OK, you finally decided to drop your shared hosting package and go for a real de

dicated server, or a virtual private server (VPS)! But you're thinking, what now
? By downloading this file, you've made the second good step. I'll try to outlin
e how to go on:
##### PREPARATION: #####
1. Get a VPS or a dedicated server.
2. Install an OS on it, in this guide we'll use Ubuntu Hardy 8.4 LTS, since it's
easy, has a large user base and will be supported until 2013.
3. You somehow have to manage to get SSH running on the server. Most of the time
s, your webhost will manage this for you.
4. In the guide mentioned below, it'll be explained how to use SSH. If you are o
n a Windows machine (your local computer!), you can use Putty - included in this
torrent. If you are using OSX, trow away Putty and just open your Terminal to u
se SSH!
##### CONNECT AND SETUP THE SERVER! #####
4. Before you can start setting up your server you have to decide some things. Y
ou'll want PHP5 and MySQL, not much to decide there. The actual web server softw
are itself is another story. You can choose Apache, it's well known and well sup
ported. Though it's also heavy, slow and sluggish. Most websites - including wor
dpress blogs, phpBB forums, wiki's etc. - run perfectly on more lightweight webs
ervers, which will result in a faster responding site and less load on your serv
er (and thus you can use a cheaper server). There are a few good Apache alternat
ives, e.g. nginx and Lighttp (pronounce Lighty). To make the decision less compl
icated: just go with Lighttpd, it's used by thepiratebay, youtube and many other
well known big websites, why should you choose something else?
5. OK, one more decision: How are you going to manage your e-mails? It's possibl
e to setup a full blown Postfix server, you don't need this though. Since we wan
t to keep load of the server, we're going to use Google apps for domain as our m
ail host. It'll look the same as gmail, with the difference that you can change
the gmail logo's! It's quite easy to setup, but after setup you'll notice that p
hp(mail) won't work. To get this working, we'll need a lightweight sendmail clie
nt like msmtp.
5. Now you've made the decisions, you still need to know how to set everything u
p. Well, you can read the man page of php, mysql and lighttpd, but then you'll l
ose a few weeks spare time and still won't know how to setup a fully secured and
optimized server ;) I suggest you read a step by step howto, and Google around
to answer some specific questions. To get things rolling, I've included the best
guide around (in my opinion) for beginners in this torrent. You can also find t
he guide on
http://nanotux.com/blog/the-ultimate-server/
(completely ad free, and a minimalistic layout, so I would say safe for work) I
suggest you to read the guide on that site, because it'll be updated when someth
ing changes, and you can leave comments there. If you can't visit the site, or d
on't want to, open guide.txt. I've pasted the guide in that file.
6. You've got everything running! Go launch your site! If you want to use an ope
n source content management system, like the blogging system Wordpress, don't us
e your old shared hosting way of installing it! You've got a server now, so mana
ge the install with Subversion, it's way easier. Look on the CMS' website for mo

re info about this, to get you started, here's the guide for wordpress and media
Wiki
http://codex.wordpress.org/Installing/Updating_WordPress_with_Subversion
http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Download_from_SVN