Introduction :
Today we have plenty of options to start own wordpress website or blog on managed hosting or shared hosting. Both managed and shared hosting has some pro and cons. If you are not willing to pay some extra amount and ready to do things on your own, follow this tutorial to learn to start a self hosted wordpress website using digitalocean and serverpilot.
Note: If you are new to LINUX and VPS, please read some good stuff about them on google. I will try as much as possible to explain every steps included in this tutorial to get started with your wordpress website.
What is Digitalocean.com?
Digitalocean is a VPS hosting provider with affordable prices starting at 5$/mo. Digitalocean provides many application for oneclick install on their droplets (VPS) like wordpress. But there is limitation on oneclick install for wordpress, you need to choose 10$/mo droplet for wordpress oneclick install. In this tutorial we will use 5$/mo droplet to install wordpress.
What is Serverpilot.io?
Serverpilot is basically a control panel which automates installation of webserver and wordpress on Digitalocean server. You don’t have to manually install and configure LAMP or wordpress manually on digitalocean. It takes care of everything for you. They have free and paid version as well with some extra features. Here we will continue with free version of serverpilot.
Install :
Creating a Digitalocean Droplets (VPS)
Step 1:
Visit Digitalocean website and signup for a account, they will ask for ID proof or you will guidelines from support to activate your account. After successful activation of your account now you can create your first droplet.
Step 2:
Now click on create a droplet, since serverpilot only works on Ubuntu choose distribution Ubuntu 14.04.5 x64 , $5 droplet in size section which is sufficient for any starting blog or website with few thousands of visitors/mo , and any preferred datacenter region as per your choice. Its advisable to choose region closer to your targeted audience. Before creating the droplet you can also customize the hostname of your server to easily identify it. click on create and your droplet will be ready in minutes and all the server details will be sent to your registered email id.
Step 3:
Once you get your server details, we need to login into server using any SSH client, preferably Putty. Open your mail and put your server Ip address in hostname section of putty and click on open. you will get a black screen window on your computer, you need to provide login user id which by default “root” and press enter. After that its going to ask for password , which is also sent to your mail. After successful login it will ask you to change default root password, change it to something strong and remember it or note down somewhere.
While entering the password you won’t be able to see password content, its advised to copy your password and right click on black screen. Once you get used to it, it will be easier to enter password instead of copy and paste.
Add Domain to digitalocean
Now you have your droplets up and running, next thing we are going to do is connect the website domain name to digitalocean. On your digitalocean dashboard go to networking and enter your domain name and select the droplet you wish to connect to this doamin and click on create record.
You need to add one more record to access your website with “www” prefix. Click on CNAME record and checkout below image and do the same.
Now your domain record is created in digitalocean panel. Next you need to point your domain Nameserver to digitalocean. Go to your domain registrar control panel and change NS record of your domain to :
ns1.digitalocean.com
ns2.digitalocean.com
ns3.digitalocean.com
Now your domain is pointed to your droplet ip.
Getting started with serverpilot
Now you are logged into server and its up and running , we need to go ahead with serverpilot installation and configuration. you need to create a account with serverpilot.
Step 1:
you need to connect your digitalocean droplets to serverpilot in order to automate the installation process of all the required package of webserver.
click on connect server
you need to enter your droplet ip address, root password and choose a SFTP password, click on connect to serverpilot. After the droplet is successfully connected to serverpilot you can see the connected droplet in your serverpilot dashboard.
Step 2:
In order to install wordpress, go to app section on your dashboard and click on create app, enter your app name, domain name, tick on wordpress box, choose php version and select your connected server, now click on create app. It will automatically install wordpress on your droplet and configure it accordingly.
Now you will be able to access your wordpress installation at your domain name.
Summary :
May be it seems little work to connect your server and to get your wordpress website up, but once it gets completed everything will run smoothly and you don’t have to get worried too much about any installation issue. If you still think its alot of work to do let me know in comments, i will try to help as much as possible .
