How to set up a VPS for hosting web apps

In this guide I'll take you step-by-step how to set up a cheap and simple VPS to host your web apps. This approach works from hosting single html files to docker containers.

1.Spinning up a VPS

Pick VPS that fits your system requirements. I generally go with the smallest option since providers allow you to scale up. I've used Digital Ocean and Hetzner myself and would recommend either providers.

This guide uses SSH to work with the server. If you don't know how to SSH into the server here's a guide on that.

I recommend running a benchmark test when you set up a new VPS. You’ll sometimes get older machines or machines that have been heavily used when using VPSs. If the performance is degraded, delete your VPS from that provider and try again. I usually use Yet Another Bench Script for this.

2.Set up docker

Digital ocean has option to spin up Droplet with Docker image pre-loaded. Your milage may vary with other providers.

For VPS without Docker installed follow this guide

3.Nginx setup

Once SSH'd into the server run the below in the command line to update the system's packages and install nginx so we can route requests to the server.

bash

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nginx 
# press enter to restart default services

Run the following to clear out nginx defaults

bash

cd /etc/nginx/sites-available/ && rm default
cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/ && rm default

4.Setting up a firewall

Providers often have firewall GUIs to simplify setting up a firewall. Here's an article on what you can expect setting up a firewall from a GUI to look like this one is from Hetzner's cloud offering.

If you prefer to set it up yourself I recommend this article here.

5.Set up your site's maintenance page

This is a page we'll use if your site offline. It's a good example that you can also use static files or static apps on your server. You can copy this starter one to test from here.

Run the command below, it will open up an editor. Once the editor is up paste in your html, save and exit the editor.

bash

cd && sudo mkdir /var/www/mysite.com
cd /var/www/mysite.com
sudo nano maintenance.html

6.Routing network traffic

Let's pretend you have a docker container running on port 8008. Okay if you have an app running on that port or not since we have a maintaince page. We will now route traffic to your app running on the VPS from port 8008.

Create an nginx config file for the site running:

bash

cd && sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite.com

Now paste the following in the editor, save and then exit the editor:

nginx

    server {
        # Port 80 is used for incoming http requests

        # The URL we want this server config to apply to
        server_name  mysite.com;

        location / {
          proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:8008;
        }
            location @static {
            # This is the maintaince page saved as /var/www/mysite.com/maintenance.html on the server
            root /var/www/mysite.com;
            try_files /maintenance.html =404;
        }

    }
    server {
        listen 80;
        listen [::]:80;
        server_name  mysite.com;
    }

7.Enabling the site

Run the following to create a symbolic link from your nginx config to enable the config.

bash

cd && sudo ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite.com /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/mysite.com

• Now let's test we have set up the nginx config correctly via sudo nginx -t.

• If that looks good we can now restart the nginx server via sudo systemctl restart nginx.

• Go to your site via http (eg. http://mysite.com) in a browser - you should see your running app if its running. Or the maintenance page if its not.

8.Setting up HTTPS

We will use Certbot for this. Important to note the certification expires after 90 days so good to have a cron job set up to renew this automatically. This article doesn't cover automating the renewal but there's a plethora out there that do.

bash

   snap install certbot --classic
   sudo apt-get install -y python3-certbot-nginx
   # ensure you have Nginx full added to firewall
   sudo certbot --nginx -d mysite.com
   # enter email & choose not to share -> then you're good to test a cert renewal 
   sudo certbot renew --dry-run

Wrapping up

I hope you found this guide easy to follow as it took me a few days to understand and get right myself. As a follow up, I recommend adding extra security set up to ensure your VPS is secure such as fail2ban.

Please reach out if you think I missed anything! You can find me at any of the socials in site's footer.