The document discusses various hosting options for websites including shared hosting, dedicated servers, VPS, and cloud hosting. It covers choosing appropriate server resources like memory, CPU, storage and bandwidth. The document also discusses setting up a LEMP stack on Linux/Ubuntu for application performance and security. It provides recommendations for securing the server, application code, backups, monitoring performance, and managing sites remotely.

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VPS hosting for speed
and security

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Mike Little
WordPress specialist
https://mikelittle.org/
@mikelittlezed1
http://mikelittle.me/

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Intro
• Servers
• Application Stack
• Security Pt 1
• Performance
• Security Pt 2
• Other Stuff

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Technical but not..

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Server
Shared vs Dedicated vs VPS vs Cloud

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Server
• Shared : - Cheap, low traffic, overloaded
• Dedicated: - Expensive, high traffic, inflexible
• VPS: - Cheap, high traffic, flexible
• Cloud: Cheap/Expensive, ultimate flexibility

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Server
• Memory
• CPU
• Storage (SSD)
• Bandwidth
• Location, location, location

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Server
• Different eggs in different baskets
• Domain Registration
• DNS Hosting
• Site Hosting
• Email Hosting
• Backup Storage

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Application Stack
Linux/CentOS/Ubuntu
LAMP/LEMP/LIMP/LUMP

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Application Stack
• Linux
• Ubuntu

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LEMP
• Linux
• NginX (“Engine X”)
• MySQL / MariaDB
• PHP (FPM)

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Easy Engine
https://rtcamp.com/easyengine/

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Security
OS and server level security

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Security
• Firewall - Block ports
• Fail2Ban - Ban naughty IPs
• Minimise attack surface
• Monitor and Alert
• Backups - OS and configuration - Offsite

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Performance

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Performance
• Lemp Stack
• Caching
• Page caching x 2
• Memory caching
• DB caching

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Security Part 2

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Security Part 2
• Strong Passwords
• Up-to-date: WP, plugins, and themes
• Update Notifications
• Limit Login attempts
• WordPress Backup - Plugin or external

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Manage Remotely
• WPRemote
• ManageWP
• JetPack/WordPress.com

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Backups
• Full backups
• Automated
• Off-site
• Restorable

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Security Part 2
• Security plugins - not all are good
• Web Application Firewall
• Extending Fail2Ban
• External WAF

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Other Stuff…

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Other Stuff…
• Site monitoring
• Email
• Performance testing
• Cron
• Backups
• Control Panel
• sFTP

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Site Monitoring
• Status Cake
• Uptime Robot
• Pingdom

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Site Monitoring

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Site Monitoring - Munin

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Site Monitoring - Munin

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Site Monitoring - Munin

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Email
• External - Use a ‘big’ provider
• SPF - Sender Policy Framework
• DKIM - DomainKeys Identified Mail
• Outgoing only

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Performance Testing

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Performance Testing

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Performance Testing

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Other Stuff…
• Cron — (not WordPress)
• Backups — (not a plugin)
• sFTP — secure and restricted (chroot)

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Control Panel
• Not cPanel or Plesk
• Webmin — Open source

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Links
• https://www.vultr.com/
• https://www.digitalocean.com/
• http://www.ubuntu.com/
• https://rtcamp.com/easyengine/
• http://www.fail2ban.org/
• https://sucuri.net/
• https://wpremote.com/
• http://munin-monitoring.org/
• https://www.statuscake.com/
• https://uptimerobot.com/
• http://www.dkim.org/
• https://www.blitz.io/

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Links
• https://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-simple-firewall/
• https://wordpress.org/plugins/limit-login-attempts/
• https://wordpress.org/plugins/backupwordpress/
• http://www.webmin.com/
• https://www.gandi.net/
• https://pointhq.com/
• http://www.rsync.net/

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Questions?
• Mike Little
• @mikelittlezed1
• https://mikelittle.org
• https://wp-hosting.co.uk