Geek’s Guide to Building a Personal Website on a Hong Kong Server

Geek’s Guide to Building a Personal Website on a Hong Kong Server

For many technology enthusiasts, having a personal website of their own is a very cool thing. With its superior geographical location and stable network environment, Hong Kong servers have become an excellent choice for building personal websites. This article will guide you step by step on how to build a high-performance and secure personal website on a Hong Kong server, making your website stand out instantly!

Preparation

Before you start building, you need to prepare the following items:

1. A Hong Kong server, preferably from well-known cloud service providers such as Alibaba Cloud or Tencent Cloud
2. A domain name for accessing your website
3. An SSH client, such as PuTTY or XShell
4. Basic knowledge of Linux command line

Choosing a Website Architecture

Common website architectures include:

• LAMP: Linux + Apache + MySQL + PHP
• LEMP: Linux + Nginx + MySQL + PHP
• MEAN: MongoDB + Express + AngularJS + Node.js
• Django: Python + Django framework

In this example, we will use the LEMP architecture to demonstrate how to build a personal website on a Hong Kong server. The LEMP architecture is favored by many developers for its high performance and low resource consumption.

Installing the LEMP Environment

First, use an SSH client to connect to your Hong Kong server. Then, execute the following commands to install the LEMP environment:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx mysql-server php-fpm php-mysql

After installation, Nginx, MySQL, and PHP will start automatically. You can use the following commands to check their running status:

systemctl status nginx
systemctl status mysql
systemctl status php7.4-fpm

If everything is normal, you should see that they are all in the active (running) state.

Configuring Nginx

Next, we need to configure Nginx to handle PHP requests correctly. Open the default configuration file of Nginx:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/sites-available/default

Find the line containing index and add index.php to the front:

index index.php index.html index.htm;

Then, uncomment the following lines to enable PHP processing:

location ~ \.php$ {
    include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
    fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.4-fpm.sock;
}

Save the file and exit. Then, restart Nginx for the configuration to take effect:

sudo systemctl restart nginx

Creating Website Files

Now, we can start creating website files. Website files are stored in the /var/www/html directory by default. You can use the following command to create a simple PHP file:

sudo nano /var/www/html/index.php

Add the following content to the file:

<?php
echo "Hello, world!";
?>

Save the file and exit. Now, you can view your website by visiting http://server-IP.

Installing WordPress

If you want to quickly build a powerful personal website, WordPress is a great choice. Here are the steps to install WordPress on a Hong Kong server:

1. Download the WordPress installation package:

cd /tmp
wget https://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz

2. Extract the installation package:

tar xvfz latest.tar.gz

3. Move the WordPress files to the website root directory:

sudo mv wordpress/* /var/www/html/

4. Create the WordPress configuration file:

cd /var/www/html/
sudo cp wp-config-sample.php wp-config.php

5. Edit the configuration file and fill in the database information:

sudo nano wp-config.php

6. Visit http://server-IP in your browser and complete the WordPress installation wizard.

Configuring Domain Name and SSL Certificate

To make your website look more professional, you can configure a domain name for it. Additionally, to ensure the security of your website, it is recommended to configure an SSL certificate and enable HTTPS access. The specific steps are as follows:

1. Register a domain name for your website with a domain registrar.
2. Point the domain name to your Hong Kong server IP with your domain name resolution service provider.
3. Use free SSL certificate services like Let’s Encrypt to apply for and configure an SSL certificate for your website.
4. Add HTTPS-related configurations to the Nginx configuration file and redirect HTTP requests to HTTPS.

Summary

This article has detailed the steps to build a personal website on a Hong Kong server, including choosing a website architecture, installing the LEMP environment, configuring Nginx, creating website files, installing WordPress, and configuring a domain name and SSL certificate. Through a series of optimizations and configurations, your personal website will have a lightning-fast access experience and strong security. Get started and build your own personal website now, and let your creativity and ideas shine in the online world!