Set Up a Basic Website! nginx, Certbot & secure login

Pls don't hack me even though I gave you my root password!
www.epik.com/?... Get a cheap and reliable domain name with Epik.
www.vultr.com/... Get a VPS with Vultr and host a website or server for anything else.
In a series of based slightly-off ffmpeg video cuts, I set up a website with all the essentials! After getting a domain, I set up a VPS and direct my domain to it. I then set a secure way to log into with with an ssh key pair. We then install nginx (Engine-X) and set up a super basic web page, and lastly added HTTPS/SSL using Certbot (setting this to try to auto-update every month with a cronjob).
You can easily add more sites to nginx which read different filesystem locations and expect different domains or subdomains.
WEBSITE: lukesmith.xyz 🌐❓🔎
DONATE: lukesmith.xyz/... 💰😎👌💯
OR affiliate links to things l use:
www.epik.com/?... Get a cheap and reliable domain name with Epik.
www.vultr.com/... Get a VPS and host a website or server for anything else.
brave.com/luk005 Get the Brave browser.
lbry.tv/$/invi... View my videos on LBRY.
www.coinbase.c... Get crypto-rich on Coinbase.

[@entrixiii9713]

Uhh Luke, you edited ssh_config, and not sshd_config, ssh_config is for the OpenSSH client, sshd is for the daemon. You didn't disable Pass auth, PAM, etc. because it was simply the wrong config file.

[@LukeSmithxyz]

Glad you noticed. I was wondering why UsePAM wasn't highlighted. Pinning this, because it will be relevant to people who give out their root passwords! EDIT: I guess I better change this so everyone in the universe can't log into unaboomer.com!

[@afonsorafael2728]

@@LukeSmithxyz quick, did anyone tried to get in?

[@undefined879]

@@LukeSmithxyz you shouldn't put UsePAM no

[@mateuszurbanowicz754]

@@LukeSmithxyz hahaha n00b

[@joshd79]

You made the change on your local machine and not the server?

[@skiz8848]

After buying my own domain yesterday, I couldn't figure it out. Thank Mr. Luke

[@TigreXspalterLP]

same

[@verbosed]

You really went and bought a domain just because papa luke told you to

[@skiz8848]

@@verbosed yes

[@theyeking7023]

@@skiz8848 reminded me of the chad meme lol

[@voievod7541]

For those wondering, Luke's desktop background is Thomas Cole's 1834 painting 'The Pastoral State'. It is the second of a five painting epic named 'The Course of Empire' , good stuff.

[@grasonbrennan]

Luke, about TTL. Its not "time to live [lye-vve]" as in the amount of time before something is live. Its "time to live [liv]" as in the amount of time that dns record has to live, before it expires. That's why a dns record with a shorter TTL will update sooner, because the old one expired faster.

[@Prutswerk]

I always thought that TTL stands for a lifetime of packet to avoid data collision.

[@bamberghh1691]

@@Prutswerk ttl is also "hop limit" in ip packets. It decrements each time it passes through a router and a packet is removed if it reaches 0

[@zes7215]

no such thing as flexor etc, nonerx

[@kunt230]

Petition for luke to make that domain his "meme" site.

[@davidhusicka8440]

Having git repo synced with memes to this site

[@5HT2A292]

@@davidhusicka8440 when I run 'yay -Syu' I always want the latest memes on my 4TB T420

[@kunt230]

@@5HT2A292 *cries in 240gb t420

[@pawebis4656]

Isn't his main site his meme site?

[@skeptical1337]

​@@5HT2A292 ancient comment, but you can just type "yay" and it auto -Syu's

[@dana_t0ebdot]

Like flexes showing password and configured wrong file.

[@verbosed]

he was supposed to configure sshd_config wasn’t he

[@lucascederqvist7915]

@@verbosed Yes

[@dmsalomon]

Nice demonstration on why to never reveal any passwords!

[@freddief939]

Thanks Luke, I wasted many hours yesterday trying to setup a website on vultr and failed. A lot of tutorials on KZbin, the person speaks slow and says a lot of useless stuff. Your tutorials are fast, compact and informative.

[@nilsirl]

Luke I'm pretty sure you messed up. To disabled password authentication, you have to modify /etc/ssh/sshd_config not /etc/ssh/ssh_config. I tried to connect to the VPS, and I was given a password prompt (although the password wasn't correct (either because you changed the password yourself, or someone already accessed the VPS and changed the password.))

[@mcan543]

I wanna put my comment here

[@altermetax]

@@mcan543 Me too

[@user-no3tu9kh3p]

I identify as an Apache web server with the default configuration provided by Debian's non graphical installation setup.

