I have a new site that I want to build, something that I as a programmer wish existed. While there is no way this site would ever reach StackOverflow levels of success, I do hope that it will have a broad appeal and become decently successful – I'm optimistic, anyway.
I'm going to start with a shared host, possibly sticking with the company which hosts my blog since I know them well enough, but I don't think shared hosting is a good long term solution.
As such, I've been checking out various VPS providers, mainly Slicehost and Linode so far, for their potential as a "next-stage" provider. The problem is that I feel I would be completely out of my element with a VPS. I only have limited experience with Linux (I've tried it a few times on my laptop, but always ran into issues that made me give up on it – usually wireless issues), and while I'm pretty sure I could get the basics setup, I worry that I'd leave things horribly insecure or that I just couldn't handle maintenance issues.
Obviously, my idea may flop entirely, but I'd rather not get caught with my pants down if I ever got to the stage where a VPS becomes a necessity.
So, are there any good tutorials / (e-)books / articles describing how to get to know your VPS, or any other issues I should be concerned with. The site would most likely be a "classic" LAMP stack, though I may decide to swap things out later on as the need (or want, really) arises.
My absolute top priority in this is security, hence this post. I have very little doubt, given the resources online – most notably Slicehost and Linodes tutorials sections, that I could hack together a workable solution, but I need to know that I'm not leaving critical vulnerabilities open by doing this.
An ounce of prevention, etc.
Thanks!
Edit:
I've also asked this question at Hacker News and Reddit over the past couple of days, so perhaps the links to those discussions might be useful:
Best Answer
If your Unix sysadmin skills are ... well, zero, then my advice is: Don't do it! Don't try to hack together a secure server configuration from a few tutorials and newbie guides.
Reasons:
You can find managed solutions very easily. Either:
Go to Webhostingtalk.com's forums, and read reviews of managed VPS providers, and pick a good one (ServInt, Wiredtree and others). The service provider handles basic OS patching etc, you're responsible for your own application.
OR