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VPS & Website/2026-06-02/4 min read
My VPS Checklist Before Deploying a Website
A practical pre-deploy checklist for checking system version, web services, ports, firewall state, and project folders.
UbuntuNginxDeploy
Start with read-only checks
Before installing anything, inspect the server state. Check the operating system, running services, ports 80 and 443, existing web servers, Git, Node.js, and UFW status.
This prevents accidental conflicts with existing services and makes rollback planning easier.
Keep the first deploy boring
For a personal static site, Nginx serving exported files is easier to maintain than a long-running app process.
The safer path is to build locally, upload the static output, point Nginx at that folder, and only then add HTTPS once the domain is ready.