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In order to make it easier for the user of this guide I am using the following symbols to identify different types of text.
1. Instructions of new steps
♣ CODE - be careful when you copy and paste and remember it's case insensitive.
• Steps within a step and additional explanation.

Step 1: Creating an EC2 account

First things first: you need to create your AWS account. You can sign up here. You’ll have to provide a credit card as part of the online registration process. Amazon offers a Free Usage Tier, which is great to explore the services and even host USHAHIDI at low traffic without being charged. Check the details here and here for specific information on AWS free usage tier.

Step 2:Launching an EC2 instance

You can start your experiments with a Micro instance because its price structure is very attractive. Meaning its free for the first year However, once your instance gets a few thousand page views a day, your instance will systematically become unresponsive and you will need to restart Apache and/or MySQL. If you expect to receive major traffic to your site you can choose to deploy on a variety of servers from a small instance to an extra large instance.

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• Choose an AMI in from the Quick Launch Wizard: This tutorial will demonstararte a deployment using Ubuntu Server 12.04 LTS - 64 bit.
• Click on Edit details: Select the Instance Type you want to use. We will chose Micro (t1.micro). You can give your instance a name and determine the shut down behavior.
• Create a new key pair. Enter a name for your key pair (i.e. Tufts) and download your key pair (i.e. Tufts.pem).
• Select the quick start security group.

Step 3:Allocating an elastic IP

On the left side of your screen you can see a column titled Navigation. Under Network and Security, select Elastic IPs. Under Address click on Allocate New Address and select  EIP used in: EC2

After the IP is allocated, right click on the IP and select Allocate and select the instance.

Step 4:Installing Ushahidi

Once your instance is running, you can access it using SSH. Secure Shell (SSH) is a network protocol for secure data communication, remote shell services or command execution and other secure network services between two networked computers that it connects via a secure channel over an insecure network. This is a bit more technical but take a deep breath and you will have an instance running sooner that what you imagined.

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That’s it! You can access the server with your SSH client and password that you just set.

Step 5: Installing required software:

Run each of these commands separately, it might take some time and require a “Y” once in a while.

apt-get update
apt-get upgrade
apt-get install apache2
apt-get install php5
apt-get install mysql-server
apt-get install curl libcurl3 libcurl3-dev php5-curl
apt-get install php5-memcache memcached
sudo apt-get install vsftpd
apt-get install php5-+cli
update-rc.d mysql defaults
apt-get install php5-mcrypt php5-curl php5-mysql php5-imap php5-gd
a2enmod rewrite
apt-get install unzip
service apache2 restart

Step 6: Installing Ushahidi

1. Create new user and set password

   Code Block
   useradd --create-home --shell /bin/sh ushahidi passwd ushahidi

2. Login as user and create dir for web files. To switch from root to user use commands below (alternatively you can start new SSH session)

   Code Block
   su - ushahidi mkdir public_html cd public_html

3. Download the latest version of Ushahidi from https://github.com/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Web/archives/master using the following command:

   Code Block
   wget https://github.com/downloads/ushahidi/Ushahidi_Web/ushahidi-Ushahidi_Web-2.4-0-gb16aee9.zip

4. Unpack files into /home/ushahidi/public_html/ushahidi-web

   Code Block
   unzip ushahidi-Ushahidi_Web-2.4-0-gb16aee9.zip mv ushahidi-Ushahidi_Web-2.4-0-gb16aee9 ushahidi-web

5. Change directory to /home/ushahidi/public_html/ushahidi-web

   Code Block
   cd /home/ushahidi/public_html/ushahidi-web

6. Change permissions for files

   Code Block
   chmod -R 777 application/config chmod -R 777 application/cache chmod -R 777 application/logs chmod -R 777 media/uploads chmod 777 .htaccess

7. Creating a database:

   Code Block
   mysql -u root -p create database ushahidi_web;

   NOTE You need to execute command above and enter root password for MySQL (mysql -u root -p), you will enter mysql console where you can run command create database ushahidi_web; to create database.
   In the same mysql command line interface you need to run command below to grant permissions for mysql user:

   Code Block
   sql
   grant all privileges on ushahidi_web.* to 'ushahidi_mysql'@'localhost' identified by 'Tufts2012'; flush privileges; quit

8. Updating apache config to make Ushahidi-web our default web server. In this step you are going into 000-default and replacing the existing with the following. First access the file by writing the following command:

   Code Block
   nano /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

   Then paste in the text below, beginning with <VirtualHost *:80> and ending </VirtualHost>. 

   Code Block

   <VirtualHost *:80> ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost DocumentRoot /home/ushahidi/public_html/ushahidi-web <Directory /home/ushahidi/public_html/ushahidi-web> Options Multiviews FollowSymLinks -Indexes AllowOverride All Order allow,deny allow from all </Directory> ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /usr/lib/cgi-bin/ <Directory "/usr/lib/cgi-bin"> AllowOverride None Options +ExecCGI -MultiViews +SymLinksIfOwnerMatch Order allow,deny Allow from all </Directory> ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log # Possible values include: debug, info, notice, warn, error, crit, # alert, emerg. LogLevel warn CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined </VirtualHost>

   To exit and save you need to use the Ctrol buton in combination with the upper case X. They click Y to save.

9. Restart Apache:
   
   

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