THE BEST COMPLETE

GUIDE

TO SETTING UP &
CONFIGURING

YOUR OWN BLAZING

SPEED

CLOUD HOSTING
SERVER
by: WP Solutions
Disclaimer
This eBook is written with the greatest care to make sure hosting your
own website(s) on your own clouds goes smoothly and without errors.

However; that being said, it is always possible errors could occur due to
hardware failure and/or human error.

WP Solutions accept no liability which might arise from these failures,

errors or issues.

WP Solutions is not a managed hosting service, once you (or through our
services) setup and configured a server it is completely self-managed and
we expect you to resolve issues through the proper channels like Social
Media, Forums, Third Party documentation, Community support or our
Support forum.

Currently this eBook is based on the free Plesk Server Software that is
being offered by Vultr. However we can’t guarantee this Plesk version
will remain free forever. It has been so far for a couple years but if Vultr or
Plesk decide to revoke the free version..WP Solutions will take no liability
or offer any kind of refund in case they do.

WP Solutions reserves the right to delete your account from our website
when this eBook is shared/copied without exclusive permission from WP
Solutions which at that point you will not be able to download any more
copies, have access to updates, your affiliate account or any of our other
services.

Instead of illegally sharing this eBook we would encourage you to make

some money of it by using our affiliate program.

If you have any questions strictly about the content in this eBook feel free
to contact us through the support forum and we will try our up-most best
to reply as soon as possible.

WP Solutions will always update this eBook when changes occur either
from their current dashboard. We will update the eBook as soon as
possible when that occurs.

WP Solutions - Setting Up Your Own Cloud eBook - First Release version; 1.0
www.wpsolutions.io

© 2021 WP Solutions

All rights reserved. No portion of this eBook may be reproduced in any form without permission
from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. & EU copyright law. For Permissions and all
Inquiries, please contact: [email protected]

WP Solutions is not endorsed by Vultr, Plesk or any other third party discussed in this eBook. Any
use of this information is at your own risk.
Content
Intro ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������1

Which Cloud Hoster To Pick? ������������������������������������2

Why Vultr? ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 2
Free Credits ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 3

Let’s begin ����������������������������������������������������������������������3

Putty ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������3
Generate SSH Keys ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 4
Adding the SSH key in Vultr ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 5

Deploy A Server ������������������������������������������������������������7

Server location ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 8
Additional Features ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 9
Startup Script ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10
SSh keys ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10
Server Hostname & Label ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10
Double Check Everything ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 10

Log Into Plesk ������������������������������������������������������������� 12

Configuring Plesk ����������������������������������������������������� 14

The Repair Kit ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 15
Configuring Backups ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 17
Set scheduled backups ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 19
System Updates With The Console ������������������������������������������������������������������ 23
Updating Plesk Within Plesk ����������������������������������������������������������������������������� 28
Updating Plesk From The Console ������������������������������������������������������������������� 30
Preparation Adding Website ��������������������������������� 33
Server Settings ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 33

Adding your first domain ��������������������������������������� 34

Configuring Website Environment ������������������������������������������������������������������� 35
Namesilo DNS ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 36

Vultr DNS ��������������������������������������������������������������������� 38

Using (free) CloudFlare As DNS ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 39
Let’s encrypt ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 43
Hosting Settings ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 45

Installing Wordpress ����������������������������������������������� 47

Plesk WordPress Dashboard ������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 48

Security ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 49
Plesk Firewall ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 50
Fail2ban ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 52
Web Application Firewall ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 53
Malware Scan ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 54
Create An Email Address ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 54
Mail Server Settings ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 56
Adding TXT&MX Records To DNS ��������������������������������������������������������������� 57
FTP ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 59

Bonus/Miscellaneous Stuff ������������������������������������� 61

This eBook’s Bonus ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 62
Tips/Tricks ����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 63
Taking A Manual Snaphot ��������������������������������������������������������������������������������� 63
Cheap Awesome Email Provider ����������������������������������������������������������������������� 65
Last Words ������������������������������������������������������������������� 69
 Page 1

Intro
Let us start by saying thank you for buying this eBook!

Although we wrote some long threads on several forums this is the first
official eBook that is being released.

If you have any critique/feedback on the layout, style or whatever let us

know so we can switch it up in the future when we write new eBooks.

This eBook will help you greatly reduce costs of fast and secure hosting
for yourself or for your clients while maintaining the best cost/features
ratio.

This is a fully self-managed solution. Naturally this eBook will describe in

great detail how to secure your server and WordPress but WP Solutions
will take no liability if your server or WordPress gets infected or hacked
due to your own doing or Vultr’s error.(never happened to us though)

However if you follow this guide to the tee you should have no issues with
security at all and that counts for the server and your WP installation.

We suggest you read this eBook in a PDF reader/program like Foxit

reader, if you read it through your browser hold the CTRL button
before you click a link.

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Which Cloud Hoster To Pick?

There are plenty of hosts to choose from but for the purpose of this guide
we will be going with Vultr.

Why Vultr?
We’ve tried a few hosts and when it comes to work-flow and ease we find
Vultr’s dashboard best suiting for what we were looking for.

From the most common cloud servers they are also the only one that
have more payment options then just CC/DC and PayPal.

In addition you can pay with Bitcoins, (only after paying once with the
other options) Alipay and WeChat Pay.

The only “negative” with Vultr is that you have to top $10 the first time if
you sign up with PayPal however you can sign up without adding credits if
you register with your CC. Want free $100 in credits to test their servers?
Check page 3.

Another host that is ok is Digital Ocean.

Digital Ocean
Digital Ocean does have the free version software we will be using so
configuring it all will be very similar but we just don’t like their dashboard.

Compared to Vultr they are all over the place.

When signing up with Digital Ocean in their registration process you can
either choose as payment a credit/debit card or your PayPal but when
you select PayPal they require you to deposit $5 first..

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So we recommend either Vultr or Digital Ocean but our personal
preference is Vultr and this eBook is therefore written towards their
dashboard.

Free Credits
We will leave you the “refer a friend” link instead of the normal one(which
only gives you $25) that will give you some credits to test out the platform
and see which one you like best. Keep in mind that credits are valid for
one month.

Vultr $100 credit their site states that this link is up for a limited time,
then again, marketing, they don’t show any message that the credit
is activated upon using the link but it will. You do need to link a valid
Creditcard or PayPal for the credit to be added.

Digital Ocean $50 credit, they do show a message it’s activated.(also

needs cc or pp to work)

For this guide though go register an account with Vultr. Vultr has also
a lot of fun applications and Linux ISO’s you can play around with for
practice or fun, the free credits are ideal for that.

Let’s begin
Before we select the server location, package and application we need
to do a few things first. The first thing we need to do is create SSH keys.
If you are thinking “Uhm what??” Don’t worry about it, it’s very easy to
create.

Putty
Putty is a program that let’s you connect to your server, it also comes with
a tool called Puttygen which will create the SSH keys.

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SSH is a protocol that makes sure the connection with your server
console is secure.

You can download Putty here and then choose the version that suits your
OS.

When installed you should see 2 new programs, Putty and Puttygen.

Open Puttygen.

Generate SSH Keys

Time to generate some SSH keys. SSH keys encrypt your console
access when you login through putty.

Open Puttygen and you will see a similar image as shown on the next
page.

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Leave everything the way it is and press generate, move your mouse a
couple times till the next screen pops up.

