First website! Advice invited...

[prshah]

actually I would recommend starting with what I call a "stable" image. I'd recommend AMI is ami-6e6f283c. I am not on the free tier.

Hope that's helpful.

Yes,very helpful and detailed.

So thanks in no small part to your advice, i will start with the t1 and ami you have recommended. As i understand it, this gives me a barebones stable readymade server, to which i install joomla, and start preparing my website.

I'm having a hard time believing the free tier is really free (for limited use). I have gone through their details, and it seems i am getting everything i want, free for a year.. what's the catch? However the part about fiscal controls is reassuring.

Do you happen to see any mistakes in my assumption or plans?

[prshah]

On a separate note, any reason you are looking at Joomla? That is mainly used for commercial websites,

Hello, thank you for your input. Yes, I am looking at a commercial website (in the long run), mainly shopping cart and paypal integration.

As mentioned, there are a number of choices besides Joomla, but from what I have read and understand, Joomla has ease of use and a wide library of extentions that I can use to accomplish my ends.

The purpose is rather nebulous as of now, and to crystallize it, I need to DO SOMETHING, rather than sit around continuing to research. If what I'm trying to do doesn't pan out, I can treat the whole thing as a learning experience and move on.

[Habitual]

...The purpose is rather nebulous as of now, and to crystallize it, I need to DO SOMETHING, rather than sit around continuing to research. If what I'm trying to do doesn't pan out, I can treat the whole thing as a learning experience and move on.

Sounds like a perfect candidate for an AWS instance.

[prshah]

Thank you all for your replies.

Based on your inputs, I have taken the leap, and created an amazon account, and have setup a unit in the free tier.

Currently, I feel that I have bitten off more than I can chew, but, with some choking, and a lot of swallowing, I have managed to setup a lamp-server and Joomla.

I'm no shrinking violet when it comes to grappling with technology, but given that EVERYTHING is unfamiliar to me (for example, given EBS capabilities, I don't see the point of S3...), I am beginning to feel like Sisyphus.

To that end, I plan to document my efforts here, so that some other poor soul like me may benefit from my efforts.

Surprisingly, there is VERY little information on Joomla+AWS, though they seem to be made for each other.

Of course comments and suggestions are welcomed. I am especially interested in tips on hardening my setup (fail2ban, users, Joomla admin hardening).

[clay7]

I use rosehosting.com and linode.com. At either place, you can get a 512 MB VPS for $19.99/month, and you can cancel at any time. 512 is plenty for just starting out, and if you need more space and/or memory, you can upgrade easily. Plus, if you mess up and want to reconfigure, you can re-image in about 30 seconds and start again with a fresh server. Service from both have been excellent.

[spynappels]

I used the Amazon AWS Free tier for a year and with a micro instance running 24/7, I think I was charged something like $0.02 per month for data transfer, and nothing else.

Just be aware that with Amazon, or any cloud provider, your server is online to the world, and you definitely need to take some basic precautions to secure the server. This is not an issue for a development server you may have in-house, behind your own router/firewall. You could simulate this on a public cloud system by using a VPN tunnel to connect to the server, and firewalling any other traffic.

I now use Linode, as it works out slightly cheaper for me and I prefer their out-of-band access.

[vazduxosbra4kania]

Based on what you are interested in running, I'd recommend 2 ways to move forward:

1) Purchase cheap monthly hosting from a linux provider (such as 123systems.net) and you can access a linux box that is connect to the internet with its own dedicated IP over SSH and install anything you want on it.

2) If you have old hardware lying around, put together a small server box together (specs don't really matter as you shouldn't need an interface) and set it up only on your LOCAL network. This means you wouldn't have to worry about security but could do anything you wanted with it again....


On a separate note, any reason you are looking at Joomla? That is mainly used for commercial websites, if you are interested in just running a personal website, I'd recommend Wordpress instead which is a free blogging software that is really flexible.

Hi soon i started thinking about website so i bought a domain and hosting for personal site (2.5 Eur per month). But the reason i am actually writing you is because i agree that you can use wordpress cause, i use it and it is extremily flexible. You can be new to the webdesign world and still build yourself a very slick and good looking site. You can use themes that are already working and change the code in the way to fit your need in the best possible way. Let me show you a subdomain of my site which is created with wordpress - www.blog.turlakov.com (keep in mind that this is may be the most simple page u could have, and there are a lot more developed and better looking themes.)

[prshah]

I used the Amazon AWS Free tier for a year.. charged something like $0.02 per month ..

you definitely need to take some basic precautions to secure the server.

Thank you, that information is very useful.

And yes, I agree with you about the "basic precautions".. in fact, with Joomla being a "big shiny target" (quoted), I definately would like to be over-cautious rather than under cautious.

I am reading through topics on server hardening right now, and would welcome any comments and/or suggestions.

[spynappels]

My main advice would be to set up a VPN tunnel to the instance and only use that for any work you may want to do on the instance.

You can firewall everything incoming except SSH on the main interface, and secure SSH with key-based authentication. Then allow all traffic on the VPN interface and use that for remote access, SCP file transfer and browsing to web content hosted on it.

This will simulate a server on your LAN with no access from the general Internet, with SSH access as a backup.

[prshah]

set up a VPN tunnel to the instance

firewall everything incoming except SSH on the main interface, and secure SSH with key-based authentication.

Thank you, this is useful. I am using SSH with key-based authentication (with relevant entries for AllowUsers AllowGroups, etc).

However, I know nothing about VPN (except that it stands for Virtual Private Network); as far as I understand it, a VPN tunnel allows me to use a remote network as though it is part of my own local network (maybe grossly simplified). If this is the case, then I don't need this as I don't WANT the remote network to be a part of my local network. The more detached, the better

I don't plan on sharing any resources from my local network to remote network (yet). I'll keep VPN in mind for the future, though (if the scenrio changes).

If I'm wrong about VPNs, I welcome corrections. Please don't derail the thread by saying I'm correct about VPNs.