WEBSITE TECH INFORMATION

Having used many shared hosting providers over the years, I decided to try a self managed VPS to have full control over the technologies that run my website. I opted for a £2 per month trial for 6 months, which gave me time to decide whether to continue with the VPS or return to shared hosting if it did not work out.

That was in October 2021, and after the trial period ended, I chose to stay with the VPS from IONOS (Size M). I am very happy with this setup and pay only £6 per month, which is cheaper than any shared hosting provider I have used in the past. I also get 2 vCores CPU, 2 GB RAM, and an 80 GB SSD, which is more than enough for this website.

Although I had the option to use the Plesk control panel with my IONOS VPS, I wanted to run OpenLiteSpeed, which Plesk does not support. That meant choosing CyberPanel as my control panel.

I have been using CyberPanel ever since, and it has been a lightweight and reliable way to manage OpenLiteSpeed. If you are considering trying CyberPanel yourself, here is my referral link: Cyberpanel

Debian would have been my first choice of operating system, but CyberPanel does not support it. OpenLiteSpeed is supported only by two control panels, CyberPanel and DirectAdmin. While OpenLiteSpeed itself is free, using DirectAdmin would require purchasing a LiteSpeed license.

I initially tried Ubuntu, but I encountered many errors when installing CyberPanel. CentOS 7 was my third choice and turned out to be the best one at the time, as the installation went smoothly and I had very few issues afterward. Any problems that did arise were easy to fix thanks to the large amount of information available online, including the CyberPanel forums.

VPS operating system: CentOS 7 Linux (later replaced with AlmaLinux)

UPDATE 17/06/2023 – Upgraded to AlmaLinux 8.8

After moving to AlmaLinux, the installation process went smoothly. I did encounter a few configuration issues afterward, such as SSL, HSTS, and database settings, but they were resolved quickly. I always keep full backups, so I can revert if needed.

This operating system is much leaner than my previous setup, using significantly less RAM and disk space than CentOS 7. It also allows me to enable certain PHP module functions that were not possible before.

I also recompile the GD module when needed to enable AVIF image support, since this feature is not included by default in many PHP builds. The process is straightforward on AlmaLinux and OpenLiteSpeed, and I may write a separate guide explaining the steps for anyone who wants to enable AVIF support on their own server.

I am very pleased with AlmaLinux, as it is a forever free enterprise Linux distribution with security support until 2029.

PHP 8.3.30  WordPress 6.9

For more detailed information on this or any other website, you can check this link here https://w3techs.com

14/09/2022

I recently did a deep dive into speeding up my site without using any plugins here is how I got a perfect PageSpeed score manually.