classiq04/prestashop-aws-deployment

This repository is a documented case study of deploying PrestaShop, an open source online store platform, on Amazon Web Services. The author built it as the final task for a DevOps internship assessment: put an e-commerce application online using a separate managed database, with the store publicly reachable. Rather than combining everything on one server, the setup splits the application and database into two tiers, which reflects common cloud deployment practice. The application itself runs on an Amazon EC2 virtual server using Ubuntu, with Apache as the web server and PHP handling the backend code, while the database runs separately on Amazon RDS using MySQL. AWS security groups control exactly which traffic is allowed to pass between the two, so the database is not directly exposed to the public internet. The README walks through the whole process step by step: launching the EC2 instance and RDS database, installing Apache, PHP, and supporting tools on the server, downloading PrestaShop, and working around a broken download link by querying GitHub's release system directly for the correct file. From there it covers extracting the application into the web server's folder, setting file permissions, enabling the URL rewriting Apache module, connecting the server to the remote database using its endpoint, database name, username, password, and port, and finally completing PrestaShop's own installation wizard. The author reports the deployment worked, with the store reachable through its public IP address, and lists the skills involved: Linux administration, Apache and PHP configuration, AWS networking and security groups, MySQL connectivity, and troubleshooting. They are candid that the deployment did not go smoothly on the first try, and that fixing problems like the broken download link and permission issues taught them more than following the instructions would have. They also note they later turned down the job this was built for, and published the write up as a portfolio piece instead. Suggested next steps for extending the project include adding Docker, Terraform, a reverse proxy, HTTPS certificates, monitoring, load balancing, and automatic scaling, though none of these are implemented yet.