After moving the mouse a couple times it will show you an unique key we
will be needing in the Vultr dashboard.

Leave it open for now while we switch back to the Vultr Panel.

Adding the SSH key in Vultr

In your Vultr Panel hover the blue circle with the + in it and click “view
more options” then select “Add SSH key”.

Example next page

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Name it whatever you want. In the box below we will be adding the SSH
key from Puttygen.

Go back to Puttygen and copy the whole key including the ssh-rsa part.
(select/drag all the way down)

Paste it in Vultr and press “Add SSH Key”, should look similar like the
image below. If your code is much shorter you didn’t select it all in
Puttygen.

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Deploy A Server
Now let’s fire up one of these bad boys. Hover the blue button in the top
right again and click “Deploy New Server”.

Choose Server
Now for most of our servers we started with the $5 Cloud Compute which
is more than enough but then again when we started they didn’t had the
High Frequency Compute which will cost you a dollar extra but comes
with serious better hardware.

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It’s basically twice as fast.

They both come with 1CPU, 1GB Memory and 1TB Bandwidth but the
difference is in the type of hardware.

Details of the Cloud Compute $5 Server Hardware:

Details of the High Frequency Compute $6 Server Hardware:

Pretty good for a dollar extra. As said we started most of our projects on
the $5 onces which works fine but we migrated a couple to the faster
ones.

Server location
Either choose a server that is closest to you if you are working on sites in
your region or choose a location based on the targeted demographic you
are working in.

If you are getting traffic worldwide, just choose the location that is
somewhat in the middle or closest where you expect the most traffic from,
with a CDN in place and Cloud Hosting it will be fast anywhere.

Server Type
Tons of options but click on the Marketplace Apps tab and then type Plesk
in search, click Plesk and this is why we love Vultr! (digital ocean added
this later too but messy dashboard)

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As you can see they’re offering three versions, two paid but one
absolutely for free. It’s their basic package which normally costs $9.16/mo

Is there a catch? Yes but not something that has been bothering us.

Normally with the paid basic package you can add up to 10 domains, this
custom free version is limited to 3 domains which is fine by us as on the
majority of our servers we only use one server per website anyway but
we also have a couple with 2 sites on it with no issues at all.

Some premium features are limited.

Server Size
Totally up to you of course but we got a bunch of $5/$6 ones running
which work great for most of our sites,we only just upgraded one server
recently and upgrading is just a click away with no downtime.

Keep in mind though, you can only upgrade with cloud servers, you
can’t downgrade.

Additional Features
Up to you.

Enable Auto Backups for 1$ a month(when on a $5 server) but whatever

size server you have the Vultr backups will always cost 20% of the server
cost.

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Now even though this eBook will show you several methods to automate
backups from within Plesk we would advice you to also take the Vultr
backups as well because they back up the entire server structure and is
just easier to use.

One more benefit of using Vultr backups is that they don’t cost you
bandwidth or disk space.

If you worried about DDOS attacks you can buy the DDOS protection.

However, this setup will be pretty secure and you could always have other
DDOS options for protection but your choice.

Startup Script
You can skip this

SSh keys
Select the Key we created earlier

Server Hostname & Label

Name it whatever you like

Double Check Everything

Double check your selection and if you’re happy with it press the “Deploy
Now” button in the bottom right.

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Congratulations, you launched your own cloud server. Let it install,
the whole process shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes max. It will
send you an email when done.

note: IF you like me also use the Vultr backups, select your server
and click the “Backups” tab at the top of your server overview.

Enable the Automatic Backups.

At the beginning we would set it to daily back ups. These backups will be
placed on a separate cloud.

Vultr will only store the two most recent backups and unless you convert
a backup to a Snapshot each backup is rotated out after each scheduled
interval.

So if you make daily backups every third day the first one created gets
deleted. If you set backups to weekly, every 3rd week the first one gets
deleted etc.

If you have a backup that you want to keep you need to convert that
backup to a snapshot, snapshots won’t get deleted automatically until you
delete em.

Keep in mind though, Snapshots restore the complete server structure

and data and can’t restore individual files.
To do so simply click the “Convert” button under actions of the desired
backup and it will be moved to the tab “Snapshots”.

note: Snapshots only contain data from the time you made your
backup. Any progress, changes etc you make after will not be
included in the snapshot and will be lost if you restore that
particular snapshop. Snapshots are good for testing server/Plesk
settings. Also as of recent they charge $0.05/GB per month per
snapshot.

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Alright, let’s get into the nitty-gritty.

Log Into Plesk

Once Vultr has done it’s thing it’s time to log into the Plesk Dashboard.

Click the login IP and it will open in a new tab.

Example;
https://11.123.345.231:8443/login

Most likely you will be greeted by a nice browser warning, don’t worry this
is only because the current server certificate is self-signed, we will create
a secure login a little bit later.

For now go to advanced, accept the risk and continue.

Fill in root and the password from Vultr and you will arrive at the Plesk
installer.

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We just noticed Vultr added an URL in the Plesk welcome screen that is
secured so you can use that one in the future if you like. Anyway, after
you logged in with root and password you will see the following screen
which is shown only once.

Add a new username, fill in your email for server notifications, password
and press Enter Plesk.

If you for whatever reason lose that info, you can always login with the
Vultr username(root) and PW.

Let it initialise for a couple seconds and it will log you in automatically.
They recently added a welcome screen just click the link in the text “I will
create a website later. Explore Plesk.” sentence as you need to properly
configure the server first.

They also might’ve deleted it, it changes often.

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Configuring Plesk
If this is your first time ever using Plesk you’re probably looking at it like
most people for the first time not knowing where to start.

Luckily for you WP Solutions have configured tons of servers already.

First Things First

Because we launched and configured many servers already we created
a certain work flow that has been working best for us. So before adding a
domain we need to configure the server first.

When you login, the first thing you will notice in the top right is that you

have notifications , the number may vary depending on which Plesk

version your first activation is, click the “Mark all as read button”.

Next is the Plesk 360 icon this function is just released and still a bit
buggy, its a tool for when you have multiple servers, you can read more
about it in our knowledge base, leave it be for now.

Next to Plesk 360 you see a Xhamster like icon.. (or maybe it’s just us
who looks at it like that)

This is the advisor, now don’t start pressing install on everything because
the advisor is more a tool to market products and some are premium
extensions.

Once some trial is expired the server will keep spamming you emails that
your trial is expired and the extension needs a license and we talking
about 100’s of emails a day.

Just ignore everything for now we will get to what to install in this guide.

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The Repair Kit

Just type in the search bar “Repair Kit” and it will show up.

You can check/repair several server aspects separately or all at once. If

everything is configured correctly you won’t be using this often. We’ll also
show you how to do this through the console later on.

As it’s a new server we don’t have to run it. In the left sidebar click
“Extensions” or if you in the repair kit screen the breadcrumb in the top
left.

In the screen that follows select “Business Customer or Private Customer

> Save and Proceed.

Now that we at the extension section we might as well do everything

needed here, depending of the Vultr Image you might have updates or
you might not.

The main screen will show the catalog. All kinds of extensions you can
install, free and premium but most of it you won’t need. If you want to
experiment with all of these just make a snapshot or backup before you
do that.

If you click “My Extensions” you will see what is already installed at the
moment.

We usually remove what we don’t need or don’t find useful. In our case
social login, PHP composer, the Advisor, Git, skins and colour schemes.
Also remove Domain Connect.(we know, might sound you need it but you
don’t)

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We leave it up to you what you want to remove but everything else not
mentioned you should not remove.

