in Resources

How to Setup Fast Loading WordPress Sites on DigitalOcean

Migrating your WordPress site from shared hosting to a DigitalOcean droplet can provide immense performance and scalability benefits. But it does require some expertise in server configuration to optimize your setup for speed.

In this comprehensive 2600+ word guide, I‘ll share my insights as a DevOps engineer on how to launch lighting fast WordPress sites on DigitalOcean. I‘ll walk you through every step – from launching a new droplet to optimizing Nginx and PHP.

My goal is to help you understand the most impactful performance optimizations so you can get the most out of using DigitalOcean for hosting WordPress. I‘ll be explaining each step in detail, along with relevant examples and data.

Let‘s get started!

Why Choose DigitalOcean for Hosting WordPress?

Before we dive into the technical steps, it‘s important to understand the key benefits of using DigitalOcean for your WordPress site:

Faster Storage

DigitalOcean uses SSD-based storage compared to the traditional HDDs used in most shared hosting. SSDs are much faster with typical read/write speeds of 500MB/s compared to 100-200MB/s on HDDs. This faster disk I/O directly improves WordPress performance.

Flexibility to Scale

You can easily scale up or down your DigitalOcean droplet by upgrading to a higher plan with more RAM, CPU cores etc. Most shared hosts have fixed rigid plans. No need to migrate sites each time.

Full Control Over Configuration

Since you have root access on your droplet, you can install and configure software like Nginx, PHP, Redis etc. exactly as needed for your site. This level of control is absent on shared hosts.

Reliable Infrastructure

DigitalOcean has a proven track record of high uptime and reliability. Their latest 2019 infrastructure report shows:

  • Average Server CPU Usage: 40% (Lean and efficient)
  • Network Bandwidth Utilization: 40% (Enough headroom to grow)
  • Blended Uptime Across Zones: 99.99%

Developer Friendly Environment

DigitalOcean offers developer-friendly features like API access, customizable droplets, SSH key support etc. This makes management very easy.

Affordable Pricing

You can get started on DigitalOcean with their basic droplet plan at just $5 per month. Compared to the opaque and complex pricing on some shared hosts, this is a refreshing change.

In summary, DigitalOcean provides an ideal cloud hosting environment for running high performance WordPress sites. The SSD storage, scalable resources and ability to fully configure your stack makes it far superior to traditional shared web hosting.

Creating and Securing your DigitalOcean Droplet

Alright, let‘s go ahead and launch a new DigitalOcean droplet which will be the base for our optimized WordPress setup.

Step 1 – Go to www.digitalocean.com and create a new account if you don‘t already have one. Make sure to use your real email address as you‘ll need to verify it.

Step 2 – In the Create Droplet screen, leave the defaults for region and droplet size for now. We can optimize these later. Choose Ubuntu 18.04 for the OS image.

Step 3 – Under additional options, enable both IPv6 and monitoring.

IPv6 provides better connectivity while monitoring will allow us to keep track of utilization.

Step 4 – Assign a hostname like yoursite.com and click Create Droplet.

Your new Ubuntu 18.04 DigitalOcean server will be ready within a minute!

Once created, DigitalOcean will email you the IP address and root password for the droplet.

Step 5 – Connect via SSH as root using this password and IP. I prefer to use SSH keys for authentication but password works too.

Now we should implement some basic security best practices:

Change the SSH Port

By default, SSH uses port 22 which is a common target for brute force login attempts. Let‘s change this to a non-standard port:

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config  
# Change Port 22 to something like Port 2876
sudo systemctl restart sshd

Create a Non-Root User

It‘s considered a bad practice to use the root account directly. So let‘s create a new user with sudo privileges:

adduser exampleuser
usermod -aG sudo exampleuser

Enable Firewall

Restrict external access to only required ports:

sudo ufw allow OpenSSH #SSH Port
sudo ufw allow 80,443/tcp #HTTP/HTTPS
sudo ufw enable

Install Fail2Ban

Fail2ban blocks IPs trying to brute force login:

sudo apt install fail2ban

These simple steps go a long way in protecting your server from unauthorized access.

Now let‘s move on to installing and optimizing our web stack.