[@Kludgedean]

The most intense, and USEFUL 20 minute video I've earned in years. This boomers head is impressed ;) nice work Good sir

[@davidhusicka8440]

@Boy Sminem mine is bydave.net I have this one for a while. There's little bug about url redirecting tho. I host it on raspberry pi so it's cheaper than his overpriced hosting.

[@terrytas13]

Thank you for this video. Took me lots of hours reading tutorials, KZbin videos and other material to make this work. Your video made it very clear and got me going on Vultr quick. I spent 60+ hours on piecing this together (obviously new to this), finally got it working. Thanks again

[@StrangeIndeed]

A couple of times I've left a comment mocking you, like a lot of other people. And I know that you know that we don't mean it. But I just wanted to say thank you. You've taught me a lot. You are genuinely my favourive Linux KZbinr. Yesterday I finished setting up my minimal distro and just now I've set up a VPM according to this tutorial. I would still be banging rock at a Windows computer if it wasn't for you. Thank you Luke c:

[@japhethjay4880]

This dude is gradually teaching programming

[@jkgfhgkhjnvfcf1307]

none of this is programming apart from the html print he did lul

[@japhethjay4880]

@@jkgfhgkhjnvfcf1307 I know that, but the guy does know his way around programming, I am a programmer myself and versatile one too. But he knows scripting languages and python, i think he has even dabbled with c. And well if you didn't catch it he said he might be coming to teach people how to actually create a website, even if it is a static website and i know he can go way beyond that, trust me he will gradually teach programming. Except you don't consider things like linux scripting programming he does more than your average joe.

[@TheMrBoal]

Thanks for spending your time educating others and for pushing curiosity, freedom and the desire to learn forward. Even if sometimes some people might not deserve it, believe that there's much more people that are thankful for your tutorials and your opinions. Please continue...

[@ladyViviaen]

the thumbnail is a chad moment

[@tomriddle6039]

IT"S GONNA BE THE GREATEST WEBSITE EVAR YOU CAN DO WHATEVER YOU WANT

[@5HT2A292]

MOAR FREEDUM

[@copper4eva]

Unicomp keyboard in thumbnail. Super based.

[@kez99]

I just realized luke introduced me to dev stuff. Im still a noob but im having alot of fun just fiddling around stuff. I owe you for life lol.

[@TeslaBitcoinFree]

This video about epik didn’t age quite so well lol

[@zes7215]

wrg,idts, epik is great, just u juice slx not

[@professorparabellum]

hey luke, i just want you to know that its been around 4 years since i first watched this video and i was first 13 when i saw it, i tried extrapolating everything in this video to windows since my first server was a 2009 mac pro running a cracked version of windows 10 ltsb : ) im 17 now and still go back to this guide from time to time whenever i need to spin up a webserver really quick. the knowledge this video gave me allowed me to start my own business and make good income off of a gaming website that is powered by this very guide. i just want to give you a heartfelt thank you as your videos really educated me on *nix systems in general and im hoping to work in IT later on as a career. P.S. I met you at Prishtina Airport in Kosovo back in 2022, it was super random and awkward cause i randomly spotted you out the corner of my eye :D

[@Antifragileathlete]

Thank you, Luke. It took me a while to do this, yet I am up and running with a few errors to be fixed. Most of them were typos. I'm a noob to technical computer stuff at 44. Fortunately, unfortunately, Chat GPT helped a lot with solving my error logs.

[@rob7328]

Hi Luke, thanks for this tutorial it was really fun and interesting, but I've run into this problem I can't figure out. After building my site I keep having these urges to sell my belongings so that I can relocate to the remote wilderness of Montana. Recently I've begun studying farming and primitive hunting techniques. I've already thrown away my iPhone as I can no longer stand the sight of it. Also my hair is growing at an insane rate. I have tried cutting it, but it only grows back the next day. A pony tail and viking beard are not my usual style, so friends and family are beginning to notice. Who is Richard Stallman and why does he keep speaking to me in my dreams?

[@gammaray152]

Up next, email server?

[@jkgfhgkhjnvfcf1307]

nice guess

[@xxxxx8200]

He's got several videos on the topic. Search his channel.

