In this blog post, we’re going to run through some ways that you can remove the Bitnami banner from your WordPress Installation on Amazon Lightsail. When you install a new instance of WordPress on Amazon Lightsail, this is done through Bitnami. 

When you load your new website you're going to notice a Bitnami Banner in the lower right-hand corner of your WordPress installation.  If you hover over the Bitnami Banner, a close button will appear, and when you click it the Bitnami Banner will disappear. However, upon reloading your page the banner will display again. This is not acceptable for production websites… We’re going to have to disable this.

There are two main ways to permanently disable the Bitnami Banner on your WordPress Instance Amazon Lightsail. Let's run through both of them, and discuss the pros and cons of each.

Disable The Bitnami Banner Via SSH

Of the two methods this is more complicated, but more effective at permanently disabling the banner. The first thing you need to do is log into your Amazon Lightsail dashboard, and access SSH. You can do this by clicking the big SSH button in the Lightsail dashboard for your instance.

Run the following command, replacing INSTALLNAME with the name of your WordPress installation.

sudo /opt/bitnami/apps/INSTALLNAME/bnconfig --disable_banner 1

This command will add the Disable Banner variable to your Bnconfig file. This variable does as its name suggests, which disables the banner in your Amazon Lightsail WordPress website. Then, you'll need to restart your server. You can do that in the Lightsail SSH interface by simply clicking on the menu icon for your website (next to the terminal/ssh button), in the instances tab, and selecting “Reboot”.

Go to your WordPress website, refresh the page, and the Bitnami Banner should be disabled permanently. Of the  two solutions, this is more difficult but more permanent.

Disable The Bitnami Banner With CSS

Instead of logging into the Amazon lightsail dashboard, connecting via SSH, and running that command, you can also do it through your WordPress installation.

You do this by adding custom CSS to your WordPress installation, which hides the Bitnami banner. 

 From your WordPress backend, navigate to appearances → customize.  in the customize screen, scroll all the way down to “Custom CSS”. Add the following code snippet:

#bitnami-banner {display:none;}

Click publish, and the changes will be pushed to the website. This method of disabling the banner is much more simple and quicker, but if the CSS gets removed, the banner will show up again.

These are two simple and straightforward messages that you can use the disable the Bitnami Banner in your Amazon Lightsail WordPress website (though don't we wish it would be disabled by default...).  We prefer the first method as it is more permanent, but it's also a little bit more difficult. The CSS route will do the same thing, but be a bit easier and quicker to implement.