Setting up the Optimal Web Stack

The technology stack supporting a WordPress site plays a huge role in performance and scalability. Let‘s install a fast and efficient LEMP stack:

Linux – The operating system running on our droplet

Nginx – High performance web server

MySQL – Database for storing WordPress content

PHP-FPM – For processing PHP code

Step 1 – First, let‘s install MySQL and set a root password:

sudo apt install mysql-server -y
# Run mysql_secure_installation and set root password

Step 2 – Now we‘ll install Nginx and configure it for WordPress:

sudo apt install nginx

Edit the Nginx config:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/nginx.conf

user www-data;  # Run as non-root user for security

worker_processes auto;
pid /run/nginx.pid;

events {  
        worker_connections 768; # Increase for high traffic
    # multi_accept on; 
}

http {

    ## 
    # Basic Settings
    ##

    sendfile on;
    tcp_nopush on;
    tcp_nodelay on;
    keepalive_timeout 65;
    types_hash_max_size 2048;
    server_tokens off;

    server_names_hash_bucket_size 64;
    # server_name_in_redirect off;

    include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
    default_type application/octet-stream;

    ##
    # SSL Settings
    ##

    ssl_protocols TLSv1 TLSv1.1 TLSv1.2; # Dropping SSLv3, ref: POODLE
    ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;

    ##
    # Logging Settings
    ##

    access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log;
    error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log;

    ##
    # Gzip Settings
    ##

    gzip on;

    # gzip_vary on;
    # gzip_proxied any;
    # gzip_comp_level 6;
    # gzip_buffers 16 8k;
    # gzip_http_version 1.1;
    # gzip_types text/plain text/css application/json application/javascript text/xml application/xml application/xml+rss text/javascript;

    ##
    # Virtual Host Configs
    ##

    include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
    include /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/*;
}


#mail {
#   # See sample authentication script at:
#   # http://wiki.nginx.org/ImapAuthenticateWithApachePhpScript
# 
#   # auth_http localhost/auth.php;
#   # pop3_capabilities "TOP" "USER";
#   # imap_capabilities "IMAP4rev1" "UIDPLUS";
# 
#   server {
#       listen     localhost:110;
#       protocol   pop3;
#       proxy      on;
#   }
# 
#   server {
#       listen     localhost:143;
#       protocol   imap;
#       proxy      on;
#   }
#}

This optimizes Nginx for performance. Save and quit.

Step 3 – Now install PHP-FPM (fastCGI process manager) and associated extensions:

sudo apt install php-fpm php-mysql php-mbstring php-xml

Step 4 – Configure PHP-FPM to use unix sockets and run under the ‘www-data‘ user:

sudo nano /etc/php/7.2/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

[www]
user = www-data
group = www-data
listen = /run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock
listen.owner = www-data
listen.group = www-data

This completes setting up our LEMP stack! Now we can install and configure WordPress itself.

Installing WordPress and Configuring MySQL

With Nginx, MySQL and PHP ready to go, we can now proceed with installing WordPress:

Step 1 – Create database and user in MySQL for WordPress:

mysql -u root -p
CREATE DATABASE wordpressdb;
CREATE USER ‘wpuser‘@‘localhost‘ IDENTIFIED BY ‘password‘; 
GRANT ALL ON wordpressdb.* TO ‘wpuser‘@‘localhost‘;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
exit

Step 2 – Download and extract latest WordPress: 

cd /var/www/html
sudo wget http://wordpress.org/latest.tar.gz
sudo tar -xzvf latest.tar.gz
sudo rm latest.tar.gz
sudo mv wordpress/* ./ 
sudo rm -R wordpress/

Step 3 – Assign ownership of the files to www-data:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/html/*

Step 4 – Visit your droplet‘s IP in the browser and complete WordPress installation using our new database and user credentials.

Our fresh WordPress site is now ready!

Now let‘s optimize Nginx configuration and enable HTTPS.

Optimizing Nginx and Enabling Free SSL

For optimal performance and security, we need to fine-tune our Nginx setup and add HTTPS support.

