Deploy a Node / Express app on AWS Lightsail with a Custom Domain + SSL

Video Tutorial (10 min)

Steps below if you prefer images

Create a Lightsail instance from the AWS dashboard

Choose your instance type

Linux & Node

Wait for the instance to be created

In the meantime, go to the Networking tab and click on Create static IP

Attach the static IP you just created to your instance

Go back home and click on networking so that you arrive at this tab

Click on Create DNS zone and enter your domain here

I personally use Google Domains to buy my domains but if you prefer to stay in the ecosystem, Amazon has their own solution called Route53

I will be using opensourceme.app for the rest of this tutorial as I have this one for testing

Click create and add two A records

The first one should be @ in the Subdomain and Resolves to should be the static IP address we created a few steps ago

Your second subdomain should be www in the first box and once more, select your static IP

Add the name servers that Amazon provides you to your domain in your domain DNS settings. The following is for Google Domains:

Go back to your instance networking settings and create a firewall rule so that we can do a quick connection test in a few steps

custom TCP on port 3000 - You can delete this later after your site is up

Go back to the homepage and click the terminal icon to SSH into your instance. Your instance should be up and running by now.

Go into htdocs

cd htdocs

Delete everything inside

rm -rf *

Clone this very repository!

git clone https://github.com/joswayski/Lightsail-Setup-Custom-Domain-SSL.git

Go into the repository folder

cd Lightsail-Setup-Custom-Domain-SSL

Install the dependencies

npm install

Run the app to test it!

node index.js

You should see: Example app listening at http://localhost:3000

If you go to your static IP from earlier and add :3000 at the end, you should be able to see something like this:

Now we have to route HTTP traffic on port 80 and all HTTPS traffic on port 443 to our server's port, 3000

Here is the documentation from Bitnami directly, or you can follow my steps below

Stop your Node app in the SSH terminal Control + C on Mac, I believe it is the same for Windows.

In the terminal, type in vi /opt/bitnami/apache/conf/vhosts/myapp-http-vhost.conf and press enter

Type i for INSERT mode

Visit this link and copy this code for port 80

NOTE: If you would like to use another port in your app, make sure that you change the http://localhost:3000 line to http://localhost:YOUR_PORT_NUMBER as well, in this section and the one coming up

IMPORTANT:

Replace both instances of /opt/bitnami/projects/myapp/public with your app directory which, if you followed my tutorial, is in /home/bitnami/htdocs/Lightsail-Setup-Custom-Domain-SSL

Press your ESCAPE key

esc

And then force save

:w!

Quit the editor

:q

Now do the same thing for the other port:

vi /opt/bitnami/apache/conf/vhosts/myapp-https-vhost.conf

ENTER

i to enter INSERT mode

Copy and paste the second part for port 443

Again, be sure to replace the /opt/bitnami/projects/myapp with your app directory, or if you are following this tutorial: /home/bitnami/htdocs/Lightsail-Setup-Custom-Domain-SSL