Deploying a Production Ready Website in Minutes (No Lock-In)

In this post, I will outline how to quickly set up professional, production ready websites – fast, easy, no vendor lock-in.

We will deploy our server on Vultr, register and configure a domain with Infomaniak, and once everything is set up, deploy the site using Dokku (an open-source, self-hosted Heroku).

Let’s go!

1. Get a server (VPS)

First, we need a server — a Virtual Private Server (VPS). This is a small Linux machine with a public IP address that we rent to host our website.

There are many cloud providers offering this, but the best ones charge per hour, not per month. Vultr is a solid choice. For example, at around $10/month, you get:

1 vCPU
2 GB RAM
a public IPv4 (and IPv6) address

That’s more than enough for a small to medium website.

After registering with Vultr, go to:

Deploy → Deploy New Server

Choose:

Shared CPU (or higher if needed)
a nearby data center
a plan around $10/month

Then follow the wizard.

2. Access via SSH

To access your server, you’ll need an SSH key.

On your local machine, run: ssh-keygen

This creates:

a private key (keep this secret)
a public key (safe to share)

Paste the contents of the public key into Vultr when prompted.

3. Register a domain and configure DNS

Next, you’ll need a domain name (e.g. myawesomewebsite.com).

Manager → Web & Domains → Domains
Select your domain
Change DNS zone → Add record

Add:

an A record pointing to your server’s IPv4 address
optionally an AAAA record for IPv6
optionally a CNAME so www.myawesomewebsite.com points to myawesomewebsite.com

After DNS propagates, your domain will resolve to your server.

4. Deploy with Dokku (the fun part)

Now we deploy the website.

Dokku is a lightweight, open-source, self-hosted PaaS. To make this even easier, I wrapped the setup into a convenience tool called Dokku Scrubs.

With it, you can deploy WordPress in essentially one command.

# Installer
curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/belal-i/dokku-scrubs/master/install.sh | bash

# Deploy
dokku-scrubs \
  --app wordpress \
  --domain myawesomewebsite.com \
  --letsencrypt \
  --email user@example.com

That’s it.

Now visit your domain, complete the famous 5-minute WordPress install, and you’re live — with HTTPS, proper isolation, and full control.

Final notes

No vendor lock-in
Easy to migrate
Cheap to run
Production-ready

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