VPS Server Setup: Step-by-Step Guide from Scratch

1. VPS Server Selection and First Connection

Before you start VPS server installation, you need to choose the right provider and plan. DigitalOcean, Hetzner, Vultr, Linode and AWS Lightsail are popular VPS providers.

A minimum of 2 CPUs, 4GB RAM and 80GB SSD disk are recommended for startup. You can choose Ubuntu 22.04 LTS or AlmaLinux 9 as the operating system. LTS (Long Term Support) versions provide long-term security updates.

Once the server is created, connect via SSH: ssh root@server_ip. As a first step, update the system: apt update && apt upgrade -y. Create a sudo user instead of root and turn off root SSH access.

2. Web Server Setup (Nginx)

Nginx is the web server preferred by modern web projects with its high performance and low memory consumption. Installation: apt install nginx -y

For basic Nginx configuration, create site configuration in /etc/nginx/sites-available/ directory. Set your domain name, document root and PHP-FPM connection in the server block definition.

Advantages of Nginx over Apache: Less memory usage, higher concurrent connection capacity and superior performance in static file serving. It can also be used as a reverse proxy.

3. PHP and MySQL/MariaDB Installation

PHP 8.2 installation (requires an additional repository on Ubuntu 22.04): apt install php8.2-fpm php8.2-mysql php8.2-curl php8.2-gd php8.2-mbstring php8.2-xml php8.2-zip php8.2-intl -y

MariaDB installation: apt install mariadb-server -y. After installation, run the mysql_secure_installation command to set a root password, delete anonymous users and turn off remote root access.

Enable OPcache to improve PHP performance. In the php.ini file, set opcache.memory_consumption=256, opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000. Installing Redis or Memcached also eases the database load.

4. SSL Certificate and Security Configuration

SSL certificate installation on your VPS server is a basic security step. To install the SSL certificate you purchased from DataSSL on Nginx: copy the certificate files to the /etc/ssl/ directory and add the SSL configuration in the Nginx server block.

Security hardening steps: Open only ports 22 (SSH), 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) with the UFW firewall. Change the SSH port (ex: 2222), install Fail2Ban and enable automatic security updates.

Finally, improve server security and performance by enabling HSTS, HTTP/2, and TLS 1.3. Aim for an A+ grade on the SSL Labs test.