I'm about to buy a raw VPS, but I'm not sure what do I need to set it up. Is there any guide to this? Every search term I try ends up bringing up some godaddy page :D

@JackJohansson I would consider investigating cloud platforms. Google Cloud or Amazon Cloud ... Both are very comparable. I use AWS, but thinking about switching to Google.

@MichaelEcklund Thanks, but I mean setting up a server from scratch. consider turning your own PC into a server and securing it.

So do you want to experiment with a VPS on your local machine?

No, but I wanted to learn how to set up a real server with nothing but an IP and a hardware

I did the securing and setup part, however don't know how to connect my domain to it

You're on Windows 10, right?

My own pc? yes windows 7. My server? CentOs7

Should have gone with the windows server. Unix doesn't provide a GUI, and I'm slow as a turtle.

I was going to recommend virtualization on your local machine. That way you can screw up as many times as you need in order to figure it out, without breaking the bank.

That's how I learned.

I did that once, but didn't have an IP and a domain. Now I'm stuck at this stage

I personally use Hyper-V for local virtualization. However, there's other options like VMWare...

What do you mean?

When you virtualize... The machine get's it's own IP Address on your local network.

Right now I can connect to it by IP and browse my websites, but obviously i need to connect to it by domain name

So you need to modify your DNS records then.

Point the records to your IP Address

Yes that's it, gotta search how :P

So do you manage your DNS @ your domain registrar?

No but I have access to everything including DNS

So did you purchase a VPS from somewhere then?

yes inmotionhosting

Okay, and you said it was Centos, is it a cPanel server?

I assume this has 2 part? Setting the domain NS as server NS, and then telling apache to redirect traffic to a folder?

Cpanel? It's an OS though... Linux

Did your VPS come equipped with a control panel of any kind, or was it a clean CentOS install?

Cpanel is for newbies :P gotta hardcode it in notepad!

clean install

Okay, so yes, you need to make sure you have virtual hosts setup and configured.

Make sure you have bind installed and configured.

Any place to start learning?

Honestly man, I would recommend installing a control panel to start.

Then as time goes on you can dig into how those control panels do what they do.

If i had a control panel there was no need to learn then

I know how to configure using Cpanel

Search on Digital Ocean, they have some good articles.

I learned on there and Howtoforge

Obviously also these stack sites are great place too

but ya so ... in a nut shell. It's Virtual Hosts, BIND, then domain registrar (NS pointing) ... You can also spoof your DNS locally to test, in order to avoid WWW syncing

edit your hosts file, C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

Gotta find the unix equivalent of that

nooo

You do it on your local machine

should be something like /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

why local?

so that your computer doesnt try to connect on the internet

it's called spoofing

you can use it for testing

Oh for testing yes

yes

so ideally, if your spoof hosts file resolves correctly

then you should be fine to "flip the switch" on the DNS records.

Let's go for a test drive and then fire at will

obviously test it on one website

and like a website that you dont care about

should make a random website for testing :P

but ya, I used control panels to start.

Eventually phased them out

but now I use Cloud Services, so it saves me a ton of time on a lot of stuff

and it's wayyyyyyy better availability.

I don't have popular websites yet. once i do, i'll switch to cloud too

not worth it yet.

@JackJohansson I would assume linode have a prebuilt wordpress node you can duplicate which will set the basic requirements, so at least you will have less toturials to read. I know digital ocean and lightsail (amazon) have such a creation wizard

Gotta set it up still though. The VPS is raw as sushi.

let me check their site

o I see they are behind the rest in this regard

which OS did you chose?

CentOs7

did you follow any of the toturials on installing LAMP stack?

Yes

this one

and this one for securing it

ok, so where are you stuck, the domain?

Yes

I have an IP, I know my DNS, I restored the back up of DB and public_html

Now all I need is to redirect the domain to IP

oh

this you should do from the DNS management in the linode admin

associate the domain with your server

I didn't buy from linode

So, I need to set the domain's DNS to my VPS's?

sure, they don't sell, still this is the way to go

from your registrar you need to set the name handler (forgot the proper name) to point to linode DNS servers

in linode you set the DNS to point to your actual node

you can point directly from the registrar to the node, but it is less flexible IMHO

The second one is what I'm trying to do :D always the hardest way.

linode.com/docs/networking/dns/dns-manager-overview/…

in that case it is all in the registrar and you need their support. In any case that is where most of the work probably needs to be done

if you point to linode you probably get better UI than in your registrar

Not a problem, if that's the case

UI is for newbies. Men should work on shell :P

Not sure what people have against UI's

lol, unless you set your own DNS server (which you can), you have to depend on UI somewhere

Just kidding. Trying to see how hard can a computer strike back

@MichaelEcklund totally nothing, but for complex settings UI just limits you

Bought the VPS for less than a day, and there are already 43 failed login attempts. What the?!

that is the true internet

It's the proper time for this meme

when you set SSH access use a public/private key setup, don't use passwords

Should google that too

Btw is it safe to include a phpmyadmin on my host?

I don't have a control panel so I have to access the DB somehow.

so the question is why do you have to access it

For back up and restore

I would say that less software === more secure, but if you need it, than you need it

why not to use a plugin for that?

WP plugin?

for DB backup? yes, several

Not all my projects are WP though

anyway you can easily configure backup with mysql tools.

oh. as I said, if you need, than you need ;)

I renamed the folder to a hash and disabled folder indexing though

hopefully it helps a bit

you will still want some automated backup

also, use different DB per site

Yes sure

DO people actually use one DB for multiple sites?

it is so easy in case of wordpress I assume the answer is yes

saves you the effort of setting a new DB

Which in this case those efforts are 3 clicks :P

that depends on where you start to count. First you need to login to phpadmin or cpanel

@JackJohansson Funny how you don't want to use GUIs for anything, but then you ask about PhpMyAdmin, lol

Why people ( especially in SE ) take everything so seriously =(