VPS Hosting (DigitalOcean & Apache)

1. Create the Droplet

From the DigitalOcean control panel, click Create → Droplets and configure:

Click Create Droplet and note the public IPv4 address once it boots (usually under a minute).

2. Point your domain at it

In your domain registrar or DNS provider, create an A record for your domain (and www, if you want both) pointing at the Droplet's IP address:

Type    Name    Value              TTL
A       @       143.198.xxx.xxx    3600
A       www     143.198.xxx.xxx    3600

DNS propagation is usually quick but can take up to a few hours depending on your registrar. You can start the server setup below immediately — you don't need to wait for DNS to resolve until the SSL step.

3. First login & basic hardening

1. SSH in as root

   From your local terminal:

   ssh root@YOUR_DROPLET_IP

2. Update the system

   apt update && apt upgrade -y

3. Create a non-root sudo user

   Running everything as root long-term is a bad habit — create a dedicated user for day-to-day work:

   adduser deploy
   usermod -aG sudo deploy

   Log out and back in as deploy for the rest of this guide (ssh deploy@YOUR_DROPLET_IP), prefixing commands with sudo where needed.

4. Enable the firewall

   Allow only what's needed — SSH and web traffic:

   sudo ufw allow OpenSSH
   sudo ufw allow "WWW Full"
   sudo ufw enable

   "WWW Full" is Apache's UFW application profile covering both port 80 (HTTP) and 443 (HTTPS) — it registers itself automatically once Apache is installed in the next step, so this command only needs to run after that.

4. Install Apache, PHP & MySQL

Ubuntu's default repositories lag behind the PHP version MoneyMate needs, so add Ondřej Surý's well-known PHP PPA first:

sudo apt install -y software-properties-common
sudo add-apt-repository -y ppa:ondrej/php
sudo apt update

Then install Apache, PHP 8.3, every extension the installer's requirements check verifies, plus GD (avatars/image handling) and ZIP (report/data exports):

sudo apt install -y apache2 mysql-server \
  php8.3 libapache2-mod-php8.3 php8.3-cli \
  php8.3-mysql php8.3-mbstring php8.3-xml php8.3-curl \
  php8.3-bcmath php8.3-gd php8.3-zip php8.3-intl unzip

Enable the two Apache modules the application relies on and restart:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo systemctl restart apache2

Finally, secure the fresh MySQL installation (sets a root password, removes anonymous users and the test database):

sudo mysql_secure_installation

5. Create the database

Log into MySQL as root and create a dedicated database and user for the application:

sudo mysql -u root -p

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

Keep the database name, username, and password handy — you'll enter them into the installer's Database step shortly.

6. Upload & extract the application

The zip archive is roughly 40–45MB. Any of the three methods below gets it onto the server — pick whichever you're most comfortable with.

Option A — scp (simplest, one command)

From your local machine (not the server), copy the zip archive up over SSH:

scp moneymate.zip deploy@YOUR_DROPLET_IP:/home/deploy/

This reuses the same SSH key you set up when creating the Droplet — no separate password or configuration needed. Watch for it to report 100% before moving on.

Option B — rsync (resumable, better for slow connections)

If your upload is large relative to your connection or you want to retry a dropped transfer without starting over:

rsync -avz --progress moneymate.zip deploy@YOUR_DROPLET_IP:/home/deploy/

Re-running the exact same command after an interruption picks up where it left off instead of re-uploading from scratch.

Option C — SFTP with a GUI client

If you'd rather drag-and-drop with FileZilla, Cyberduck, or Transmit, connect using:

Upload the single zip file into /home/deploy/, then extract it on the server via SSH as below — dragging the ~12,000 individual extracted files through an SFTP client instead would take dramatically longer than uploading one archive and unzipping it server-side.

