The 3 Things That Trip Up Every VPS Beginner (And How to Handle Each One)

Setting up a VPS for the first time is manageable — until you hit one of three walls. Here's what they are and exactly how to get past each one.

Wall 1: UFW Firewall

Most tutorials tell you to run ufw enable and move on. The part they skip: what to allow first.

If you enable UFW before allowing SSH, you lock yourself out of your own server.

Safe sequence:

ufw allow 22      # SSH — do this FIRST
ufw allow 80      # HTTP
ufw allow 443     # HTTPS
ufw enable        # now enable it
ufw status        # verify

That's it. Everything not on this list is blocked. An open VPS gets port-scanned within hours of provisioning — don't skip this step.

Wall 2: nginx Reverse Proxy

Your Node.js app runs on port 3000. Visitors come in on port 80. nginx is the bridge between them.

The config that makes this work:

server {
    listen 80;
    server_name your-domain.com;

    location / {
        proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection 'upgrade';
        proxy_set_header Host $host;
        proxy_cache_bypass $http_upgrade;
    }
}

Save this to /etc/nginx/sites-available/myapp, symlink it to sites-enabled, test with nginx -t, reload with systemctl reload nginx. That's the full flow.

Wall 3: PM2 (The One Everyone Forgets)

If you start your app with node app.js and close the terminal — app is gone. If the server reboots — app is gone.

PM2 fixes this:

npm install -g pm2
pm2 start app.js --name myapp
pm2 startup        # generates a command — run it
pm2 save           # saves the process list for reboot

Two commands most people miss: pm2 startup and pm2 save. Without both, your app won't survive a reboot.

Putting It All Together with Claude Code

If you want to see these three things handled automatically on a fresh VPS, I put together a full walkthrough where Claude Code does the entire setup from one SSH prompt — including the firewall, reverse proxy, and PM2 config.

Full guide: ayyaztech.com/blog/hostinger-vps-setup-claude-code

Video walkthrough: youtu.be/AX9Wp_YxTpU