Website deployment setup on VDS/VPS

Configuring Website Deployment on VDS/VPS

VDS/VPS is a virtual dedicated server with root access. It gives full environment control at an affordable price. Suitable for most commercial projects: Laravel, Django, Node.js, WordPress.

Initial Server Setup

# Connect
ssh root@YOUR_SERVER_IP

# Create deploy user (don't work as root)
useradd -m -s /bin/bash deploy
usermod -aG sudo deploy
mkdir -p /home/deploy/.ssh
cp ~/.ssh/authorized_keys /home/deploy/.ssh/
chown -R deploy:deploy /home/deploy/.ssh
chmod 700 /home/deploy/.ssh && chmod 600 /home/deploy/.ssh/authorized_keys

# Disable root login via SSH
sed -i 's/PermitRootLogin yes/PermitRootLogin no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
sed -i 's/#PasswordAuthentication yes/PasswordAuthentication no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
systemctl restart sshd

# Basic packages
apt update && apt upgrade -y
apt install -y git curl wget nginx ufw fail2ban unzip

PHP + Laravel Stack

# PHP 8.3
add-apt-repository ppa:ondrej/php
apt install -y php8.3-fpm php8.3-cli php8.3-{pgsql,mysql,redis,xml,mbstring,curl,zip,gd}

# Composer
curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php
mv composer.phar /usr/local/bin/composer

# Node.js 20
curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_20.x | bash -
apt install -y nodejs

# PostgreSQL 16
apt install -y postgresql-16
sudo -u postgres createuser --superuser myapp_user
sudo -u postgres createdb myapp_prod -O myapp_user

Nginx Configuration for Laravel

# /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp
server {
    listen 80;
    server_name example.com www.example.com;
    root /var/www/myapp/current/public;

    index index.php;
    charset utf-8;

    location / {
        try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
        fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $realpath_root$fastcgi_script_name;
        include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~ /\.(?!well-known).* {
        deny all;
    }

    # Cache static files
    location ~* \.(css|js|jpg|jpeg|png|gif|ico|svg|woff2?)$ {
        expires 1y;
        add_header Cache-Control "public, immutable";
    }

    # Gzip
    gzip on;
    gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript;
    gzip_min_length 1024;
}

Let's Encrypt SSL

apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-nginx
certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com \
    --non-interactive --agree-tos -m [email protected]

# Auto-renewal
systemctl enable --now certbot.timer

Deployment Structure (Deployer or Manual)

# /var/www/myapp/
# ├── current -> releases/20241115143022
# ├── releases/
# │   └── 20241115143022/
# ├── shared/
# │   ├── .env
# │   └── storage/

# deploy.sh
DEPLOY_PATH=/var/www/myapp
RELEASE=$DEPLOY_PATH/releases/$(date +%Y%m%d%H%M%S)

git clone --depth=1 -b main https://github.com/user/repo.git $RELEASE
cd $RELEASE

composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
npm ci && npm run build

ln -s $DEPLOY_PATH/shared/.env $RELEASE/.env
ln -s $DEPLOY_PATH/shared/storage $RELEASE/storage

php artisan migrate --force
php artisan optimize

ln -sfn $RELEASE $DEPLOY_PATH/current

sudo systemctl reload php8.3-fpm nginx
php artisan queue:restart

# Remove old releases
ls -dt $DEPLOY_PATH/releases/* | tail -n +6 | xargs rm -rf

Firewall and Security

ufw allow OpenSSH
ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
ufw enable
ufw status

# Fail2ban
cp /etc/fail2ban/jail.conf /etc/fail2ban/jail.local
systemctl enable --now fail2ban

Monitoring (Minimal)

# Netdata — simple monitoring
bash <(curl -Ss https://my-netdata.io/kickstart.sh)
# Available on :19999

# Or install Prometheus Node Exporter
apt install -y prometheus-node-exporter

Implementation Timeline

• Initial VPS setup + Nginx + PHP + deploy: 1–2 days
• SSL + firewall + fail2ban: several hours
• Monitoring setup: +1 day