Free hosting control panels. "Coin"
- Tutorial
There comes a time when virtual hosting is not enough and your project "requests" to the server. Not always for new tasks you will need a dedicated server immediately , but at least it’s worth starting with a virtual server . At the same time, many of you, in order to save some money, begin to look for a partner (s) for renting a more productive service. Also, one of the options for saving the budget is to use free software.
After all, not every one of you, for example, will be pleased to sit in the console and install the necessary software, or manage your sites through the same command line. At such moments, hosting control panels come to the aid of many webmasters, and how nice it is when this panel is precisely high-quality and free software. More recently, we have already talked about one free software product, but today we will talk about another interesting hosting control panel, namely the “coin” ...
I think many of you have guessed that we will talk about CentOS Web Panel (CWP). Unlike many other control panels, CWP will automatically deploy a full LAMP stack with caching at the web server level through Varnish Cache- This is a great solution for storing the "hot" cached content of your web pages in RAM. It will speed up your website, and at the same time reduce the load on the processor.
But back to the panel itself, before installing, I would like to highlight several of its main advantages:
You can find the full list of CentOS Web Panel features on the official website of the software product at the following link . As you can see, most commercial server and hosting management systems do not have such a wide range of capabilities, and what can we say about free products.
As for system requirements, according to the developers’s statement, we will need a server with at least 512 MB of RAM (for the 32-bit version of the OS) and the installed “coin”, namely CentOS 6.x. If you want to enjoy all the features of this panel, for example, such as anti-virus scanning of mail, then on board your “machine” should be at least 4 GB of RAM. CWP also supports operating systems such as RedHat 6.x and CloudLinux 6.x.
After the hosting provider has provided a server with CentOS, several useful steps must be taken before installing CWP. If you do not have the Wget utility installed - a console program for downloading files over the network, then we connect to the “machine” via SSH and enter the following command:
Next, update your server using the command:
And do not forget to restart the "machine" so that the changes take effect:
Now we are ready to install CentOS Web Panel. Go to the / usr / local / src directory:
Where to download the latest version of installation files:
If the main link does not work, then use the following command:
Then we launch the installation itself:
The installation process can last about 30 minutes, so calmly go to the kitchen for a cup of a good drink (everyone has their own tastes). As soon as the panel is installed in the console, you will see the following message:
Do not forget to save accesses, in particular, the MySQL superuser password. After, according to the instructions of the developers themselves, we reboot the server using the ENTER button. If this does not work, then use the reboot command, which we mentioned earlier. When you try to connect to the server again via SSH, you will see the CWP welcome screen, which will display brief information about registered users and the current situation of using disk space:
Let's go to the panel using our favorite browser, using one of the following links, the same accesses as to the server:
After successful authentication, we get to the Dashboard menu page, from here you can manage all the settings of the CWP panel. We will try to briefly talk about each block of the panel:
Next, we will configure a few basic parameters that we need to work with CWP. First, configure the name servers. To do this, go to the DNS Functions menu section and select the Edit Nameservers IPs item.
Specify your name servers and click the Save changes button. To read the DNS configuration instructions (BIND), use the following link , which is also available on the Edit Nameservers IPs page.
The next step is to configure the “shared” IP address and superuser mail - these are very important steps for placing sites on your server. As a rule, the IP server is already indicated, but to make sure of this, go to the CWP Settings menu section, and then select Edit Settings.
We see that the Shared IP field most likely contains the IP address of your “machine” (if it is not, then specify it), and in the Root Email field you need to specify your mail. After specifying all the necessary data, do not forget to click the Save changes button. Now CWP is ready to accept hosting sites.
You remember that the panel is able to provide hosting services. In CWP you have the opportunity to configure any number of tariff plans. To do this, go to the Packages menu section and select Add a Package. We fill in all the necessary fields according to the number of server resources that you are ready to provide your potential client, and as usual, do not forget to apply the changes - in this case, by clicking the Create button.
In order to add a domain to the panel, you must have at least one user account. Go to User Accounts, select New Account and create an account. I draw your attention to the fact that by default access to the shell is disabled for the newly created user. I advise you to think several times before activating this functionality to your customers. You can also set inode limits for each user here. After filling in all the fields, click the Create button.
Now let's add a new domain. To do this, go to the Domains menu section and select Add Domain. We specify the necessary domain, assign it to the appropriate user and fix all the actions with the Create button.
A standardly configured panel should consume a small amount of your server’s resources, let's check it out. To check the RAM consumption, connect to the server via SSH and enter the following command:
On the screen of our "typewriter" the following data was displayed:
I think you will have a similar result. As you can see from the total amount of RAM in 1 GB, about half is used - 522 MB, which is quite consistent with the statement of the developers. This resource consumption is quite low for hosting control panels.
