Most of us start off with a shared hosting account for our web sites, and at the long run we all hit the shared hosting limits. This results in suspensions or an upgrade meaning more money and less revenue. There are lots of Virtual Private Servers “VPS” running at the same price or a little more per month.
The real advantage of a Virtual Private Server? Well when you pay for a VPS you purchase a package that has your own allocated memory, disk space and CPU. I have seen VPS really cheap nowadays so low that i pay less than i used on a shared hosting account. The real thing is that shared hosting prices go so high because of the price of the equipment and the control panel as they have to pay monthly for it.
The cheapest VPS are the unmanaged and no control panels on them. It sounds so complicated that lots of people will not even think about getting one but the truth is that is not so hard. You could configure and have your Virtual Private Server Up and ready to serve your web pages in about 2 hours max using kloxo!
Kloxo (formerly known as LXAdmin) is a free control panel that can do the job for you to control, manage and get your VPS ready to serve your sites. You can setup Up-to 40 domains on the free version no restrictions.
To setup you will need:
- A VPS or Server with about 512mb ram (you will need about 250mb when all the programs are running you can tweak it after is installed and run it with as little as 33mb)
- An SSH client, for Windows you can use a program called PUTTY for Linux i like to use Secure Shell.
- Some patience and about 2 hours (if you doing it for the first time and unfamiliar with commands)
Let start,
First, download and install PUTTY or Secure Shell. If the VPS provider uses VePortal install CenTos 32bit “x86″ version. When done run PUTTY or Secure Shell and use your login information received from the VPS Provider.
Check if you have YUM installed by running
# yum -y update
If it gave you an error you need to install YUM
Else if it was successful its installed, most installation of centos already have YUM Installed.
You need to disable SELinux, all the VPS that i have installed Kloxo has it disabled but make sure it is or Kloxo will not work.
You can run this command to make sure is disabled
/usr/sbin/sestatus
If is disabled you are good to go else you will need to disable it.
To disable SELinux you need to edit the file located at /etc/selinux/config and change “SELINUX=enforcing” to “SELINUX=disabled”
#vi /etc/selinux/config
Save the file and run:
#setenforce 0
To install Kloxo you need to download it to the VPS first to download it you will need to run this command:
# wget http://download.lxcenter.org/download/kloxo/production/kloxo-install-master.s
When it finishes downloading you are ready to start your Kloxo installation. To start installing you can run this command
# sh ./kloxo-install-master.sh
The installation might take some time to complete as its downloading some additional programs needed to run your web-server.
In case you are presented with a question/menu from yum/up2date, you may press <Enter> .
When the installation finishes it will let you know, then open your browser and type:
http://YOUR_SERVER_IP:7778
Example:
http://1.1.1.1:7778
Once the login screen appears you might login as admin with password: admin
As soon as you login for the first time change your password as this is a default password.
Kloxo Will install the following programs for you.
Web server:
- apache
- php
- pure-ftp
- awstats
Mail server:
- qmail-toaster
- courier-imap-toaster (imap pop)
- vpopmail
- Roundcube
- Horde
DNS Services:
- bind
- bind-chroot
Database Service:
- mysql-server
After you have login you will be able to install and activate other services as Apache/Lighttpd; BIND/djbdns; spamassassin/bogofilter; and more.
Kloxo will not manage any firewall you can install something third party like CSF or APF.
You might also install Webmin for basic system administration there will be no conflicts as long as you do not make changes to the services kloxo installed.
