Tutorial How to install cPanel or WHM on VPS (CentOS 6 7 Tutorial, Debian, Ubuntu or Windows) – cPanel is the most popular Linux based web hosting control panel. It provides a graphical user interface to easily manage and host multiple websites on a single VPS or dedicated server. With the help of it’s powerful GUI we can easily do most of the tasks we perform on the website server using the command line, for example, uploading files, creating emails, cron job settings, database handling, etc. WHM (Web Host Manager) provides root access interface and Reseller levels where users can manage settings related to server administration and account management. cPanel provides a user-level access interface where users can set up their web hosting.
Features cPanel / WHM. cPanel / WHM comes with many key features, some of them listed below.
– Multilingual GUI interface for managing server and client websites.
– Built-in file manager and phpMyAdmin to easily manage files and databases.
– DNS and management support for server and client websites.
– Email management with DKIM and SPF support for authentication and encryption.
– SSL management / TLS is easy for multiple domains using SNI.
– Easily Backup and Migrate from client accounts on different servers.
– Can be easily integrated with almost all client management and billing software such as WHMCS, Blesta etc.
Precondition:
– A Fresh Server VPS, Cloud or Dedicated Server running CentOS 7 or CentOS 7.2. – – You can also choose from different VPS Server directly from us if you do not have.
– A static IP address, cPanel can not work on dynamically allocated dynamic IP addresses if you have DHCP enabled on your ethernet interface.
– Minimum of 1 GB RAM but it is recommended that you have 2 GB RAM.
– Minimum GB Disk Space 20 but it is recommended that you have at least 40 GB of Disk Space.
– Root access to your server.
Note:
– cPanel, once installed can not be removed from your server because it does not have any uninstaller. To remove cPanel you will have to reinstall your Operating System.
– cPanel is a commercial software and requires a license to work but cPanel offers a 15 day trial, you can install your software using trial and you can buy software later. This trial is automatically enabled after cPanel is installed on your server.
Steps to Installing cPanel / WHM
- Before installing cPanel you must have Perl installed on your server as cPanel is written in Perl. To install Perl on your system, login as user root and run the following command:
yum -y install perl
2. Now you will need to set the hostname for your server. A hostname is the FQDN or Fully Qualified Domain Name that will be used to identify your server. For example assume vps.mydomain.com – this is FQDN that you can use as your hostname. To change your hostname run the following command:
hostname vps.mydomain.com
You can replace vps.mydomain.com with your hostname. You must have a domain for which you set up a hostname. Next, you will need to change your current directory to / home directory, run the following command to do this.
cd /home
Download the installation script from the cPanel site by executing the following command:
curl -o latest -L https://securedownloads.cpanel.net/latest
Then:
sh latest
This will start your cPanel installation, you can now sit back and relax as the installation takes about half an hour to complete. After the installation script is complete you will see the following output:
You can now open your browser and go to https: // yourserverip: 2087 to access WHM. Sign in with your root account name and root account password. Make sure that you use https to access WHM in the browser. For example if your IP is 101.16.246.216 then you will have to go to https: // 101.16.246.216:2087
After you login, you will be taken to the start of server setup. In Step 1 you will be shown the cPanel User License Agreement & webhost Manager End, you can go through the agreement and click I Agree / Go to step 2 once you are ready.
In Step 2 you will be taken to the Network Settings section. Provide your contact information, a valid email address that should not be hosted on the same server. This email will be used to send important information about the server.
Scroll down to find the hostname part, you can enter a new hostname for your server by replacing the old one we have given during installation. If you do not want to change the host name, you can leave the hostname field that way. Enter DNS resolvers for your server. Resolvers will be used to retrieve DNS entries from any website. If your service provider has DNS resolvers then cPanel will automatically detect and fill it for you, otherwise you can use Google’s public DNS resolvers that are 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4 or OpenDNS this public DNS resolvers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220 .
You can then select your Network Main Tool, an IP available on the device that will be considered the primary IP address of your server. When finished click the Save & Go to Step 3.
