How to get the URL correct on an Amazon EC2 install (URL)?

I have installed Joomla on an Amazon EC2 instance (using your AMI) and have everything working. The only problem is that the URL is very odd comprising a long string of numbers and letters.

I have a web name that I bought through Godaddy and I can redirect that to my Joomla instance, which takes me there but, once I get there, the URLs are back.

How do I set things up so that the Joomla pages follow my website name e.g. www.mywebsite.com instead of ec2-11-22-333-44.compute-1.amazonaws.com?

OK – don’t worry. I figured it out.

My problem was that I had not allocated an elastic IP address, so I couldn’t point my domain to it, and forwarding it allowed me to access it but not well enough for it to recognize the site as being from my URL.

Once I allocated an Elastic IP, and assigned that IP to my domain name, all worked. The only problem is that now, when I go to ‘mydomain.com’ it shows me the Bitnami banner instead of my site.

I’m glad to hear that. Yes you have to assigned an elastic IP address to point to your domain. Take a look to this guide for changing the URL at http://wiki.bitnami.com/Applications/BitNami_Joomla!Stack#How_to_change_the_defaultURL.3f

Thanks. I did try that to change the URL but obviously did something wrong because afterward I couldn’t access the site at all.

I have a temporary solution, which is that I have changed the index.html file to put a redirect in the header to mysite.com/joomla – which is good enough for now.

Ok this is another possibility. Could you check the Apache log file at /opt/bitnami/apache2/logs/error.log ?

Will do. Right now I have a different issue. I am trying to get the mail function to work and I keep getting errors such as “SMTP Error! Could not connect to SMTP host.”

I have tried using phpmailer and SMTP with the same results.

This is an email address I am using from other sites without any problems. I have opened up the SMTP port (25) on the security in Amazon but still can’t seem to get through.
Have you had any experience with that?

Hmmm….and now I’m getting a message from Amazon telling me that I have reached the limit for sending emails through SMTP port 25. Frustrating considering that none of them actually went anywhere.

OK – I think I figured that one out too. Not sure why but I couldn’t get Optonline to accept SMTP, and Amazon didn’t seem to want to send more than a few emails through port 25 anyway. So I switched to using a Gmail account.
I first had to open port 465 on EC2 security, and then use the Gmail settings for SSL as follows:
Mailer : SMTP Server
Mail from : youremail@yourdomain ( Write your e-mail here )
From Name : My Name ( Write a normal name here )
Sendmail Path : leave it by default
SMTP Authentication : Yes
SMTP Security : SSL
SMTP Port : 465
SMTP Username : youremail@yourdmain ( Your Full e-mail address )
SMTP Password : YourEmailPassword
SMTP Host : smtp.gmail.com

Thanks for posting your solution. My understanding is that it is not necessary to open the port in the Amazon firewall.