Beginner Help - Wordpress, LEMP, NGINX, Apache, basic setup

Hello all,

Will try to keep this concise. Have worked with websites for many years, always managed shared hosting etc… I would like to move my websites to DO. I played around with the setup all day yesterday and got a test site working between a droplet and ServerPilot, however I want to be able to manage my own Droplet instead of relying on others.

I have read the tutorials here but am still really confused, the problem being I don’t know which questions to ask.

1. What do I need to install to get started? It seems that LEMP is the way to go, but I read that NGINX can also be installed in FRONT of apache (so that .htaccess could be used?)

2. I just want a secure, fast, easy to use website with a wordpress installation on it. I assume NGINX because this site will grow over time.

3. Eventually, I’d like to add all of my domains onto this droplet (one big account).

I’m having a very difficult time with the tutorials. For example, the tutorial may say… enable gzip compression on etc/nginx/ngnix.conf

My question is how? I can’t find any instructions on how to edit this file, how to find it, what program to use or how to create it - or what I have to type in order to do so. I’m really confused and don’t want to settle on shared hosting.

I downloaded Putty for windows and have been able to login with the root/pw combo that was sent to me, that’s about it. I know nothing of sudo or nano or vim or any of this. A lot of the tutorials are missing (appears to me) to be the basics steps. I can follow along okay but am missing the key points.

Is the big black box in the DO control panel area the same thing as putty?

Really want to learn this so I can setup a server properly from the get go. Maybe a bullet point list?

*Ubuntu 14.04 64 bit *LEMP *PHP my admin needed? *Next I install wordpress?

Thank you to all who help. I look forward to learning… and having a faster loading website than Hostgator…