Hello all,

I have been hosting for couple month using dedicated server with Cpanel, everything seem to be fine and easy with Cpanel, but i haven't learn anything about linux administrator other than use the web interface, and paying additional $30/month for Cpanel is nonesense. So now i want to little adventure and try to use host without cpanel but do not know where to begin since i been using the GUI of cpanel.

The server will come with pre-install software (apache, mysql, php) and my question is what are the steps need to be done to host 1 or more web site on the same server.

usually with cpanel i just need to create a new account, domain name, password and select a package and it automatically setup everything username, ftp, e-mail ...)

but since there are no cpanel or any other control panel for me to use WHAT ARE THE STEPS need to be done to add a new account (domain)


thank you

Depends on what u want you could do "manual" hosting. The easy way is using real users or users in the system. If you just want to give like ftp access and lets say a mail address then could be done virtually using a mysql/sqlite/pgsql/text-file base.

Doing manual hosting is not easy, thats why most of people use Cpanel/Vdeck/Plesk and so on, because there is too many stuff to handle. If you are good with "scripts" then you could use that, or start building your own "panel", lets say start simple with just a couple of task which users can do and go more in details as you learn.

Everything depends on you and what you know...

First you will need to configure your server to support using virtual domains for each service(email, web, ftp, etc). Out of the box most services are setup for a single domain configuration.

Edit: One other thing I forgot to mention is most likely you're going to have to configure support for almost all the scripting languages and ssl.

Here's the basics I use for my personal servers (done via script these days):

I add a user to the machine via useradd
I run a maildirmake on ~/Maildir for them
I build a web structure /var/www/domainname.tld/{htdocs,cgi-bin,log}
I touch /var/www/domainname.tld/favicon.ico
I generate a basic index.html file in /var/www/domainname.tld/htdocs
I drop a link in their home directory to their webstructure
I generate a basic apache config for them using a template and sed
I add basic aliases for their virtual email addresses (smtp,pop3,imap)
I setup a basic proftpd virtual domain for them
I setup a database with full privledges for them
I chown everything to them (I'm setup to use suphp)
I setup some webbased management tools for them (phpmyssqladmin,etc)
I setup basic entries for spamassassin for their domain
edit: I setup basic entries for dns (if needed) <rare anymore>
I restart all necessary services

Start by adding your own test domain, once its working add another and if it works too you have the process down, so now you can automate it via script.

It's really a great way to learn linux, all the in and outs of webhosting, and what happens behind the scenes, but it's not easy the first time you attempt it.

Be sure to read the tutorials on http://www.debian-administration.org/ and http://howtoforge.com, they will help you immensely the first time.

If you're not quite to the level of doing all of that on your own yet you could look into getting assistance with it from an experienced source or use one of the free panels like webmin.

What's harder than actually doing manual setups is going from a panel to manual and back, manual changes are likely to break panels and panels do things in a very obscure manner.