=instance,Tags=[{Key=Name,Value=classicpress}]'

Wait until the instance reaches the Running state and its status checks pass. Then note its public IP address or DNS name from the EC2 console or with aws ec2 describe-instances.

Connect over SSH with your key pair and the login user for your operating system variant.

OS variant and SSH login user:

Ubuntu 24.04 ubuntu

ssh -i <key-name>.pem ubuntu@<instance-public-ip>

The administrator password is unique to your instance and is generated on first boot. Read it as root:

sudo cat /stage/scripts/classicpress-credentials.log

The file lists the site URL, the admin URL, the administrator login name (SecureAnyCloud) and the generated password. It also lists the database name, database user and generated database passwords. Keep this file somewhere safe.

Over SSH, confirm that the web server and the database are active, the expected ports are listening, and ClassicPress is the expected version:

for s in apache2 mysql; do echo "$s: $(systemctl is-active $s)"; done
sudo ss -tln | grep -E ':80|:3306' grep -oE "\$cp_version = '[^']+'" /var/www/html/classicpress/wp-includes/version.php
sudo -u www-data wp core is-installed --path=/var/www/html/classicpress && echo "core installed"

You should see both services active, ports 80 and 3306 listening, the ClassicPress version reported as 2.7.0, and core installed.

Next, confirm that the site and the login page answer with HTTP 200:

curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'home: %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/
curl -s -o /dev/null -w 'login: %{http_code}\n' http://127.0.0.1/wp-login.php

Apache serves the website and the dashboard on port 80. In a browser, go to the admin sign-in page:

http://<instance-public-ip>/wp-admin/

Sign in with the administrator login name SecureAnyCloud and the password from the credentials file.

After you sign in, you land on the ClassicPress dashboard. The At a Glance, Activity and news panels summarise your site.

ClassicPress uses the classic content editor. To write a post, open Posts and choose Add New. To build a page, open Pages and choose Add New.

Give it a title, write your content with the classic editor toolbar, and choose Publish. Pretty permalinks are already enabled, so each page and post gets a clean URL.

Manage your content, categories and tags from the Posts and Pages lists in the dashboard.

Visitors browse the site at the instance address. Because ClassicPress is fully compatible with the WordPress theme and plugin ecosystem, you can install any compatible theme from Appearance. Extend the site with plugins from Plugins.

The MySQL database lives on a dedicated EBS volume mounted at /var/lib/mysql. The ClassicPress code and uploaded media live on a second dedicated EBS volume mounted at /var/www. Both volumes are kept off the operating system disk and are independently resizable. Confirm the layout:

findmnt /var/lib/mysql
findmnt /var/www df -h /var/lib/mysql /var/www

To grow either volume, resize it in the AWS console, then grow the filesystem on the instance. The fstab entries reference the filesystem UUID, so the layout persists across reboots and instance replacement.

The site derives its address from the request host. Point a DNS name at the instance and the site answers on it immediately, with no ClassicPress reconfiguration.

To serve the site over HTTPS, install a certificate with Certbot for Apache once your domain resolves to the instance:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install -y certbot python3-certbot-apache
sudo certbot --apache -d your-domain.example

Certbot obtains and installs the certificate and configures Apache to redirect HTTP to HTTPS. Renewals run automatically.

Back up the MySQL database regularly. A logical dump of the ClassicPress database is the simplest approach, and you can schedule it with cron:

sudo mysqldump --single-transaction classicpress > /var/backups/classicpress-$(date +%F).sql

Also back up /var/www/html/classicpress/wp-content, which holds your themes, plugins and uploaded media. For a full point-in-time copy, take EBS snapshots of the /var/lib/mysql and /var/www volumes.

Keep the operating system patched with sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade. Update ClassicPress core, themes and plugins from the dashboard.