VPS hosting is the best way to run a website. It’s more secure, cost-effective and easy to manage than shared hosting. If you want to start hosting your own site on a VPS, this guide will walk through every step of the process.
Install the OS
Once you’ve chosen a VPS, you’ll need to install the operating system on it. The most common OSs are Linux and Windows Server—we’ll cover how to do both.
Linux is free, open source and widely used. There are a variety of distributions available that all have slightly different features; we recommend using Ubuntu or Debian as they’re beginner friendly but also offer plenty of power for more advanced users if required.
Windows Server is not free, but it does provide some extra features like Active Directory (for setting up user accounts) and IIS (for hosting websites).
Configure networking
To access your VPS, you will need to configure networking. The two main ways to do this are bridged and routed. Bridged networking is simpler to set up, but it’s less secure than routed networking.
Routed networks require a static IP address for the server, which means that you can’t change your IP address as often as with a dynamic IP address.
Set up a service to manage your vps
There are a lot of services that will manage your VPS for you, and some of these even have free tiers. Let’s look at two popular options: DigitalOcean and Amazon Lightsail.
Access your server with SSH
To access your server, you’ll need to use SSH. If you’re using Windows, we recommend downloading [PuTTY](https://the.earth.li/~sgtatham/putty/latest/) for this purpose; if you’re on Mac or Linux, consult your distro’s guidelines for using terminal windows. Once the program is installed, use the password that you set up when creating the VPS to log in with:
- username: root
- password:
This will tell you how to open a vps
- What is a VPS?
- How to open a VPS?
- How to access your server with ssh
Conclusion
We hope this has been helpful! If you have any questions or would like more information, please leave a comment below.
