VPS Hosting Tutorial: How to Set Up a VPS Server For Your Website

Key Takeaways

If you're looking to set up VPS hosting, this video is for you. My name is Charlie and in this video I'll show you exactly how to set up VPS hosting step by step the most affordable way. We'll go over what VPS hosting actually is, why you would want it, how to set it up, and yeah, pretty much everything you need to know. So, when it comes to hosting a website, there are three main ways to do it. You have shared hosting, you have VPS, and you have a dedicated server. Shared hosting is sort of like having a bunk bed in a big room. You're basically sharing everything and if one person is noisy or loud, that's going to affect everyone. A VPS is like having your own apartment within a building. You have your own key, so your own resources. You set your own rules and also your neighbors can't use your stuff. And then you have dedicated servers, which are the most expensive. And that's basically like having your own house. Now, for most people, they don't need a dedicated server, and a VPS is a perfect middle ground. It's not that much more than shared hosting, but you get a lot more features and power. So, if you want something that's a little bit faster than shared hosting, you want to be more in control, and you want to start running automations or bots or anything like that, a VPS is a fantastic choice. And for me, I run a bunch of my own websites on a VPS. I use Hostinger, and I'm going to show you exactly how to set it up. So, if you guys click on the link down below in the description, it's going to take you to a page that looks something like this, or you can scan the QR code on the page. It's going to take you to the same place. And yeah, this is what I use for my VPS. It's been amazing. It's also very affordable, and if you guys know me, I'm all about saving money. It might look a little bit different depending on when you are watching this video, but if you're watching during Black Friday, they have this big big sale going on right now. And I really encourage you to sign up now to basically lock an insane price. So, I'm going to click on claim deal right here. And it's going to show us the four different options we have for the VPS. Now, for almost all you guys watching this video, I'm probably just going to recommend the KVM2 plan. You can see right here, it's $5.99 per month. Don't worry, I'm going to show you guys how to save even more money with a coupon code. Yeah, this plan basically comes with two vCPU cores, 8 gigabytes of RAM, 100 gigabytes of really fast disc space, and you get 8 terabytes of bandwidth. Now, that's probably going to be enough for most of you. If you have really, really high usage, you might want to look at the KVM4 or KVM8 plan, but for this video, I'm just going to stick with this one. So, we'll click on choose plan. So, it's going to have you select how long you want to have this plan for. I definitely recommend doing at least 12 or 24 months. It's going to lock you into this low rate and save you a ton of money. But of course, choose accordingly. And what you're going to want to do is come here to have a coupon code, put in Charlie Chang, click apply, and that's going to save an additional 10%. So, as you can see, we're basically getting 2 years of VPS hosting for $130, which is insane. Now, you can add daily auto backup if you want, but the free weekly backups are, in my opinion, enough. So, I'm not going to add that right here. You're going to want to select the server location. So, since I'm in the US, this is the best one for me with only 40 milliseconds of latency. Basically, you're going to want to choose the location where most of your website viewers are going to be. And then we're going to select our operating system. Right now, this is optional, so you don't have to do this. They have a bunch of different plane OSs. There's OS with panels, which I recommend for most people cuz it's a bit easier to use. And if you're trying to install a certain application, you'll want to come here. For example, if you want to run an N8 server where you basically host all of your workflows and automations, you'll want to select this. If you're just having this VPS for a WordPress website, you'll want to choose this. But for this video, I'm going to show you guys how to do an OS with panel. And we're going to go with cloud panel just because it's, you know, pretty easy to use. But basically, any of these is going to be good. Doc Po is popular. Coolifi is popular. Easy panel is also very popular. You can show more, but let's just go with cloud panel for this video. And yes, this is a free control panel. So, we'll click on confirm. Then, we're going to go to continue. Here, you're going to register your account and then put in your payment information. So, once you're on your dashboard, you're going to set up your VPS. We're going to create a panel password. This is what you're going to use to log into your control panel. You also have the option to add an SSH key, but I'm just going to leave that as is for now. We'll click on next. I do recommend having the malware scanner. It is free. Now, it's going to set up your VPS, and this is going to take about 5 minutes. So, now I'm going to show you guys how to manage your VPS. So, if we click on this button right here, it's going to take us to our Hostinger H panel dashboard. So, here you're going to see some information about your VPS. You'll be able to change your root password here. We'll be able to also