path: root/content/blog/2021-03-30-vps-web-server.md

+++
date = 2021-03-30
title = "How to Set Up a VPS Web Server"
description = "A beginner's guide to setting up a virtual private server (VPS)."
+++

## Shared Hosting vs. VPS

Choosing a place to host a website is one of the most confusing
decisions for beginner web developers. Even for experienced web devs,
choosing between different forms of web hosting can be a daunting
choice.

First, let's take a look at [shared web
hosting](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shared_web_hosting_service).
Shared web hosting is a product where you are purchasing a small piece
of a web server that is being shared between many websites. As a result,
the cost of shared hosting is extremely low. You won't have access to
the server itself, which means you can't install your own software on
the server, such as Docker. Usually, you are simply allowed to connect
your domains to the server, set up domain security, and other small
utilities.

In contrast, a [virtual private
server](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_private_server) (VPS) is a
virtual machine that replicates the environment of having a dedicated
server to yourself. You are able to control the virtual server's host
names, base file system, package manager, etc. Another great upside of a
VPS is that since it's virtual, the company providing the VPS can
dynamically increase the disk size, RAM size, or number of CPUs at any
time. However, the virtual server is still physically located on a
server that is shared between multiple virtual servers.

The choice between shared hosting and VPS mostly depends on your skill
level with system administration. If you're comforting working on a
server that is mostly left up to you (or you're willing to learn), then
a VPS is usually a better option. However, shared hosting is a fantastic
option for people who don't want to have to learn how to manage their
server.

## My Situation

I had used shared hosting for approximately 5 years before trying my
first VPS. I manage a homelab and have had success running a server and
performing typical sysadmin duties, but I was still hesitant to get a
VPS. One fear was that I always struggled to properly set up the
networking part of a server - DNS and hostname configurations were not
my friend.

As a little bit of background, I originally used
[Siteground](https://www.siteground.com) for my initially shared hosting
and stayed on that platform for at least a year. However, the UI was
clunky, and I didn't like how they handled certain technical aspects,
so I switched to [Namecheap](https://www.namecheap.com). Namecheap was
great because it is the service I primarily use for purchasing domain
names, which made it incredibly easy to link them to my hosting service.
However, it was still mediocre shared hosting, and Namecheap is
notorious for not letting you use [Let's
Encrypt](https://letsencrypt.org) to obtain free SSL/TLS certificates;
Namecheap wants to make you purchase certificates through their store.

Finally, I settled down with [iWebFusion](https://www.iwebfusion.net)
for about the last year of my shared hosting. This service was pretty
great, came with free SSL/TLS, and I never had any complaints.

However, I finally grew tired of not being able to install software on
my own web server. I wanted to be able to try out things like
[Postmill](https://postmill.xyz) or [Matrix](https://matrix.org). This
is possible with a VPS, so I decided to grab a new domain name to try it
out.

## Getting Started: Buying a VPS

The first step to moving over to a VPS is (you guessed it): finding a
VPS provider. For my VPSs, I use [1984](https://1984hosting.com) and
prefer their services much more than any alternative, due to their
location (Iceland), their [privacy
policy](https://1984hosting.com/GDPR/), their respect for GDPR, and the
ability to remain anonymous if you pay in Bitcoin or Monero.

[Njalla](https://njal.la) is another good, privacy-oriented option for
VPS services.

You'll have to decide what specifications you want on your VPS. For me,
I only build and deploy low-resource HTML, PHP, and Python websites.
This means I can survive on the smallest VPS: 1 CPU, 1GB of RAM, and
25GB SSD for \$5.00 per month.

As noted above, the great thing about a VPS is you can request your
provider to increase the resources at any time.

## Configuring DNS Settings

Okay, so now let's get into some actual work that has to be done to get
content moved from a shared host to a VPS. At this point, I'm assuming
you have a shared host with website content that you can still access,
and you've purchased a new VPS and can SSH into that server.

