Host WordPress on Google Cloud using Bitnami installer – bad experience

Ivan Radunovic
Host WordPress on Google Cloud using Bitnami installer – bad experience

Bitnami is automatic installer of open source packages. It can install software on all 3 major cloud providers: Google Cloud, AWS and Azure.

It has couple of options for installing WordPress which depend on your needs when it comes to speed and reliability. In this tutorial will use default Single-Tier deployment.

Visit WordPress package by Bitnami and Sign in.

Choose your Cloud provider

You can go with any of the supported Cloud providers, I’ll go with Google Cloud.

I am able to select between 3 cloud providers Google, Amazon or Azure.
Selection of Cloud providers

In next few screens I need to login to my Google account using oAuth flow and approve permissions.

After that I am presented with project setup form, from where I’ll create new Google project named WPJack.

I decided to go with Google and now I need to select my Google Cloud project where I want to run this new Bitnami instance.
Bitnami project setup

Now I need to Enable Compute API in order to proceed with the installation.

Alert asking me to Enable Compute API inside my Google Cloud Console.
I need to enable Compute Engine API

For this I’ll visit developer console link, that’s the first link above.

Inside Google Cloud Console from left sidebar choose API Library and search for Compute API:

I am now enabling Compute API
Search for Compute Engine API

I clicked on first item from search results and after that I clicked Enable button on the next page.

At this stage they asked me to enable billing because this is newly created project.

Because this is a new project without attached billing or credit card it's asking me to Enable billing prior to enabling neeeded api.
Enable billing modal

After enabling it, now I need to enable Cloud Deployment Manager V2 API.

Now I need to enable Cloud Deployment Manager V2 API.
Enable Cloud Deployment API

After enabling this last API Bitnami is ready to Launch my WP instance.

Now all requirements are meet, it's time for Bitnami to launch my new instance.
Time for launching my new instance

Now I am presented with server settings form:

Server settings screen on Bitnami with a huge form and location selection.
Server settings form

All these options are ok. Most important things here are server size, because cost will depend on it and location of the VM instance.

I’ll hit Create.

Process of creating VM instance

Now I am redirected to the following page:

Details of my new WP application
Application info

Important information from this page is application password. Make sure you copy/paste it somewhere. Also username is not a regular admin username it’s user.

Domain is not configured

I am a bit in a state of shock because Bitnami never asked me about my domain and now it installed everything without the domain.

It seems I’ll need to configure domain on my own. Ok that’s not too hard when you are a system administrator but for ordinary user I think that’s a deal-breaker.

Steps I’ll need to configure manually:

  • Point A records of my domain to the IP address of new Google VM instance
  • SSH into VM and configure virtual host for that domain inside
  • Log inside WordPress admin and update the domain
  • Somehow configure Lets encrypt SSL certificate or use Cloudflare for that

Even for me this is just too much, I would advise some other method of installation this one is incomplete.

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