Many businesses are moving to the cloud, but not all can afford to do so. For those looking for a free solution, there is a dedicated hosting option available from WordPress.com that allows you to run a website or blog with the popular content management system. Let’s take a look at how to host your website on a dedicated server with WordPress.

Step One: Choose A Hosting Plan

As with any other website platform, there is often more than one choice when it comes to web hostings. With WordPress, you have a number of options that range from shared hosting all the way up to a dedicated server. Even experienced webmasters can get overwhelmed by the sheer number of hosting plans that are available, so it’s important to do some research before making a decision.

The good news is that you can’t go wrong choosing a hosting plan from WordPress.com. The company is widely known for providing a safe and stable environment for WordPress users, so it’s a good bet that your content will be preserved and not lost to hackers or rogue exes.

Step Two: Install WordPress

Once you have made a decision about the hosting provider, it’s time to move onto the next step and install WordPress on their server. Begin by creating an account with WordPress.com and then click on the “Select server location” button located in the upper-right corner of the screen. A dialogue box will open up, and you will be given the choice of either the free shared hosting plan or the paid private one.

If you decide on the private option, you will need to enter your credit card details in order to continue. You will then be provided with a download link for WordPress. Once downloaded, visit your site’s dashboard to begin the installation process. Follow the on-screen instructions carefully and you will be up and running in no time.

Step Three: Activate WordPress

Once installed, you will need to activate WordPress. To do so, enter your email address in the dialog box that appears when you click on the “Activate” button at the bottom of the WordPress dashboard. An email with links to click will be sent out to the address provided. Once clicked, the installation will be activated and you can begin using the platform.

Step Four: Configure WordPress

The next step is to configure WordPress. You can do this by clicking on the wrench icon at the top right of your WordPress dashboard. This will bring up a menu with several options, including “Tools”, “Settings” and “WP Admin”. Choose “Settings” and then click on the “Design” tab. Here you can change the visual appearance of your site, including colors, font sizes and a whole lot more. You can use the search bar to find the exact setting you want to change.

Once you have changed all the necessary details, click on the “Saves” button at the top-right corner of the dashboard to confirm your changes. You can now log out of the WordPress dashboard and go back to the hosting company’s control panel.

Step Five: Adjust The Nginx Configuration

The final step is to adjust the Nginx configuration file. This file controls how your site will be accessed via the web. To do this, use your FTP client to connect to your hosting account and then select the “sites” directory. Open the file named “nginx.conf” in your favorite text editor. You will need to make several quick changes to the file that will allow you to use a dedicated server for your WordPress site. First, find the line that starts “server_tokens” and remove the “s” at the end of it.

Next, find the section that deals with “location” and change it from “location / {“index”:

index.php

} to “location / {“index”:index.php}”.

The above change ensures that whenever someone types in “example.com” in the URL bar of their browser, their request will be routed to the index.php page, which is why we recommend using this type of configuration in conjunction with a caching plugin like WP Super Cache. When users visit your site, the page will load almost instantly because the content has already been requested and cached by the plugin. This speeds up performance and makes your site much more responsive.

To finish, log back in to your hosting account and make sure to replace the “s” at the end of the “server_tokens” line with an “i”.

Now that you have WordPress installed and configured on a dedicated server, you can start adding content to your site. The benefits of this arrangement are numerous, including the ability to install 3rd-party plugins without worrying about compatibility issues. Additionally, you can rest assured that your content will be preserved even if something catastrophic happens to your website’s host.