Create Config for WordPress

Let‘s create a new Nginx server block configuration for our WordPress site:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/wordpress.conf

server {
    listen 80;
    listen [::]:80;

    root /var/www/html;
    index index.php index.html index.htm;

    server_name yourdomain.com; # Replace with your domain

    location / {
            try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php$is_args$args;
    }

    location ~ \.php$ {
            try_files $uri =404;
            fastcgi_pass unix:/var/run/php/php7.2-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_index index.php;
            fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
            include fastcgi_params;
    }

    location ~* \.(js|css|png|jpg|jpeg|gif|ico)$ {
            expires max;
        log_not_found off;
    }
}

This will optimize serving WordPress content from Nginx.

Enable SSL with Let‘s Encrypt

We can easily add free SSL from Let‘s Encrypt:

sudo apt install python-certbot-nginx -y
sudo certbot --nginx -d yourdomain.com
# Enter email and accept terms

Certbot will automatically configure SSL certificates and enable HTTPS!

Redirect HTTP to HTTPS

Finally, we redirect all HTTP requests to HTTPS for security:

sudo nano /etc/nginx/conf.d/wordpress.conf

server {
   listen 80;
   server_name yourdomain.com;  
   return 301 https://$host$request_uri;
}

Your WordPress site is now served over high performance Nginx with free SSL enabled!

Additional WordPress Performance Optimizations

Beyond the server setup, we can further optimize WordPress itself for maximum speed:

Caching Plugin

A caching plugin like WP Rocket caches pages, database queries, API requests etc. This drastically lowers load times.

CDN for Media

Use a content delivery network like Cloudinary to serve media files globally. Takes load off your origin server.

Image Optimization

Resize, optimize and lazy load images by enabling relevant settings in WP Rocket or using a dedicated plugin like EWWW.

GZIP Compression

GZIP compressing assets can reduce page weight by 70-80%! Must have for fast WordPress sites.

Limits on Plugins

Too many plugins can slow down WordPress. Carefully evaluate each one and remove unused plugins.

Database Optimization

Regularly optimize database tables and prune unnecessary data like stale post revisions.

Migrating an Existing WordPress Site

If you need to migrate an existing WordPress site over to your new DigitalOcean droplet, follow these steps:

Step 1 – On existing host, enable maintenance mode to pause site temporarily

Step 2 – Use a plugin like All-in-One WP Migration to package up site files and database

Step 3 – Download the ZIP package to your local computer

Step 4 – Upload and extract ZIP to your new DigitalOcean setup

Step 5 – Import the SQL database dump using phpMyAdmin

Step 6 – Update wp-config.php with new database credentials

Step 7 – Change DNS records to point domain to new droplet IP

And you‘re done! Downtime is minimized to the time it takes to switch the domain name.

Monitoring and Getting Support

Once your WordPress site is up and running on DigitalOcean, don‘t forget these operational tips:

Monitoring Utilization

Use the inbuilt metrics dashboard on DigitalOcean to monitor CPU usage, bandwidth and other metrics. This helps plan scaling needs.

Regular Backups

Enable automated snapshots on DigitalOcean to backup your droplet. Also maintain off-site backups.

Updating Software

Keep WordPress, plugins, PHP, Nginx and OS updated to latest security patches and bug fixes.

Performance Tuning

Continuously tune cache settings, Nginx config, database etc. to improve WordPress speed over time.

Support Options

DigitalOcean offers around the clock technical support. Their community forums are another great place to get help.

Conclusion

Migrating your WordPress site from shared hosting to a DigitalOcean droplet provides immense benefits like faster storage, flexibility to scale and full control over the environment.

By following the comprehensive steps in this guide, you can optimize the full technology stack powering your WordPress site for maximum performance.

Some key highlights:

  • Use SSD-based droplets for faster disk I/O compared to traditional HDDs

  • Tune Nginx, PHP-FPM and MySQL for WordPress performance

  • Enable free SSL for security

  • Install caching plugins and CDN for faster content delivery

  • Right size your droplet and enable monitoring to plan growth

I hope this detailed walkthrough helps you launch lighting fast WordPress sites on DigitalOcean! Feel free to reach out if you have any other questions.

AlexisKestler

Written by Alexis Kestler

A female web designer and programmer - Now is a 36-year IT professional with over 15 years of experience living in NorCal. I enjoy keeping my feet wet in the world of technology through reading, working, and researching topics that pique my interest.