Getting your own server ready
Before your website can go live on the real internet, and before anyone — you, or Easy Life Agents on your behalf — can look after it, you need your own real place to put it. That place is called a server: a computer, owned by a company, that stays turned on all the time so your website is always there for visitors. This page walks you through getting one real, working way for a helper program to safely reach your own server and do work on it, one plain step at a time.
Get a real Amazon Web Services account
Amazon Web Services, usually just called AWS, is one of the largest companies in the world that rents out real computers over the internet for other companies and people to use. Go to aws.amazon.com and create a real account using your own real email address and your own real payment card. AWS does give a real, limited amount of free use to a brand new account, but it is not free forever, and typing in a payment card is a real commitment to pay for what you use beyond that.
Install the AWS Command Line Tool
A "command line tool" is a small program that lets your own computer talk directly to a company's service by typing real words, instead of clicking buttons on a website. Amazon's own version of this is called the AWS CLI (short for "Command Line Interface"). Download and install the real, official copy from aws.amazon.com/cli, following the real instructions for the kind of computer you own (Windows, Mac, or Linux).
Create a real, limited permission instead of using your master login
Inside your new AWS account, do not hand out the master login you just created to any helper program, ever. Instead, create what AWS calls an "IAM user" — IAM stands for Identity and Access Management, and it is simply AWS's own real system for creating smaller, limited logins for one specific real purpose. Create one IAM user for this, and give it only the real permission it actually needs to reach one server (a real, named AWS permission called AmazonSSMManagedInstanceCore on the server's own side, plus permission to start a session, on the user's own side). AWS will give you back two long pieces of text for this user, called an access key and a secret key — these work like a real password, so keep them as safe as you would keep a real password.
Tell the command line tool who you are
Open the command line tool on your own computer and type the words below, then paste in the access key and secret key from Step 3 when it asks for them.
Once that's done, you can check that it actually worked by typing this next real command. If it worked, AWS will print back a real description of the exact permission you just set up, proving your computer can really prove who it is to Amazon.
Prove a real connection to your real server
Once your server exists (built for you as part of getting your website launched), Amazon's own real remote-access system — called SSM, short for "Systems Manager" — lets a real, permitted helper program run commands on it without ever needing to leave open the kind of door a stranger could also try to walk through. Every real server AWS gives you already has SSM's own small helper installed on it automatically. To prove a real connection works, type this, putting in your own server's own real, unique name where it says so:
If a new line appears letting you type commands directly on the server, the real connection works, and either your own Managed Sites page or Easy Life Agents' own can now use it to help look after your site.
Is SSM the only real way in?
No — this is one real, working way among a few, and it's worth knowing what the others actually are and why this page teaches this one first.
| Way in | What it actually is | Real trade-off |
|---|---|---|
| SSM (taught above) | Amazon's own remote-access system, controlled entirely by the real permissions you set up in Step 3. | No door has to be left open on the internet at all. This is what Easy Life Agents' own real servers already use for themselves. |
| SSH | The older, traditional way of remotely typing commands on another computer, using a matched pair of secret key files. | Works almost everywhere, but needs a real network door left open and a key file kept as safe as a real password. |
| FTP / SFTP | A way of moving whole files back and forth. | Cannot run a real command on the server at all — only useful for copying files, never for real maintenance work. |
| A small helper program installed on the server itself | A little program that sits on your own server and calls out to ask for instructions, rather than waiting to be reached. | The one real way that still works even on the cheapest kind of website hosting, the kind that never allows a real remote login of any kind. |