Hosting PageMotor on Vultr

Pick your plan

Vultr charges the same USD price in every data centre, so location does not change the bill. Only the plan does. Tap what you are running:

Estimate the cost per site

Full reference

Auto Backups add 20 per cent to whichever plan you pick. On production, enable them. Pricing verified on vultr.com/pricing/ in April 2026.

Pick a region

Same price everywhere. Latency is the only thing that changes. Pick the closest Vultr data centre to your visitors, not yourself.

Vultr has 32 regions at the time of writing (April 2026), across every populated continent. There is almost always one within 100 ms of your audience.

What to tick on the Vultr signup screen

Once you have signed up and are inside the Vultr console, click Compute in the left sidebar, then Instances, then Create Instance.

Step 1: Choose Type — select Shared CPU

On the Deploy a Server screen, choose Shared CPU. It is the right shape for a PageMotor host at all but the very largest scale.

Step 2: Location and Plan

Filter to Europe and pick London (or the region closest to your visitors). In the plan table below, select vc2-1c-2gb ($10/mo) to start — you can resize up later with no reinstall.

Step 3: OS, SSH Keys, and Backups

Click Configure to move to Step 2. Select Ubuntu as the OS and choose the latest LTS version from the Image Version dropdown. Then paste your SSH public key into the SSH Keys field — this is the most important security step.

Full settings reference

No ed25519 key yet? Generate one on your Mac with ssh-keygen -t ed25519, then paste the public key (~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub) into Vultr's SSH Keys section before launching.

Let Claude Code do the heavy lifting

This guide recommends a complete, Claude-Code-driven stack: Vultr for the server, Cloudflare for DNS, Mailgun for email. You say what you want; Claude Code provisions the box over SSH, manages DNS through Cloudflare's API, and configures email through the EP Mailgun plugins.

If "bash commands" and "edit the Nginx vhost" made your eyes glaze over, you are the reason this section exists. Claude Code is a command-line tool from Anthropic that SSHes into your Vultr box, runs every command in this guide, and explains each step in plain English as it goes. You do not need to understand the commands. You need to know what you want: PageMotor running at your domain, with SSL, on a fresh box.

Before Claude Code takes over: 7 manual steps

1. Buy a domain if you do not have one. Any registrar works; we recommend Cloudflare (free DNS, wholesale renewals, Claude-Code-manageable). Full setup is in the Cloudflare DNS guide. You need to be able to edit the DNS A record.
2. Install Claude Code on your Mac from claude.com/claude-code. Free to install; you pay only for Anthropic API usage, a few pence for this setup.
3. Generate an SSH key, one time ever: ssh-keygen -t ed25519, then press Enter three times. Your public key is at ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub.
4. Sign up for Vultr and provision the VPS via our referral link ($300 credit). Use the choices in the "Sign up" tab. Paste your SSH public key (cat ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.pub | pbcopy) into the SSH Keys field during signup.
5. Note the VPS IP address once provisioning finishes (30 to 60 seconds). You need it for the next step and the prompt.
6. Point your domain's A record at the VPS IP. Set it DNS only (grey cloud) if on Cloudflare, so certbot can issue SSL without obstruction. Quick check: dig yoursite.com +short should return the VPS IP. Claude Code can do this for you if it has Cloudflare API access.
7. Download the PageMotor 0.8.3b core ZIP from the forum download area, unzip to somewhere easy like ~/Downloads/pagemotor-0.8.3b/, and note the path. It should contain pagemotor.php, index.php, lib/, config-sample.php and license.txt.

The prompt (copy, paste, edit three lines)

Open Claude Code in Terminal, paste this, edit the three bracketed placeholders, then hit Enter and watch it run.

I have a fresh Ubuntu 24.04 VPS at [VPS_IP_FROM_VULTR].
I can SSH as root using my ed25519 key at ~/.ssh/id_ed25519.

My domain is [yoursite.com]. The A record already points at the VPS IP.

My PageMotor 0.8.3b core files are in [~/Downloads/pagemotor-0.8.3b/].
The folder contains pagemotor.php, index.php, lib/, config-sample.php, license.txt.

