Prepare your laptop

Before you order a server, get your Mac in order. This page makes sure the site builds from nothing, shows you what you are about to ship, checks that the project folder is backed up (it is the only original of the site), and sets ssh on this Mac to keep passphrases in the Keychain. No SSH key is made here: the next page makes one for the server, right before the OVH order form.

Before you start

You need Node 22 with npm. Everything on this page runs in Terminal on your Mac, in the project folder ~/sites/example.com/src.

$node -v
$npm -v

$node -v | cut -d. -f1

v22

Let macOS remember SSH passphrases

No SSH key on this page: the next page makes one for the server, with a passphrase, right before the order form. What you set now is how this Mac handles that passphrase, so that you type it once and not at every connection. Copy the command and paste it in the terminal: it adds a Host * block at the end of ~/.ssh/config, and creates the file if it does not exist.

$mkdir -p ~/.ssh && chmod 700 ~/.ssh
$cat >> ~/.ssh/config <<'EOF'
$
$Host *
$  AddKeysToAgent yes
$  UseKeychain yes
$EOF
$chmod 600 ~/.ssh/config

$vim ~/.ssh/config

$grep -q 'UseKeychain yes' ~/.ssh/config && echo keychain OK

keychain OK

Check the build from scratch

A build that works on your machine can depend on a stale node_modules or a leftover .next cache. Remove both, reinstall from the lockfile, and build:

$cd ~/sites/example.com/src && rm -rf node_modules .next out
$npm ci
$npm run build

$cd ~/sites/example.com/src && test -f out/index.html && test -f out/404.html && echo build OK

build OK

Know what you ship

out/ is exactly what the server will hold. Look at its size and at the heaviest files in it:

$du -sh out
$find out -type f -size +20M -exec du -h {} +

These files deploy fine as they are. Nothing to compress or move today:

• The first deploy (page 6) uploads everything once; a few hundred megabytes take minutes on a home connection.
• Every later deploy sends only the files that changed, so an unchanged 55 MB WAV costs nothing after the first time.
• The VPS disk (40 GB on the smallest OVH plan) holds dozens of releases of a site this size.

What those files cost your visitors (a 55 MB download on a phone) is a separate question, handled on the launch checklist (page 8).

Back up the project folder

There is no other copy of this site. The folder ~/sites/example.com/src holds the only original of the source and of the media; photos-26-og/ holds the only originals of the photos (276 MB of HEIC and MOV). The server will only ever hold built copies, which cannot be turned back into the project.

Time Machine is the simplest backup on a Mac. Check that a destination is set up and when it last ran:

$tmutil destinationinfo
$tmutil latestbackup

Then make sure the project folder is not excluded (excluding big folders is a common way to save backup space):

$tmutil isexcluded ~/sites/example.com/src

$tmutil isexcluded ~/sites/example.com/src

[Included]

Done

The site builds from an empty folder, you know what out/ weighs and which files make it heavy, the project folder is covered by a backup, and ssh on your Mac keeps passphrases in the Keychain.

Next page: Order the VPS at OVH, where you make the server's SSH key right before the order form, then paste its public half into it.