everything i personally do when hosting a website on a new server | basement blog
There's an overwhelming amount of options today for deploying something to the Internet. You've got services like Fly.io and Heroku that allow you to deploy worldwide with simple commands. There's Neocities and Nekoweb that expose a simple drag-and-drop interface for your static site. And of course there's Bearblog and Pika for blogging.
But what if you want to learn the basics of renting a virtual private server (VPS), spinning it up, and configuring it to run your website? Is learning the nitty-gritty of server setup obsolete these days? Maybe, but it's fun! So this is why I'm going to spend the rest of this blog post going highlighting my personal checklist for provisioning and hardening a VPS!
First things first: we need to rent a server to put our Website on. My preference is to use Linode (referral link). Any VPS provider will do the trick, but I used to work for Linode, so I'm familiar with the interface and the pricing is really good for the reliability and support. Their whole claim-to-fame is that you get connected to a human right away when calling in for support:
During the purchasing step, you're most likely going to be asked to provide a "root password" for your server. This password you will need when getting access to the server, so make sure you remember it.
