Day 8

FYI, using "day #" for title now as that is kind of the way to go.

Monday, September 28th was Day 1.
Wednesday, December 23rd, is the planned Final Day (assuming I am around.  Thursday is Christmas Eve, and I don't work Christmas Eve)

Ergo, there are 87 days in this challenge, if you count weekends.  That's actually a lot considering the entire last week of the year is not part of the challenge.

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Okay, so we're looking at 645 - 745 tonight here now yaa.

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Okay -- Day 22's post.

The article I am trying to follow assumes I have a working wordpress site, which I am assuming I did and I did it on my core howtofixinsomnia.com and I did it on my EC2 server.  Since the error was related to my EC2 server not having FTP installed, it makes sense that I had a working wordpress site on that server.  I am hoping I did have that up and running.

IF I DID NOT, that would explain the entire problem... it can't work with the server's directories, because there are none, because wordpress is not on the server in the first place, so obviously the plugin is not going to install.

Once I solve that, it's all fairly easy (hopefully) -- I use the plugin to sinc S3 & Cloudfront with my EC2 server blog and it's all peaches and cream.  From there I put all web files on S3 and mainly just work on everything virtually on the site itself.  Couldn't be a nicer setup.

So now I just need to confirm my wordpress blog is installed properly on EC2, and should that be the case, setup FTP correctly or try the whole "create the directories" thing.

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*** issue COULD be that the plugin, and thereby, wordpress, doesn't have permissions / IAM / access to EC2.  So even though it runs on EC2, it can't pair itself with S3 or Cloudfront because wordpress is kind of like an outer-skin... it can't tap into it's own brain and edit it's own files, since that's all secure EC2 stuff.

This article explains, dude was having a hard time setting it up:
https://ulrich.pogson.ch/setup-aws-work-amazon-s3-wordpress-plugin

Keep in mind, the reason this issue didn't come up is the main article I am following assumes I just have my own established fully-functional wordpress blog on my own website.  It's not going to explain how to get server permissions to allow my wordpress to install plugins.  A good test might be to install any plugin that needs to install directories to unix... if no plugins will install, there's some communication, permissions, or other core problem at play.

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Okay, the first issue at hand is HOW DO I GET ACCESS TO UNIX AND HOW DO I INTERFACE WITH IT??

I was using some program to do this with before, but I never mentioned it in the blog, so now I am digging around looking for one.

The FIRST LINE of this article implies to use a "client" like MindTerm or PuTTY:
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/opsworks/latest/userguide/workinginstances-ssh.html
ehem
http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/mindterm.html
^^^ THIS looks like it... I think I remember this article.  Okay!  We're off to a good start here.

STEP 1: SERVER IS BACK ONLINE -- confirmed by the temp link:
ec2-52-10-178-133.us-west-2.compute.amazonaws.com

Isn't it beautiful?

Aaaaaannnd Chrome no longer supports Java, so I need to switch to firefox to use this particular plugin / "client" to interface with it.

I took a minute to ask Chrome, wtf?

And it's like, "Bro, only 1% of people actually use Java on their browser now a days, comeon bro, get with the times."

And I'm like, "WTF???"

So we can switch to firefox or install some sexy unix interfacing client... who knows... maybe that WOULD help... I dunno... I kind of like that Amazon has a default one... I think I will just switch to firefox or even give the ol' explorer a try...

And it's passed 7:45.  Hour's done.  You pass.  I will return to tomorrow, install firefox, interface with my server, and attempt to figure out where wordpress is and how to get it running properly, so that I can then find a way to get it to be able to add plugins to itself and shit.