On Sun, 2014-12-21 at 15:34 -0600, Keith Smith wrote:

I was not able to shell into the server and found SSH had not been 
installed.  I was surprised.  I installed SSHD and now I can access the 
box via the shell.

The default policy for Ubuntu is "no ports open" which basically is a means to ensure a new install is "somewhat secure." I believe that the server edition is slightly different there, and certainly the cloud images are as well. But that's the basic idea. Limited surface area by default to target.

So my main question is, am I going about this correctly or am I not 
understanding the difference between Ubuntu and RHEL?

I think that building a new user is unnecessary for what you're doing (from the limited info here). Many of the packages in Ubuntu (web server being one) automatically builds a new user and runs things under that user (I believe it's "httpd") which is probably what you want. In general, that's a good idea, so it has been incorporated into the package itself.

But, all in all, not a server guy :-) Hope that helps some.

Ted