Cloudhim is written for developers who run their own server: a VPS on Hetzner, DigitalOcean or similar, with PHP, Laravel, WordPress or Docker apps on it, and no ops team behind them. If that is you and you are just getting started, read these guides in order. Each one takes a few minutes and leaves your server in a better state than before.
1. Pick a server and know what it costs
- How much it costs to run a small website or SaaS in the cloud
- Hetzner CX23 (formerly CX22) price tables and DigitalOcean Droplet price tables
- When Cloudflare Pages' free tier is enough to skip a VPS
2. Lock down access on day one
- Disable SSH password login and use keys
- Turn on the UFW firewall without locking yourself out
- Stop exposing port 22: SSH over Tailscale
- Check that Docker isn't bypassing your firewall
3. Host your apps
- Host several apps on one VPS with Docker and Caddy
- Set up swap so a small VPS doesn't run out of memory
- Which PHP version to run
4. Keep them running
- Make Docker restart containers that go unhealthy
- Fix a Caddy 502 Bad Gateway and an Nginx 502 when the app is running
5. Back everything up
- The complete backup strategy for a solo-run VPS
- Automatic MySQL backups to Cloudflare R2
- Back up the whole VPS with Restic, without a surprise bill
- Find out when a backup fails silently
6. Stay patched
Security alerts on Cloudhim cover holes in PHP, WordPress, plugins and build tools that need action on your server, with how to check and patch. Recent ones: PHP2Shell and the WordPress core RCE. See all of them under Security alerts.
Free tools for the jobs above
Check a certificate with the SSL Certificate Checker, look up records with DNS Lookup, plan a schedule with the Cron Expression Generator, work out permissions with the Chmod Calculator and subnets with the Subnet Calculator. They all run free with no sign-up: see every tool.