To remove an extension is pretty easy, just click the extension of choice

and in the selected extension screen press More>Remove

note: in “My Extensions” click the box or image, not the “Open”
button if you want to remove something.

If there are updates you will see a number. Simply go to the updates tab
and update the extension.

Auto-update is turned on by default, once the server is completely

configured it will update the extensions automatically from now on.

Awesome!

Let’s install a couple additional extensions before we move on.

In the top search bar, type drive and select Google Drive Backup
(assuming you have a gmail account)

Press the “Get it free” button and let it install, we will get back to it in a
sec.

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note: we are using Google Drive for backups but you also have the option to
backup with Dropbox, Onedrive, Amazons S3, Seafile and a couple paid ones.
Just put in search what you’re looking for.

By the way, the search in the top bar will also display anything within
plesk. Just type in whatever you’re looking for.

Now in search type “Scheduled Backup List” install it and we will get back
to that one later too.

Next one, type “Diskspace Usage Viewer” and install it. This one is handy
to clear cache and remove any temp stuff. We don’t need it directly but
in the future when you have it opened you can select all files and hit the
“Clean-up” button.

Last one for now and optional but it never hurts to make stuff more
secure. Install Google Authenticator. To make it work you will need to
have the Google Authenticator app on your smartphone.

When you enable the extension in plesk you will see the barcode, scan it
with your app, fill in the return code select the options you are comfortable
with and press OK.

Now when you log into your Plesk server dashboard you can only access
it through the Authenticator app.

Configuring Backups
In the sidebar click “Tools&Settings”. As you can see there are a lot of
things going on on that page, don’t sweat it, most of it you won’t be using.

Under Tools & Resources select “Backup Manager”

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You will see a notification bar stating: For security reasons, we

recommend that you protect data contained in backups. Please go to
‘Backup Settings’ and update backup security settings.

We usually close this as we store our backups in Google Drive but if for
some reason you’re going to store it on your webserver or locally you
might want to open it and specify a Password.

For the purpose of the guide ignore it.

Go to the “Remote Storage Settings” tab and you will

see the (google) extension we installed earlier.

In recent Plesk updates Plesk is now already making incremental

backups every day since you launch the server. You can delete those as
the data is stored on your server thus saving space.

Click the extension (in this case google drive), select “Personal drive” and
it will open a screen where you need to select the google account that is
associated with your storage. .

Create a folder path. As I have several servers backing up in the same

storage I named it “BB server backup/”. Press Apply and now when you
check your Google Drive it created a new folder.

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Press ok and in the next screen below Google Drive Backup it should say
“Ready for use”.

To put an extra layer of protection you can add Password Protection. We

will leave this up to you.

Set scheduled backups

Go back to the main screen of the Backup Manager and click the
“Schedule” tab.

On the next page you can see how we got it set up.

We’ve set the time at 3am local time which is best when you only have
native traffic.

If you have traffic from all over the world set something that would fit the
majority or if your site is finished and you’re not adding content daily you
can set backups to weekly or incremental.

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We switched off incremental as we already set full daily backups but
remember, this will cost you bandwidth unless you’re using Vultr’s backup
option. If you don’t have a lot of traffic yet no problem but as your traffic
increases keep an eye on your bandwidth usage in the Vultr Dashboard.

An other option is if you have Vultr Back ups to let this be but we prefer to
have multiple backups.

What is an incremental backup?

Good question!

Currently we have it set to full backups so they don’t need any other
backups to restore our systems. An incremental backup links with the
previous backup and only contains changes made after that backup.

It saves space, backs up faster and restores faster but as said, We’re
already doing full backups for now so we don’t want to waste any more
space and besides that we rarely need to restore backups anyway. Ofc
you can also use this, whatever you want, your server ;) moving on.

At the “Keep backup files for” fill in whatever. When designing website
we have it set to daily backups and basicly configured it like the Vultr
backups, every 3 days the first back up is deleted.

Under “Backup settings” make sure you select the Google Drive we made
earlier. You can also store a backup in your Drive and on the server but
we rather not clog up our server.

If your server is getting really big and backups surpasses 500MB in size
tick the “Create a multivolume backup, volume size (MB):” option to split
the backup in smaller sizes. The other options we leave up to you.

Apply>OK.

Go back to the “Tools&Settings” page and under General Settings select

the “System Time”.

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Even though we set the time for automation on default there is no

Time zone selected. Set the time zone either to the server location, the
demographic you’re targeting or to whatever is handy for you.

Press OK which will bring you back to the“Tools & Settings”

page.

In the bottom right under “Additional Services” you should see the
extension “Scheduled Backups List” which we installed earlier.

Click it and if you did everything right you will see a backup is pending.

Alrighty, grats, you’ve set up automated server backups!

You can always manually make a backup whenever you want. Just go to
the “Backup Manager” and press backup.

Make sure you select under “Store in” your Google Drive and “Type” Full.

note: keep an eye on your drive storage(if you only have the free one), with
15gb it won’t be full soon just clean it up every now and then. Also, you can
only do scheduled backups of the whole server. If you try it from your domain
panel it becomes a premium service which sets you back about $4 a month.

So far so good? Up to the next section.

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System Updates
When you just launched your server you have to do this manually one
time.

Two ways you can go about it, from within Plesk or through the Putty
Console. We prefer the console way(page23) but experiment with both to
see what you like best.

System Updates Through Plesk

Go to Tools&Settings and under “Server Management” select “System
Updates”.

Depending on the current Vultr Image you might have system updates
and you might not with the current Vultr Image, you should see there
are currently updates pending. On our example server there were 110
updates but you will probably have a different number.

If you see a blank page click the “Check for updates”button. On occasion
you might get a white loading screen, if that happens refresh the page.

Hit the “Update All” button.

A popup will show loading all the available updates, when it’s done
loading click the “OK” button and it should start updating. Let it do it’s
thing, it shouldn’t take more than a couple minutes max. (Faster through
the console)

When it’s done you should be looking at the following:

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By default server updates are automated from this point on. If you go to
“Settings” in “System Updates” you will see it’s configuration.

If you want email notifications when an update has been installed leave
your email otherwise leave it blank.

System Updates With The Console

If you do the System Updates through the server console you will need to
connect with your server through Putty.(not to confuse with puttygen)

We prefer to work with the console as it’s faster and doesn’t have any
visual bugs that could pop up from time to time like the Plesk dashboard.

Go back to your desktop and open Putty (not puttygen)

Let’s login to our server through the console.

See the putty screenshot on the next page.

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Fill in your server IP and under “Saved Sessions” give it a name and
press Save as you will have to login here every now and then.

Press open and the console will load. The first time you login you will see
a security alert. Nothing to worry about, press Yes.

As you might not be eable to copy paste command lines from this ebook
I made a list of handy lines to copy/paste in your console on the website,
check em here.

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Your login credentials will be asked, login as root and use the password
from your Vultr dashboard.

note: for those that never worked in the command window you don’t use ctrl V
to paste what you copied, you just press the right mouse button ;)

When you’re completely logged in it will show you a screen similar to the
one below showing there are updates available.

You might notice it has 8 more updates than it showed in the Plesk
System Updates. (or just the 8)

That’s because these are Ubuntu Security Updates and Plesk doesn’t
take care of Kernel updates so you have to do them manually but we will
show you how you can automate these too.