Please follow the "From empty box to live PageMotor" procedure at
https://documentation.elmspark.com/hosting/vultr/

Do this end-to-end:
1. Bootstrap the server (nginx, PHP 8.3 FPM with required extensions,
   MariaDB, certbot, fail2ban, UFW allowing only 22/80/443, and
   unattended-upgrades for automatic security patches)
2. Configure a fail2ban [sshd] jail and confirm it is active
3. Run mysql_secure_installation (set root auth, remove anonymous users
   and the test database, disallow remote root) and confirm MariaDB
   listens only on localhost
4. Configure MariaDB to default to utf8mb4
5. At an interactive mariadb prompt (never put the DB password on the
   shell command line), create the database and a dedicated DB user
   scoped to it
6. Upload my PageMotor 0.8.3b core to /var/www/mysite on the VPS,
   create user-content subfolders, set ownership to www-data,
   755 directories / 644 files (no 777 or 775; www-data owns the tree)
7. Write config.php with my four database constants:
   DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD and DB_HOST (localhost). Leave the rest blank.
8. Create the Nginx vhost with fastcgi_read_timeout 600,
   client_max_body_size 64M, and the /lib/ php denial rule
9. Set PHP max_execution_time to 300 and memory_limit to 256M
10. Run certbot --nginx for SSL, then verify renewal with
    certbot renew --dry-run and confirm the certbot timer is active
11. Verify the Nginx config is valid and services are running
12. Hit the homepage once with curl to trigger PageMotor's first-load
    table creation
13. Confirm the tables exist in the database

Stop after step 13. Do NOT register an admin account. Do NOT install
EP plugins. I will register via /admin/ in a browser, then ask you to
install plugins as a separate next task.

Rules:
- Tell me what you are about to do before doing it
- Show me the output of each step
- Stop on any error and ask me before continuing
- British English (organise, behaviour, colour)
- No em dashes in any file you write. Use commas or full stops.
- Ask before anything destructive

What to edit: [VPS_IP_FROM_VULTR] with your VPS IP; [yoursite.com] with your domain (appears twice); [~/Downloads/pagemotor-0.8.3b/] with the path where you unzipped the core.

After the prompt finishes

1. Open https://yoursite.com/admin/ in your browser.
2. Register your first account. Whoever registers first becomes the administrator.
3. Come back to Claude Code and paste the plugins prompt below.

Please install EP Email, EP Newsletter, EP Email Mailgun, EP Newsletter Mailgun,
EP GDPR, EP Password Reset, EP Diagnostics and EP Assistant on yoursite.com.
Then configure EP Email to send through Mailgun: set the Email Transport to
Mailgun EU (api.eu.mailgun.net, GDPR-clean routing) using my Mailgun sending
key [paste-sending-key] and sending domain mg.yoursite.com.

From empty box to live PageMotor, by hand

Using the Claude Code prompt? You can skip this. This documents the exact sequence Claude Code runs, kept here for transparency and for anyone who prefers to do it themselves. About 30 minutes once DNS has propagated.

apt update && apt upgrade -y
apt install -y nginx php8.3-fpm php8.3-mysql php8.3-curl php8.3-gd \
  php8.3-mbstring php8.3-xml php8.3-zip php8.3-intl php8.3-bcmath \
  php8.3-opcache mariadb-server certbot python3-certbot-nginx \
  fail2ban ufw unattended-upgrades unzip

# Confirm PageMotor's required PHP extensions
php -m | grep -iE 'mysqli|mbstring|curl|zip|fileinfo|openssl'

# Turn on automatic security updates
dpkg-reconfigure -plow unattended-upgrades

ufw allow OpenSSH
ufw allow 'Nginx Full'
ufw enable

cat > /etc/fail2ban/jail.local <<'EOF'
[sshd]
enabled = true
maxretry = 5
bantime = 1h
EOF
systemctl enable --now fail2ban
fail2ban-client status sshd

