The LEMP stack consists of open source software to get web servers up and running. Available as a one-click install, get NGINX, MySQL, and PHP-FPM installed on your Droplet in less than a minute.

In addition to the package installation, the One-Click also:

• Enables the UFW firewall to allow only SSH (port 22, rate limited), HTTP (port 80), and HTTPS (port 443) access.
• Sets the MySQL root password and runs mysql_secure_installation.
• Sets up the debian-sys-maint user in MySQL so the system’s init scripts for MySQL will work without requiring the MySQL root user password.

After you create a LEMP One-Click Droplet:

• You can view the LEMP instance immediately by visiting the Droplet’s IP address in your browser.
• You can log into the Droplet as root using either the password emailed to you or with an SSH key, if you added one during creation.
• The MySQL root password is in /root/.digitalocean_password.
• The web root is /var/www/html.
• You can get information about the PHP installation by logging into the Droplet and running php -i.

In addition, there are a few customized setup steps that we recommend you take.

Creating an Nginx server block file for each site maintains the default configuration as the fallback, as intended, and makes it easier to manage changes when hosting multiple sites.

To do so, you’ll need to create two things for each domain: a new directory in /var/www for that domain’s content, and a new server block file in /etc/nginx/sites-available for that domain’s configuration. For a detailed walkthrough, you can follow How to Set Up Nginx Server Blocks.

Setting up an SSL certificate enables HTTPS on the web server, which secures the traffic between the server and the clients connecting to it. Certbot is a free and automated way to set up SSL certificates on a server. It’s included as part of the LEMP One-Click to make securing the Droplet easier.

To use Certbot, you’ll need a registered domain name and two DNS records:

• An A record from a domain (e.g., example.com) to the server’s IP address
• An A record from a domain prefaced with www (e.g., www.example.com) to the server’s IP address

Additionally, if you’re using a virtual hosts file, you’ll need to make sure the server name directive in the VirtualHost block (e.g., ServerName example.com) is correctly set to the domain.

Once the DNS records and, optionally, the virtual hosts files are set up, you can generate the SSL certificate. Make sure to substitute the domain in the command.

certbot --nginx -d example.com -d www.example.com

HTTPS traffic on port 443 is already allowed through the firewall. After you set up HTTPS, you can optionally deny HTTP traffic on port 80:

ufw delete allow 80/tcp

For a more detailed walkthrough, you can follow How to Secure Nginx with Let’s Encrypt or view Certbot’s official documentation.

You can serve files from the web server by adding them to the web root (/var/www/html) using SFTP or other tools.

A newly-created LEMP Droplet includes an index.html web page. You can change this by uploading a custom index.html file or remove it.