Moving from a managed VPS to an unmanaged service like Linode.

[John1744]

Hello all,

I've been running a VPS hosted forum for about 15 years now and I am pretty comfortable with Cpanel and WHM etc. I've been using Knownhost for quite a while and have been pleased, I pay $99 every 3 months for this service and have had to use the customer service about once a year for issues beyond my scope of knowledge. But like a lot of people I've been intrigued greatly by the simplifed digital cloud hosting available at such a lower cost. I can get nearly equivalent resources for around $10 per month through a service like Linode.

But the problem is I've never setup a server from scratch and I'm curious if there are any tutorials, classes, etc out there to learn how to setup an environment for something like a Xenforo install on a from scratch cloud environment. I'd love to do some testing and am looking for advice on how best to begin going down this road.

Many many thinks in advance!

 

[Sunka]

Go with this.
http://centminmod.com/

 

[Pierce]

@eva2000 not only runs centminmod but is a fellow xenforo admin.

I've run his config on 2 vps servers to get away from bigger dedicated servers to save a significant amount every month.

Doing testing the performance is impressive.

The mod allows for powerful firewall rules. Easy nginx setup, php upgrades and general server management.

It takes about 30 minutes to install. And took me a few hours to learn the differences to duplicate my site onto the new setup.

Hardest part was understanding CSF firewall limits outgoing as well!

For $10, it will cost very little to dab into it.

You could also put your domain on cloudflare for easy DNS management.

Email is the last thing you have to figure out. But you could host your email with Google or some other service. And use a mailer like postmarkapp, sendgrid, sparkpost, pepipost etc depending on volume. If your only 100 per day Google would be fine.

 

[rdn]

Go with this.
http://centminmod.com/

or https://serverpilot.io/

 

[motowebmaster]

If you've never run your own server before, consider spinning up something temporary on DigitalOcean or some other cloud service. DigitalOcean offers some nice tutorials on how you can spin up a basic server, then add things like Apache or nginx to it. Use it to run a simple WP test site, not your actual XF site. Look at your existing phpinfo page from within XF Admin to see what your current host is running today:

/admin.php?tools/phpinfo

Once you've gone through it a few times, it will go a long way toward helping you make an informed decision that best meets what you are looking for.