New to WordOps, please help me sort out my questions /doubts :)

Dan21

Hello,
I want to run a small web hosting business, focused on Wordpress hosting only atm. Will be buying a VPS today, perhaps.

I wanted to know pretty lots of things as I come to know more and more about WordOps. 🙂

Previously I wanted to install cPanel, for the ease of use and its tools, I believe using only WO should be better than having cPanel for performance purposes. Am I wrong to state that?
With cPanel, I'm aware of the process of making subdomains and making emails. I did read some discussions here on both of these topics and I think I'm pretty sure I can do all that myself with WordOps when I have to..
I'm very confused on the type of caching/s to use 🙂 Really.
If I purchase perhaps a VPS with the following config:
vCPU 2 ; RAM 8 GB ; Disk space 80 GB ; Traffic 20 TB ; (as a starter)
I obviously will not be much aware of what my clients are doing with their wordpress. What type of caching would you suggest (considering I cannot choose a type of caching for every type of client's wordpress site. But as I think of it, I might enable them to answer a short question on the type of site they'll be making, if that should change my cachng tools. Still, I do not know what to do here)? (I'll have a PAYG cdn on top..)
Lastly, I want to utilise my own version of Wordpress instead of installing default one.. How do I go about this?

Thank you! 🙂

sleete

I prefer fastcgi (caches the php generated webpages) + redis (caches the database queries) + opcache (caches precompiled php bytecode) (all can be installed via wordops) + cloudflare (caches images). Reason for fastcgi over cloudflare caching the pages is so nginx will still log everything.

Redis and opcache are installed through wo stack flags, and there's wp addons for both to let you monitor and clear as necessary. Fastcgi is setup via wo site create/update flags, exact configs are stored in conf files for the site in the nginx site-avail dir. But since fastcgi stores the php generated pages as html to serve, wp doesn't get notified there was a hit so there's no addon to monitor it, but there is an addon to clear the cache.

Btw, make sure the fastcgi cache size isn't too big so it doesn't massively fill up the vram (tmpfs aka /run). It'll cause system issues.

portofacil

I do run a webhosting business that is largely based on WordOps. I'd like to say what I think.

Previously I wanted to install cPanel, for the ease of use and its tools, I believe using only WO should be better than having cPanel for performance purposes. Am I wrong to state that?

You are right.

With cPanel, I'm aware of the process of making subdomains and making emails. I did read some discussions here on both of these topics and I think I'm pretty sure I can do all that myself with WordOps when I have to..

I made the decision not to offer email services. DNS neither. My clients must have a Cloudflare account, which I use to manage their DNS and email forwarding (both free).

Maintaining your own email services can quickly become a real hell because you never know what your clients will do with their emails. I don't want to live like that.

Also, I don't want to deal with exceptions, so I won't let my clients install WordPress in directories. They usually think it doesn't make sense, but they accept the subdomain option because I don't back down.

Concerning the VPS settings, I've found that 2 VCPUs are the bare minimum for a WP site. If there are "more" clients on the same box, it won't work well. Your results may differ.

All of my clients' VPSs have at least 4GB RAM and 4vCPUS, and I don't even offer smaller ones.

You should know that WO does not provide user isolation, which means that all processes run under www-data and that is not easy to change. Also, you'll need to figure out how to give your clients access to SFTP and a way for them to install their websites "self-service." (I wrote a control panel for that, but I still can't share the code.)

You didn't ask for this kind of advice, but I think you should get the server and install a few clients in "beta" or whatever you call it before you start selling your services. You'll have to figure out how to deal with pitfalls, caveats, and other problems. I wouldn't make any promises to real clients until I had a clear idea of how to run the business, or at least the confidence that I could solve any problems that came up by hiring people or doing it myself.

Oh, there's one more thing: invest in backups. I run mine once a day, early in the morning in my clients' time zone, when there isn't much traffic. Tell your clients how your backup works, and be ready to lose a lot of data at any time. Almost all VPS and bare-metal providers offer automatic backups these days, but I don't trust them. I have my own backup script that takes daily snapshots on rsnyc.net (in my own opinion, I don't like S2-like storage for backups).

Sorry to have written so much. I'd still have a lot to say, but I don't want to scare you. 🙂