In Step 3 you will see the Set Up IP Address section. If you have more than one IP address assigned to your server and your interface, you can add them here. To add a new IP address just enter the IP address in IP Address (es) to Add field, if you have IP address set you can also add some IP address using CIDR notation. Enter the Subnet Mask and select the network interface. Click on IP (s) Add button to add IP address. Bottom You will see a list of IP addresses currently available for your server.
If you want to use default settings click on Skip This Step and Use Default Settings default Settings button above. If you have added an IP address then click the Go to Step 4 button. In Step 4 you will be taken to the configuration nameservers, you will have three options to choose from, you can compare the advantages and disadvantages of using different Server Name applications. Recommended is that you choose BIND because it has the greatest advantage. If you do not want to run a DNS server on your local computer, you can disable the nameservers by selecting the disable option.
Next, select the nameservers that your server will use. You may want to be ns1.hamzah.net or ns2.domain.net. You will need to create a hostname in your domain control panel. Now add A Entries to your hostname with the checkout malfection on Add “A Entries” for Hostname.
Enter the IP address of your server if it is not prefilled. Finally click the Save & Go to Step 5 button to go to step 5.
In Step 5 you will see a configuration page for your service. In FTP configuration you can choose from two FTP applications, recommended is Pure-ftpd. Select option disabled if you want to disable local FTP server. In email configuration you can choose Dovecot which is also recommended or you can choose to disable email server by selecting option disabled.
Next you can configure cPHulk Brute Force Protection, select the Enable cPHulk checkbox to enable cPHulk. Next you can choose the settings for cPHulk from many options. In the Advanced cPHulk settings you can choose the duration to block users from logging in if it encounters a specific failure with Account and IP address.
You can also provide a maximum failure before an IP address is blocked for a day. Finally click the Save & Go to Step 6. In Step 6 you will be asked if you want to use file system quotas. It is recommended that you select Use quota preferred file system. If you choose not to use file system quotas then you will not be able to track the disk space used by any user or website.
Click Finish Setup Wizard to complete the initial setup wizard. You will now see some of the new features of cPanel in its showcase features. In recommended feature you will see cPanelID, which allows user to login to cPanel with its cPanelID. This feature allows users to login to multiple cPanels with a single user id. You can enable this feature by selecting the enable option. To disable this, choose No, Thank you.
Next, you’ll see a protection feature based on this cPHulk name that only blocks certain users instead of blocking IP addresses so other users can login from the same IP. There are more new features like PHP-FPM, ModSecurity, cPanel Reset Password and more. You can choose to enable them or disable them by selecting No, Thank you
After you choose to enable or disable the feature. Click the Save Settings button to save the settings and go to WHM. You will now see the WHM default home page. To see the cPanel / WHM user level interface, you will need to create the first user account. Go to Home> Account Function> Create New Account in WHM. In the “Create a New Account” interface, enter the user’s primary domain, the user name will automatically get filled in accordance with the domain, you can also use a different username if you want. Enter the password for your users, you can also use password generator to generate strong password. Please enter a valid email for your users. You can select a package from the dropdown, but as we have installed cPanel recently there will be no packages of any kind. If you do not select any packages, cPanel will provide unlimited resources for this account.
Next, in the settings options, select the default theme. You can choose modern and responsive paper_lantern. If you want the old non responsive theme you can choose x3 or x3mail, select the language in local settings. In reseller settings you can create a reseller account account. A reseller has the ability to create more accounts under it. In the DNS settings select the option to enable DKIM and SPF on the account. In the mail routing settings, unless required, leave the option as Local Mail Exchanger. Click the Create button to create a user account. cPanel will now run a script to create a user account and the output will be displayed to you.
Now you can go to https: // your-server-ip: 2083 to access cPanel, you will see a login prompt like below. Enter the username and password you created recently and click on Login button. After you login, you will see the Front cPanel interface from which the user can manage all the settings related to their website.
