linux on AnyStack

How to install a Mastodon instance on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS

Thu, 06 Apr 2017 10:06:00 +0000

Have you already the new open-source social network Mastodon ? I have launched few days ago my own instance to contribute to this project.

If you want to launch your own instance, here a quick tutorial to install mastodon on a Ubuntu 16.04 LTS server with Nginx as a reverse-proxy and Cloudflare CDN/SSL.

To follow the steps of this tutorial, a user with sudo rights is enough, you don’t need to login as root.

Install the dependencies

sudo apt-get update

Install nodejs

curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_6.x | sudo bash -
sudo apt-get install imagemagick ffmpeg libpq-dev libxml2-dev libxslt1-dev nodejs
sudo npm install -g yarn

Install redis-server

sudo apt-get install redis-server redis-tools

Install Postgresql

sudo apt-get install postgresql postgresql-contrib

sudo su - postgres
psql
CREATE USER mastodon CREATEDB;
\q

You will also have to enable ident authentication so users can login without password

sudo sed -i '/^local.*postgres.*peer$/a host all all 127.0.0.1/32 ident' \
/etc/postgresql/9.?/main/pg_hba.conf

And to install the ident daemon :

sudo apt-get install pidentd
sudo systemctl enable pidentd
sudo systemctl start pidentd
sudo systemctl restart postgresql

Install Ruby

Install the dependencies

sudo apt-get install autoconf bison build-essential libssl-dev libyaml-dev libreadline6-dev zlib1g-dev libncurses5-dev libffi-dev libgdbm3 libgdbm-dev

Create a user mastodon without password :

adduser --disabled-password --disabled-login mastodon

Then login as mastodon :

su - mastodon

Install rbenv and rbenv-build

git clone https://github.com/rbenv/rbenv.git ~/.rbenv
echo 'export PATH="$HOME/.rbenv/bin:$PATH"' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'eval "$(rbenv init -)"' >> ~/.bashrc
source ~/.bashrc

We have to logout to apply the bash modification, and we install ruby-build.

exit
su - mastodon
git clone https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build.git ~/.rbenv/plugins/ruby-build

Then install ruby 2.4.1 for mastodon :

rbenv install 2.4.1
rbenv global 2.4.1

You can check the ruby version installed with the command :

ruby -v

Mastodon installation

We have installed all the dependencies required to setup Mastodon, so we can now clone the github repository. We use git checkout to select the last release instead of the master branch.

cd ~
git clone https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon.git live
cd live
git checkout $(git tag | tail -n 1)

Install bundler to manage the dependencies and disable the gem documentation

echo "gem: --no-document" > ~/.gemrc
gem install bundler --no-ri

Then launch the installation

bundle install --deployment --without development test
yarn install

You can now copy the configuration sample file and edit with your own informations

cp .env.production.sample .env.production
nano .env.production

You have to add the following informations :

# Service dependencies
REDIS_HOST=localhost
REDIS_PORT=6379
DB_HOST=/var/run/postgresql
DB_USER=mastodon
DB_NAME=mastodon_production
DB_PASS=
DB_PORT=5432

# Federation
LOCAL_DOMAIN=yourdomain.com
LOCAL_HTTPS=true

Ainsi que la partie SMTP qui permettra aux utilisateurs de confirmer leur inscription :

# E-mail configuration
SMTP_SERVER=mail.yourdomain.com
SMTP_PORT=587
SMTP_LOGIN=noreply@yourdomain.com
SMTP_PASSWORD=YourPassword
SMTP_FROM_ADDRESS=noreply@yourdomain.com

For the application secret part, you can use the command bundle exec rake secret to generate the 3 secret keys, then you have just to copy them into the configuration file.

To setup the database and the assets :

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:setup
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile

Adding systemd services

Web service

nano /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-web.service

[Unit]
 Description=mastodon-web
 After=network.target

[Service]
 Type=simple
 User=mastodon
 WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
 Environment="RAILS_ENV=production"
 Environment="PORT=3000"
 ExecStart=/home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec puma -C config/puma.rb
 TimeoutSec=15
 Restart=always

[Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

Background service

nano /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-sidekiq.service

[Unit]
 Description=mastodon-sidekiq
 After=network.target

[Service]
 Type=simple
 User=mastodon
 WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
 Environment="RAILS_ENV=production"
 Environment="DB_POOL=5"
 ExecStart=/home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec sidekiq -c 5 -q default -q mailers -q pull -q push
 TimeoutSec=15
 Restart=always

[Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

API service

nano /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-streaming.service

[Unit]
 Description=mastodon-streaming
 After=network.target

[Service]
 Type=simple
 User=mastodon
 WorkingDirectory=/home/mastodon/live
 Environment="NODE_ENV=production"
 Environment="PORT=4000"
 ExecStart=/usr/bin/npm run start
 TimeoutSec=15
 Restart=always

[Install]
 WantedBy=multi-user.target

Then we can enable our systemd services :

systemctl enable /etc/systemd/system/mastodon-*.service

And we can start our mastodon instance :

sudo systemctl start mastodon-web.service mastodon-sidekiq.service mastodon-streaming.service

Add the required crons for mastodon :

crontab -u mastodon -e

RAILS_ENV=production
@daily cd /home/mastodon/live && RAILS_ENV=production /home/mastodon/.rbenv/shims/bundle exec rails mastodon:media:remove_remote

Nginx reverse-proxy setup :

So we have setup mastodon, but to access to our instance directly under https and with our domain, we need to setup a reverse-proxy using Nginx.

At first, install Nginx :

wget -O - https://nginx.org/keys/nginx_signing.key | sudo apt-key add -
sudo echo "deb http://nginx.org/packages/ubuntu/ $(lsb_release -sc) nginx" > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/nginx.list
sudo apt update
sudo apt install nginx

We have now to create our nginx configuration file for ou domain, we will use the configuration based on the Angristan’s model :

nano /etc/nginx/sites-enabled/yourdomain.com

map $http_upgrade $connection_upgrade {
 default upgrade;
 '' close;
}
server {
 listen 80;
 listen [::]:80;
 server_name www.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com;
 return 301 https://votredomaine.com$request_uri;

 access_log /dev/null;
 error_log /dev/null;
}

server {
 listen 443 ssl http2;
 listen [::]:443 ssl http2;
 server_name www.yourdomain.com yourdomain.com;

 access_log /var/log/nginx/yourdomain.com-access.log;
 error_log /var/log/nginx/yourdomain.com-error.log;

 ssl_certificate /etc/letsencrypt/live/fullchain.pem;
 ssl_certificate_key /etc/letsencrypt/live/privkey.pem;
 ssl_protocols TLSv1.2;
 ssl_ciphers EECDH+AESGCM:EECDH+AES;
 ssl_prefer_server_ciphers on;
 add_header Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=15552000; preload";

 keepalive_timeout 70;
 sendfile on;
 client_max_body_size 0;
 gzip off;

 root /home/mastodon/live/public;

 location / {
 try_files $uri @proxy;
 }

 location @proxy {
 proxy_set_header Host $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
 proxy_pass_header Server;
 proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000;
 proxy_buffering off;
 proxy_redirect off;
 proxy_http_version 1.1;
 proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
 proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
 tcp_nodelay on;
 }

 location /api/v1/streaming {
 proxy_set_header Host $host;
 proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
 proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
 proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:4000;
 proxy_buffering off;
 proxy_redirect off;
 proxy_http_version 1.1;
 proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
 proxy_set_header Connection $connection_upgrade;
 tcp_nodelay on;
 }

 error_page 500 501 502 503 504 /500.html;
}

You can start nginx with the command :

service nginx start

Then we will use Let’s Encrypt to generate a SSL certificate.

cd /opt
git clone https://github.com/letsencrypt/letsencrypt
cd letsencrypt
./letsencrypt-auto certonly --webroot -w /home/mastodon/live -d www.yourdomain.com -d yourdomain.com --email vous@yourdomain.com --text --rsa-key-size 4096

Updating Mastodon

Mastodon is updated very often, so if you want to keep your instance up-to-date you will have to follow the following steps :

su - mastodon
cd live
gem install bundler --no-ri
git fetch
git checkout v1.X.X
bundle install --deployment --without development test
NODE_ENV=production npm upgrade --global yarn
yarn install
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:clean
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails assets:precompile
RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails db:migrate
exit

Then you just have to restart the instance :

sudo systemctl restart mastodon-web.service mastodon-sidekiq.service mastodon-streaming.service

If you need to update ruby with a new release use :

rbenv install 2.4.1
gem install bundler --no-ri

Create your administrator account

You instance is now running properly but you have to register to create your account and then you will be able to set this account as administrator with the following command :

RAILS_ENV=production bundle exec rails mastodon:make_admin USERNAME=votre-utilisateur

My instance mastodon.top

![mastodon.top/images/2017/08/Screenshot_44.png) With VirtuBox, I have launched a Mastodon instance and if you are not registered on Mastodon yet, you can register at mastodon.top. We are already more than 200 users on my instance and enough resources for more users. You can find more informations about the instance on the page about and the real-time monitoring of the server at instance.mastodon.top.

