Need some guidance

Question

Hello guys!!

First of all, i want thank you all for the support you have given me!!

I’m totally new with all this vps stuff, so i’m trying my best to learn as fast as i can! I’m glad there are so many tutorials in here!!

The problem is that i’ve been following many of those tutorials, but i’m getting lost a lot, because i often need to merge 2 or more tutorials to do what i want, and then one of them says one thing and the other says another (which is good, cause they serve different purposes).

So, i wish i could have some guidance, like: 1- follow this link, then 2- this link, then 3- and so on, based on what i need.

I know that i’m asking too much, but i’m willing to restart my droplet because i’m afraid i’ve done something wrong, mainly in the safety area… and i know that there are some things i can´t do after i’ve done other things…

Here is what i’ve done already: installed ubuntu 10.04 64x (don´t know about ubuntu or CentOS, but i followed a guide that said to install ubuntu, and i even made some changes in ssh and the droplet port, changing from 22 to 25000, based on the guide) - then i installed Zpanel, and only got to see its interface by thyping in the web browser the droplet’s IP (i did’nt change the droplets hosts file nor my computer’s hosts file), and then i got confused about firewalls, ports and stuff like that, temporary DNS, etc…

So, i what i need now is the following:

I need to migrate my wordpress blog from a shared hosting to DigitalOcean, but i want it to be very secure (i still don’t know enough about security), because my site is big and i gain money from it, so there were cases of people trying to hack it. The site needs to be able to handle a lot of simultaneous traffic as well, and fast, if possible…

Also i need to use a control panel, like Zpanel (because cPanel is paid service). I’ve been told that Zpanel installs LAMP and phpMyAdmin by itself…

I’ve heard Varnish is very good for caching and allowing a lot of traffic too, but i dont know when is the correct time to install it… Should i install it? After Zpanel? Before Zpanel? After Wordpress? Also i’ve read something about php APC, fast cgi, but don´t know about them…

Then i need to restore my database and content of the wordpress site (can i do it with zpanel interface?), and after that i need to test it before propagating the DNS…

And then i want to know there is anything else to do before i propagate my DNS and get my site to work as before, but now on DigitalOcean =))

I know its too much to ask, but thank you guys anyway!!

Kamal Nasser · Answer

1. Should i add a Swap on ubuntu?? I mean, for me that will use Wordpress blog with high traffic.

Yes, but make sure you set the swappiness level to 0:

echo vm.swappiness=0 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf
sysctl -p

2. Memcache, should i use it too?? People here say that it can speed up my site, but i will already use varnish, nginx, W3Total cache plugin, and maybe CloudFlare. Should i add Memcache as well?

It’s recommended that you use it since it’s an in-memory cache which will speed things up. But you can’t just “use” it, your app (Wordpress in this case) needs to support and use memcached, I believe there are plenty of plugins that do this.

3. What abou FastCGI on php?? Would you guys recommend it?

If you are going to use nginx, you will have to use fastcgi. FastCGI is faster even if you use Apache so I recommend going with it.

4. APC on PHP, should i install it even with all those cache stuff??

Yes, I recommend installing an op-cache extension such as APC.

5. Is it recommended for me to make a CDN after all? Or stick with CloudFlare?

Depends. Cloudflare is usually enough.

pablo · Answer

“Also i need to use a control panel, like Zpanel …”

Why? IMHO, you should not install zPanel at all. In doing so, you are:

1.) adding another layer of complexity;
2.) adding another possible point of failure;
3.) limiting your ability to have granular control over your cloud server (that is, if you rely on zPanel exclusively).

Case-in-point

All of the “premium” WordPress hosting companies employ Nginx, instead of Apache (including the inventors of WordPress: WordPress.com !). Thus, it defies logic that anyone that values performance would deploy their WordPress installation on the LAMP stack. I’m no expert on zPanel, but, if memory serves me, zPanel does not support Nginx.

You’re better off with:

1.) How To Use Filezilla to Transfer and Manage Files Securely on your VPS;

2.) How To Create SSH Keys with PuTTY to Connect to a VPS;

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

4.) Either the Duplicator plugin or How to Migrate WordPress from Shared Hosting to a Cloud Server with Zero Downtime.

sgrenger · Answer

Thank you so much Pablo!

The link about How to Migrate Wordpress talks about migrating into an Apache server, will i be alright following it using Nginx?

After all thopse steps, will you recomend installing SSL certificate?

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