After hearing a lot of good things about Servers for Hackers by @fideloper I joined the mailing list, and then recently started the ebook. You should really at least check out the articles on the site, if not grab the ebook and related materials.

Just to get this out of the way – “hackers” in this context aren’t nefarious denizens of the net causing untold damage. It’s just regular people, getting things to work.

Considering it is covering what many (even web-designers / -developers) find a “scary” topic, it deals with setting up servers clearly and logically, making it very accessible. It’s also presented nicely which always helps. I cna honestly say it is one of the most accessible technical books I have read.

What’s more it covers the topics you really need, including:

• Securing SSH
• Firewall (IPtables) configuration
• Serving sites using Apache and Nginx
• Load balancing with HAProxy
• MySQL replication
• SSL certificates
• Tools to make life easier – Vagrant, Ansible, Supervisord

As Chris says “Don’t catch Accidental Sysadmin Syndrome™” – check it out now.