VPS & Servers

A VPS is a server you control completely. For about $5 to $10 a month you get root access, your own PHP settings, and no neighbours slowing you down.

You also become the system administrator. These guides cover both sides of that trade.

Is a VPS actually better than shared hosting?

Choose a VPS to learn, to run several sites, or to run software shared hosting simply cannot host — NextCloud, a chat server, anything that runs as a continuous service.

Stay on shared hosting if the site matters commercially and you do not want responsibility for patching an operating system. That is a perfectly sensible answer.

The first ten minutes on a new server

Do these before installing anything. Most compromised servers skipped at least one:

1. Update everything — apt update then apt upgrade. In that order; the second does little without the first.
2. Create a normal user with sudo and stop logging in as root. Every automated attack on the internet is trying root right now.
3. Allow SSH, then enable the firewall. In the wrong order you lock yourself out and need the provider rescue console.
4. Install SSL before putting anything real on the server.

How much server do you need?

• 1 GB RAM — learning, a small static site
• 2 GB — WordPress, NextCloud, an Openfire chat server with a few thousand users
• 4 GB — WooCommerce, group video calls, anything that transcodes media
• 8 GB and up — several busy sites, or video at scale

Memory runs out long before disk does. Storage is the cheapest thing a host sells, which is exactly why it features in the advertising.

One habit worth building

When something breaks, read the log before changing anything:

sudo tail -f /var/log/apache2/error.log

Run that, reload the page, and the real error appears. It is faster than any amount of guessing, and it is the single most useful command in this whole section.