How to Install a WordPress Blog to an Amazon S3 Cloud

1. Sign in to your Amazon Web Services account. If you do not have one yet, you can signup for free.
2. Click on 'Products' in the main navigation menu and then click the 'Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2)' link. Choose a pricing plan, if desired, or proceed with the free tier. The free option is typically enough to handle a standard blog.

3. Enter your phone number on the verification page. Amazon will call the number and play through a recorded prompt which will ask you to enter a 4-digit PIN number displayed on the resulting page. Amazon uses this as a form of human verification to help combat fraud. When your PIN is accepted, the page will refresh to confirm your subscription. Click 'Continue,' then click 'Complete Sign-Up.'
4. Access your control panel by clicking on the 'Sign in to the AWS Management Console' link at the top of the Amazon Web Services page. Click the link to enter your EC2 Console Dashboard and select 'US West' from the region menu. Click on 'Launch Instance' to start up your server.
5. Click on the 'Microsoft AMIs' tab, enter 'Microsoft Web Platform' in the search field and hit 'Enter.' The resulting page will list the available images you can install. Select the WordPress image and follow the prompts to begin the installation. You will be asked to enter or select configuration details. It is recommended that you start with only one instance, and choose the 'small' instance type. When asked to configure your instance, leave the defaults set and continue to the next step.
6. Enter a name on the 'Create a Key Pair' page and click 'Create Download Your Key Pair.' This file acts like a certificate in order to authenticate you to the S3 cloud. Store it in an easy-to-find and safe location on your computer.
7. Continue to the next step and click 'Create a new Security Group.' Select HTTP, HTTPS, MySQL, and RDP, and click 'Add Rule' for each. These settings allow you to administrate your server and Web space remotely, and for visitors to access your website. Continue to the next page and click 'Launch.' Click 'Close' on the confirmation page.