How to install WordPress in a VPS using Digital Ocean

Hosting a website can be tricky if you don’t know the basics of web hosting.

In order for the installation to be successful you will need the following:

• A VPS Server
• Get a Domain name
• Download and install Putty

In this article, I will show you how to host and install WordPress website and to a blog from scratch, let’s begin with the basics first, What is a website? simply a website is a set of files that need a place where to be available to the public 24/7 365 days a year

In order to achieve this, we need to get a server where to host our website, there are more than 100.000 hosting providers around the internet, in our case, we will be using Digital Ocean, why digital ocean? because is so simple to use, with a beginner-friendly interface.

Feel free to test Digital Ocean for two months for free, using this coupon.

however, you are not obliged to use Digital Ocean, you can use any other hosting company you feel comfortable with, I use them because they offer an excellent service, if you are looking for any other cheap and powerful VPS companies you can also check out contabo

After you sign up, you will be in the Digital Ocean Dashboard

Set up hosting server

How do we deploy or create a server? simply click on the top right green button, once open you will need to select droplet, what’s nice of Digital Ocean is that you can upgrade and downgrade at any time and, it can install WordPress for you automatically!

Just cling on it, and it will install WordPress automatically on Ubunto 20, once you have selected that, you will need to choose a plan

this is entirely up to you, they have plans starting as little as $6/mo.

I prefer to start with 12$ as it gives a good performance, they also recently introduced the new NVMe technology, in short, it allows to deliver better IOPs performance and 5x faster data transfer.

Select any data region you feel comfortable with, next, you need to create a root password, make sure to choose a strong password

we will need this password to configure our server, then we need to choose our hostname, simply this is your domain name, like w-ecom.com, every website owner need to have a domain name, the most known company to get domains are Godaddy or NameCheap

Map a domain name to our server

Now that you have a name, and also a server, but you don’t have a connection between them, so we need to connect them through a procedure called mapping

Once you have bought your domain, hover over to the DNS management zone, where you will need to change the name record pointing to @ there you will need to edit the IP address under the “value” section

Finish the setup using SSH client Putty

To make sure that the name has mapped correctly and is fully functional we need to ping our domain by using the command prompt

Simply type ping and then your domain name to check if you get a response

Now that we know it’s working, we need to use an SSH client to access our server, in short, putty is software that allows configuring a Linux server, once you have installed putty, open it and copy/paste your IP address

Once you open the putty it will tell you to log a user, simply type root, and then it will ask you the password, do you remember the password that we set up at the beginning when we created our server? we need that password, simply right click with your mouse the password, it won’t show for security reasons, but rest assured the password is there.

The first thing it will ask you is to enter your domain name, click enter, then it will ask you to enter your email address, click enter, then you will need to enter the WordPress Username, this is up to you, just choose a username that fits your criteria, then you will need to enter the password, then it will ask you to enter your blog name, again this is entirely up to you, then it will ask you if the information you provided is correct, simply enter the letter y and type enter

Then it will ask you if you would like to issue an SSL certificate

what’s good about Digital Ocean is that it allows you to issue an SSL certificate automatically for free, simply type y and then you will need to insert your email

then it will ask you if you are willing to share your email adress, simply say n.

Last settings

Here it will ask you which domain you would like to activate the HTTPS, simply type and enter the 1 domain, the last option to complete our configuration it will ask you if you want re-direct automatically to secure HTTPS, simply enter 2 to say yes,

and there you have it, install WordPress to a VPS server in just a few clicks is never been easier. If you are interested in using the power of Facebook ads to drive traffic to your blog or eCommerce website then you might want to read this article

To login to your WordPress website simply type https://yourwebsite.com/wp-admin and it will bring you to the login page.

I hope this small lecture will give you some motivation to start your own blog using a VPS server and get all the benefits it has to offer.

If you have any questions please leave them in the comments section below I will answer every question or doubt you might have.