reboot the VPS if you want. Here's some more details about our VPS. And if you come here to settings, we'll be able to change the root password just like before. Reset the firewall configuration, reset the SSH configuration. But for most of you guys, you don't need to play around with this. Now, with a VPS, at any time, you can definitely change the operating system. So if you think hey I want to do something else with my VPS you can absolutely come here choose whichever OS you want to use. So right we can switch to Coolify or Cyber Panel or you can even select an application but just know that when you actually change the OS it's going to wipe out all the information. So really keep that in mind. Here you can check out your backups and monitoring. So with your plan it's going to come with weekly backups. You can also upgrade to have daily backups. And as you can see, this is a new VPS that I just set up for this video. So there are no backups, but this is where you would see them. You can see your server usage right here. If you come here to security here, we can play around with the malware scanner. So you always want to make sure that this is active. If you want to add a firewall, you can definitely do that right here. Here's the DNS manager. You're probably going to want to add a domain to your account. Let's do something like this. And of course, you want to get the domain. So you can either get it through Hostinger or you can get it through whatever other domain registar. Now the tutorial section is actually really really helpful because VPS they are a bit more complicated than shared hosting. Definitely come here if you have any questions any of the more specific questions because they're going to show you how to do it. And yeah, this has saved my life many times. So highly recommend using that resource that Hostinger gives you. If we come back here to overview and we click on manage panel, this is where we're going to be able to log into our panel. So, enter in the information that we created earlier. So, now I'm going to come here to sites and click on add site. You'll be able to select from a bunch of different types of sites, but for most of you, it's probably going to be a WordPress site. So, we'll click on this. Now, we'll use the narrativeloop.com. We'll click on create. And so, if you now go to our site within here, we're going to copy this IP address. And what we're going to do is we're going to go to the place where we own the domain. So, for example, I own this domain through Hostinger. and we're basically going to create an A record. By the way, I'll have a link down below to the instructions since there are a few different ways you can do it. So, I'm going to put this as a leave this is at. I'm going to paste our IP address right here. Leave this as this and we'll click on add record. So, another thing you want to do is come here to SSL and you're going to want to make sure that there is an SSL certificate installed. So, if there's nothing here, you'll come here to actions, click on new let's encrypt certificate, and then create install right here. Once you do that, you'll be able to log in to your WB admin. Just go to your URL/WP-admin and you'll use the logged information to log in there. I know it sort of got complicated at the end. And if you're having some trouble with setting it up, I basically just go to all the resources that Hostinger gives you and follow their instructions. Again, I'll have a link to those instructions down below. But really, the whole setup process is going to be different depending on what you want to use your VPS for. There are many specialized functions for a VPS. For example, if you want to run your own N server, there's a special way to do that. I'll actually have a link down below to a video where I show you exactly how to do that. That's exactly what I do with my VPS to basically save a ton of money on N. Yeah, hopefully this video was helpful. Again, depending on what use case you want your VPS for, I would just install the exact application that's going to match that. I do recommend choosing an operating system with a panel. That just makes it a lot easier for you guys. Unless you're very technical, then you maybe you can just choose one of the plain ones. Yeah, VPS's have been amazing for me. It's what I use to host my websites as well as my N server. It's just a bit more complicated than shared hosting, but you get a lot more speed, a lot more resources, and yeah, it's like having your own apartment rather than having a bunk bed within a dorm room. And as you guys saw, it's extremely affordable. Just about five or $6 per month. Yeah. Anytime a friend askked me, "Hey, Charlie, what should I use for my VPS?" I point them to Hostinger. It's what I personally use myself. And they're just super affordable. They have tons of resources and you get a lot of bang for your buck. So again, I'll have a link down below to Hostinger. Make sure to use code Charlie Chain at checkout to save an additional 10%. And yeah, hopefully this video helps you guys set up your VPS. The best way to learn is to actually, you know, get your hands dirty. Play around with it and that's the best way to learn. If you guys got any value from this video, make sure to give it a like and subscribe for more content just like this. I do a ton of tutorial videos, videos about entrepreneurship, finance, all stuff to help you live a financially successful life. Thank you so much for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Peace. Fire.