This article is all about creating a WordPress application inside of Cloudways platform. If you are a beginner and have just started out in Cloudways but are not familiar with its options, this is the article you need to refer to. Everything about adding the domain to Cloudways, pointing to server IP, obtaining SSL, is discussed here.
Create Cloudways Account
If you haven’t yet signed up for Cloudways, it is one of the cheapest cloud hosting panel for WordPress. However, you can buy other cloud servers for cheap, manually install operating system and control panels. Whichever the options you choose, no one makes a panel optimized for WordPress better than Cloudways at a low cost. If you would like to visit, you can use my affiliate link: Cloudways.
Cloudways also offers a 3 day Free Trial which no other hosting platforms provide. You can utilize it. Install your WordPress application and if satisfied with the performance, you can settle with it by activating payments.
Create Server
First, you will create an account and then you will be asked to create a server.
You will select the Clean version of WordPress without any Cloudways optimizations. You will be then asked to choose servers.
You can choose between Digital Ocean, Linode, Vultr, AWS, Google Cloud, etc. I recommend Digital Ocean for beginners because it is the only cheapest option you can afford.
If you are running a Blog with less traffic, you can select the 1GB RAM Plan. For WooCommerce, since you need more CPU, you can choose higher plans if you wish. (Not mandatory though)
Even if you run WooCommerce on a 1GB plan, there is nothing to worry about until and unless there is less traffic on your site. When more customers arrive, AJAX and WooCommerce functions need more RAM and CPU, which you can upgrade later. 1GB plan is more than sufficient to build your WooCommerce site.
Remember to select the server location near your viewers. Server location won’t matter much for Blogs as there will be no customer involvement and viewers only see a static version of your site. But when it comes to WooCommerce, choose the nearby one. Blog-type websites can take benefit from CDNs whereas for E-Commerce sites’ actual server performance matters.
Once you select the Server and Plan, it may take about 5-7 minutes to set up the Server.
You can have multiple servers in different locations. The monthly charges are levied on server resource consumption and bandwidth and not on Applications inside those servers.
Create WordPress Application
Even though you are migrating to Cloudways, it is a must to create a WordPress application. We can however delete that later. It may look intimidating at first. In reality, Cloudways works similar to all other hosting platforms.
Once a Server is created, add an Application inside that server. Select any basic WordPress version without any optimizations.
As mentioned earlier, you can have multiple applications on one server. Once the WordPress installation is completed, you can log in to your site now with the provided credentials. Shown in the image below.
You have your WordPress login URL, login Username, and Password. You also get the SQL Database username and password. All these are unique for each application. If you have 3 WordPress applications installed on one server, you will have 3 different SQL databases.
The login URL which you receive belongs to Cloudways. FYI, you have not yet added the domain to Cloudways and we are going to point it in the next step.
Add Domain to Cloudways
As of now, Cloudways doesn’t know what your domain name is. Now in this step, we will add our domain so that their default WordPress installation will point to our domain.
As in the above picture, go to ‘Domain Management‘ inside of the Application menu. Add your Domain Name and save the changes.
Install SSL
There is no hiding the fact that every site needs SSL. Here, we are generating an SSL certificate through the Cloudways Platform for our Domain. If you have purchased any custom certificates earlier for your domain, you can add them. If you don’t own an SSL, get the free one from Let’s Encrypt. Don’t worry! Cloudways will do that for you.
Warning: Before you apply for an SSL certificate, it is very important to point your domain to Cloudways IP. If the domain is not pointing, you WON’T receive SSL.
In order to generate SSL for your domain, the panel will ask you for an Email ID and the name of the Domain itself. This information has to be passed to Let’s Encrypt. Within 2-3 minutes, your SSL will be approved.
In some very rare cases, you may receive an error saying, that “today’s quota of providing SSL has been exhausted”. This means that Let’s Encrypt provides limited SSLs per day. If you get this error, kindly wait until the next day.
This is it. You now have successfully, created a WordPress application inside of Cloudways panel, and you have obtained SSL for your domain.
Now in case you want to migrate your site by restoring backups, you can easily do this now as you won’t face any errors relating to SSL.