[mysqld]
character-set-server = utf8mb4
collation-server = utf8mb4_unicode_ci

[client]
default-character-set = utf8mb4

mariadb -u root -p

CREATE DATABASE mysite_pm CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
CREATE USER 'mysite_db'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'your-strong-password';
GRANT ALL ON mysite_pm.* TO 'mysite_db'@'localhost';
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;
EXIT;

mkdir -p /var/www/mysite
cd /var/www/mysite
# Copy pagemotor.php, index.php and lib/ from your local core
mkdir -p user-content/{themes,plugins,images,uploads,css,tmp,logs}

chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/mysite
find /var/www/mysite -type d -exec chmod 755 {} \;
find /var/www/mysite -type f -exec chmod 644 {} \;
# setgid so files created later keep the www-data group
find /var/www/mysite/user-content -type d -exec chmod g+s {} \;

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name yoursite.com;
    root /var/www/mysite;
    index index.php index.html;

    fastcgi_read_timeout 600;
    proxy_read_timeout 600;
    send_timeout 600;
    client_max_body_size 64M;

    add_header X-Content-Type-Options nosniff;
    add_header X-Frame-Options SAMEORIGIN;

    location / { try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string; }
    location ~ \.php$ {
        include snippets/fastcgi-php.conf;
        fastcgi_pass unix:/run/php/php8.3-fpm.sock;
        fastcgi_read_timeout 600;
    }
    location ~ ^/lib/.*\.(js|css|woff|woff2|ttf|eot|svg|png|jpg|gif)$ {
        try_files $uri =404;
    }
    location ~ ^/lib/.*\.php$ { deny all; }
    location ~ /\.(ht|git|env) { deny all; }
}

ln -s /etc/nginx/sites-available/mysite /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/
nginx -t && systemctl reload nginx

max_execution_time = 300
memory_limit = 256M
upload_max_filesize = 64M
post_max_size = 64M

certbot --nginx -d yoursite.com
systemctl list-timers | grep certbot
certbot renew --dry-run

Settings people forget (and later regret)

• fastcgi_read_timeout 600 or higher. Default 60 kills AI plugins mid-call.
• max_execution_time = 300. Match PHP to Nginx or expect 504s.
• MariaDB character-set-server = utf8mb4. Without it, emojis corrupt silently.
• UFW before anything else. A new server gets scanned within minutes.
• Run mysql_secure_installation. A default install leaves an open test database and anonymous users.
• Enable the fail2ban [sshd] jail. The package installs inactive.
• ed25519 keys, then harden login. Set PasswordAuthentication no and PermitRootLogin prohibit-password, then reload ssh.
• unattended-upgrades on. A one-time apt upgrade is not enough for a box that lives for years.
• opcache on. Default on Ubuntu 24.04; verify with php -m | grep -i opcache. 3 to 5 times the page speed for free.

Email: Mailgun (recommended)

Vultr gives you the box, not email, and it blocks outbound port 25, so traditional SMTP is out anyway. Mailgun is the production recommendation across both EP Email (transactional) and EP Newsletter (campaigns), via the EP Email Mailgun and EP Newsletter Mailgun driver plugins.

• The port-25 block does not matter. The drivers POST to Mailgun's HTTPS API on port 443, not SMTP.
• EU region for GDPR. Pick Mailgun EU (api.eu.mailgun.net) for EU and UK audiences. The region is locked per domain for life, so choose it when you create the domain. North America picks Mailgun US (api.mailgun.net).
• Free to start. 100 emails a day with one verified custom sending domain, no card.

What to add in Cloudflare

For the mg.yourdomain.com subdomain, all set DNS only (grey cloud), never the orange proxy:

• One SPF TXT record at mg.yourdomain.com
• Two DKIM CNAME records at pdk1._domainkey.mg… and pdk2._domainkey.mg…
• One tracking CNAME at email.mg…
• The two MX records only if you want Mailgun to receive mail (you usually do not, and never on the apex)

For the full end-to-end walkthrough (signup, region, DNS, DKIM activation, sending key, inbox-placement verification), follow the dedicated Set up reliable email with Mailgun guide.