# Simple install How To **URL:** \ **Category:** Installation\ **Tags:** writefreely\ **Created:** [January 7, 2019, 6:38pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264 "2019-01-07T18:38:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![lhl](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/lhl/32/103_2.png) [@lhl](https://discuss.write.as/u/lhl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 12:51pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/21 "2019-01-20T12:51:19Z")
When I was using _Bitbucket_ and an _S3_ instance where there is a lot of upload each time (I was using a **HUGO** Static Generated site at the time) my monthly costs were around $5 - $8 over the _FREE_ allowance - roughly updating on a daily basis. Now I am using **WriteFreely** , still updating once every few days or so, single user - based on a **AWS EC2** instance, also using **AWS Route53** to register my domain my monthly costs are approx $1.50. For my usage it is less than when I was using **VULTR** to host my sites. A lot will depend on your usage environment. One of the reasons I switched from HUGO to WriteFreely was the ease of administration. I still wanted a bare-bones blog with very few, if any, bells & whistles. I also wanted to really restrict the outgoing costs to the absolute minimum for a personal use only site that I have control over. ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 12:56pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/22 "2019-01-20T12:56:16Z")
So, if I use [Scaleway](https://www.scaleway.com/pricing/)’s basic tier that costs around €1.99/mo (about $2.26) with 25GB SSD & 1 GB Memory but it has a minified version of Ubuntu 16.04, would you recommend me that? ---
**Author:** ![lhl](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/lhl/32/103_2.png) [@lhl](https://discuss.write.as/u/lhl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 1:07pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/23 "2019-01-20T13:07:35Z")
I would think that there is not a lot of difference in most of the offers out there at this level of requirements. So long as you are not locking yourself into a minimum term contract - you can pretty much switch a VPS on/off as you please. There is some effort required in backing-up files and db’s etc but it is always fairly easy to move from one provider to another if you find it doesn’t suit you. ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 1:10pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/24 "2019-01-20T13:10:23Z")
Okay. Thanks! ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 3:59pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/25 "2019-01-20T15:59:54Z")
@lhl @matt I tried everything as you have mentioned but I ran into some problems when I ran the last command ![image](https://discuss.write.as/uploads/default/original/1X/31bb9486c1162fe76fb97ff750102c8d69597276.png) I have uploaded writefreely folder directly to var/www and according I changed the two files you have mentioned like this: writefreely.conf file ![image](https://discuss.write.as/uploads/default/original/1X/f99c1af486cfc50162bc83ff6357fae66ca65984.png) writefreely.service file ![image](https://discuss.write.as/uploads/default/original/1X/542c320a9772a2e233ad520636145151282d9bf1.png) Please let me know where I have done wrong. My website is [writeread.space](https://writeread.space/). This whole system is hosted on Ubuntu 16.04 on [Scaleway](https://www.scaleway.com) ---
**Author:** ![lhl](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/lhl/32/103_2.png) [@lhl](https://discuss.write.as/u/lhl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 4:24pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/26 "2019-01-20T16:24:36Z")
Sorry, I don’t know. As I said I’m an average joe, not a developer or programmer. I think @matt can probably be much more useful to you to problem solve. All I can see is that the ExecStart= in the writefreely.sevice file should read: `/var/www/example.com/writefreely` as outlined in the Getting Started pages [here](https://writefreely.org/start) `example.com` should be replaced by the name of the folder you have used to store the files to. If you are running the files from a reverse NGINX configuration check that your file PATH is correct first. NGINX also requires you to create a symlink to the **WriteFreely** files in order to be able to serve them. Again my experience of these things is generally through trial and error as I am doing them. ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 4:31pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/27 "2019-01-20T16:31:36Z")
Can you show me these same files for your server? You can blur any sensitive details. ---
**Author:** ![lhl](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/lhl/32/103_2.png) [@lhl](https://discuss.write.as/u/lhl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 4:35pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/28 "2019-01-20T16:35:49Z")
The writefreely.service and writefreely.conf are as in my original post (only changes are where I input specifics for my address) Not much to show really. Have a look at this link first about how to set up a symlink with NGINX. It is for another software, but the information is useful: [https://learn.getgrav.org/webservers-hosting/servers/nginx](https://learn.getgrav.org/webservers-hosting/servers/nginx). ---
