Getting WordPress set up with pretty urls on nginx is fairly straightforward. First thing we need to do is create a database for WordPress in MySQL and a user for this database. mysql -u root -p CREATE DATABASE wordpress; GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON wordpress.* TO “user”@”localhost” IDENTIFIED BY “pass”; FLUSH PRIVILEGES; EXIT Enter your MySQL… [more]

The nginx webserver is a lightweight alternative to apache and is perfect for running on a vps where resources are scarce. First we need to install our packages. sudo apt-get install mysql-server mysql-client libmysqlclient15-dev I am using apt-get instead of aptitude here so we don’t get a lot of unwanted dependencies installed. The MySQL install… [more]

Following on from my previous article on setting up a vps server running Ubuntu 8.04 I am now going to configure a simple firewall. Linux uses a rules based firewall system known as iptables. To check your current rules use the following command. sudo iptables -L As it’s a new install we don’t have many… [more]

These are the steps I took to setup a fresh vps at linode.com running Ubuntu 8.04. Hopefully this will serve as a basic tutorial to configuring and securing a linux server. Once you’ve deployed your distribution in the linode account manager and waited for the server to build your vps you need to connect to… [more]