Installing AsomeCMS on a $5 VPS

AsomeCMS happily runs on a 1GB RAM VPS — the kind you can rent for $5/month from any hosting provider. Here is how to get from a fresh Ubuntu install to a live site in about 30 minutes.

Start with a minimal Ubuntu 22.04 droplet. Install PHP 8.2 with the required extensions, MariaDB, Composer, and nginx. Apt has packages for all of this — there is no PPA dance and no compiling from source.

Create a database, clone the AsomeCMS repo into /var/www, run composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader, and copy .env.local with your DATABASE_URL. Point nginx at the public/ directory with a standard Symfony config and reload.

Open your domain in a browser. The web installer takes over from here — checks PHP, runs migrations, asks for your admin email and password, writes the lockfile. Five clicks and you are done.

You now have a self-hosted CMS running on hardware that costs less than a coffee. No subscription. No tier limits. No surprise bills the month a post goes viral. Just a server you own.