Hello girls and boys,
remember my last guide about a "High performance stack"? This time I got something better for you - a complete guide from picking a server until the actual setup with plenty of extras.
Table of contents
Server
Picking the right server is a difficuilt and quite sensitive task. If you pick a too underpowered system you will run out of resources fast. If its too expensive though, you will run out of cash.
So what is enough and what is luxury?
Most people will tell you to either try Linode, DigitalOcean or Vultr. However, for the 5$ you pay, you are getting some overpriced hipster box. If you are really low on cash I can recommend OVH's VPS boxes. In my opinion the performance offered there is fairly decent and way better compared to DO for example. Alternative you should check out Online.net's "ScaleWay" x86 boxes. While the CPU is not that great, the VPS's are just fine to kick of for a few bucks. For German/EU users I can also recommend using Netcup. Its pricey at times, however they often have great promotions and solid performances.
Please note that this is just my personal opinion. In the end it depends on you, how much you are willed to spend and where. I personally would use a VPS/Server with at least 2GB of RAM for a small installation of NodeBB. The guide below has been optimized for a 32GB RAM and 8 core system.
OS
While you can use any OS, you are comfortable with, I will only provide the commands for Ubuntu here and so do recommend you to use it as well.
Why? Because, if you are reading this guide I will assume you are a beginner.
Furthermore Ubuntu Server has in general the greatest documentation as its quite popular.
Good choices are also FreeBSD, CentOS, Arch Linux, Fedora and so on.
Basically it doesn't really matters.
Preperation
Assuming you have installed Ubuntu Server 16.04LTS on your server, its time to get it running. If you are using Windows on your PC, I do recommend to install WinSCP and PuTTY. Instead of WinSCP you can of course use FileZilla. However, my personal experience confirmed that WinSCP is far more convenient to use. Maybe try both and decide which one you like more.
Additionally I recommend using a text editor with syntax/highlighting, e.g. Sublime or Atom.
Even though we will not really use them in this guide, its always recommended to have a proper text editor on your PC.
DNS
What has DNS to do with a stack? Not a lot, thats right, but as in my previous guide we will target the maximum possible performance. Therefore, we will also try to reduce the DNS resolving time.
To achieve this we will route our domain through CloudFlare. Just sign up and follow the instructions. Once done be sure to have DISABLED CloudFlare in the DNS settings (grey clouds).
But why? Due to the use of CloudFlare the server response time can be delayed around 0,7s, which is quite a lot, considering we want the maximum performance. Instead we will just make use of CloudFlare's fast DNS network.
Security
Open up PuTTY and enter your servers IP. By default the SSH port will be set to 22. Once you entered your password and successfully logged in, its recommended to change the SSH port.
To achieve this I recommend running the following commands:
apt-get update && apt-get upgrade
apt-get install nano
nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
Check out for the line writing:
Port 22
Change it to a number like 198 for example. Once edited hit Ctrl+X. Confirm with Y.
Now you need to restart SSH:
service ssh restart
Thats the most basic security I do recommend. Of course there are more practices like Fail2Ban, Firewalls and so on. However, this guide is directed at beginners and covers the most basic commands to admin a server.
Between, did you noticed how we updated our sources and upgraded our system with the first command? Neat.
Webserver
By default Ubuntu Server might have a couple of useless crap installed which will be blocking in our use case. To remove it run the following commands:
apt-get remove httpd* apache* nginx* mysql* php*
apt-get purge httpd* apache* nginx* mysql* php*
All clean and ready to use. Now we can start setting up our own webserver.
As you might have heard there are plenty webservers. The two most commonly used ones are NGINX and Apache.
Unfortunately I have encountered webmasters still using Apache in 2017. NGINX is far more efficient and performant.
Therefore, the choice is quite easy. However, we won't install NGINX over the apt repo. Instead we will build it from source.
But why? Isn't it harder to setup? Sure it is, but at the same time we will add some goodies to our NGINX version.
One of them will be Google PageSpeed. Yep, TLSv1.3 will be supported as well.
Our goal is maximum performance at maximum stability and security. Lets go for it.
Lets first clone some of the required modules and also install some libraries.
Before doing so, we will install git, since we are going to need this later when installing NodeBB.
apt-get install git
General deps necessary for compiling:
apt-get install build-essential zlib1g-dev libpcre3 libpcre3-dev unzip uuid-dev
Now we can start compiling NGINX!
