Question

Clarification for a Beginner: Power of Digital Ocean vs Ease of DreamPress

Hi,

I am going to start a Wordpress blog that I eventually want to generate revenue through a few ads, affiliate marketing and a Shopify store. If anyone would like more details on what I’m doing so they can give me a better answer, let me know.

From what I am reading Digital Ocean seems like a much better and powerful tool, however I have zero experience in dealing with what I am reading about in the tutorials.

I would love to learn how to use Digital Ocean. My concern is how much time it would take as I run a business already. If I could learn how to create/manage a site through DO spending 2-3 hours a day I would do it and enjoy it a lot I think. But if it would be more of a full time job spending 6-8 hours a day I can’t commit that much time to it now.

In your honest opinion would it be better for me to start with a plug and play option like DreamPress until I generate enough revenue I can hire someone to use DigitalOcean for me?

Does that sound like a heads up plan for someone in my position? Or would it potentially create more issues down the line as the methods I end up using in DreamPress may need a massive overhaul in a switch to DO?

Thanks.

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JonsJava • August 25, 2017
Accepted Answer

DO is a powerful solution (similar to AWS EC2 instances). With that said, you receive un-managed hosting – which means:

  • you install all the software yourself
  • you are responsible for updating your server to keep it secure
  • you are responsible for ensuring that it is configured correctly
  • if you run into an issue, you hit up the Q&A to receive community support (I don’t work for DO)

I’m a DevOps engineer, so Linux is my thing. For someone who just wants it working? I’d recommend leaving it to the pros, and fire up a droplet to play around with it in your spare time, while hosting your site at a managed provider.

Race car drivers hire mechanics and a pit crew. If this is a personal site that is for fun, I’d say by all means do it yourself – you’ll learn a lot. Because it’s a professional site, I say don’t go that route until you have a firm grasp on how to handle all aspects yourself, or you hire someone to do it for you.

Sleepeasies • August 25, 2017

Thank you for the reply.

I decided to go with Serverpilot. So it’s up and running already, which probably would not have been the case if I’d decided to do it on my own.