Extract it

Back on the server (over SSH), first make sure there's enough disk space and the archive isn't corrupted from the transfer:

df -h /var/www
unzip -t /home/deploy/moneymate.zip | tail -1

unzip -t tests every file in the archive without extracting anything — it should end with No errors detected in compressed data. Then extract into /var/www, the standard location for web applications on a Debian/Ubuntu box:

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/moneymate
sudo unzip -q /home/deploy/moneymate.zip -d /var/www/moneymate
sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/moneymate

Once you've confirmed the extraction, delete the zip to reclaim the disk space:

rm /home/deploy/moneymate.zip

7. Configure the Apache virtual host

Create a new site configuration pointing straight at the project's public folder — the correct, clean document root, no .htaccess redirect trick required:

sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/moneymate.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
    ServerName yourdomain.com
    ServerAlias www.yourdomain.com
    DocumentRoot /var/www/moneymate/public

    <Directory /var/www/moneymate/public>
        Options -Indexes +FollowSymLinks
        AllowOverride All
        Require all granted
    </Directory>

    ErrorLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/moneymate-error.log
    CustomLog ${APACHE_LOG_DIR}/moneymate-access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Enable the site and disable Apache's default placeholder page:

sudo a2ensite moneymate.conf
sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf
sudo systemctl reload apache2

8. File permissions

Laravel needs write access to two folders. Since the application already runs as www-data (set in step 6), this is usually already correct — but confirm and lock down the mode explicitly:

sudo chown -R www-data:www-data /var/www/moneymate/storage /var/www/moneymate/bootstrap/cache
sudo chmod -R 775 /var/www/moneymate/storage /var/www/moneymate/bootstrap/cache

9. Enable SSL with Certbot

Free, auto-renewing Let's Encrypt certificates via Certbot's Apache plugin — requires your DNS A record (step 2) to already be resolving to this server:

sudo apt install -y certbot python3-certbot-apache
sudo certbot --apache -d yourdomain.com -d www.yourdomain.com

Certbot edits your virtual host to redirect HTTP → HTTPS automatically and installs a systemd timer that renews the certificate before it expires — nothing further to do. Confirm the timer is active:

sudo systemctl status certbot.timer

10. Run the installer

Visit your domain in a browser and follow the Installation & Setup wizard, using the database credentials from step 5.

11. Set up the cron job (required)

MoneyMate's scheduled tasks — daily budget-threshold checks, due-date reminders, recurring-transaction processing, net worth snapshots, the weekly digest email, and package grace-period sweeps — all run through Laravel's scheduler, which needs exactly one cron entry to drive it. Edit the crontab for the www-data user (the same user the application runs as):

sudo crontab -u www-data -e

Add this line, running every minute:

* * * * * php /var/www/moneymate/artisan schedule:run >> /dev/null 2>&1

12. Queue worker with Supervisor (recommended)

Notification emails (budget alerts, due reminders, the weekly digest, AI-action completion) are queued jobs, not sent inline, so a real request never waits on an outgoing email. Unlike shared cPanel hosting, a VPS can run a genuine persistent php artisan queue:work process — Supervisor keeps it alive and restarts it automatically if it ever crashes.

1. Install Supervisor

   sudo apt install -y supervisor

2. Create a worker config

   sudo nano /etc/supervisor/conf.d/moneymate-worker.conf

   [program:moneymate-worker]
   process_name=%(program_name)s_%(process_num)02d
   command=php /var/www/moneymate/artisan queue:work --sleep=3 --tries=3 --max-time=3600
   autostart=true
   autorestart=true
   stopasgroup=true
   killasgroup=true
   user=www-data
   numprocs=1
   redirect_stderr=true
   stdout_logfile=/var/www/moneymate/storage/logs/worker.log
   stopwaitsecs=3600

3. Start it

   sudo supervisorctl reread
   sudo supervisorctl update
   sudo supervisorctl start moneymate-worker:*

   Check it's running with sudo supervisorctl status — you should see moneymate-worker:moneymate-worker_00 as RUNNING.

After launch

• Confirm the cron ran by checking Site Settings → Activity Log or /var/log/syslog after a few minutes.
• If you set up the queue worker, watch storage/logs/worker.log while sending a test email to confirm it's actually processing jobs.
• Send yourself a test budget-threshold alert, or use the "Send test email" action in SMTP Settings, to confirm mail delivery end-to-end.
• If Stripe is configured, add your webhook endpoint (https://yourdomain.com/stripe/webhook) in the Stripe Dashboard so subscription events reach the application.
• Consider enabling DigitalOcean's automated Droplet backups (or your own mysqldump cron) before real customer data accumulates.