How to Deploy a PHP App on EC2 with Apache or Nginx (with & without PHP-FPM)

1. Launch EC2 Instance & Connect

• Choose Ubuntu 22.04 or Amazon Linux 2
• Open ports: 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP), 443 (HTTPS)
• SSH into your EC2 instance:

  ssh -i "your-key.pem" ec2-user@your-ec2-ip

2. Install PHP & Git

sudo apt update
sudo apt install php php-fpm php-mysql git -y
php -v
          

3. Clone Your PHP App

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/your-php-app.git
cd your-php-app
          

4. Option A: Use PHP-FPM

sudo apt install php-fpm -y
          

🔧 Configure PHP-FPM

sudo nano /etc/php/7.4/fpm/pool.d/www.conf
# Change the user and group to www-data:
user = www-data
group = www-data
listen = /var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock
          

🔧 Start PHP-FPM

sudo systemctl start php7.4-fpm
sudo systemctl enable php7.4-fpm
          

5. Option B: Run Without PHP-FPM

php -S 0.0.0.0:8000 -t public
          

6. Apache (httpd) as Reverse Proxy with HTTPS

sudo apt update
sudo apt install apache2 -y
sudo a2enmod proxy
sudo a2enmod proxy_fcgi
sudo a2enmod ssl
          

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/your-php-app.conf

  ServerName yourdomain.com

  ProxyPassMatch ^/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/your-php-app/$1
  ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
  CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined



  
    ServerName yourdomain.com

    SSLEngine on
    SSLCertificateFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/fullchain.pem
    SSLCertificateKeyFile /etc/letsencrypt/live/yourdomain.com/privkey.pem

    ProxyPassMatch ^/(.*\.php(/.*)?)$ fcgi://127.0.0.1:9000/var/www/your-php-app/$1
  

          

sudo a2ensite your-php-app
sudo systemctl reload apache2
sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-apache -y
sudo certbot --apache
          

7. Nginx as Reverse Proxy

sudo apt install nginx -y
          

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-php-app

server {
  listen 80;
  server_name yourdomain.com;

  location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ =404;
  }

  location ~ \.php$ {
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
    fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
    include fastcgi_params;
  }
}
                    

sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/your-php-app /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
sudo nginx -t
sudo systemctl restart nginx
sudo systemctl enable nginx
          

🔒 Secure with HTTPS

sudo apt install certbot python3-certbot-nginx -y
sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com
          

8. Final Tips

• Use .env for secrets and configs
• Monitor app logs using tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log
• Ensure firewall rules allow ports 80/443

🎉 Congrats! Your PHP app is now live on AWS EC2 with a secure production setup.