Build and Host Your Own LAMP Web Server!

We will need Oracle VM VirtualBox to install and manage our web design server / virtual machine! This is a critical step for a web development lab!  You can download VirtualBox from the following link:

https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads

In this lecture I am going to show you how to download Ubuntu Server 14.04.  This operating system is ideal for web hosting as it is extremely light-weight!  It is a much better alternative to a Windows OS that will require MUCH more power from your host computer.  You can download Ubuntu Server from the following link:

http://www.ubuntu.com/download/server

Wordpress allows you to build websites quickly and easily! If you would like to install WordPress later on in the course, make sure you download this so you can follow along in future lectures. You can download wordpress from the following link:

https://wordpress.org/download/

In this lecture we will cover what a Virtual Machine (commonly refereed to as "VM") is.  We are going to use Oracle VM VirtualBox to create and manage our Virtual Machines.

It is time to setup our Virtual Machine. Don't forget it is better to setup a larger HDD now than to create something that is too small!

Now that we have our Virtual Machine created we need to install Ubuntu

In this lecture I am going to show you how to update your Virtual (LAMP) Web Server.  It is very important to run these updates in order to mitigate vulnerabilities and keep your VM secure.

It is important that we set a static IP address for our LAMP web design server since it would be very inconvenient if our IP address changed from day to day.  In this lecture I will show you exactly how to do this!

Samba is a tool that will allow us to drag / drop files directly to / our LAMP server from our host machine! This makes building a website incredibly faster as this is 0 waiting time. No more waiting for your FTP client to upload the new documents and then waiting a couple of minutes for your page to refresh! It will now be instantaneous.

Mapping a network drive is very useful if you want to edit your web development files quickly easily. In this lecture I will show you how to do just that!

Let's test our server to make sure it's working! Additionally I am going to show you how to create a local DNS entry so you won't have to memorize your IP address of your local server. For example: instead of typing http://192.168.1.170, you could type http://myweblab.local/ or whatever you decide to make up!

In this lecture I am going to show you how to setup PuTTY.  This will come in very handy when you want to make changes to your web development lab as it keeps you from needing to log into the server from Oracle VM Virtual Box. Our goal is to save time anywhere we can!

At this point our web development lab is ready to go!

If you would like to create a WordPress website on your LAMP Web Design server, you will first need to create the WordPress database in MySQL. In this lecture I will show you how to do this! Thankfully it isn't as complicated as it sounds so let's get it done!

In this lecture we are going to install Wordpress and get it running!

In this lecture I will show you how to add a theme to our web server!

In this lecture I will show you how to add plugins to your web design / WordPress server! Installing plugins is without question the most important thing you will need to do for your web development lab!

This lecture will show you how to get your certificate of completion.