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Deploying a Secure Virtual Private Server with Ubuntu 20.04 (Udemy.com)

Setting up a secure instance of Ubuntu 20.04 with Caddy, NGINX, Apache, PHP, MariaDB, PostgreSQL, Redis, and more

Created by: Trevor Sawler

Last updated February 2023

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What you will learn

  • Deploy a secure Virtual Private Server on a provider like Linode, Digital Ocean, or Vultr
  • Best practices to secure the VPS
  • Install most commonly used software (web server, PHP, databases, etc)
  • Learn how ufw, the "Uncomplicated Firewall" works
  • Connect to the VPS using SSH (secure shell) and Kes (public and private SSH keys)

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Overall Score : 92 / 100

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Course Description

Many developers have been turning to Virtual Private Servers to host their projects, and with good reason: unlike in a shared hosting environment, you are not running the risk of someone else's badly written code resulting in poor performance or (worse yet) your site being compromised because of someone else's insecure programming.

With a Virtual Private Server, you have complete control over the software that is available to you, and you can fine tune the server to meet your exact needs. But setting up a secure VPS takes a bit of work, and requires a bit of learning.

This course will take you through the basics of setting up a fast, secure VPS on Linode, DigitalOcean, AWS Lightsail, Vultr or any other provider that offers VPS Linux hosting. We'll set up an Ubuntu 20.04 server with the most commonly needed software, and ensure that it is locked down as securely as possible. We will also go through best practices for adding users, software, and services, and ensure that we choose the right kind of server for a particular project. We will learn how to implement public and private keys for secure access using SSH, how to edit files on the remote server through the command line using vi or nano/pico, how to use the most common and useful Linux command line programs, and how to configure the most popular and useful server software.

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Instructor Details

Trevor Sawler

I have twenty years of experience in professional software development, and twenty years of experience as a University professor.

As an entrepreneur, I have worked with a broad range of clients, including Thomson Nelson, Hewlett Packard, the Royal Bank of Canada, Keybank, Sprint, and many, many others. I also have extensive management and project management experience. I have led teams of fifty developers and artists on multi-million dollar projects, and much smaller teams on much smaller projects.

As a professor, I have taught in a wide variety of course areas, including Computer Science, English, Irish, and American literature, and a number of "crossover" courses that bridge the liberal arts and technological fields.

I have won regional, national, and international awards for my work in the IT field, and have also won awards for my teaching and research as a University professor.

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Reviews

4.6

366 ratings on Udemy

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By Branden M Wehmeier on 3/30/2026

Course needs to be update. To me, 5 star courses are heuristically pedagogical creating instantaneous flow. This course has taken me significantly longer than the video time as I have to constantly create extra work flow. Trevor is an excellent speaker and very knowledgeable. I could learn more from him in an updated and longer version of this course. In fact, email me, and I will purchase it. I am ok with course. I am using it as a quick intro. I purchased longer course to provide a more comprehensive and up-to-date material.

By Carlos A Pardo G on 1/6/2026

Super exciting the way the teacher shows things ,, the good explanations and everything is just great!!

By Szymon Skurski on 11/18/2025

Absolutely everyone involved in web development should complete this course. Stephen has a rare gift for explaining complex issues in a very simple way. The course has only one drawback: it is too short. It is a pity that it does not cover concepts such as setting up a git repository on a server and running Docker and Kubernetes (I hope that the second part will be released soon).

By Fabian Cardenas on 2/20/2025

This was awesome! Can't believe I was paying for a hosted server, even auto-stuff like vercel or netlify, they can be headless and all but that is too risky, also unnecessarily expensive. This course gave me all I needed to run my own VPS, understand why and how to upscale it (manually, remember costs!, this if for a small eCommerce). All the security gave on the course is well explained, you can feel the expertise of Trevor, I really wish for a database course from Trevor, that would be fantastic. Also the course has a few outdated parts, but check the Q&A they go deep on how to solve it. Also I ended up using linode and caddy as Trevor recommends and I think he is right on recommending those, again the experience can be felt. 10/10 course with a few outdated part but very brief and discussed on the Q&A.

By Russ F on 12/26/2023

Another Excellent Course! Wonderful course, good explanations, good practice and everything worked! Simple, but covers the essentials and quickly which for many is the requirement from a course like this (4-5hrs) Either for a beginner or someone needing a server refresher (I did) this course delivers. Five stars. Excellent job Trevor!

By BA-Tech SB-Jana on 4/7/2022

I'm still at the beginning of the course but I can difenetly say that this course up to this point is awesome. and I'm sure you're gonna love this course as well. So far I've gained really informative and important knowledge. I'm sure you won't regret it, you're gonna learn an awful lot in addition to this the Instructor Mr. Trevor Sawler is responsive to you quetions, I only had to wait a max of 24 Hours to my questions. Happy learning

By Zeno Görbe, BSc on 1/6/2022

As all of the courses published by Trevor Sawler, this one does NOT disappoint. It teaches everything you need to know to deploy, secure and manage a VPS. You can feel the faulty style teaching, and that is a real plus, because it helps you understand every click and command. I can only recommend this course, as of all courses of Trevor Sawler.

By Peter Barrett on 1/4/2022

Another great course from Trevor Sawler bringing this topic up to date for Ubuntu 20.04LTS. What is more, is that it incorporates an introduction to the impressive Caddy web server. Now maybe there's a subject for a more extensive course in the future Meanwhile this course is thoroughly recommended !

By Lee Trent on 1/4/2022

Another outstanding course by Trevor Sawler! This is a hands-on course that covers the basics of server administration and shows you how to deploy a secure web application (provided) to a virtual private server. This course is well supported by the instructor. What I like most about this course is that “everything just works”. After taking this course, I was able to deploy a React frontend web application that interacts with a Go REST API that reads and writes to a PostgreSQL database, all on a virtual private server using HTTPS and JSON Web Tokens for authentication! I never would have been able to do this had I not taken this course.

By Giann Battista Nigita on 5/14/2021

Trevor's courses are simply top-notch. Not only that, he conveys important content clearly down to the last detail. His support is also outstanding. For me he is absolutely the best tutor on Udemy. Trevor, thank you for sharing your experience, skill and knowledge with us.

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