I wanted to know if there was a neat playbook or tutorial set that one can refer to if they’re trying to set up their own static website from home?

So far I have done the following:

  1. Got a raspberypi (Raspberry Pi 2 Zero W) and raspberrypi OS installed with fail2ban ready.
  2. Installed nginx (I have not configured anything there).
  3. Written the HTML and CSS files for the website.
  4. Purchased a domain.

How do I complete the remain pieces of this puzzle?

My purpose: I want an online profile that I can share with my colleagues and clients instead of relying on LinkedIn as a way to connect. Eventually, I will stop posting on LinkedIn and make this my main method of relaying information and disseminating my works and services.

  • vegetaaaaaaa@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1·
    8 hours ago

    By default nginx will serve the contents of /var/www/html (a.k.a documentroot) directory regardless of what domain is used to access it. So you could build your static site using the tool of your choice, (hugo, sphinx, jekyll, …), put your index.html and all other files directly under that directory, and access your server at https://ip_address and have your static site served like that.

    Step 2 is to automate the process of rebuilding your site and placing the files under the correct directory with the correct ownership and permissions. A basic shell script will do it.

    Step 3 is to point your domain (DNS record) at your server’s public IP address and forwarding public port 80 to your server’s port 80. From there you will be able to access the site from the internet at http://mydomain.org

    Step 3 is to configure nginx for proper virtualhost handling (that is, direct requests made for mydomain.org to your site under the /var/www/html/ directory, and all other requests like http://public_ip to a default, blank virtualhost. You may as well use an empty /var/www/html for the default site, and move your static site to a dedicated directory.) This is not a strict requirement, but will help in case you need to host multiple sites, is the best practice, and is a requirement for the following step.

    Step 4 is to setup SSL/TLS certificates to serve your site at https://my_domain (HTTPS). Nowadays this is mostly done using an automatic certificate generation service such as Let’s Encrypt or any other ACME provider. certbot is the most well-known tool to do this (but not necessarily the simplest).

    Step 5 is what you should have done at step 1: harden your server, setup a firewall, fail2ban, SSH keys and anything you can find to make it harder for an attacker to gain write access to your server, or read access to places they shouldn’t be able to read.

    Step 6 is to destroy everything and do it again from scratch. You’ve documented or scripted all the steps, right?

    As for the question “how do I actually implement all this? Which config files and what do I put in them?”, the answer is the same old one: RTFM. Yes, even the boring nginx docs, manpages and 1990’s Linux stuff. Each step will bring its own challenges and teach you a few concepts, one at a time. Reading guides can still be a good start for a quick and dirty setup, and will at least show you what can be done. The first time you do this, it can take a few days/weeks. After a few months of practice you will be able to do all that in less than 10 minutes.