# Installing Discourse on a self hosted VPS. A process with FAQs

**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-discourse-on-a-self-hosted-vps-a-process-with-faqs/407922
**Category:** Self-hosting
**Tags:** email, login, install, domains, hosting
**Created:** [17 ביולי,‏ 2026,‏ 10:51pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-discourse-on-a-self-hosted-vps-a-process-with-faqs/407922 "2026-07-17T22:51:08Z")
**Posts on this page:** 1
**Showing post:** 14

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### Author: ![Ed\_S](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/ed_s/32/134015_2.png) [@Ed\_S](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Ed_S)
#### Post date: [20 ביולי,‏ 2026,‏ 5:16am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/installing-discourse-on-a-self-hosted-vps-a-process-with-faqs/407922/14 "2026-07-20T05:16:57Z")

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Personally, I’ve never used snapshots. (I think they are an extra-cost item, and I’m not certain of their usefulness when there’s a live database running.)

The way I think about backup frequency, is how would I feel at the time I need to restore the backup? If I’d lost a month’s worth of member conversations and contributions? That would feel pretty bad. I had a responsibility to the community, and I allowed their work to be lost.

Against that, if I’m running in a limited disk-space situation, I want to balance the disk use. What I’ve done in practice, and I should probably review this, is to backup every two days and retain four backups. One of my moderator team automatically pulls a copy of the backup directory every night, so we have an offsite copy. We stand to lose half a week of contributions, in the case of disaster.

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