• Posts
Server Management
• Basic Auth with Apache
• Enabling SSL
WordPress
• Deploying a LAMP server Ubuntu 22.04
• WordPress Migrations
• Deploying a LAMP server Ubuntu 20.04
Ansible
• Why Ansible
• WordPress Ansible Deployment
Monitoring
• Getting started
• Node exporter
• Blackbox exporter

Ansible: Automate your WordPress deployments

Ansible is a framework for automating deployment and maintenance of remote systems. This tutorial will go through the creation of my own WordPress playbook for Ansible. You can find all of my WordPress playbooks in Github in my Playbooks repository. The Playbook The WordPress installer playbook I created is the wp_install.yml playbook. The playbook handles the installation and configuration of Apache, MySQL, PHP, and WordPress on top of an Ubuntu server (Tested on 22.

October 10, 2022 Read

Ansible: Getting started

Ansible is an open-source tool for automating infrastructure and application deployment. I came across Ansible repeatedly while searching for a better way to manage my numerous bash scripts that I had been using for automating my deployments. Ansible allows for ‘infrastructure as code’(IAC) management techniques which in turn make systems more standardized and easier to manage. Why Ansible There are a number of IAC tools in circulation today, and I know I was overwhelmed with options when initially trying to select one to use.

October 3, 2022 Read

Setting up a LAMP server for WordPress 2022

This tutorial has been updated for 2022. In this tutorial we will walk-through the process of installing Apache, MySql, and PHP on an Ubuntu 22.04 DigitalOcean Droplet. The server created here will eventually host a WordPress website, I will indicate when settings are specific to WordPress and you can alternate from there if you are doing something different. These directions are for DigitalOcean but should be similar for most VPS providers.

June 25, 2022 Read

Prometheus: Installing the Blackbox exporter

Blackbox exporter is a tool to probe remote targets over a variety of protocols. Or from the Blackbox exporter Github page: The blackbox exporter allows blackbox probing of endpoints over HTTP, HTTPS, DNS, TCP and ICMP. In practice I use it to monitor connectivity to websites. Through the Blackbox exporter I can capture HTTPS response times, SSL certificate statuses, and some additional website metrics. Additionally using the Alertmanager tool it’s possible to create alerts based on HTTPS response times, HTTPS status codes, or SSL certificate status.

November 16, 2021 Read

Prometheus: Installing the Node exporter

Previously we installed Node Exporter on our Prometheus host. However in practice you will likely be installing Node Exporter on another VPS or other remote machine. The process is largely similar to installing it locally with a few extra steps. These directions go through the process I use for installing Node Exporter on remote virtual private servers running Ubuntu 20.04. To begin we’ll assume you have access to a remote machine/VPS through SSH or other ’terminal’ access with ‘sudo’ permissions.

November 9, 2021 Read

Prometheus: Getting started with Prometheus and Grafana

Prometheus is an open-source application created for systems monitoring and alerting. The Prometheus server application can produce limited visualizations of data that it collects and stores from Exporters which send it the data. Prometheus and it’s Exporters are good for measuring numerical values over time, things such as: Data Storage/Memory Usage, Network Stats, and Process Monitoring. An example of Prometheus Black Box Exporter data displayed through a Grafana dashboard

November 5, 2021 Read

Setting up password authentication with Apache

This is referred to as Apache ‘Basic Auth’. Following these directions will add a username and password prompt to a website or specific webpage. Typically we use this to hide a ‘Dev’ website so it can still be accessible but not open to the public. Using htpasswd to generate users and passwords Install Dependencies Make sure you have Apache Extended Utilities installed sudo apt update sudo apt install apache2-utils Create first user with htpasswd sudo htpasswd -c /etc/apache2/htpasswd.

October 12, 2021 Read

Migrating a WordPress website

When migrating a WordPress website from one server/VPS to another there are two things we need to make sure we capture; the MySql database and the wp-content folder. The instructions below will walkthrough copying both the MySql database and the wp-content folders from an existing WordPress installation to another ‘blank’ WordPress installation on a different VPS. Copying the data This should be done on the server you want to copy.

September 24, 2021 Read

Setting up a LAMP server for WordPress

This tutorial will walk through the process of installing Apache, MySql, and PHP on an Ubuntu 20.04 DigitalOcean Droplet. The server created here will eventually host a WordPress website, I will indicate when settings are specific to WordPress and you can alternate from there if you are doing something different. These directions are for DigitalOcean but should be similar for most VPS providers. Before starting this process you should obtain an Ubuntu 20.

September 16, 2021 Read

Enabling SSL with Apache

Today this tutorial will walkthrough using Certbot to obtain a SSL certificate and then applying the certificate to your website with Apache. This tutorial assumes you have SSH access or another way to run terminal commands on a Debian based server with Apache already installed. For this particular example I ran these commands on a basic DigitalOcean Droplet running Ubuntu 20.04. Obtain certificate using Certbot We’ll be using the Cerbot app to request a SSL certificate from LetsEncrypt.

September 14, 2021 Read