[@devhypercoder2522]

He made one recently. Web and email in one sitting

[@felixgraphx]

Yo - I just want to say thank you for helping me getting a domain name + website + https ssl certificate, got it all setup in one sitting ! (last time I did that was 10 years ago so I was rusty as hell, so thanks again for that step-by-step video man! )

[@makeme1975]

This was extremely helpful, I host on aws because I want to learn about their products but they want you to purchase a load balancer to configure an ssl certificate. Knowing about certbot really helps

[@iamnorwegian]

Very happy to be subscribed to this channel. I now have a rudimentary website up and running, free for me to play around with and build on at my own pace. Something I've wanted to do since forever. Even after watching this the first time, I tried reading around for alternatives for all the providers and software that was used, but found the signal-to-noise ratio to be unbearable. Maybe I'm an idiot. I've often wondered, how do people find this information when starting from scratch?

[@thesynalice]

Important take! If your server becomes inaccessible after SSL installation, it most likely has to do with you needing to open port 443.

[@cartanfan-youtube]

Thanks for this tutorial man! The written guides I found were all bunk and wanted to change unnecessary stuff in the nginx config. Big thanks for showing us how to do the ssh stuff as well! don't worry, I followed the updated instructions in the pins.

[@Macleod1617]

Yesterday after watching your video about getting a website, I said to myself "I don't want to be web peasant, hope he shows us how to set 1 up" and Boom! Today you did. Thank you!

[@kevinc8279]

Awesome vid Luke. Short and to the point and all command line! I've had a domain for a while and a VPS running minecraft for the kids! But I ain't no peasant, time to get moving on the webpage and https. Thanks!

[@snacksy7754]

Wait a second, are you telling me the entire server is only used trough the terminal? How is that possible! I have been living my entire life in the gooey goodness of the GUI. How can i open the HTML file without a modern text editor like Microsoft Word? Don't fall for this man's tricks, you should not need to own a website when simple solutions like Wix or Wordpress will host for free! And with those i do not need to drudge trough the swamp of the terminal, instead using the quick and user-friendly UI for the true power user! You may be tempted by these pro-console gurus that will tell you a terminal will solve all your problems. They paint a utopia of productivity and progress, telling us we must release ourselves from the shackles of the user interface. When in reality they are trying to seep into our society by targeting the new and ignorant computer users who do not have the wisdom of the older generation. For them you are simply something to be warped into one shape: godless, ignorant, and devoid of intellectual honesty.

[@pup4301]

They love their toolchains. We love them to!

[@unfa00]

Oh wow, just what I needed :D Thanks, Luke!

[@nevin3543]

Thanks for making this video. I'm only at the 5 minute mark, but watching this made me realize how many things I did wrong, and how many things I skipped when setting up my website haha

[@adamm5205]

Luke you forgot to tell us about opening ports if your website is not loading If your on Debian: sudo ufw allow 80 sudo ufw allow 443 sudo ufw reload

[@Rmly]

Actually, you don't need to ufw reload xD

[@bm7374]

You have no idea how long I've been trying to figure this out. Thanks, brother.

[@frankyin8509]

Bro. Thanks so much, it saved me for building a self-maintained website and selling some homemade stuff

[@chaoticsoap]

Straight to nginx, you're the best fucking teacher.

[@teuphil]

in crontabs i have to set the PATH variable or provide the absolute path to commands

[@iFly969]

You convinced me man. I bought a domain but still looking for decent vps. Vultr's lowest option now is $5 a month.

[@Klayperson]

2:52 OMFG i almost forgot who was talking for a second, don't scare us like that Luke it's frightening not knowing what's going on

[@lucapham-trong6636]

Plot twist: The Unaboomer intentionally changed ssh_config instead of sshd_config, just to see who sneaks into his cabin.

[@hashkeeper]

wow i've used this tutorial multiple times, am straight up memorizing this. I understanding linux filesystem a bit more too. Luke Smith, you dawg

[@PythonforTrading]

so i purchased 2 domains, and i followed this tutorial. Watched the video twice and replace cabin, with cabin1 and cabin2

[@JamesMete]

This is not the greatest website in the world. This is just a tribute. The unaboomer strikes again with the awesome content!

[@altermetax]

It would be great if you made a tutorial for a mail server (I used your script on Vultr+Debian but for some reason when I send to GMail/Microsoft the emails go to the spam folder).

[@creaai5307]

When are the cooking or gardening videos coming boomer 😔

[@squantojones3836]

Thank you! Got my own little site up and running.

[@robivy3454]

thumbnail superpowers......good video, thnanks buddy

[@MattyFez]

>nginx >not thttpd That wasn't very cat-v of you

[@gammaray152]

@@Willwantstobeawesome they put VIM as harmful.

[@0ne87]

Linux, ssh, epub all listed as harmful.

[@MattyFez]

@@0ne87 YES

[@rand_kk]

newbie here, thttpd what is the main reason to use it?