First we are going to fully upgrade the server through a linux command
line. (if needed)

Type the following: apt full-upgrade and press y. Let it run and at some
point it will show a purple screen, select yes.

image next page

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All should have gone well and it will say “done” at the end.

Now let’s configure the server so it will also update the Ubuntu security
patches automatically.

Type/paste the following command line:

dpkg-reconfigure --priority=low unattended-upgrades

You will shown a purple screen again:

Select <YES>, great ,now the Ubunty Security updates are automated
too.

Restart the server by typing: reboot, Putty will disconnect so close it.
Keep in mind because it will apply updates automatically from now on you
will have to login the console every now and then to reboot the server.

Takes a minute max. (usually in under 20 seconds)

note: when you go to Tools & Settings> Server Management> System Updates
in the Plesk dashboard you might still see all updates if you had some in the
list, click the “Check for Updates” and press F5 to refresh the page.

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Once you done all this, from now on everything should be automated.

When Plesk installed updates automatically it should show you

notifications and a pop-up notifying you it updated when you log into your
dashboard.

It will look something similar like this:

When you click the notifications icon in the top right of your screen you
might see an orange notification saying “Plesk updates are available”

Click on it at it will open a new screen that probably shows there is a

Plesk Obsidian update available with at the bottom an “Install update”
button..

Most likely it already updated to that version automatically so don’t click it,
first check if you’re not already running the correct version.

You can see the current version in the right sidebar under “System
Overview” (only when you already added a domain)

Assuming you haven’t added a domain yet (which you

shouldn’t have if you follow this guide) to see the version go to
Tools&Settings>Plesk>About Plesk

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For now as it’s a new server without a domain it has no right sidebar. We
need to manually install some Plesk updates one time only.

Plesk Installs/Upgrades
Depening on which image Vultr is using, you might need to update the
Plesk core version. Then you need to update and install some Plesk
Components. After that it will be automated.

Again two ways to go about it, through Plesk and the Console.

Updating Plesk Within Plesk

Go to Tools&Settings and under “Plesk” click “Updates”

Like the first time logging into Plesk you will be greeted by a browser
warning(you won’t if you used the https url Plesk provided) because we’re
still on a self-signed certificate, go advanced and accept. You should end
up in the summary screen:

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If there is a core update or component updates you will see a notification
in the bottom right.

Click the “Install or Upgrade Product” option. In the next screen leave
everything the way it is or untick the second option and continue.

Tick the confirmation box, hit continue and let it do it’s thing.
When it’s finished you should see a success message:

Press ok and you will return to the summary screen.

In the first version of our eBook we had to install a lot of things separately
but with the new Obsidian version most of the components we use are
already pre-installed and just need some configuring.

In the summary screen click “Add and Remove Product Components”

If you’re going to use your own server to handle email open the drop-
down in front of “Mail Hosting”

Don’t select the anti virus options as they require a paid license, you
could install “SpamAssasin” but keep in mind it takes quite a bit of your
resources.

We use a third party for my emails(which I’ll show later) so leave

everything the way it is. Open the drop-down of “Web hosting”

Then open the drop-down of “PHP interpreter versions” here you can
install new PHP versions, at the time this eBook was written it’s running
on 7.4 but version 8.0 has also been released. You can install it but keep
in mind that at the moment not all WP plugins are compatable with PHP
8.0 so leave the server on 7.4 for now.

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Now open the drop-down of “Plesk extensions”

Select install for the “Plesk Firewall” and optionally “Watchdog system
monitoring” but again it takes resources.

Once all is done hit the continue button at the bottom and let it run. When
done it should give the same success message when you were updating
the core version.

You can close this browser tab, updates should be installed automatically
from now on.

Updating Plesk From The Console

Connect with the server through Putty as shown on page 23/24.

Again, you can’t copy text from the eBook So check this page for handy
copy/paste command lines.

If Plesk Obsidian needs a core update let’s do that first. Type the following
command line: /usr/local/psa/admin/bin/autoinstaller

In the next screen type f and press enter

Next view first type in 1 and press enter followed by f and enter again. At
the confirmation type y and press enter.

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It will do it’s thing and like in Plesk it will give a warning (the false posi-
tive,probably patched when you are reading this)

You can safely ignore this and press y and enter to continue.

You now arrive at the final screen, type f and press enter

Let it run, at some point it has a small pause so it looks like it’s finished
but just leave it, it’s finished when you see the following screen.

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Next we are going to install additional components.

These 3 we use the most besides the ones already installed with
Obsidian but you can install and experiment with whatever:

• PHP latest version (new plesk version should have the latest if not install
the newest PHP version)
• Plesk Firewall
• Watchdog (optional, watchdog keeps an eye on malware but takes
resources, server should be secure enough though)

Type the following command or copy/paste: plesk installer --select-

release-current --show-components

Let it load and you will see a list with all components.

The ones that are installed and up to date will show [up2date] in front of
the full component name and the ones that you can install shows [install]

or recently PHP 8.0

To install a component you type the following command: plesk installer

--select-release-current --install-component and the component name that
can be found on the left.

So for example if we are going to install PHP 8.0 we will type:

plesk installer --select-release-current --install-component php8.0

If we want to install the above 3 all at once we will use:

plesk installer --select-release-current --install-component php8.0 --install-

component psa-firewall --install-component watchdog

To remove something is quite easy too. Let’s remove PHP 7.3 with the
following command:

plesk installer --select-release-current --remove-component php7.3

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And naturally if you want to remove multiple components at the same
time you keep adding the --remove-component + name behind it. Copy it
from here.

When updating, installing or removing components through the console

when successful you will see the following:

Great, Plesk is fully up-to-date now, Reboot the server by typing; reboot
and let’s continue.

Before we forget, if you ever need to repair plesk from inside Putty just
type plesk repair all (we never needed it so far)

Now that we have set backups, updated the server and Plesk it’s time to
set some domain settings so we can add a website.

Preparation Adding Website

Almost ready to add a website, we just need to set a couple more things
to make it all go as fluently as possible which should have been the case
so far.

Server Settings
Head over to Tools&Settings > General Settings> Server Settings

Most settings you can keep as is, at Full hostname you used to enter your
own name like cloud.yourdomain.com but Vultr is using their own secure
servername these days but it’s better to name your server for example

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like this, cloud.yourdomain.com, so it’s easier to configure your DNS
records later on.

Remember, it has to be an existing domain you have access to as you

need to set an A record for it. We use the domain we’re using for the
server.

Scroll down to “Preferred domain for websites” and select your

preference, we always set it to “domain.tld” but feel free to whatever you
like. Press OK.

Head over to your Vultr dashboard and click your server, go to Settings
and you will see this table with the corresponding data underneath it.

Under Reverse DNS, on default it’s set to your IP: 123.vultr.com

Click it and change it to your hostname we just set in the server settings
(cloud.yourdomain.com) and update it or use the servername vultr is
using in Plesk.

If you used your own name (cloud.etc) We need this to later secure the
Plesk login with Let’s Encrypt and configure the mailserver.

Adding your first domain

First things first. If you want to cut some time in the propagation process I
suggest you set your DNS first shown on page 36/37.

It will probably still show a warning message that your domain isn’t bound
to the right IP yet but it will take a tiny bit less time.

Time to start configuring all of this.

Go to your main screen in Plesk>Websites & Domains.

