Hi all, I’m planning to host a small community site or wiki for Stardew Valley using a VPS and Virtualmin. I’m looking for guidance on the best way to set up a WordPress or MediaWiki site with SSL, email, and good performance. Any tips?
This isn’t specific enough for anyone to provide useful guidance (and kinda smells like engagement farming to gain reputation for spamming…just based on what folks who’ve asked questions like this have done in the past). “Stardew Valley or Mod server” also reeks of spam just waiting to happen. The Discourse spam detector thought so, too, I approved it anyway, on the off chance it is sincere.
If it is, please be more specific. What specific problem are you trying to solve? No one can offer useful performance guidance without knowing what performance problem you have and what resources you’re working with.
The other reason this seems suspicious is that most people simply do not have performance problems. Most websites see so little load that any web server in its default configuration doesn’t even break a sweat. Computers are really freakin’ fast.
Thanks for approving the post and I understand your concern.
Just to clarify — I’m not trying to spam or gain reputation. I’m genuinely new to managing a VPS and Virtualmin, and I’m working on setting up a small wiki-style site for a Stardew Valley modding community (no game server or anything heavy, just informational pages and maybe a small blog).
I’m looking for advice on:
- Whether WordPress or MediaWiki is better for light content and ease of use in Virtualmin
- Best practices for SSL setup (Let’s Encrypt or manual?)
- How to set up email safely without getting blacklisted
- Basic performance/security settings for a 2GB RAM, 1vCPU VPS (AlmaLinux 8)
Any guidance or relevant threads you could link would be super helpful. Thanks again!
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For ease of use, I’d probably go with WordPress. It’s both an easy and super-powerful CMS.
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SSL certificates are easily managed within Virtualmin. For more details, see our documentation on “How to Add an SSL Certificate”.
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That is more difficult, yet Virtualmin has you covered on nearly everything that needs to be done, particularly SPF and DKIM.
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2GB of RAM and 1 vCPU are generally enough for a small blog. I wouldn’t recommend starting with Alma 8 though; it should be at least Alma 9 or Debian 12.
Yes, we have extensively covered nearly everything in our documentation:
And, of course, read our Dos and Don’ts—it’s important!
and most important - if you post asking for help on anything include the SYSTEM INFORMATION you are asked for at the top of your POST as it helps everyone to help you.
That’s right—and, if the OP follows the guidelines, they will, and this won’t be happening in this ticket either, as per the guidelines.
I would prefer MediaWiki for light content – but remember I’m not a “Wordpress person” so that’s probably why.
And YES, let Virtualmin do the SSL using Let’s Encrypt… so nice Virtualmin is…
Not getting blacklisted is still something I’m working on.
They’re two different tools for different purposes. “light content and ease of use” aren’t relevant questions…they are both capable of that. It depends on whether you want a wiki or a CMS.
If you want a bunch of people to be able to create their own accounts and edit/create pages, you want a wiki and MediaWiki is one of the best wikis.
If you want a select few writers to create your pages, and you want a more traditional editorial process, you want a CMS/blog, and WordPress is one of the best (certainly the most popular).
Performance is irrelevant when you have no users. Worry about performance when performance is a problem.
You get blacklisted when you send spam. The default Virtualmin email configuration (assuming you enable DKIM and SPF and configure your DNS correctly) will satisfy all the major mail providers and most of the tiny ones, without much jumping through hoops. As long as you don’t send spam, and as long as the IP you are on is not already blacklisted (common for cheap virtual machine hosting provider IPs), email won’t be a problem.
This is a bunch of different questions, and we generally ask you ask individual (specific) questions instead of combining them all into one post. FAQ - Virtualmin Community
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True… but I inherited a linux box with tons of OLD php code that allowed spammers to “bounce” spam off of it… people kept trying to “make the php code more secure” but I found the only real solution was moving them to Wordpress… so the “contact us” pages weren’t easy to hijack.
You will not do that - but your problem is that your “users” might and the world of idiots out there will try. So it will be down to you and your policies to control that so be prepared for a lot of work.
when you get an ip (especially ip4) guard it with your life they are rare and many are blacklisted already so may take some effort to get clean - it is worth the effort.