{"id":1895,"date":"2015-06-28T12:49:56","date_gmt":"2015-06-28T12:49:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/?p=1895"},"modified":"2015-08-01T08:21:09","modified_gmt":"2015-08-01T08:21:09","slug":"how-to-get-your-mean-stack-up-and-running-in-less-than-a-minute","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nikola-breznjak.com\/blog\/codeproject\/how-to-get-your-mean-stack-up-and-running-in-less-than-a-minute\/","title":{"rendered":"How to get your MEAN stack up and running in less than a minute"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the past year I’ve tried lots of options for hosting my MEAN applications, and finally I’ve settled for DigitalOcean<\/a>. It’s true what they advertise – that you can have a SSD cloud server up and running in less than 55 seconds. However, you don’t have to go spending your hard earned cash just yet – I have a special deal with DigitalOcean<\/a> and you can signup via this link<\/a> and get 10$ immediately, which will be enough for 2 full months of non stop server running. They even provide you with API\u00a0so that you can control your\u00a0server, and this tutorial<\/a> shows you how.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to make it look like I\u2019m pushing you on\u00a0DigitalOcean\u00a0– you can sign up with someone else if you like, I just recommend them because I had a good experience with them in the past and because it’s so easy to get a MEAN stack all pre-installed (more on this in a bit) and ready for use.<\/em><\/p>\n

Create a droplet<\/h4>\n

Once you complete the sign up on\u00a0DigitalOcean<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0you will be presented with a similar screen, as show on the image below, where you have to click on the Create Droplet<\/strong> button:<\/p>\n

\"DO_1_createDroplet\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Next, you have to\u00a0name your droplet<\/strong> (cool name the folks at DigitalOcean chose to call their server instances) and select the size (the smallest one will be just fine here), just as it’s shown on the image below:<\/p>\n

\"DO_2_nameAndSize\"<\/a><\/p>\n

After this, you have to choose a region, as shown on the image below. Naturally, you’ll want to choose some location which is closer to your targeted audience.<\/p>\n

\"DO_3_region\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now comes the most awesome part. In Select Image<\/strong> section you have tons of options ranging from the barebones distributions (Centos, Ubuntu, Debian, etc.), to the pre-built stacks (LAMP, LEMP, WordPress, ROR, MEAN, etc.) like shown on the image below. Here you have to choose the MEAN on 14.04 option (YMMV<\/a> on the exact number), and this is awesome because with this droplet you won’t have to go through the hassle of installing Node.js, Express and MongoDB as we did in the first tutorial<\/a> – it will be already done and waiting for you! B-E-A-utiful<\/a>!<\/p>\n

\"DO_4_image\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Then, just wait a few seconds and your droplet will be ready:<\/p>\n

\"DO_5_waiting\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You’ll be redirected to the dashboard (once the droplet is created) which will look something like the image below:<\/p>\n

\"DO_6_created\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Connect to the droplet<\/h4>\n

On your email address you will receive instructions which will look something like on the image below:<\/p>\n

\"DO_7_email\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Now, using\u00a0a SSH client of your choice (I’m currently on Windows so not much leeway here :)) connect to the droplet. The image below shows the setting from the Putty<\/a> SSH client on Windows:<\/p>\n

\"DO_8_putty_2\"<\/a><\/p>\n

You have to connect with the root<\/strong> user and the password that was emailed to you. However, immediately upon logging in you will get a notification that you have to change the root’s password, as shown on the image below:<\/p>\n

\"DO_9_rootLogin\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Create a new user<\/h4>\n

Using root user\u00a0in linux is bad practice, so now you’re going to create a new user with the following command:<\/p>\n

useradd nikola<\/pre>\n
Of course, you can use any username you want. After this add the\u00a0user to the sudo<\/strong> group by executing the following command:<\/p>\n
gpasswd -a nikola sudo<\/pre>\n
The sudo group enables the user nikola to use\u00a0the\u00a0sudo command when using some commands that are restricted to root user. You can learn more about sudo here<\/a>. The image below shows the example of the commands I just listed:<\/p>\n
\"DO_10_userAdd\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Run<\/h3>\n
Now just run<\/p>\n
grunt<\/pre>\n
and if you visit your ip address on port 3000<\/strong> you should see:<\/p>\n
\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n
What you now have running is a well known MEAN.js<\/a> framework. You may have also heard about MEAN.io<\/a> and you can learn about the difference in my post about MEAN.io vs MEAN.js<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n
Use your own domain<\/h4>\n
In case you bought (or have somewhere hanging in the closet from the 90’s .com boom<\/a>) a domain that you would like to use to point to your droplet you have to go to the DNS<\/strong>\u00a0settings and add a domain like shown on the image below:<\/p>\n
\"DO_11_DNS\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Also, in your domain registrar<\/a> (where you bought your domain – think Godaddy, Namecheap, Hostgator, etc.)\u00a0you have to set the corresponding nameservers to:<\/p>\n