Ask HN: Ideas to ease the installation of an EC2 hosted webapp

[nkrode]

Recently i open sourced a DIY dropbox powered blogging engine ( http://www.nkrode.com/article/autopilot ). Many of the users interested are people who do not have a programming background, but would still like the idea of a dropbox powered blog. However, i think my current setup instructions are beyond most people. It requires them to :

1. Setup a dedicated server or fire an EC2 instance 2. Fork a github repository 3. Install some python packages etc. (i guess i can do a pip install) 4. Configure web servers 5. Configure the blog etc. etc.

I was wondering how can I can packages this all together so that it's a sort of 1-click install. One option I was thinking was :

1. User signs up for an Amazon account or azure or google. (non geeks will still find it hard to deal with downtimes, server issues etc.) 2. Fires a pre-configured image. 3. Done.

Are there any other tools, services, options which can easy this whole process?

[skram]

Yes -- look into Amazon CloudFormation (http://aws.amazon.com/cloudformation/) and/or Amazon's Marketplace (https://aws.amazon.com/marketplace/).

You might also look into Heroku (https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/python/) and/or services like it specifically for Python (http://www.quora.com/What-is-the-Heroku-equivalent-for-Djang...)

[nkrode]

nice! thanks for sharing.