These login credentials will be used to log in to the server. To do so click on the droplet name you just created, and then click on the Access Tab.

Now you will see the option “Launch Console”, click on it to access your droplet remotely.

A new tab will open up with terminal access. Now, will need to log in to the server as username “root” (username and password you received in the email).

Enter the password from the email and press enter. You will be prompted to set a new password (you need to remember the new password so store it somewhere secure).

Now that we have access to the server, will install Nginx, MySQL, and PHP on Ubuntu 18.04 or 20.04, which has already been installed on your Digitalocean server.

Note: All the commands that are to be used have a white or black background and commands are case-sensitive. Press Enter after typing the command to run.

Install NGINX

sudo apt install nginx -y

To check if NGINX was successfully installed, visit your server IP address. The IP address for your server can be found by clicking on the droplet name. The IPv4 value is your IP address as shown in the image below. 

Note down the IPv4 value as will use it again.

You will be greeted with a “Welcome to NGNIX” screen if NGNIX was installed successfully.

Now we need to assign proper permissions:

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/yadavgaurav

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/yadavgaurav

Firewall and Security:

ufw enable

ufw allow ssh

ufw app info “Nginx Full”

ufw allow ‘Nginx Full’

To check ufw is properly configured run the following command:

ufw status

The result should be something like this:

service nginx restart

Nginx Server Block

Now we need to configure Ngnix Server Block to properly point our domain and PHP configurations.

A server block in Ngnix is used to divide and separate configuration details and host more than one domain off of a single server.

If you want to understand Ngnix Server Block in details following link will be helpful:

• Understanding Nginx Server and Location Block Selection Algorithms
• Server Block Examples

We will first delete the default files:

rm /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

rm /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default

Now we need to create new block files:

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/

nano example-com

This will create example-com (you can use a name more relevant to your domain) and open a file editor as nano is a file editor in ubuntu.

server {
listen 80;
root /var/www/yadavgaurav;
index index.php index.html index.htm;
server_name example.com www.example.com;
client_max_body_size 0;

error_page 404 /404.html;
error_page 500 502 503 504 /50x.html;

location / {
try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?q=$uri&$args;
}

location ~* \.php$ {
if ($uri !~ "^/uploads/") {
fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
}
include fastcgi_params;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
}
location = /favicon.ico {
log_not_found off;
access_log off;
}

location = /robots.txt {
log_not_found off;
access_log off;
allow all;
}

location ~* .(css|gif|ico|jpeg|jpg|js|png|webp)$ {
expires 1y;
log_not_found off;
}

location ~ \.user\.ini$ {
deny all;
}

# Enable Gzip compression.
gzip on;

# Disable Gzip on IE6.
gzip_disable "msie6";

# Allow proxies to cache both compressed and regular versions of the file.
# Avoids clients that don't support Gzip outputting gibberish.
gzip_vary on;

# Compress data, even when the client connects through a proxy.
gzip_proxied any;

# The level of compression to apply to files. A higher compression level increases
# CPU usage. Level 5 is a happy medium resulting in roughly 75% compression.
gzip_comp_level 5;

# Compress the following MIME types.
gzip_types
	application/atom+xml
	application/javascript
	application/json
	application/ld+json
	application/manifest+json
	application/rss+xml
	application/vnd.geo+json
	application/vnd.ms-fontobject
	application/x-font-ttf
	application/x-web-app-manifest+json
	application/xhtml+xml
	application/xml
	font/opentype
	image/bmp
	image/svg+xml
	image/x-icon
	text/cache-manifest
	text/css
	text/plain
	text/vcard
	text/vnd.rim.location.xloc
	text/vtt
	text/x-component
	text/x-cross-domain-policy;
}

To save the file Press CTRL+O and Enter the key, then press CTRL+X.

Create Symbolic Links:

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/example-com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/

sudo nginx -t

service nginx restart

systemctl restart php7.4-fpm.service

systemctl restart mysql

apt-get update

Now it’s time to update your DNS setting, to do so login into your domain registrar (Godaddy, Bluehost, Namecheap, etc.) and change name servers.

ns1.digitalocean.com

ns2.digitalocean.com

ns3.digitalocean.com

Now add your domain to your droplet and add the following records.

A record from example.com which points to server IP

Record type: A
HOSTNAME: @
WILL DIRECT TO: Server IP (IPv4)
Click “Create Record”

Record type: A
HOSTNAME: www
WILL DIRECT TO: Server IP (IPv4)
Click “Create Record”

Install Let’s Encrypt SSL Certificate

add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot

apt-get update

apt-get install python-certbot-nginx

certbot –nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

Optional Configuration

PHP Configuration for running WordPress smoothly:

File location /etc/php/7.4/fpm/php.ini

max_execution_time Change 30 to 300
max_input_time Change 60 to 600
memory_limit Changeset to 128M to 256M
post_max_size Change 8M to 64M
upload_max_filesize Change 2M to 32M

Restart PHP-FRM and NGNIX

sudo service php7.4-fpm reload

sudo service nginx reload

Installing Another Website On the Same Server

For this we need to create a new directory in /var/www/

cd /var/www/

mkdir examplenew

wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

tar -xvzf latest.tar.gz

mv -v wordpress/* /var/www/examplenew

rm -rf index.nginx-debian.html latest.tar.gz wordpress

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/examplenew

sudo chmod -R 755 /var/www/examplenew

Create a new server block

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/

nano examplenew-com

Add server info, create a new database, and install SSL as we did them before.

If you need help regarding anything, then do leave a comment and we will get back to you as soon as possible.