Building a Personal Server from Scratch

Recorded the entire process from buying a domain, choosing a VPS, configuring Nginx, installing SSL to deploying the first service. Suitable for beginners.

Prerequisites

You need: a domain, a VPS, basic SSH knowledge.

Steps

1. Purchase VPS, get IP and root password
2. SSH connect, change password, create regular user, configure SSH key
3. Install Nginx: apt install nginx
4. Point domain DNS to VPS IP
5. Get SSL certificate: certbot --nginx

Security Hardening

# Change SSH port
sed -i 's/#Port 22/Port 2222/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# Disable root login
sed -i 's/#PermitRootLogin yes/PermitRootLogin no/' /etc/ssh/sshd_config
# Install fail2ban
apt install fail2ban

Your server is your home in the digital world. Spend time building it well, it's worth it.