Setup A Digital Ocean Server - Part 1

This tutorial in intended for people who are looking for alternative to shared hosting or a server that you have control with very low startup cost. You can built a very secure and almost maintenance free server with just $5 a month. The server will be running on Linux and you have full control of it. So you can do what ever you want, webserver, gaming, VPN, Bitcoin nodes, etc etc.

In this tutorial series I will share 

1. Setup a server with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

2. Install a webserver running on Apache, PHP and MySQL

3. Do some OS updates and setup UFW firewall

4. Install LetsEncrypt free SSL certificate for your domain.

First, you need to sign up with Digital Ocean. It will ask for your credit card but they will only charge what you use at the end of the month. Let say you just use for an hour, they will bill you just for a few cents. Click on this link to open a new account

Create A Digital Ocean Account

Once done, login to your dashboard and and start building your new server.

Click on the Create button at the top right corner, and choose Droplet.

On the next screen you will be ask to choose a Linux OS or One-click Apps. 

Click One-click Apps -> Select LAMP on 16.04

LAMP stands for Linux + Apache Webserver + MySQL Database + PHP. So this install will include all the necessary app to start a webserver.

Next, choose the size of the server. We will go with the Standard setup. Choose the $5/mo setup. And don't worry about the 512 MB RAM. It can handle lots of traffic. Try it out first. I've been using the for few year and never had a problem. You can still upgrade later with just a few clicks.

Next, ignore the Block Storage. Choose your datacenter location. I recommend you choose a server nearest to your targeted audience.

Next choose your options. I recommend you select the Monitoring service. Its FREE. You can monitor the server CPU, memory and bandwidth from the dashboard

Skip the SSH keys. And finaly give your server a name. And click Create

Then the setup will run for a few minutes, and once its done you will receive an email containing the username and password to the server. 

Next let try to login to our brand new server. If you are using Windows, please install Putty. We need a SSH client to securely connect to the server.

Launch the terminal and keyin the credential provided in the email. If everything its working, you will be prompt to change your root password.

You can also test your webserver by going to the ip address. You will get the screen below if your webserver installation was successfull

I'll see in part 2 where we will do some OS updates. If you have any questions do let me know, and follow me to get updates on the next post.