Steps to setup a VPS for general web stuff

VPS

In these examples my username is k
* Gain ssh access via "serial console" in the control pannel for one hour.
* Change root password with control pannel.
* useradd -s /bin/bash -m -d /home/k -g ssh k

on local machine:
* ssh-keygen -t rsa
* cat ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

on remote (as root):
* mkdir -p /home/k/.ssh && vim /home/k/.ssh/authorized_keys
* (paste key and save)
* vim /etc/ssh/sshd_config
* Add or uncomment this to the file and save it.
* PasswordAuthentication no
* restart ssh
* apt-get update
* apt-get install -y sudo
* usermod -a -G sudo k
* visudo
* add this to the top of the file
* Defaults rootpw
* Defaults:k timestamp_timeout=-1
* now to fix the locale shit:
* sh -c "echo 'LC_ALL=en_AU.UTF-8\nLANG=en_AU.UTF-8' >> /etc/default/environment"

Now you can exit, logout, and login without no password as non root user only from your computer. 
* shh k@ip
* sudo apt-get install -y git man npm nodejs-legacy curl
* sudo chown k .ssh/
* ssh-keygen -t rsa
* cat .ssh/id_rsa.pub
* copy and paste key into https://github.com/settings/ssh
* git config --global user.name "Karlgl"
* git config --global user.email "kg@papercloud.com.au"

Install Rails
* sudo apt-get install -y bundler postgresql libpq-dev
* sudo su postgres
* LC_ALL=C
* createuser k -d -S -R

Repo specific stuff
* git clone git@github.com:KarlGl/SmsHour.git
* sudo npm install gulp -g
* npm install
* nohup gulp server &

Static file server
* apt-get install -y git nginx
* mkdir ~/www
* sudo vim /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/default
* scroll down within 'server' after 'location / {' add these lines:
* root /home/k/www;
can add backend services in here too, so that the frontend can request them over 80 with ajax... rewrite command will not pass the "sms_hour_backend" to the app as part of its path.
```
location /sms_hour_backend {
          proxy_pass http://localhost:3000;
          rewrite /sms_hour_backend/(.*) /$1  break;
        }
```

* save and exit vim
* sudo nginx -s reload
* now can see any files in the www folder from a web browser