First time VPS

I have had a shared hosing for many years now, but over the years I have learned how restricting it can be for a web developer that wants to try something other than static websites.

After realizing how much the hosting would cost me compared to how little I made use of all the unlimited space and limits, I figured I would try my hand at keeping a Virtual Private Server, because it was cheaper by a lot, partly because you would be on your own to manage it, the hosting provider would not assist you.

Didn't seem too intimidating anymore after learning web development and still learning Computer Science at the Reykjavik University. It's just a remote computer, right? I have played with using localhost alot for projects, setting up databases, servers... and a VPS is basically the same idea, just strictly bound to the terminal CLI. 

It was suggested that I would just buy the smallest VPS package and see how well I would manage to transfer all the contents from the shared hosting service to the VPS (still the same provider, which made this simpler). I was even told that if I then canceled my shared hosting, the remaining money I had payed to keep it up for the year could be transferred to pay for the VPS. Sounded like a good deal to me.

So that's how I got my Ubuntu server up and running! And in hindsight I think things went quite smoothly, managed to find very good guides online by DigitalOcean about VPS and various setups.

  1. Set up the Apache server
  2. Add the PHP
  3. Add the database (went with MariaDB)
  4. Get the phpMyAdmin up and running
  5. Figure out how to increase the upload limit in PHP to import the SQL files.
  6. Migrate the websites one by one, just changing the directory of the default site to the directory I was setting up each time so I could see it on the ip in browser.
  7. Create the configuration files for the VirtualHost on the Apache server via ftp, so the domains will know where to connect.
  8. Direct my domains to the new server, wait for that to connect.
  9. Using the Certbot to get SSL certificates easy (many thanks to https://letsencrypt.org/ for the free safety). Got https now!

You are now a proud webmaster of a Apache server!

I was migrating a WordPress installation, Piwigo gallery, MediaWiki and a php website I made from scratch about guineapigs! The main things I ran into was the upload limit issue when I was trying to import the SQL exports, in the end I installed the PHP-FPM, and then things finally started happening.

Now the only thing I haven't figured out yet is how to be able to use the permalink rewrites for the WordPress, because if I use anything but the plain links, then I get 404 errors. Not a big deal, but it took me a moment to realize what the issue was because I was using custom permalinks.