What are best practices for configuring a server for WordPress sites?

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It’s a very loaded question, I’ll try my best here, keep in mind it’s 4am, so I’m just giving you highlights, not detailed explanations.

Linux I’m assuming you’re using a recent version of Ubuntu

  1. Change the default SSH port from 22, to something else (/etc/ssh/sshd_config).
  2. Either enable AllowGroups or AllowUser in the sshd_config,
  3. Install fail2ban (apt-get install fail2ban)
  4. Install apache2, php5, and mysql-server
  5. Edit /etc/apache2/conf.d/security.conf and make appropriate changes for a production server.
  6. Disable the slow query log in MySQL (you don’t want this on in production, especially on a VPS)
  7. Configure your system timezone (dpkg-reconfigure tzdata)
  8. Make sure your php.ini reflects the same time zone
  9. Add a new virtualhost in /etc/apache2/sites-available/ (leave the default one alone)
    1. Enable this virtual host by: a2ensite nameofnewvhostfile
    2. Enable mod-rewrite (a2enmod rewrite)
    3. Restart apache2 /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

You can do some other things as well, like install Shorewall, or UFW for better firewall management, install Nginx as a reverse proxy to apache, tweaking the query cache, but this really depends on a whole bunch of other things, and you should tweak mysql settings after being in production mode for a few days.

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