NPS_VERSION=1.13.35.2-stable
cd
wget https://github.com/apache/incubator-pagespeed-ngx/archive/v${NPS_VERSION}.zip
unzip v${NPS_VERSION}.zip
nps_dir=$(find . -name "*pagespeed-ngx-${NPS_VERSION}" -type d)
cd "$nps_dir"
NPS_RELEASE_NUMBER=${NPS_VERSION/beta/}
NPS_RELEASE_NUMBER=${NPS_VERSION/stable/}
psol_url=https://dl.google.com/dl/page-speed/psol/${NPS_RELEASE_NUMBER}.tar.gz
[ -e scripts/format_binary_url.sh ] && psol_url=$(scripts/format_binary_url.sh PSOL_BINARY_URL)
wget ${psol_url}
tar -xzvf $(basename ${psol_url}) # extracts to psol/
OPENSSL_VERSION=1.1.1-pre8
cd
wget https://www.openssl.org/source/openssl-${OPENSSL_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar -xvzf openssl-${OPENSSL_VERSION}.tar.gz
NGINX_VERSION=1.14.0
cd
wget http://nginx.org/download/nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar -xvzf nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}.tar.gz
cd nginx-${NGINX_VERSION}/
./configure --add-module=$HOME/$nps_dir ${PS_NGX_EXTRA_FLAGS} \
--prefix=/usr/local/nginx \
--sbin-path=/usr/local/sbin/nginx \
--conf-path=/etc/nginx/nginx.conf \
--error-log-path=/var/log/nginx/error.log \
--http-log-path=/var/log/nginx/access.log \
--pid-path=/run/nginx.pid \
--lock-path=/run/lock/subsys/nginx \
--with-openssl=/root/openssl-${OPENSSL_VERSION} \
--with-http_ssl_module \
--with-http_v2_module \
--with-http_stub_status_module \
--with-http_gzip_static_module \
--without-mail_pop3_module \
--without-mail_imap_module \
--without-mail_smtp_module
make
make install
Please note that Google PageSpeed, OpenSSL and NGINX might update from time to time. Therefore I recommend checking them for updates regularly.
To update NGINX or any of the modules you just want to rerun the above commands with their respective version numbers. Afterwards you just restart NGINX.
Well, thats it. Almost. Now we need to be able to start and stop NGINX and also let it auto boot.
To achieve this we will create a script:
nano /lib/systemd/system/nginx.service
Paste this into it:
[Unit]
Description=The NGINX HTTP and reverse proxy server
After=syslog.target network.target remote-fs.target nss-lookup.target
[Service]
Type=forking
PIDFile=/run/nginx.pid
ExecStartPre=/usr/local/sbin/nginx -t
ExecStart=/usr/local/sbin/nginx
ExecReload=/bin/kill -s HUP $MAINPID
ExecStop=/bin/kill -s QUIT $MAINPID
PrivateTmp=true
[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
Close with Ctrl+X, confirm with Y.
Reload systemd services:
systemctl daemon-reload
Enable NGINX on boot:
systemctl enable nginx
You can now verify whether or not NGINX is running by entering:
service nginx status
Starting NGINX manually can be done with:
service nginx start
Congrats on your succesful setup. Next we will install a Database system.
Database
Before even thinking about NodeBB, we will install a classical SQL database server for later use, e.g. WordPress or Ghost.
Lets pick MariaDB. Instead of posting the instructions here, I recommend checking out this link:
Everything is explained there.
Now lets get onto NodeBB. Instead of MongoDB, we will skip into the future and go with Redis. Super fast, super simple.
REDIS_VERSION=4.0.11
wget http://download.redis.io/releases/redis-${REDIS_VERSION}.tar.gz
tar xzf redis-${REDIS_VERSION}.tar.gz
cd redis-${REDIS_VERSION}
make
make install
cd utils
sh install_server.sh
Follow the on screen instructions and configure the vars to your desired option.
By default the service name will be redis_6379.
Assuming your redis.conf is in /etc/redis/redis.conf, you want to make sure its bound to 127.0.0.1.
If not uncomment the line.
Also be sure to use a password for authentication. Search for requirepass and replace the default password.
Please be sure to give this article a quick read as well:
https://redis.io/topics/security
Especially the tipps with "renaming" should be considered to prevent data being manipulated by a 3rd party.
You are done now.
PHP
Instead of old fashioned, RAM hungry PHP-FPM, we will go for HHVM. A drop-in PHP replacement.
apt-get update
apt-get install software-properties-common apt-transport-https
apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver hkp://keyserver.ubuntu.com:80 0xB4112585D386EB94
add-apt-repository https://dl.hhvm.com/ubuntu
apt-get update
apt-get install hhvm
sudo update-rc.d hhvm defaults
Running HHVM in socket mode gives a little extra performance.
Replace the entire content of /etc/hhvm/server.ini with this:
; php options
expose_php = 0
pid = /run/hhvm/pid
; hhvm specific
# hhvm.server.port = 9000
hhvm.server.file_socket=/run/hhvm/hhvm.sock
hhvm.server.type = fastcgi
hhvm.server.default_document = index.php
hhvm.log.use_log_file = true
hhvm.log.file = /var/log/hhvm/error.log
hhvm.repo.central.path = /run/hhvm/hhvm.hhbc
Restart hhvm:
service hhvm restart
To get HHVM running with NGINX, check out the configs attached.
NodeJS
Installing NodeJS will be even easier.
All you need to run is:
NODE_VERSION=8
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_${NODE_VERSION}.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs
Hardcore.
NodeBB
You can now start installing NodeBB after the docs. As seen in my configs, I have got my NodeBB install running in /home/web/mydomainname.tld/.
Adjust it to wherever you feel comfortable with.
Ads
To use ads you need to have Google DFP. Once you entered all your ads and placed the ads on your site, you need to open up the public/src/ajaxify.js.
Look out for this:
function renderTemplate(url, tpl_url, data, callback) {
Right before the function is about to close add this little piece of code:
googletag.pubads().refresh();
Don't forget to rebuild NodeBB.
Bonus
Notes
PageSpeed can either be run by using Memcached or Redis. Since we do not want Redis to fed up, we will go for Memcache:
apt-get install memcached
Also be sure to raise its memory limit. To achieve this edit /etc/memcached.conf and change the given paramteres to your liking.
Once completed be sure to restart memcached by using service memcached restart.
