High Performance Jamroom on DigitalOcean

This guide has been designed for Jamroom users who would like to run and manage their own server - in this case a "VPS" (Virtual Private Server) called a "droplet" running on the VPS provider Digital Ocean:

https://www.digitalocean.com/?refcode=8c9a01ef2151

(Yes - that is our referral code on that URL - if you would use it, it would be REALLY helpful - if not, feel free to pull that off if you'd rather not give us the referral).

While this guide has been designed to be used with DigitalOcean, it can really be applied to other VPS providers (such as Linode) or even to your own dedicated server - our guide however will be written as if you are using DigitalOcean, so you may need to adjust as necessary.

This guide is targeted towards intermediate to advanced Linux users - you should be familiar with the following:

1) You should know what SSH is and how to SSH into a remote server, change directories, move around the file system, edit a file, etc.

2) You should be familiar with the "root" user on a Linux server and understand why the root account should be treated with care.

3) You should have a desire to run your own server - this includes the regular maintenance and other issues that can arise when you are the one "in charge of it all" - if you really don't want the hassle of being a part-time system administrator, you are going to be better off having your site hosted for you on a managed (i.e. shared hosting, etc.) server.

I have to include this section as I know that by posting this guide that some of you are going to email us and ask us to "really quick just log in to my server and fix things for me". And we're going to have to say "no".

So right up front:

1) This guide is being provided to help you learn how to setup and manage your own VPS/server.

2) If you get stuck in this guide, please feel free to comment and we can try to help, but ultimately we are not going to log into your server and fix anything - if you are afraid you are going to get stuck, or that the content is too advanced, then this guide is not for you - please use managed hosting for your Jamroom.

3) DO NOT EVER post your root password or other user login information as comments here on this guide! Your server WILL be hacked if you do so!

4) You really should not just paste in things that are shown to you in some online guide without understanding what the commands mean. I will do my best to explain what the commands are and what they do, but we also cannot be responsible if by doing so it messes up your server. Seriously - this guide has been created to help you out, but things can (and sometimes do) go wrong.

With that said, I'm not trying to scare anyone, I just need to make sure it is clear that we are not the "IT guys you can call when something doesn't work" - we only support the Jamroom software - this guide is being provided to help out those who want to know how to do this on their own.

Are you ready to roll up your sleeves and get to work? Then let's get rolling - the first step is to get your new droplet setup on DigitalOcean.