host it with pm2, here is what I do with vagrant. structure like /var/www/hp.com/package.json /var/www/hp.com/node_modules /var/www/hp.com/hpserver.js # the server, which will be hold by pm2 /var/www/hp.com/html # site content, so here are the harp-content like html/harp.json , html/public/articles , html/public/index.jade

1. node -v I use nvm to install node, which you can use some alternative way. The point is node version.

curl -o- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/creationix/nvm/v0.31.0/install.sh | bash nvm install 4.4.3 ( dont run nvm install stable because it will install v6.0.0 which is not robust yet ) nvm alias default 4.4.3 nvm use default

2. Nginx

sudo touch /etc/nginx/sites-available/hp.com sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/hp.com

server {
    listen 80 default_server;
    listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;
    server_name localhost;
    #server_name lorem.com www.lorem.com; # the domain
    location / {
        proxy_set_header   X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header   Host      $http_host;
        proxy_set_header X-NginX-Proxy true;
        proxy_pass         http://127.0.0.1:9000;
    }
}

ref Ghost (a node blogging app) Nginx setting https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-host-ghost-with-nginx-on-digitalocean

3. site content

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/hp.com/html sudo chown -R $USER:$USER /var/www/hp.com/html sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www npm install -g harp ( will install 0.20.3 and it is ok for harp cmd , but not for the server ) harp init /var/www/hp.com/html --boilerplate kennethormandy/hb-remedy site content in /var/www/hp.com/html/public with /var/www/hp.com/html/harp.json (site info)

4. /var/www/hp.com/hpserver.js

cd /var/www/hp.com touch package.json echo “{}” >> package.json npm install harp@0.19.0 --save echo “require(‘harp’).server(__dirname+‘/html’, { port: process.env.PORT || 9000 })” >> /var/www/hp.com/hpserver.js

Test-to-run: node /var/www/hp.com/hpserver.js and should have no error. If you don’t specify harp@0.19.0 then there might be errors ( like asking to do npm rebuild node-sass or the libsass binding was not found ) in harp@0.20.3 (the latest version which would do default install) ref http://harpjs.com/docs/deployment/azure

5. pm2

npm install -g pm2 pm2 startup ubuntu # then do as prompt cmd

then restart vps

pm2 start /var/www/hp.com/hpserver.js pm2 dump && pm2 kill && pm2 resurrect Now as the vps starts, pm2 will trigger hpserver.js and serving every changes to /var/www/hp.com/html. For back up, just save the whold hp.com dir ( hpserver.js + package.json + node_modules dir + html dir )

See How To Use PM2 to Setup a Node.js Production Environment On An Ubuntu VPS. You can use the user you created while following Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 14.04 as the “safeuser”.