From Shared Cpanel to VPS Droplet - to host multiple separate Wordpress sites

Hi there,

You could follow the steps from this video on how to host multiple WordPress websites on the same server with Apache Virtual Hosts:

Essentially, what needs to happen is:

• Download a new copy of WordPress with the wget command:

wget wordpress.org/latest.zip

• After that extract the files

unzip latest.zip

• Then move the files to the /var/www/ folder:

mv wordpress /var/www/your_site.com

• Then set the owner of the file to the Apache2 user:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/your_site.com

• After that copy the existing Apache config:

sudo cp /etc/apache2/sites-available/000-default.conf /etc/apache2/sites-available/your_site.conf

• Then enable the new site:

sudo a2ensite

• Run a configtest:

sudo apachectl -t

• If you get Syntax OK reload Apache:

sudo systemctl reload apache2

• Then create a new MySQL database and username. To create the database first access MySQL:

mysql

Then run the following queries:

CREATE DATABASE wp_site;

CREATE USER 'wp_site'@'%' IDENTIFIED BY 'use_secure_password_here';

GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wp_site.* TO 'wp_site'@'%' WITH GREANT OPTION;

• Finally, access the site via your web browser to finish the installation.

Hope that this helps. Regards, Bobby

I recommend you use zPanel, it allows you to use the VPS like shared hosting, only you have more resources to use. I use it for multiple domains using separate installations of Wordpress and other systems.

zPanel is a web hosting manager like cPanel, but it is free: http://www.zpanelcp.com/

I am no expert on Wordpress, but I can give you an answer to your first question from my own perspective.

If you are completely new to Linux system administration, the learning curve will probably be steep. With a VPS, you are responsible for all aspects of your server starting at square 1 with the installation of any packages you will need, including installation and configuration of a web server. DO does provide a ready-made Wordpress droplet which will take care of most of that for you. But keep in mind that you are still the one who has to keep it running. It’s not terribly difficult, but there can be a lot to learn initially, and you may have to spend a significant amount of time looking through documentation. There is help in communities like this, but as you have seen, the response may not be quick or particularly helpful, especially if the answer can be found in the documentation.

The best way to answer your question may be to just try it out. It is quite inexpensive to set up and try out a droplet for a month. See if you can figure it out and whether it is within the realm of what you want to do. A 512 MB droplet would probably handle a couple of Wordpress sites well enough for you to learn what you need to know.

Reaching back in my memory a few years to when I was using Wordpress, I seem to remember editing config files for a single domain, so multiple sites (not multisite) would require multiple installations - each domain having its own installation in its own directory. The advantage to a VPS is that the database server is all yours. You get as many databases as you want, so you don’t have to prefix your Wordpress tables differently for each installation.