Also, the default installation already contains the latest stable version of PHP with the Zend Optimizer application and the ionCube PHP Loader utility , which is easy to verify using the command:
You should see the following information in the console:
If you are loyal to CentOS and about $ 13 per month of your hosting budget (for comparison, we took the cost of the ISPmanager Business license ) we are ready to invest in hardware, not software, then you should like the CWP panel. Perhaps, right now you are thinking about launching your first hosting server, why not use these funds with licensed software to rent a more productive “machine”, and thereby make your potential customers a little happier. It's not always that free is bad. No need to be afraid of something new, at first glance unknown.
Test for health, and you will succeed!
To be continued…
After all, not every one of you, for example, will be pleased to sit in the console and install the necessary software, or manage your sites through the same command line. At such moments, hosting control panels come to the aid of many webmasters, and how nice it is when this panel is precisely high-quality and free software. More recently, we have already talked about one free software product, but today we will talk about another interesting hosting control panel, namely the “coin” ...
I think many of you have guessed that we will talk about CentOS Web Panel (CWP). Unlike many other control panels, CWP will automatically deploy a full LAMP stack with caching at the web server level through Varnish Cache- This is a great solution for storing the "hot" cached content of your web pages in RAM. It will speed up your website, and at the same time reduce the load on the processor.
Opportunities
But back to the panel itself, before installing, I would like to highlight several of its main advantages:
- by default, the ability to switch PHP versions is available - the administrator, on his side, can install the required version in a few clicks, and the user, in turn, can select the desired PHP revision for his sites;
- the panel is oriented both to the management of servers and to the provision of hosting services (support of tariff plans, restrictions, etc.);
- it is possible to counter small DDoS attacks and block unwanted traffic through the use of extensions to work with CSF (Config Server Firewall);
- Out of the box, CWP supports CloudLinux, a commercial CentOS extension primarily aimed at hosting providers;
- quite convenient hosting of projects with streaming video broadcasting due to the built-in ffmpeg support ;
- CWP has an integrated anti-spam mechanism based on AmaVIS , ClamAV , OpenDKIM , RBL checks, SpamAssassin ;
- the panel supports placing on the server both its own name servers and the use of FreeDNS;
- the presence of built-in monitoring tools.
You can find the full list of CentOS Web Panel features on the official website of the software product at the following link . As you can see, most commercial server and hosting management systems do not have such a wide range of capabilities, and what can we say about free products.
System requirements
As for system requirements, according to the developers’s statement, we will need a server with at least 512 MB of RAM (for the 32-bit version of the OS) and the installed “coin”, namely CentOS 6.x. If you want to enjoy all the features of this panel, for example, such as anti-virus scanning of mail, then on board your “machine” should be at least 4 GB of RAM. CWP also supports operating systems such as RedHat 6.x and CloudLinux 6.x.
Server Preparation
After the hosting provider has provided a server with CentOS, several useful steps must be taken before installing CWP. If you do not have the Wget utility installed - a console program for downloading files over the network, then we connect to the “machine” via SSH and enter the following command:
yum -y install wget
Next, update your server using the command:
yum -y update
And do not forget to restart the "machine" so that the changes take effect:
reboot
Installation
Now we are ready to install CentOS Web Panel. Go to the / usr / local / src directory:
cd /usr/local/src
Where to download the latest version of installation files:
wget http://centos-webpanel.com/cwp-latest
If the main link does not work, then use the following command:
wget http://dl1.centos-webpanel.com/files/cwp-latest
Then we launch the installation itself:
sh cwp-latest
The installation process can last about 30 minutes, so calmly go to the kitchen for a cup of a good drink (everyone has their own tastes). As soon as the panel is installed in the console, you will see the following message:
############################## CWP Installed ##############################
go to CentOS WebPanel Admin GUI at http://SERVER_IP:2030/
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2030
SSL: https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2031
---------------------
Username: root
Password: ssh server root password
MySQL root Password: xxxxxxxxxxxx
Do not forget to save accesses, in particular, the MySQL superuser password. After, according to the instructions of the developers themselves, we reboot the server using the ENTER button. If this does not work, then use the reboot command, which we mentioned earlier. When you try to connect to the server again via SSH, you will see the CWP welcome screen, which will display brief information about registered users and the current situation of using disk space:
********************************************
Welcome to CWP (CentOS WebPanel) server
Restart CWP using: service cwpsrv restart
