Tag: nginx

Three years ago I wrote a guide to building a VPS web server for serving sites in a PHP environment. That setup served me well for some time, but most of the sites I run now — including this one — are now written in Python. Earlier this year I built another web server to reflect this. It’s similar to before; I still use Ubuntu and I still like to serve pages with nginx. But PHP has been replaced with Python, and many of the packages used to build the environment have changed as a result. As with the last time, I decided to compile my notes into a guide, both for my own reference and in case anyone else would like to duplicate it. So far, the server has proven to be fast and efficient. It serves Python using uWSGI, uses a PostgreSQL database, and includes a simple mail server provided by Postfix. I think it’s a good setup for serving simple Django-based websites.

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As mentioned previously, I’ve recently moved this domain over to Slicehost. What follows is Part Four of a guide, compiled from my notes, to setting up an Ubuntu Hardy VPS. See also Part One, Part Two, and Part Three.

I prefer to install Wordpress via Subversion, which makes updating easier. We’ll have to install Subversion on the server first:

$ sudo aptitude install subversion

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As mentioned previously, I’ve recently moved this domain over to Slicehost. What follows is Part Two of a guide, compiled from my notes, to setting up an Ubuntu Hardy VPS. See also Part One, Part Three, Part Four.

Now we’ve got a properly configured, but idle, box. Let’s do something with it.

Nginx is a small, lightweight web server that’s all the rage on some small corners of the Net. Apache is extremely overkill for a small personal web server like this and, since we’re limited to 256MB of RAM on this VPS, it quickly becomes a resource hog. Lighttpd is another small, lightweight web server, but I’m a fan of Nginx. Try it out.

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