The first change is minor, but it should be done immediately in order to
get things moving: DNS settings. Go to wherever your DNS settings are
handled. If your shared host also managed your DNS settings, you'll
need to first move that DNS over to your new VPS provider. For me, I
route my DNS through [Gandi](https://www.gandi.net).

Once you know where your DNS settings are, go ahead and update the
`A` records to match the public IP address of your VPS. For
example:

```txt
A         example.com     xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
A         subdomain       xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
CNAME     www             example.com.
```

If you have any other records that require updates, such as MX or TXT
records for a mail server, be sure to update those accordingly.
Personally, I don't host my own mail server. I route all mail on my
custom domains to [Migadu](https://www.migadu.com). Hosting your own
email server can become complex quickly and is not for beginners.

DNS changes can take up to 48 hours to propagate, so be sure to give it
some time before assuming you've made an error.

## Server Updates and Packages

Now that the DNS settings have been changed, let's set up our server
while we wait for the DNS to propagate. First up is to ssh into your
server. If you've signed up with a service like DigitalOcean, you can
add your SSH key to your account and to your VPS droplet so that you
don't need a password in order to SSH.

```sh
ssh root@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
```

The VPS that is used in this blog post runs Ubuntu 20.04 with an Apache
web server. If you're working on a different operating system (OS) or
want a different web server, such as Nginx, you'll have to use
different commands to set it up.

First, let's update and upgrade our server.

**NOTE:** Since we have logged in to the server as `root` for
now, we don't need to use the `sudo` modifier before our
commands.

```sh
apt update && apt upgrade -y
```

## Create A User Account

While being able to use `root` can be beneficial at times,
you shouldn't use `root` unless you have to.

So let's set up a new user in our system. The `-m` option
below tells the OS to create a home directory for the new user.

```sh
adduser USERNAME
```

Now, create a password for that user.

```sh
passwd USERNAME
```

Finally, add the user to the sudoers file, so they can perform
priveleged commands.

```sh
usermod -a -G sudo USERNAME
```

If you are using SSH keys and not passwords, you'll need to copy your
SSH key from your local machine to the VPS. If you haven't disabled
password-based SSH yet, the easiest way to do this is
`ssh-copy-id` from your local computer (not from the VPS):

```sh
ssh-copy-id testuser@xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx
```

If you've disabled password-based SSH, you'll need to manually copy
your SSH key into the `~/.ssh/authorized_keys` file.

## Install Software

Our goal here is to host a web server, so the next step is to install
the Apache web server and any other packages we need.

From this point on, I will be logged in as a user (not
`root`) and will need to use the `sudo` modifier
for most commands.

```sh
sudo apt update; sudo apt upgrade -y; sudo apt autoremove -y
sudo apt install apache2
```

If you need other language support, such as PHP, you'll need to install
that too.

```sh
sudo apt install libapache2-mod-php php-dom
sudo a2enmod php
sudo systemctl restart apache2
```

## Website Files & Folders

Next up is to create the directories for the domain(s) we want to be
hosted on this web server.

```sh
cd /var/www
sudo mkdir example.com
```

We have a folder for `example.com` now, so let's add an
`index.html` file and put it within a specific
`public_html` folder. You don't need this
`public_html` if you don't want it, but it helps with
organizing items related to `example.com` that you don't
want to publish to the internet.

```sh
cd example.com
sudo mkdir public_html && cd public_html
sudo nano index.html
```

You can put anything you want in this `index.html` file. If
you can't think of anything, paste this in there:

```html
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html lang="en">
    <head>
        <meta charset="utf-8" />
        <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1" />
        <title>Hello, world!</title>
    </head>
    <body>
        <h1>Hello, world!</h1>
    </body>
</html>
```

If you want something to be served at
`example.com/page01/file.txt`, you'll have to create the
`page01` directory under the `example.com`
directory. For example:

```sh
cd /var/www/example.com/public_html
sudo mkdir page01
sudo nano file.txt
```

