I plan to run a social network on a droplet

You don’t need it but it would drastically increase performance, so that is your choice.

Do i need varnish ? <br> <br>Setting up webmin or what pablo said above ? <br>

Webmin/virtualhost don’t support Varnish. Have you tried setting it up manually? Droplets are billed hourly, it would cost you next to nothing to try it out :]

I know some people have said to do other things before trying a control panel. But personally i prefer control panels. Once i do what Pablo says, can i then add webmin ?

Shall give it ago. <br> <br>Is there anyone out there willing to set it up for me ?

I wouldn’t use zPanel since that would make it hard to set up Varnish and nginx, but you can use W3TC or other caching plugins to speed up some of the pages. <br> <br>If you want to have a secure and fast Wordpress setup, check out the links Pablo posted.

Wordpress and its a plugin called buddypress

What stack does it run on and what language is it written in?

This social network will be for a client, So i wont really be able to learn all these things this time. I have set up a droplet with zpanel for some other sites i have at the minute. <br> <br>What would be the best solution for making a droplet that is suitable for this social network? <br> <br>

I would first learn how to manage a server via the command line, b/f tinkering with a control panel. Check out: <br> <br>1.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/initial-server-setup-with-ubuntu-12-04”>Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 12.04</a>; <br> <br>2.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-setup-a-firewall-with-ufw-on-an-ubuntu-and-debian-cloud-server”>How to Setup a Firewall with UFW on an Ubuntu and Debian Cloud Server</a>; <br> <br>3.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-protect-ssh-with-fail2ban-on-ubuntu-12-04”>How To Protect SSH with fail2ban on Ubuntu 12.04</a>; <br> <br>4.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-create-ssh-keys-with-putty-to-connect-to-a-vps”>How To Create SSH Keys with PuTTY to Connect to a VPS</a> (particularly the section re: disabling password logins); <br> <br>5.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-wordpress-nginx-php-and-varnish-on-ubuntu-12-04”>How To Install Wordpress, Nginx, PHP, and Varnish on Ubuntu 12.04</a>; <br> <br>6.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-and-use-memcache-on-ubuntu-12-04”>How To Install and Use Memcache on Ubuntu 12.04</a>; <br> <br>7.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-add-swap-on-ubuntu-12-04”>How To Add Swap on Ubuntu 12.04</a>; <br> <br>8.) <a href=“https://www.digitalocean.com/community/articles/how-to-install-alternative-php-cache-apc-on-a-cloud-server-running-ubuntu-12-04”>How to Install Alternative PHP Cache (APC) on a Cloud Server Running Ubuntu 12.04</a>.