Today’s post is a formula that you can use to get a decent server and install WordPress on it. This is the setup for this site, and it works like magic. This is a self-hosted WordPress for free.
Oracle Always Free Teir
Oracle offers an always free tier for servers. This is an arm server and it does wonders. 8 Cores and 24 gb of ram with up to 200 GB of storage. This thing is a beast for a free server. For more information, you can visit their site: https://docs.oracle.com/en/learn/cloud_free_tier/index.html
When you create your compute, make sure you stay within the always free unless you are willing to pay for more. Also, select the Ubuntu server as this is the easiest way to build your server.
Make sure to download your SSL cert or you will not be able to later.
LAMP stack
The next phase for your Free WordPress site is building out a lamp stack. Lamp means Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP. With this stack, you can run almost any site. I’m going to refer you to digital oceans for this part, as they have an amazing tutorial for just this. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu-22-04.
Quick Catch
The Oracle always free tier users iptables. Here is a good forum post on how to disable iptables. https://serverfault.com/questions/129086/how-to-start-stop-iptables-on-ubuntu.
Another Quick catch is you must open the ports in the firewall of your compute on the main page. Once you do this, then you are free to do more.
WordPress For Free
Now it’s time to install WordPress for Free. Digital Oceans offers a free tutorial for this process as well. I suggest reading over it. https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-wordpress-on-ubuntu-22-04-with-a-lamp-stack. Once you have your website installed, it’s all about the setup from here. You have the basic setup. Now it’s time to work on logos, placement, content, SEO, and more. This is a learning curve within itself.
I suggest getting a udmey account and searching for the SEO beginner to hero courses as these will change how you build out your site. I always suggest a few plugins for beginners.
- Loginizer – This plugin prevents people from brute forcing into your site.
- W3 Total Cache – This plugin keeps your site moving quickly and you can set it to do some crazy stuff.
- Health Check and Troubleshooting – This will help keep you up to date. This includes things like PHP upgrades and such.
- WP Statistics – this one is very simple, it gives you a visit and visitor lists. This way you can see your returning traffic vs new traffic.
- Yoast SEO – SEO allows your site to be found. Yoast makes, making sites easier. It helps with blog posts and more. I personally can’t write without it. The readability helped me see some of my language issues.
- Shortcodes Ultimate – The paid version of this is amazing, the free is amazing as well. I am able to do quotes and more with the free version. Which is why I use it.