## Apache Configuration

Now, let's set up the files that will tell the server where to find the
files for `example.com`. We will copy the default
configuration file and create our own.

```sh
cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
sudo cp 000-default.conf example.com.conf
sudo nano example.com.conf
```

This configuration file will have a few default lines, but you'll need
to edit it to look similar to this (settings may change based on your
personal needs):

```config
<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerAdmin your-email@email-provider.com
    ServerName example.com
    ServerAlias www.example.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/example.com/public_html
    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>
```

Now, enable the configuration for your new site, disable the default
configuration, and reload the web server.

```sh
sudo a2ensite example.com.conf
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2
```

You can always run a test to make sure no errors or warnings are found
in your configuration files.

```sh
sudo apache2ctl configtest
```

Now, restart the web server entirely. After this, you should be able to
browse to `http://example.com` and see the HTML content you
provided earlier. Note that SSL/TLS has not been enabled yet, so you
won't be able to use the secure version yet
(`https://example.com`).

```sh
sudo systemctl restart apache2
```

You can repeat this for as many websites as you need. Just create the
domain folders in `/var/www/`, add the configuration file,
enable the configuration, and restart `apache2`.

## SSL/TLS Certificates: Serve Websites Over HTTPS

In order to serve secure content, you'll need to obtain SSL/TLS
certificates. Luckily, there's a free tool called
[Certbot](https://certbot.eff.org) that helps us with the process.

The first step is to install `snapd` and `core`
for Ubuntu.

```sh
sudo apt install snapd
sudo snap install core
sudo snap refresh core
```

Next, install the `certbot` snap package.

```sh
sudo snap install --classic certbot
```

Execute the following command to ensure that the `certbot`
command can be run.

```sh
sudo ln -s /snap/bin/certbot /usr/bin/certbot
```

Finally, you can run `certbot` one of two ways:

1.  run it and let it alter your Apache configuration files
    automatically to enable HTTPS redirects.
2.  run it and only allow it to create certificates. You'll need to
    manually alter the config files to enable HTTPS redirects.

Run certbot and allow automatic config changes:

```sh
sudo certbot --apache
```

Run certbot for certificates only and don't allow it to alter config
files:

```sh
sudo certbot certonly --apache
```

The Certbot packages on your system come with a cron job or systemd
timer that will renew your certificates automatically before they
expire. You will not need to run Certbot again unless you change your
configuration. You can test automatic renewal for your certificates by
running this command:

```sh
sudo certbot renew --dry-run
```

Now, test your domains by going to `https://example.com`.

## Firewall Security

To enable better security on your server, you'll need to enable a basic
firewall. For Ubuntu, we'll use [the uncomplicated
firewall](https://cleberg.net/blog/secure-your-network-with-the-uncomplicated-firewall.html).

Now, add the following rules to the firewall allow SSH, Apache, and
HTTP(S) connections. If you need to, you can enable different ports for
specifics applications, SFTP, etc.

```sh
sudo ufw default deny incoming
sudo ufw default allow outgoing
sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
sudo ufw allow Apache
sudo ufw allow proto tcp from any to any port 80,443
```

Once you've added all the rules you need, enable the firewall.

```sh
sudo ufw enable
```

## Troubleshooting

If you run into any issues during your VPS set-up, be sure to walk back
through your actions and make sure you didn't miss any steps.

Many websites have fantastic guides to setting up various web servers.
This is one of the areas [where DigitalOcean
shines](https://www.digitalocean.%20com/community/tutorials). For
simpler or more Linux-oriented questions, I suggest using [Linuxize]
(<https://linuxize.com>).

If you're getting certain errors (e.g. =500 Internal Server Error=) and
need to debug locally, you can view the `access.log` and
`error.log` files in the `/var/log/apache/`
directory.