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I plan to run a social network on a droplet

Posted January 9, 2014 4.7k views
Hello All, I plan to run a social network on a droplet, Can I make the droplet secure enough to run a social network?
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cameron1
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cameron1
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18 answers
gparent January 9, 2014
Yes
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cameron1 January 9, 2014
How can this be achieved with Ubuntu ?
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mattbridges January 9, 2014
By writing secure code; hardening the operating system and ensuring the various levels of the application are secure. Start here https://www.owasp.org/index.php/Secure_Coding_Principles
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cameron1 January 9, 2014
Thank you, i am not a very good coder. I would be using wordpress with buddypress. Wordpress is reasonably secure isnt it ?
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mattbridges January 9, 2014
This might be helpful http://codex.wordpress.org/Hardening_WordPress
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cameron1 January 9, 2014
Thank you shall study! What about the droplet itself? I would plan to use zpanel.
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tyler January 9, 2014
zPanel has had a rocky past as far as security is concerned. There are better alternatives out there, namely Webmin/Virtualmin. Or you could learn to do the Apache conf yourself, or even use the speedier nginx (my personal favorite).
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cameron1 January 9, 2014
I had herd that about zadmin. But webmin/virtualmin sound good. Are they quite straight forward to install?
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pablo January 9, 2014
I would first learn how to manage a server via the command line, b/f tinkering with a control panel. Check out:

1.) Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 12.04;

2.) How to Setup a Firewall with UFW on an Ubuntu and Debian Cloud Server;

3.) How To Protect SSH with fail2ban on Ubuntu 12.04;

4.) How To Create SSH Keys with PuTTY to Connect to a VPS (particularly the section re: disabling password logins);

5.) How To Install Wordpress, Nginx, PHP, and Varnish on Ubuntu 12.04;

6.) How To Install and Use Memcache on Ubuntu 12.04;

7.) How To Add Swap on Ubuntu 12.04;

8.) How to Install Alternative PHP Cache (APC) on a Cloud Server Running Ubuntu 12.04.
Initial Server Setup with Ubuntu 12.04
by Etel Sverdlov
This tutorial covers how to login with root, how to change the root password, how to create a new user, how to give the new user root privileges, how to change the port, and how to disable root login in. This tutorial is written for Ubuntu. When you first create your server, this tutorial explains the first steps you need to take. This tutorial is written for Ubuntu 12.04.
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cameron1 January 14, 2014
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.

What would be the best solution for making a droplet that is suitable for this social network?

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kamaln7 January 14, 2014
What stack does it run on and what language is it written in?
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cameron1 January 14, 2014
Wordpress and its a plugin called buddypress
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kamaln7 January 15, 2014
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.

If you want to have a secure and fast Wordpress setup, check out the links Pablo posted.
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cameron1 January 15, 2014
Shall give it ago.

Is there anyone out there willing to set it up for me ?
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cameron1 January 15, 2014
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 ?
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kamaln7 January 16, 2014
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 :]
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cameron1 January 18, 2014
Do i need varnish ?

Setting up webmin or what pablo said above ?
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kamaln7 January 19, 2014
You don't need it but it would drastically increase performance, so that is your choice.
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