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Press the “+Add Domain” button and in the next screen Plesk recently
added a new option which is Temporary domain name, which could come
in handy if you want to test everything out first.

For this eBook we assume you have a domain so select “I already have a
registered domain name.”

Fill in a username and password, this is for when you want to log into
Plesk with a different name than root, also handy if you handle clients and
set server rights. (cloud.yourdomain.com:8443)

We will not discuss how to do that in this ebook(handle clients) but there
will be an article on the website in the future (or it might even be there
once you read this)

note: you might see a bar above your domain asking if you want to
connect automatically, close this, you might’ve not unistalled the
domain connect extension

Configuring Website Environment

Now that you added the website there are a bunch of new options.

You might see a notification about enhanced security as seen in the

following screenshot.

Open it and tick the “Enhanced security mode” box. Keep in mind, as
stated once you set it it cannot be undone. What it does is encrypt all PW
you use within Plesk for databases,user passwords and Plesk passwords.

Leave the rest as is or change it to your preference and “Apply”.

While finishing up this guide Plesk added a new view named the
“Dynamic List” naturally you are free to choose which one you like best
but this eBook and my preference is based on the “Active list” view.

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You can always change the view by clicking the tool icon. But the first
time you will see this button

Before we are going to install WordPress we need to do a couple of

things. We first need to set the DNS records.

Setting DNS Records

There are 3 main options to set your DNS.

• using your domain registrar

• using Vultr’s DNS
• using Cloudflare

We’ve used them all 3 for different server purposes.

Most of our domains we have registered with Namesilo & for the sites
we don’t need a CDN for or don’t want to hide the IP we used their
nameservers so we’ll be showing you how to set that up at Namesilo
first.

If you need a new domain and use our link and use coupon:
wpsolutions it will give you an one time $1 off. Not much but it’s
something :)
note: processes at other registrars are similar so shouldn’t be that hard to
figure out.

Namesilo DNS
When logged into Namesilo, click “Domain Manager”, navigate to your
domain and click your url, next to “DNS Records:” click Update.

You will see their default records, edit or delete em all.

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We will be needing to add a couple A records. Add a new A record:

With the first A record leave the area under HOSTNAME empty.

Then add 5 more A records with the following names: www, cloud or
whatever you named your server on page 32/33) , ipv4, mail, webmail.
(last 2 only if you planning to use your mailserver,we us a 3rd party host)

Under “ADDRESS/VALUE” fill in your vultr server IP (whatever is yours),

set the TTL to 3600 and press SUBMIT

As stated above, the A record for “cloud” is for the server name we set on
page 32. If you like us don’t use the mail server you don’t have to add the
webmail and mail A records yet.

We will leave it like that for now, if you’re using the mailserver we will
be adding TXT and MX records a little later. Keep using your registrar’s
Nameservers. (for namesilo it’s ns1.dnsowl.com, ns2.dnsowl.com etc)

Take a break as it could take a while before the DNS propagation is

finished.

We can’t really tell you how fast it goes, we had it finish within an hour
and in worst cases 24-48 hours which they will tell you everywhere that’s
the official time it takes.

A good site to see if your DNS is propagated already is DNS checker.

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Vultr DNS
If you for some reason don’t want to use your registrars DNS and
nameservers you can use the ones that Vultr is providing.

Go to your Vultr dashboard. In the main screen select the DNS tab and in
the top right click Add Domain.

Same process as above. The only real difference is that with Vultr you
also have to set the Nameservers manually, no big deal.

Under “Type” select NS, “Name” leave empty, under “Data” ns1.vultr.com,
under TTL, 3600 and press the + icon to add the record.

Repeat the process one more time but now fill in ns2.vultr.com. You’ve
now set your Vultr nameservers. (don’t forget the A records)

Go to your domain registrar and change their nameservers to ns1 and

ns2.vultr.com. Keep in mind there is a propagation time.

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If you’re not sure which records to fill out, go into your Plesk dashboard
and under your domain section click the DNS Settings.

Now you probably notice NS records with your domain name so why are
we not using those? Simply because it needs some advanced knowledge
and if they go down for some reason good luck handling that.

Using the Nameservers of your registrar, Vultr or Cloudflare are stable,

secure and usually on several IP’s plus if something goes wrong you have
support.

Using (free) CloudFlare As DNS

The third option and our favorite is using CF as DNS.

Why use free Cloudflare? Because it’s a good free DNS (real fast
propagation) and it puts an extra layer of protection.

Keep in mind though, if you use your cloud also as mail server (pages
54/59) you can’t proxy that in Cloudflare.

So if one of the reasons you want to use Cloudflare is to hide your server
IP you will want to use an external mail service otherwise your MX
configuration will reveal your original server IP.

We will show you a real cheap option for setting up an external mail
server in the misc section.

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Let’s begin. Register an account with Cloudflare if you haven’t already.

Add your site and hit the button and then select the free plan.

If you already set DNS before Cloudflare it will copy most of the current
settings if not you can add them manually like any other DNS. (see page
35)

Check what is added, add or remove what you need and press
“Continue”.

In the next screen it will show you your current Nameservers which will
most likely be your registrars and what you need to replace them with.

In this example you see our Dutch registrar nameservers (the one we will
be using for email) and the Cloudflare nameservers we need to replace
them with.

Keep in mind, you only need to change the nameservers, all your current
DNS settings you have at your registrar or Vultr will be overwritten by
Cloudflare.

You can let it be or if you OCDish, delete them.

Example next page

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Once you changed them at your registrar hit the Done button.

Like setting the other DNS methods it takes time to propagate but even
though they say it’s within 24hours with CF it was propagated within the
hour. (often within 15min)

So once you click the done button wait like 15-20 min then either hit the
refresh button (f5) or the recheck button and then refresh.

We’re not going into too much details of all the CF options, we will
probably write some articles for the website about it but we will cover
some basic settings to get you going.

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In the main screen you will see the following bar:

First check the DNS settings, they basically need to look the same as the
DNS you already set before and shown on page 36.

All A records need to have the orange cloud stating “Proxied” but again,
keep in mind that if you use your own mail server hackers (or authorities)
can still easily figure out your server IP through the MX record.

The MX and TXT records are DNS only. For every record keep the TTL
on Auto.

Next: Hit the “SSL/TLS” button in the Cloudflare Bar.

As we have configured Let’s Encrypt make sure the setting is set on “Full
(strict)” if you have set it on anything else your site won’t load as this
guide configured the site to automatically direct to HTTPS.

Next: click the “Speed” button in the Cloudflare Bar and then
“Optimization”

Scroll down to “Auto Minify” and make sure everything is turned off
because WP plugins will take care of that and will connect with cloudflare.

Then in the free version you have the choice to use Rocket Loader and
Brotli.

If you don’t use a CDN with it( because we also use a CDN and only use
Cloudflare as DNS) WP plugin will probably turn off or suggest to Turn of
Rocket Loader. Brotli you can keep switched on, Brotli is a compression
method like Gzip(it is said it’s better)

But really, when it comes to tweaking your WordPress Site it’s just testing
all kinds of settings and then go with the best one so feel free to test it
with and without rocketloader.

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There are many testing tools out there but the most complete one that will
show results directly when you changed settings is GTmetrix.

While you are there register a free account. It will let you change to
several test locations besides Canada and it skips queues.

This is the tool we use most for testing, keep in mind that it will not show
the exact loading time for visitors as it loads everything on your site, front
and back-end but it’s great for tweaking your site.

