Planning on making a complete hosting tutorial - Looking for suggestions!

Wappler General
#1

Since this question comes up on the forum every so often, I plan on making a couple of tutorial videos with voice explanations on fully hosting a Wappler created site on a VPS/Cloud Server. These tutorials will be aimed at people with no knowledge of VPS servers or Linux, so it’ll be a complete tutorial from start to finish, with visual explanations too. Here’s what I plan on covering so far (not in order):

NodeJS Hosting - Non-Docker, Not using the Wappler integration, valid for all VPS servers regardless of provider:

  • Getting a domain and linking it to a server via Cloudflare
  • Accessing the server via SSH, as well as securing it
  • Uploading the site via SFTP in Wappler
  • Installing NodeJS on the VPS
  • Setting up a reverse proxy
  • Setting up a service for the site, including automatic starting on VPS reboots, etc.
  • Installing/setting up MySQL as well?

PHP Hosting

  • Getting a domain and linking it to a server via Cloudflare
  • Accessing the server via SSH, as well as securing it
  • Uploading the site via SFTP in Wappler
  • Installing Apache or NGINX
  • Installing/setting up MySQL as well?

Looking for suggestions on what else to cover in these! I want them both to cover everything someone without knowledge would need to know.

6 Likes
2022: The Year in Review
#2

As someone without knowledge I would be very interested in these. I think I have a bit of a grasp of Heroku hosting but still struggling with digital ocean. I wish I knew enough about it so to know the right questions to suggest. Thank you for doing this.

2 Likes
#3

Hi @Digo thats a very good idea, can I suggest you do it with the Oracle’s free tier? so that everyone will be able to practice without having to pay. I have been using it to carry out different tests and it really works very well, it can even be used to set up small to medium projects.

Cheers

2 Likes
#4

May I suggest getting in touch with @mark1 regarding a Wappler Meetup demonstration. I am sure that there will be many of us that are interested. This is not to take away from your plan to create a tutorial, but to enhance the plan and maybe get some real-time feedback.

2 Likes
#5

Just so you are aware, i already have something like this which I will be releasing very soon after Wappler 5 comes out of beta although it will be specifically for Docker/ Cloud.
The new series will cover building an entire content managed site from start to finish in Node but with branches for PHP regarding setup

3 Likes
#6

Great idea!

You might want to checkout the new Resource Manager in Wappler where you can create the VPS with just a few clicks.

From there you can easy open an SSH terminal in Wappler tab to setup the server further.

The new SSH terminal in tabs gives you more space and convenience and we might also add a few commands shorts to the toolbar for even easier installation of system tools.

Just have to find out the best practices so your documentation and research will be of great value!

@JonL and @mebeingken can maybe also share some best practices of dockerless installations.

1 Like
#7

I think it would be very helpful to include this too.

I’m sure the tutorial will be much appreciated and of interest to many Wappler users.

3 Likes
#8

Hi all, thanks for the feedback. To answer a couple of them:

This tutorial will work with any Cloud provider, but I may have a couple of extra videos on getting the VPS for individual providers - not a bad idea!

I saw a post about this in the past, I’ll definitely take a look at that.

I’ve yet to take a look at this in the Beta, It might be beneficial for me to make another separate tutorial using this feature. So one using normal methods, and then one using the Wappler Resource Manager.

Yep, I’ll definitely include this after further thought.

Hope to have this out sometime next week!

1 Like
#9

I just love the Wappler community. I would like to offer 2 options for promoting tutorials to promote the use of Wappler. Option-1 if you can fit a live build in an hour or less you could consider hosting a MeetUp. Our community seems to really appreciate live builds. Option-2 if you are going to publish a free tutorial on YouTube or where ever you might want to consider hosting a Question and Answer session as a MeetUp or at the end of a MeetUp. As always I am open for suggestions and stand ready to assist anyway I can.

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#10

Dockerless hosting + Digital Ocean Managed DB would be great! Awesome idea!

2 Likes
#11

Looks like a lot to cover already, however…

installing SSL certificates, Redis?

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#12

SSL will definitely be covered, and required as part of the reverse proxy, as I’ll be covering linking a domain as well. I hadn’t considered Redis, but that’s a good idea, thanks!

Yep, these will be posted for free on YouTube. I suspect a Q&A session would be far easier than a live tutorial, but I’ll see what the feedback is like after the first one is published.

As a side note, the video will have timestamps, so if you already have a server, know how to link a domain, etc, you can just skip to the section you want to watch.

#13

Another good topic is using pm2 as process manager for NodeJS. We are also looking for easier integrations of it in Wappler as it is almost a must for NodeJS processes.

3 Likes
#14

I believe I now have a rough plan on how I’ll proceed with this. All tutorials will be free and on YouTube.

EP 1: The “core” episode, that will teach you the below and get your Wappler NodeJS site up and running on a VPS. Other videos will assume you have completed this video. This is a Dockerless tutorial, hence why the Wappler integration will not be used.

  • Linking your domain to the server, via CloudFlare, along with information on where to purchase, etc.
  • Accessing the server via SSH
  • Basic security of the server
  • Setting up your Wappler targets, along with SFTP
  • Installing NodeJS on the VPS
  • Setting up a reverse proxy, so your site can be accessed
  • Setting up a free SSL cert
  • Setting up a service for the site
  • Installation and setup of MySQL, along with using it inside Wappler

This episode will ideally be around 30 minutes.

After episode 1, there will then be multiple addon videos, which will provide information on setting up and using other services within Wappler. These videos will be anywhere from a few minutes in length, to 25 depending on the service.

I currently have the following planned, and I’m open to further suggestions. These are in no particular order, and I will likely do a poll as to which one should be done first.

  • Redis
  • Mail Servers
  • Additional Domains on the same server
  • PM2
  • Wappler Resource Manager
  • Docker
  • Control Panels (cPanel, Direct Admin)
  • Other server OSes, the initial tutorial will be based on Ubuntu.
  • Server maintenance tutorials

The idea with these episodes is that if you only need to set up a mail server but not redis, you’ll just need to watch the core episode, and then the mail server episode. This way, you won’t be overloaded with information you might not need.

7 Likes
#15

Which one?

Congrats for the initiative!

#16

I’ll be using Apache since I think it’s a bit better for new users compared to NGINX. I may do one for NGINX if there’s enough requests, but I’m assuming most people that would prefer it would know how to set that up themselves.

Thanks!

#17

@Digo It will be awesome to have such tutorial. Eagerly looking forward to it.

I have been using shared LAMP hosting since a decade but don’t know much about hosting for NodeJS.

The major reason for me to not get started with NodeJS is it’s hosting and having no idea with it.

The answers I’m looking for NodeJS hosting are:

  • Cheap hosting for NodeJS (Is there anyway to host it for cheap similar to LAMP stack?)
  • I can setup multiple apps/websites in same shared hosting and can point different domains to each apps/websites. Can I do same for the NodeJS hosting?
1 Like
#18

Glad to say this has/is being recorded today. The plan is to have it out within a few days.

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#19

Just to answer your questions here:

Any VPS will work, the same with LAMP. So you’d be looking at a few dollars a month, but that ultimately depends on how much you want to spend and your needs. I go over this a bit in the video.

Yes, this is possible. You would just repeat a couple of steps to host another site. I will cover this in its own quick couple of minute video.

3 Likes
#20

Congratulations on the initiative this will be welcome in the community