[@conceptrat]

@O Programador Astuto For a brief moment there I thought you said Viz. Reminded me of a comic if read on occasion called Viz. Definitely not in the good list with the 'PC' crowd nowadays.

[@fratquintero]

Este "man" la tiene clara. What a brilliant mind. Congrats!

[@allmighty_cs]

i bought a domain through erik yesterday as well, like the sheep i am. how can I protect my privacy from whois and other site info lookup websites so they can't find out my real name/contact information? I have privacy enabled so it says REDACTED but I feel like this isn't the best solution. luke?

[@LukeSmithxyz]

I don't get it... Your problem is automatically solved, but you don't feel like it's a solution? What would you like to happen?

[@allmighty_cs]

@@LukeSmithxyz Oh, well when I tried to use whois on your website it didn't give me redacted, but no information at all. so i was wondering if you did something special.

[@henriaunin]

@@allmighty_cs You should have WhoIs protection already, if it's not showing your credentials or even shows something else. Some ccTLDs already have whois protection due to their laws.

[@6400ab]

Thank you for posting this. It's just what a novice passive tech boomer like myself needed.

[@mattlennon3]

Great vid Luke, you got the info across really well. I've got some sites hosted on AWS amplify as I could never get this stuff working properly like a n00b. I will certainly be trying this out at the weekend! Could you explain what the extra period was for at 5:42? Cheers :)

[@bobsagget9212]

Just found this channel. Super cool stuff. Subbed bc we have the same wallpaper

[@borrachagamer]

you made things easier, simpler and didnt tell me every thing whithin the matter so i can learn on my on aswell. thanks

[@miguelsuarez2833]

Your videos are so cool Luke!, Keep on it... I really would like u to explore more about openbsd, Or an amazing question I have, is there a minimal way to have a video wallpaper in dwm?, minimal, means no komorebi... Thanks for your videos!

[@jaymesc4436]

for anyone doing this on ubuntu(because this happened with me) don't install the package "python-certbot-nginix" install this package "python3-certbot-nginx" because python2 -> python3 naming conventions

[@ThrE80]

THANK YOU SO MUCH

[@haraldhardrade6410]

Nice! I ended up buying a vps just to try it out :D

[@fredericoalves3169]

Thanks to your video, i started my own thing too. i can't wait for some tips on building a basic website! cheers

[@ProtoForte]

Thanks! Couple of questions though. What if I used a CMS like Drupal to make a website? Also could you show how to do this for a mail-server? I know you've made a video in the past linking a script to run and automatically create a mail-server, but video's like these are more interesting and entertaining.

[@w0ble]

Would be interesting to see you setup mail server. Lots of vps providers block port 25 by default for obvious reasons.

[@tremorwolfgang8403]

Some of your thumbnails are pure gold. I don't even watch your videos. I just keep a lookout for videos with weird thumbnails in my feed, usually it's you.

[@dmsalomon]

Setting a low TTL will not make the record propagate faster. That is only true if you first set the TTL low in advance, so that future record changes will propagate faster. The downside to setting the TTL low is that it will increase the latency to access your website, especially for smaller websites that are less likely to have a record cached from concurrent accesses of different users

[@nicolasa.bermellferrer8025]

Thank you very much Luke. Honestly this video was tremendously useful for me.

[@torspedia]

I'd certainly be interested in a series on how you get your website(s) up and running, especially the technology you're using...

[@MrGearlooose]

Same here. Setting up several applications on ond host which are listening on different ports, properly configuring nginx to deal with that (servers vs. locations, reverse proxy...), setting up Name records as sub domain. You can find tutorials on each single of these tasks, but it's not that easy to get all of these working together.

[@torspedia]

@@MrGearlooose especially if you're hosting several different apps, attached to the same domain.

[@apostate855]

Very good, now I can put my minecraft chest coordinates up without relying on the cloud.

[@asierlopezgordon1370]

A basic HTML tutorial would be nice, but for the self-website creation series to be complete you should make a tutorial explaining how to become interesting enough to have your own website.

[@aaronspeedy7780]

There are already a lot of html tutorials

[@eyupyorulmaz3410]

Great video luke, please do the same for setting up an email server.

[@GooogleGoglee]

Can you actually show how to add and configure a second and third domain that point to the same server with a different CA key for SLL?

[@drygordspellweaver8761]

i want to know this to

[@karokhkakil8048]

Well Explained! better use wildcard for DNS record and Certbot, you don’t have to edit your DNS record and Certbot every time for new subdomains.

[@barmetler]

Okay tbh, I didn't know nginx could serve files, I only used it as a reverse proxy and for ssh because I have multiple programs running on mtmy server, and for the actual Web page I use apache behind nginx...