That’s it for Cloudflare for now.

Let’s encrypt
Let’s get a SSL certificate for your domain.(make sure your DNS is
working)
In your domain panel click the “SSL/TLS Certificates” icon.

And in the next screen scroll down and install Let’s Encrypt.

After clicking “Install” a side panel will open, fill out your email, select
“Secure the domain” and if you going to use the mail server select
“Secure the wildcard domain”.

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If your DNS propagation is finished it shouldn’t give any problems but

make sure it’s propagated.

One more small thing, remember way at the start when we logged into
Plesk it gave the browser warning because the server IP had a
self-signed certificate?

We can now create a secure login as we changed the hostname and

added the A record.(cloud)

Go to Tools & Settings > Security > SSL/TLS Certificates

If you select the certificate we just made for your domain you can login
with yourdomain.com:8443. Make sure you select the right certificate.

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If you prefer to login through the server hostname, click the Let’s Encrypt
button;

Fill in the server host name you’ve set(cloud.yourdomain.com),email and

install the certificate.

Alright now you created a secured Plesk login, go to https://cloud.

yourdomain.com:8443 and there you go. (make sure you have an A
record for cloud)

note: keep in mind, if you prefer to securely log into the server
hostname, cloud.yourdomain.com because you have multiple
domains/clients you can still log into plesk with yourdomain.
com:8443 but the connection will not be secured because the server
your site is on will then run a different certificate.

Hosting Settings
In your domain section select the “Hosting Settings” icon.

We are going to change only a few things.

“Preferred domain*”: Your choice. We usually have it set to none unless

it’s a long domain name then we select the option without www.

“Security”: tick the “Permanent SEO-safe 301 redirect from HTTP to

HTTPS” (only if the SSL is working or else it will create an error or loop)

This saves you a plugin or editing the .htaccess in WP. Now every
homepage URL will be redirected to https://yourdomain.com.

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Under “Web scripting and statistics” even though we installed PHP 8.0.0
already but it currently conflicts with certain plugins.

Leave PHP on version 7.4.X. for now we will update on the forum when
it’s stable.

Leave the default “run PHP as” on FPM served by Apache. (probably it’s
set on default already)

Why not with Nginx? If you run on a Nginx server WP will not create a
.htaccess and you will have to add things manually which is for advanced
users instead we will be using Nginx as reverse proxy.

When all is set press Apply and OK. One last thing and then we are going
to install a WP installation.

In your domain panel go to “Apache & nginx Settings”

Leave it all on default and scroll down to the “Additional Apache

directives”.

To have a slight improvement in TTFB (time to first byte) add in both

Additional directives for HTTP”&HTTPS” fields the following 3 lines:

KeepAlive On
MaxKeepAliveRequests 100
KeepAliveTimeout 100

Under “nginx settings” make sure the first 2 options are ticked, now the
3rd option “Serve static files directly by nginx” We’ll leave that to you.

We serve our static stuff usually through a CDN but if you don’t use that
select it.

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Tick the fourth option “Enable nginx caching”, the default settings should
be fine but experiment on your own risk.

Press Apply and OK and you will return to your main screen.

Time to install WordPress!

Installing Wordpress
Plesk makes this very easy. In the left sidebar click on “WordPress” and
the WP toolkit will open, click the “Install” button.

A side panel will slide open from the left. We usually leave most of what is
filled in as is.

The things we change are the “Website Title” and we add some more
characters to the “WordPress Administrator” and “Database” Password.

Our website usernames and passwords usually consists out of 20+

random characters but if you like us run multiple sites with these types of
names and passwords you better user some Password Software.

We’ve used LastPass and Dashlane, they both have free and cheap
premium versions but it’s optional of course.

Press the “Install” button. A screen will pop up showing you the progress,
shouldn’t take long.

When done it asks you if you want to install some plugins, I suggest you
don’t as you don’t have a .htaccess yet which might result in issues when
you want to login.

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Plesk WordPress Dashboard

From here you can do a couple things.

Install/remove plugins or themes, change your login or DB info, set it on

maintenance mode(I usually use a plugin) and then there are some paid
options.

You can login directly into your site by pressing the “login” button or click
Setup to change email or password.

If for whatever reason you locked yourself out of your WP, you can always
log into your plesk account and login WP through there or change the
password.

All other options are quite clear, when you click the “Back Up/Restore”
option you will be routed to the backup manager shown on page 16/17.

In the beginning the “Security status $” will show all is ok but later on it
will say “DANGER” spooky!!

Don’t worry about it though, after you’re done with this eBook everything
is secure it just shows what could be an issue rather than it actually being
an issue just to tickle your emotions to buy the premium toolkit. ;)

Also don’t mind the warning notification about themes and plugins, you
will update these within WP, sync is a bit behind in Plesk.

Under Tools you see some options, we usually turn off the indexing till
the site is done and ofcourse turn on Caching through nginx.

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All the other options we leave up to you, if you unsure what they do click
the ? for explanation and always make a backup or snapshot if you have
doubts.

So to sum it all up, we’ve showed you:

• how to launch a server

• how to configure, updates and upgrade the server
• how to setup automated backups
• how to update and upgrade Plesk
• how to add a domain
• configure the DNS
• how to install WP with the right server settings

We could basically call it quits as we wanted to show you guys how to

setup your own server to host your sites but we don’t want to leave you
guys hanging as there are a couple more things to do which takes some
time too but very important to your server.

Security
Plesk, Vultr and WordPress are already kinda secure against the majority
of people that want to screw you but as always if they really really want to
mess with you they can but at least let them work for it right.

Luckily Plesk takes care of most of the security through a couple settings,
let’s configure them.

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Plesk Firewall
Either type in the searchbar “firewall” or go to Tools & Settings > Security
> Firewall. (which we installed on page: 30).

Activate it by pressing “Enable Firewall Rules Management”

You can leave everything as is after but let’s say some IP is messing with
you or you want to block an IP for other reasons.

Click the “Modify Plesk Firewall Rules”and then “Add Custom Rule”

Under Properties;

Name the rule(whatever you want), select “Incoming” then Action >
“Deny”.

Under ports add for TCP and UDP port 80 + 443

Scroll to sources, type the IP, you want to block and press “Add” and at
the bottom “OK”.

Example page 51

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In the next screen you see a warning, hit this button then click
“Activate”.

On default the majority is set to “Allow incoming from all” don’t worry, that
doesn’t mean they can just easily hack your server because it works with
fail2ban which will ban every IP according to some rules and suspicious
behaviour.

However, if you work from the same set of IP’s constantly you can really
tighten the firewall.

For example, IF you use FTP from just one IP you can deny all IP’s but
whitelist yours.

Click the “Modify Plesk Firewall Rules” again and in the list click the FTP
server:

If you select “Deny” it will block all FTP traffic including your server which
will prevent certain updates instead we will tick the option “Allow from
selected sources, deny from others”.

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Add your server IP and any IP you’re working from. Press Ok, the “Apply
Changes” > Activate again and now every other connection will be
blocked instantly.

note: If you see an error in the top bar when activating/updating the
firewall, just wait 10 seconds and apply and activate again.

Fail2ban
Go to Tools&Settings > Security > IP Address Banning (Fail2Ban)

In Obsidian it’s already activated so go to the “Settings” tab. You will see;

Above are the default settings you can play around with. 600 seconds
equals 10 minutes.