********************************************
if you can not access CWP try this command: service iptables stop
15:20:19 up 23 min, 1 user, load average: 0.00, 0.00, 0.00
USER TTY FROM LOGIN@ IDLE JCPU PCPU WHAT
root pts/0 78.111.187.112 15:20 1.00s 0.01s 0.01s -bash
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/vg0-root 33G 1.9G 30G 6% /
tmpfs 504M 0 504M 0% /dev/shm
/dev/vda1 485M 68M 392M 15% /boot
/dev/mapper/vg0-temp 2.0G 369M 1.5G 20% /tmp
Interface
Let's go to the panel using our favorite browser, using one of the following links, the same accesses as to the server:
http://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2030
SSL: https://xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx:2031
After successful authentication, we get to the Dashboard menu page, from here you can manage all the settings of the CWP panel. We will try to briefly talk about each block of the panel:
- Navigation - navigation menu for viewing various settings of each service;
- Top 5 Processes - displays in real time the 5 most “gluttonous” processes on your server;
- Disk Details - this block provides information about the disks of your "machine";
- Service Status - shows the current status of services, and also makes it possible to manage them if necessary (start, stop, etc.);
- System Stats - displays the memory consumption, the number of processes and letters in the queue;
- Application Version - shows the versions of installed applications, such as Apache, PHP, MySQL and FTP;
- System Info - displays information about the processor model, the number of cores, their frequency, version of the operating system, server uptime, etc .;
- CWP Info - shows which name servers are configured for your “machine” at the moment, and also displays the server IP address and panel version.
Default setting
Next, we will configure a few basic parameters that we need to work with CWP. First, configure the name servers. To do this, go to the DNS Functions menu section and select the Edit Nameservers IPs item.
Specify your name servers and click the Save changes button. To read the DNS configuration instructions (BIND), use the following link , which is also available on the Edit Nameservers IPs page.
The next step is to configure the “shared” IP address and superuser mail - these are very important steps for placing sites on your server. As a rule, the IP server is already indicated, but to make sure of this, go to the CWP Settings menu section, and then select Edit Settings.
We see that the Shared IP field most likely contains the IP address of your “machine” (if it is not, then specify it), and in the Root Email field you need to specify your mail. After specifying all the necessary data, do not forget to click the Save changes button. Now CWP is ready to accept hosting sites.
You remember that the panel is able to provide hosting services. In CWP you have the opportunity to configure any number of tariff plans. To do this, go to the Packages menu section and select Add a Package. We fill in all the necessary fields according to the number of server resources that you are ready to provide your potential client, and as usual, do not forget to apply the changes - in this case, by clicking the Create button.
In order to add a domain to the panel, you must have at least one user account. Go to User Accounts, select New Account and create an account. I draw your attention to the fact that by default access to the shell is disabled for the newly created user. I advise you to think several times before activating this functionality to your customers. You can also set inode limits for each user here. After filling in all the fields, click the Create button.
Now let's add a new domain. To do this, go to the Domains menu section and select Add Domain. We specify the necessary domain, assign it to the appropriate user and fix all the actions with the Create button.
A standardly configured panel should consume a small amount of your server’s resources, let's check it out. To check the RAM consumption, connect to the server via SSH and enter the following command:
free -m
On the screen of our "typewriter" the following data was displayed:
total used free shared buffers cached
Mem: 1006 522 483 0 162 218
-/+ buffers/cache: 142 864
Swap: 4095 0 4095
I think you will have a similar result. As you can see from the total amount of RAM in 1 GB, about half is used - 522 MB, which is quite consistent with the statement of the developers. This resource consumption is quite low for hosting control panels.
Also, the default installation already contains the latest stable version of PHP with the Zend Optimizer application and the ionCube PHP Loader utility , which is easy to verify using the command:
php -v
You should see the following information in the console:
PHP 5.4.45 (cli) (built: Dec 5 2015 14:22:25)
Copyright (c) 1997-2014 The PHP Group
Zend Engine v2.4.0, Copyright (c) 1998-2014 Zend Technologies
with the ionCube PHP Loader (enabled) + Intrusion Protection from ioncube24.com (unconfigured) v5.0.19, Copyright (c) 2002-2015, by ionCube Ltd.
If you are loyal to CentOS and about $ 13 per month of your hosting budget (for comparison, we took the cost of the ISPmanager Business license ) we are ready to invest in hardware, not software, then you should like the CWP panel. Perhaps, right now you are thinking about launching your first hosting server, why not use these funds with licensed software to rent a more productive “machine”, and thereby make your potential customers a little happier. It's not always that free is bad. No need to be afraid of something new, at first glance unknown.
Test for health, and you will succeed!
To be continued…