[@RATsnak3]

0:22 Gabe Newell already did this lol

[@Viken43]

Now have an ArchLinux based VPS server running, ssh setup was soooo easy man... Thanks Luke x

[@pronhub556]

"It just took a second" Lies, 6 (six!) whole minutes had passed, we can *all* see that..

[@kresimircosic9035]

Love the video, thanks. I was able to follow everything easily.

[@ltxr9973]

Nice, I was always using apache as a reverse proxy/html-/php-server but I don't want to deal with it again if I ever make another website. I like how your website seems to have no scripts at all and looks almost the same when I disable dark reader.

[@PestisNonSapien_GMO_exHuman]

Certbot doesn't work if you have the typical cpanel noroot hosting. I have to use srvrco/getssl on GitHub instead. It also uses letsencrypt. So this is what I have in my cron: getssl -a cpanel_cert_upload $domain

[@ion_propulsion7779]

Do you recommend switching the port number as well for ssh?

[@s0litaire2k]

If you're just testing and not sure if you want to keep a website, you could spin up a "free tier" google server (costs 0.02 per month for fixed ipv4. ) I use it to run a VPN form time to time. You get 20Gb disk space to play around with. Then if you want something more permanent then go for the payu monthly Vultr server.

[@DiegoMascheroni]

Hello Luke, why is your preference on vultr over for example amazon? good video, thanks.

[@barmetler]

Wait https just worked? You don't have to set up all those dmarc and whatnot records? Also, I had to fuss about with changing my hostname, because digital ocean sets up reverse dns based on that, but then it doesn't work for smtp reverse lookup and all of this just was so much work and my Mailserver still resolves to example.com instead of mail.example.com

[@danielstellmon5330]

The only thing I plan to do differently is that I like to have a unique SSH key for every device/server combo. My laptop and Desktop have different keys when logging in to the same server and user ID. If my SSH keys are ever leaked (If my laptop is stolen) I can block access for that key/device without affecting the rest. Also I keep passwords on my SSH keys. That may be a little paranoid, but a little over kill never hurt me.

[@madgestikz]

thanks a lot sir! Waiting for a quick tutorial how to make static sites like yours!

[@madgestikz]

@makaroner я надеюсь на генераторы статических сайтов, врядли он свои вручную делает)

[@bahathir_]

One more very useful tool to be installed in the remote host, is.. terminal multiplexer., such as GNU SCreen or tmux. Thank you.

[@elclippo4182]

"apt install unattended-upgrades" on a server is also a good choice, for having automatic/unattended security updates.

[@heyyitsultima]

It appears this may be installed by default on the servers running Debian from this provider.

[@elclippo4182]

ThatGuyUltima Probably yes. However, it’s a good idea to double check that.

[@gsus7125original]

Wow look how much more expensive the VPS prices are since then.

[@YuriShevchouk]

Great vid! Can you go over what's the different values on your top bar, right side. I think I see bitcoin price, web traffic, what else is there.

[@agenttank]

IOTA price :)

[@dagoberttrump9290]

I didn't have to disable PAM when I put PubkeyAuthentication yes. Not sure if that's connected though...

[@manwe_sulimo]

Domain name makes me think you read “Industrial Society and Its Future”

[@thunder3372]

Hey, for anyone here trying to get a private email server working, vultr blocks port 25 (smtp) by default, you need to send a ticket to them, but they'll actually unblock it pretty fast. Otherwise the script works perfectly. Ticket thing can be found on the support section. Hope this helps someone. Edit: This took me a day to figure out. Hope it doesn't take so long for you.

[@philo52]

nice vid but its python3-certbot-nginx now

[@Sankaritarina89]

This is so incredibly wholesome

[@kacperw587]

The thumbnail, is goddamn amazing.

[@humilitas990]

Unrelated superficially, but you should read Francis Yockey's Imperium. They hunted the man down for writing something almost nobody read. If you don't give it an episode on Not Related, still at least give it a look personally.

[@perfectdarkmode]

Do you still use Epik after the data breach last year?

[@dingusbrule5756]

Your own forum would be cool

[@ElliotWilks_]

can anyone help me with what coding language luke is using in this video?

[@i_sometimes_leave_comments]

Even if you disable password login through ssh, there's a lot of ways hackers can use your password. There are many ways people can get a shell on your website. If someone gets a shell, even as a low-privilege user, they can easily get root access with that password. "Please don't hack me" has NO affect on malicious hackers.

[@andylib]

This is exactly what i need!! Thank you

[@beatlerocker99]

Both of these services are now much more expensive. Does anyone know of any cheaper options?