Creating a LAMP server
There are several ways that you could go about setting up your server – you could install Ubuntu
and then go about installing each of the applications you need to run your website, one at a time.
This is time consuming and isn't a particularly efficient way to launch your services as there are
core applications / services which are used by almost all basic deployments on Ubuntu servers.
Those core applications / services are: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP.
Apache is a web server which controls what your server does when a visitor comes along. It tells
the server which website the user is looking for and in which directory to find that website. We will
be using Apache throughout this ebook.
MySQL is a database server which is used to store structured data (for example an orders
database). This is a robust and well tested solution that is one of the leading products in the market
(and it's free). Finally, we have PHP which is an engine which enables your server to interpret and
display PHP documents to your users.
We refer to the installation of all these components as a LAMP Stack. Luckily for us, Digital Ocean
(and most other providers) have a ready-made image for us, so we don't need to mess around
installing everything. To set up your LAMP server, follow the below steps.
1. Log in to your Digital Ocean account
2. Click “create droplet” in the top right
3. Name your droplet anything you want
4. Under the applications tab, select 'LAMP on 14.04'
5. Click 'Create Droplet'
You will then see a progress bar appear on the page. Once this is complete, your server is up and
running- congratulations, you're officially an Ubuntu server owner!
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