NextCloud on your shared VPS

Nextcloud is a suite of client-server software for creating and using file hosting services. It is functionally similar to Dropbox, although Nextcloud is free and open-source, allowing anyone to install and operate it on a private server.

In contrast to proprietary services like Dropbox, the open architecture allows adding additional functionality to the server in form of applications and enables the user to have full control of their data.

The original ownCloud developer Frank Karlitschek forked ownCloud and created Nextcloud, which continues to be actively developed by Karlitschek and other members of the original ownCloud team.

Assumptions

your server is example.com and it is running Ubuntu 16.04;
you already have a configured subdomain in the dns: nextcloud.example.com;
your sudo user is admin;
the user you want to create for NextCloud is nextcloud;
the database main user is root and the password is mysqlpassword;
the database you will use is named nextclouddbwith the user nextclouddbuser with the password password

Create a new user and add it to Apache group

sudo adduser nextcloud
sudo usermod -a -G www-data nextcloud

Create the virtualhost for Apache

Apache specials

Please be sure to have an Apache configuration similar to what the following commands give:

sudo a2enmod rewrite
sudo a2enmod headers
sudo a2enmod env
sudo a2enmod dir
sudo a2enmod mime
sudo a2enmod ssl
sudo a2ensite default-ssl
sudo service apache2 restart

Actually creating the host

su - nextcloud
cd ~
mkdir public_html
chmod 755 ./public_html
exit
sudo chgrp -R www-data /home/nextcloud/public_html
sudo chmod -R g+w /home/nextcloud/public_html
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.example.com.conf

<VirtualHost *:80>
  <Directory "/home/nextcloud/public_html">
    Allow from all
    Options +Indexes
    <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
      RewriteEngine On
      RewriteBase /
      AllowOverride All
    </IfModule>
    
    <IfModule mod_dav.c>
      Dav off
    </IfModule>
  </Directory>

  DocumentRoot /home/nextcloud/public_html
  ServerName nextcloud.example.com
  
  SetEnv HOME /home/nextcloud/public_html
  SetEnv HTTP_HOME /home/nextcloud/public_html
</VirtualHost>

sudo a2ensite nextcloud.example.com.conf
sudo service apache2 reload

Create the database

mysql -uroot -pmysqlpassword -e "CREATE DATABASE nextclouddb /*\!40100 DEFAULT CHARACTER SET utf8 */;"
mysql -uroot -pmysqlpassword -e "CREATE USER nextclouddbuser@localhost IDENTIFIED BY 'password';"
mysql -uroot -pmysqlpassword -e "GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON nextclouddb.* TO 'nextclouddbuser'@'localhost';"
mysql -uroot -pmysqlpassword -e "FLUSH PRIVILEGES;"
sudo nano /etc/mysql/my.cnf
Add binlog-format = MIXED

Install other packages

sudo apt-get install apache2 mariadb-server libapache2-mod-php7.0
sudo apt-get install php7.0-gd php7.0-json php7.0-mysql php7.0-curl php7.0-mbstring
sudo apt-get install php7.0-intl php7.0-mcrypt php-imagick php7.0-xml php7.0-zip
sudo apt-get install unzip

NextCloud

sudo su - nextcloud
cd ~/public_html
wget https://download.nextcloud.com/server/releases/latest-13.tar.bz2 -O nextcloud-13-latest.tar.bz2
tar -xvjf nextcloud-13-latest.tar.bz2
rm nextcloud-13-latest.tar.bz2
cd nextcloud
mv ./* ../
cd ..
rm -rf nextcould
sudo chmod 0770 /home/nexcloud/public_html/data

Access http://nextcloud.example.com to finish the setup. Also, be sure to check:

https://docs.nextcloud.com/server/13/admin_manual/maintenance/backup.html

Also, do remember to check the firewall rules.

Activate SSL

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:certbot/certbot
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install python-certbot-apache
sudo certbot --apache -d nextcloud.example.com
sudo su - nextcloud
nano /home/nextcoud/public_html/config/config.php
Change the option for overwrite.cli.url from http:// to https://

Activate opcache

sudo su - nextcloud
nano /home/nextcloud/php.ini
opcache.enable=1 opcache.enable_cli=1 opcache.interned_strings_buffer=8 opcache.max_accelerated_files=10000 opcache.memory_consumption=128 opcache.save_comments=1 opcache.revalidate_freq=1
Ctrl+x and Y to save
exit
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.example.com.conf
add PHPINIDir /home/nextcloud below the ServerName line
sudo nano /etc/apache2/sites-available/nextcloud.example.com-le-ssl.conf