We change the ban period to 1500 seconds or 25 minutes.

Time interval we leave at 600 seconds or 10 minutes.

Number of failures we leave at 3.

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Currently with these settings our server has already banned hundreds
of IP’s so it works pretty efficiently. (bots are attacking servers and sites
daily 24/7)

But it’s quite tight which means if YOU enter something wrong 3 times
your IP will be thrown in jail too.

To avoid this go to the “Trusted IP Addresses” Tab and add your home
IP or the IP’s of your Proxy/VPN/VPS/ just to make sure you don’t throw
yourself in jail.

Don’t know what the IP where you working from is? Just go to whoer.net
and find out. If you have a dynamic IP, well, don’t enter it wrong ;)

In Obsidian all jails are already activated so you don’t have to configure
anything else. Moving on.

Web Application Firewall

When you are designing your site, testing plugins, themes and maybe
make some changes to them we suggest you set the WAF to Detection
Only otherwise the Application Firewall might think you are messing
around and will block your current browser.

Go to Tools&Settings > Security > Web Application Firewall (ModSecurity)

Set it to “Detection only” for now., scroll down “Apply > OK”. Once you’re
done with your site, are sure about all your plugins and settings you can
set it to “On” again.

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Malware Scan
In your domain section click the “ImunifyAV” icon. This is a freemium
mailware scan tool.

We don’t use it often but if you ever run into issues you can.

Press the Scan button and it will check your WP installation for malware,
act accordingly.

On to another extra feature explanation.

Configuring The Mail Server

Let’s say you are not going to spam email and you want email addresses
for contact/support resembling your domain name but don’t want to pay
extra for yet another service.

You can do this from within Plesk but on default it’s not configured.

Lets first create an email address and see what happens.

Create An Email Address

In your domain panel click the “Mail Settings” icon;

Go to the “Email Addresses”Tab and create a new Email Address.

If you have the “Can be used to log in to Plesk” ticked you can login into
Plesk with that email.

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Enter a recovery email in the field “External email address” and fill out a
Password for your new email address.

Leave Mailbox on Default size and press “OK”.

Now go to https://webmail.yourdomain.com and login.

Seems everything is working right? Send an email to your just created

email address from any email you already have.

Most likely it will arrive, now reply to it. It will say that it was send
successfully but did it?

If you send it to a Gmail address it will actually arrive but it will go straight
to the spam folder, When you send it to other mail providers besides
gmail it will never arrive and occasionally it will end in a spam folder.

This is because the mail server hasn’t been properly configured.

Let’s first check what is wrong.

Go to mail-tester.com, copy the email address that is shown on their

page.

Go back to roundcube (or horde) and compose a new email and paste
the mailtester email address, give it a title and some text and send it off.

Go back to mail tester website and press the pretty blue button to check
your score..

As you can see, it currently sucks and won’t even arrive 9 out 10 times,
let’s fix this.

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Mail Server Settings

In Tools & Settings > Mail > Mail Server What we need is already ticked
but you you can tweak the settings if you have clients but leave it all on
default for now.

If you did install SpamAssassin click the “Spam Filter” option and tick the
box behind “Switch on server-wide SpamAssassin spam filtering”.

If some email address is sending spam to your Plesk created email just

go to the “Black List” tab and click and drop any email you
want to block in the list.

Go to your “Websites&Domains overview and click “Mail Settings” again.

Everything we need is already ticked by default however you need to

select the Let’s encrypt certificate we made earlier for webmail and mail.

Remember when we were setting the DNS server we said we have to add
TXT and MX records later on, you have arrived at that point.

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Adding TXT&MX Records To DNS

Go to where-ever you have your DNS set.

Remember you can take a peek for your domain records in your domain
panel under “DNS Settings”.

You at your DNS host? (for us either namesilo or CF)

Add an MX record, leave hostname empty or @ with CF.

Under Target Hostname enter: mail.yourdomain.com

TTL 3600, Distance (with others usually named priority) 10 and Submit it.

Next we will add the TXT records from your Plesk DNS Settings, 4 in
total:

1
HOSTNAME: _domainkey
TEXT: o=- (or change this to whatever you want in plesk just make sure
you update it in the DNS settings of your plesk domain dashboard)
TTL 3600

2
HOSTNAME: _dmarc
TEXT: v=DMARC1; p=none
TTL 3600

3
HOSTNAME: default._domainkey
TEXT: A very long one, copy/paste the whole line:
v=DKIM1; p=MIGfMA0GCSqGSIb3DQEBAQUAA4GN etc etc
TTL 3600

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4
This one will be slightly different from what the Plesk dashboard shows.
HOSTNAME: leave empty (or @ with some registrars)
TEXT: v=spf1 +a +mx +a:cloud.yourdomain.com ~all

Now if you look at your DNS within your Plesk Website panel (DNS
settings) you see that nr4 is slightly different.

In this guide it ends with ~all and in your DNS Settings it shows -all, you
will need to change that.

Go to your DNS Settings in your web panel:

Click the link in front of your v=spf1 (yourdomain.com.) and change - into
~ “Apply > OK”

If you change anything don’t forget to update the DNS settings, you need
to do it twice.

First this one:

Press “Update” and then you click the “Apply DNS Template”

Like the A records it will take some time before it’s all propagated.

To check the status of your MX records, we find the following site always
useful: https://mxtoolbox.com

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Time to take a break or you can continue reading.

Ok, back at it, if everything is properly propagated lets go back to

mailtester, copy the email address and send a new email to it.

Check your score again:

Well ain’t that something, the sun is shining again!

Good Job! Your own created email addresses will now send and receive
the right way.

Don’t use it for mass spam because Vultr won’t be happy with that.

IF you still can’t receive or send an email, it could be that Vultr has the
email port closed, just send them a ticket to open it and that you will be
using it for just the occasional support email and you’ll be fine.

FTP
We assuming you will be uploading some stuff through FTP. (we don’t we
use the Plesk File Manager)

Creating a FTP account in Plesk is easy.

Go to your Plesk domain panel and click the FTP icon.

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If there is an account in there click it and set your password. If you want
to create a new account click the +Add a FTP Account.

Assuming most of you already know how to FTP files but for those that
don’t: Download Filezilla

Install and open it.

In “Host:” type your server IP and fill out your Username and Password
you have set and click “Quickconnect” leave Port empty

If you login for the first time it will say something about the certificate, just
tick the “Always trust certificate in future sessions” and press OK.

If your login was successful on the right it will look like this:

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Double click the httpdocs and you will enter your WP installation folder.

I’m also going to assume you know what to do from here if not and you
haven’t figured it out check our Knowledge Base or drop a line on the
support forum.

note: If it won’t connect it’s most likely you either haven’t installed
the plesk firewall or you didn’t enable it which in that case the server
will block the connection. But if you followed this guide correctly
you should connect ;)

End Of The Main Guide

This concludes the main part of this guide. We’ve tried to make it as
newbie friendly as possible making sure the least amount of issues could
pop up.

We might have forgotten stuff and/or made some errors along the way, if
so, let us know or if we find them ourself we will change them.

Whatever is the case, you will always be able to receive future versions of
this eBook free of charge.

Bonus/Miscellaneous Stuff
From here on some tweaks, tips/tricks and the bonus.

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This eBook’s Bonus

For everyone that bought this eBook, we will provide one licensed Astra
Pro Agency bundle for your site so no nulled crap and with the license
activated you will be able to update it.