**Author:** ![lhl](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/lhl/32/103_2.png) [@lhl](https://discuss.write.as/u/lhl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 4:41pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/29 "2019-01-20T16:41:06Z")
There should be very little different to your setup when using a `localhost`. Is that not what you had set up…? ---
**Author:** ![lhl](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/lhl/32/103_2.png) [@lhl](https://discuss.write.as/u/lhl)\ **Post date:** [January 20, 2019, 4:59pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/30 "2019-01-20T16:59:36Z")
@staticpixel - there is a tutorial on Scaleway about setting up a reverse proxy with NGINX: [here](https://www.scaleway.com/docs/how-to-configure-nginx-reverse-proxy/) ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 2:28am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/31 "2019-01-21T02:28:08Z")
Yes. But it was development and not production. That too in Windows with Xampp. ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 4:55am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/32 "2019-01-21T04:55:07Z")
@lhl this time I did exactly like you have done that too in Amazon EC2 with Ubuntu 18.04. There were no errors but when I go to the public IP it doesn’t show or load anything. This is the message in the terminal. Something is going weirdly off. I too uploaded the writefreely folder into the home folder so the path is `/home/writefreely` ![image](https://discuss.write.as/uploads/default/original/1X/6fbd958fb9cf3f45116ff1c9e91237ca4ba5aeed.png) ---
**Author:** ![geekgonecrazy](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/geekgonecrazy/32/89_2.png) [@geekgonecrazy](https://discuss.write.as/u/geekgonecrazy)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 9:30am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/33 "2019-01-21T09:30:52Z")
On ec2 be sure to open the appropriate port(s) in your firewall. If using nginx probably 80 and 443. If just writefreely looks like it needs 8080 open according to your screenshot. ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 10:04am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/34 "2019-01-21T10:04:32Z")
Well, in my EC2 instance there is an inbound rule which allows all traffic through all ports. So I don’t think the problem lies there. ---
**Author:** ![lhl](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/lhl/32/103_2.png) [@lhl](https://discuss.write.as/u/lhl)\ **Post date:** [January 21, 2019, 4:47pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/35 "2019-01-21T16:47:40Z")
Not sure if you are up and running yet…? But I spent some time this afternoon rewriting the Install process. It is based on AWS EC2, Ubuntu 18.04LTS, Nginx and a Single User, SQLite Production WriteFreely blog. I had no problems with set-up, install/config and have a running blog. [Here is the link to the post.](https://discuss.write.as/t/slightly-less-simple-install-how-to/303) ---
**Author:** ![TobiBB](https://discuss.write.as/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/t/2acd7d/32.png) [@TobiBB](https://discuss.write.as/u/TobiBB)\ **Post date:** [January 24, 2019, 9:43am UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/36 "2019-01-24T09:43:20Z")
Can anyone give a apache reverse proxy config? ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2019, 2:39pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/37 "2019-01-26T14:39:18Z")
Check out writefreely.org. The whole process is there especially the reverse proxy part. Now, if you want even more specifics then you have to check the docs of your Hosting Provider ---
**Author:** ![staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/staticpixel/32/97_2.png) [@staticpixel](https://discuss.write.as/u/staticpixel)\ **Post date:** [January 26, 2019, 6:03pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/38 "2019-01-26T18:03:47Z")
@lhl I just thought that instead of using reverse proxy, can’t I use standalone? Any issues with that production build? Please let me know. ---
**Author:** ![Chouchen](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/chouchen/32/155_2.png) [@Chouchen](https://discuss.write.as/u/Chouchen)\ **Post date:** [February 11, 2019, 10:27pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/39 "2019-02-11T22:27:51Z")
There’s an example for nginx which I don’t use (and don’t understand fully). Is there the same example for Apache anywhere? ---
**Author:** ![stadja](https://discuss.write.as/user_avatar/discuss.write.as/stadja/32/248_2.png) [@stadja](https://discuss.write.as/u/stadja)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2019, 8:31pm UTC](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264/40 "2019-04-27T20:31:15Z")
Same question here: is there an Apache quick how to for a reverse proxy installation ? [Previous page](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264.md?page=1) [Next page](https://discuss.write.as/t/simple-install-how-to/264.md?page=3)