An example of how you can host your own Wordpress sites, or any other web applications, with a minimum of fuss or clashes between sites

About the presenter Chris has been in the tech industry for more than 20 years. He has been both the in-house and outsourced IT guy for over 50 local small businesses and started his own consultancy in April of He understands the difficulties facing a growing small business and can offer a measured perspective, founded on a solid base of experience. 2

Self-hosting intro Why would you do this? Control Testing Cost Learning Fun 3

Static IP address/business account A normal residential service can change IP address You can add a static IP address to some home accounts Your ISP might only offer it for business accounts, and may require an ABN (I strongly recommend getting an ABN anyway) Nothing else should change 4

Configuring domains/subdomains You’ll need one or more of your own domains Use your domain host’s tools to add an A record to your static IP address You can then create as many subdomains as you want as C records (aliases) to your A record 5

VM host environment (Part 1) All you need is a spare old computer you can leave on all the time CPU barely matters, RAM is most useful ESXi & Linux-based QEMU solutions are free, just download and install If you have a Windows Server, you can use Hyper-V If you have a desktop PC, you can use Vmware Player 6

VM host environment (Part 2) My recommendation is CentOS ( Grab a DVD ISO image and burn to a DVD. Boot from disc and follow the wizard. THIS WILL TOTALLY ERASE EVERYTHING ON THE COMPUTER. Just so we’re clear. Congratulations, you’re a Linux user. There’s probably a Meetup group for that. 7

Pre-built Wordpress VM You don’t have to build your own virtual machines I use Bitnami & Turnkey Linux for my VMs You can download a pre-built environment that’s a working Wordpress install, or You can download a LAMP VM and install Wordpress yourself. 8

Getting it booting & live (Part 1) Your VM host environment will have an option to import an existing file When setting up your VM, make sure the virtual network adapter is bridged, not NATed 9

Getting it booting & live (Part 2) In your DHCP server, create a reservation. For most homes, the router is the DHCP server. For most businesses, the main server is the DHCP server. 10

Getting it booting & live (Part 3) In your router, set up port forwarding. The IP address matches the reservation. 11

Quick Review Computer on all the time Static IP address Domain with one or more records pointed at static IP address VM host environment on computer Pre-build VM on host DHCP reservation for VM Port forwarding on router pointed at reserved IP 12

Now let’s make it scalable In our set up so far, all the domain records point to the same server. What if you want different servers for different domains? The solution is a “Reverse Proxy”. 13

Nginx VM Pronounced “engine x” Download and install a pre-built VM Set up a reservation Point the port 80 port forwarding to this server 14

Nginx configuration (Part 1) Configure hosts file Each line has the private IP address of the server and its name as known by the outside world. This fixes some weird redirection issues. 15

Nginx configuration (Part 2) Configure default enabled sites For each domain/server name, pass incoming requests to the matching name you’ve set up in the hosts file. 16

Done 17

That seemed complicated… Yes, you could do most of this with a single server, a single LAMP install, no virtual stuff and a lot of configuring. BUT, changing it is hard. Scaling it up is hard And you’re stuck with one platform 18

I mean, really complicated… With this solution you can have any number of physical and virtual servers. You can add and reassign resources much more easily. Servers do not have to be LAMP/WordPress installs. Servers can be any OS For example; you can build a testing environment for your plug-ins that has a dozen or more different OS, stack and version combinations. 19

Do you really do this? Yes. Details on the next slide. 20

21 Router ( ) ESXi Windows Server Linuxsvr01 ( relay) Windows 10 test env CentOS 1 iwantmy.xyz (Telescope) Bamboo Invoices Disposals/C lassifieds Helpdesk job tracking Podcast Slack invites ERP / Bookkeeping RSS server Technicalconsultingperth.com Nginx reverse proxy CentOS Prebiotic.diet Dev/Test ERP system eBooksa.ga Satelliteup.link Munchausenbypro.xyz Technicalconsulting.in Technicalconsulting.in/ternati onal Technicalconsulting.in/Perth Technicalconsulting.in/Austral ia Technicalconsulting.in/theUK

Questions? 22