Astro Pro Agency Bundle Currently costs $249 so a pretty cool bonus
right?

It will include the Astra Pro Plugin and on request only the WP Portfolio
Plugin, Access to Premium Site templates and the Ultimate Addon plugin
(elementor or beaver builder)

Keep in mind, any detected abuse will result in termination of your

account, including access to all WP Solutions Downloads, the
Affiliate Section, the forum and the licenses will be void.

How does it work?

When you got the server running and WordPress installed you first need
to download the Astra Theme and activate it.(from the WP repository)

If you bought this through BHW you can send me a PM providing the
email you bought the ebook with, the purchase number and a WP admin
login of your site so I can install and activate the plugins and add an Astra
Child Theme. (see; What is a Child Theme?)

Alternatively you can do the same through our WP Solutions support

forum.

If you need more options like licensed Elementor Pro and other premium
features check out the website. If you still after reading this eBook don’t
want to set it up for yourself check out our Preconfigured Servers. If you
just want to buy Astra Pro and Elementor Pro together for a cheap price
follow this link.

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note: Keep in mind though, there will be no priority support for
themes or plugins as the prices would have to increase. Plenty of
info in FB groups and from YT videos to be found however you can
discuss anything WordPress related on our community forum plus
we will be adding more articles and videos to the knowledge base
soon.

Some resources for Astra:

• Astra Knowledge Base

• Official Astra FB group
• Astra YouTube
• WP Solutions Plugin Section

Although we must say FB groups really suck to find answers as it’s hard
to find info, the overview just sucks and it’s too crowded so we still prefer
the forum.

Tips/Tricks
Just some extra stuff that helps with your server.

Taking A Manual Snaphot

Although we showed you how to backup the server there is also a
temporary option which is called a snapshot.

Only use this when updating system updates or testing out new
extensions, configurations etc and you don’t feel like making a full
backup.

Remember, this is only for temporary use and you should delete the
snapshot after. It used to be free but they now charge $0.05/GB per
month.

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The snapshot is not a substitute for full backups and should only be used
when you playing around with settings.

You can see a snapshot like the Ctrl Z otherwise known for most as the
“undo function“ and it will re-roll to that exact state.

Go to your Vultr Dashboard and on the product page select “Snapshots”

In the top right hit the “Add Snapshot” button.

Select your server, name it your website name because if you have
multiple sites, they all show up in the same screen so you know which
snapshot belongs to which site and hit “Take Snapshot”.

Or click your server and you will also see the tab “Snapshots” and follow
the above description.

To restore a snapshot go to your server overview > Snapshots and press

the curved arrows to restore a snapshot.

Again, this is not a substitute for backups and should only be used for
quick testing/tweaking the server.

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Once done delete the snapshot or you can keep it but remember if
you revert back it will load everything that was saved at the time of the
snapshot, every change you made after will be lost.

Cheap Awesome Email Provider

As explained if you use Cloudflare DNS to hide your server IP you better
not use your cloud as mail server because the MX record reveals your
real server IP. If you don’t care or not using Cloudflare you can skip this
part.

To still hide your server IP and use your own email we will be using a
Dutch provider as it’s one of the cheapest we could find and we’re using it
ourselves for all our domains.

Don’t use this for spamming because that’s really not the goal. The goal
is you have a business email for normal traffic. Like support emails, sales
emails etc.

Go to Vimexx preferably on Chrome, as you can see the website is in

Dutch, press right mouse and click “Translate in”, for us the option is
English but if you have an other browser language it probably has the
option to translate it in that language.

Select the cheapest Package and press the direct order button, the blue
button or is it purple? The cheapest package is “start” but you will see
medium first, press the arrow on the left to see the start package.

You will pay for one year and the price for unlimited domains is €6.53/$
7.74 incl tax, that’s €0,54/$0.64/mo so peanuts for mail.

Hit the order button and in the next screen register an account. After
registering you can select a payment gateway.

Once paid you will be in the customer dashboard, from the

header(desktop) hover “Mijn Hostings” or translated “My Hosting” and
select “Mijn Hostings”. It will show your username and login link.

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Click the link and you will be logged in automatically into the DirectAdmin
dashboard which is in English so great!

If you haven’t got any domains added yet it will show you the DirectAdmin
main dashboard but if your have domains added it will first show you a
screen with all domains listed.

Under “Your Account” click the “Domain Setup” link.

In the next screen at the top left click “Add another Domain” and then
under “Create Domain” add your domain without the http/https prefix, let
everything else as is and click “Create”.

After you have successfully added your domain click the Home Icon and
select your added domain.

Now back in the DirectAdmin main dashboard go create your email under
“E-mail Management”> E-mail accounts.

Click the “Create mail account” and fill out your details and press “Create”
in the next screen it will show the detail but forget the Pop settings as we
are going to use a different one.

Your email will work directly if you click the “Webmail” Icon at the top in
DirectAdmin. Go test it ;)

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However if you want it to work with a mail client or WordPress etc you will
need to add some DNS records from the DirectAdmin to your main DNS
provider (Cloudflare, Vultr, Namesilo etc).

Go back to the main DirectAdmin screen and under “Your Account” click
“DNS Management”.

You’re only going to copy the MX record and all TXT records plus the
“smtp” and “mail” A records (dont need the AAAA) to your main DNS.

For the two A records you will be using the IP that is shown in
DirectAdmin.

Add all the same way as described on page 57/58.

We use CloudFlare as DNS and it looks like this:

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As you can see, 4 A records and IP’s are that of our server and all the
other ones are the mail records we used from Vimexx.
(ip4 needs to be ipv4 as stated earlier)

In this case we had to switch off the proxy for the third party A records
otherwise the mail didn’t work but as it’s not our server IP it doesn’t matter
that it can been seen.

If you want to add it to a program that uses SMTP, for the incoming and
outcoming server we will use mail.zxcs.nl.

We have Thunderbird installed because it’s free and you can add many
email accounts, your configuration should look like this:

We sometimes noticed it won’t directly accept the settings, probably due

propagation in that case try again later. (could take a day in the worst
case)

WordPress Optimization
In the first writing of this eBook we had another 15 pages about WP
optimization but we decided to scrap that due to the real purpose of this
eBook which is to set up your own cloud hosting server.

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However, we will write several articles and record some videos in the
future about the subject.

Last Words
This concludes this guide for now. Again, thank you for buying and
reading this eBook.

When you purchased this guide you were automatically added to the WP
Solutions mail list so you will get an email when there is a new version for
this eBook which of course you can download for free.

You can always unsubscribe but you will not receive any updates
notifications.

We will never share any data with 3rd parties!

For support questions, WordPress related question or if you just want to

pop by and say hi you can register an account at the support forum.

Upon registration on the forum please send us a PM with your purchase

number and email you left at the checkout (if it’s different) and we will
upgrade your account so you can enter the Customer Support Section.

Follow, like, recommend WP Solutions on our Social Media accounts

where we will be planning some promotion events in the future also.

Facebook | YouTube | Instagram

As this is a self-managed solution, for advanced Plesk questions we

recommend joining their Facebook group, Plesk Forum or consult their
knowledge base.

There will be articles on our site about Plesk over time and also feel free
to ask away on the WP Solutions forum because in our opinion FB groups
suck for sharing knowledge as you have to search forever for answers
and the general overview is just bad.

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Best regards,

Team WP Solutions

www.wpsolutions.io