Don’t hesitate to give your opinion on Mastodon, to tell me if there are errors in the tutorial or to ask for help if you want to deploy your own instance.

You can also follow me on Mastodon : thomas_virtubox@mastodon.top

Self-Hosting made easy with Cloudron

Sat, 17 Dec 2016 02:03:49 +0000

Because there is nothing better than self-hosting, you are may looking for a way to manage your apps easily and to be able to host yourself all your web apps ?

I have tried several solutions in the past, but there was always something wrong and I was looking for something easy to deploy and stable.

Cloudron is a platform to run and manage your apps, and if it was only available on AWS EC2 servers, it can be now deployed on any platform, including Scaleway, OVH, DigitalOcean or Linode.

There are a large choice of apps available on the Cloudron App Store which can be deployed with a single click.

Cloudron also provide the ability to backup your server with AWS S3 storage, and keep your server and your apps always up-to-date.

So ton install Cloudron you only need :

clean Ubuntu 16.04 LTS with 1GB+ RAM
SSH keys connection
domain with a wildcard record to your server ip

Because Cloudron will install each application on a new subdomain, so you have to purchase a domain and to use a wildcard if you don’t want to add each record manually.

I recommand you to buy a .xyz domain at NameCheap and then to use Cloudflare DNS.

To install Cloudron, the first subdomain needed will be my.yourdomain.com, it will be your homepage.

Then you have to run the following command :

wget https://git.cloudron.io/cloudron/box/raw/master/scripts/cloudron-setup
chmod +x cloudron-setup
./cloudron-setup --domain <domain> --provider <digitalocean|ec2|generic|scaleway>

You will have to replace :

<domain> with yourdomain.xyz
<provider> with the provider name or generic

When the process will be done, you will have to go to my.yourdomain.xyz to finish the setup and create your admin account. There is no maintenance needed with Cloudron but you can read the documentation .

Optimize easily your WordPress images without any plugin

Sun, 23 Oct 2016 05:52:28 +0000

You want to improve your pagespeed score by optimizing your images in WordPress ? But you don’t want to pay a subscription for a plugin ? If you are using a VPS or a dedicated server, you don’t need any plugin to optimize all your images easily.

For that you can use this script :

# For debian/Ubuntu
wget -qO optimize.sh https://git.virtubox.net/virtubox/wp-optimize/raw/master/deb-wp-optimize.sh && bash optimize.sh

#For Centos/RedHat
cd /var/www
wget -qO optimize.sh https://git.virtubox.net/virtubox/wp-optimize/raw/master/centos-wp-optimize.sh && bash optimize.sh

If you want to do the process manually

# Debian/Ubuntu
apt-get update && apt-get install optipng jpegoptim -y

# Centos
yum update && yum install optipng jpegoptim -y

Then you just have to go in your web directory and to run the following commands :

cd /var/www
find . -name *.jp* | xargs jpegoptim --strip-all -m76
find . -iname '*.png' -print0 | xargs -0 optipng -o7 -preserve

Making WordPress faster by running wp-cron with Linux

Thu, 15 Sep 2016 05:54:00 +0000

WordPress use wp-cron to check updates for themes, plugins and some other process but it could have an impact on your website speed because WordPress execute it on every page-loading. So if you have a lot of traffic, it will (no benchmark proof at the moment) delay page loading for users.

So if you are using a linux server (VPS or dedicated), you can easily create a cron job to run it each 5 minutes or each 10 minutes. But remember WordPress need wp-cron to work properly, so don’t disable it totally !

To disable wp-cron, just add the following line in wp-config.php :

define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

Then to add a cronjob you have to a :

## Run the crontab with your server or vhost user 
crontab -u yourserveruser -e

## method 1 : using curl to run the script
*/10 * * * * curl http://example.com/wp-cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1

## method 2 : using php to run it
*/10 * * * * cd /var/www/example.com/htdocs; php /var/www/example.com/htdocs/wp-cron.php > /dev/null 2>&1

The first method use PHP-CGI when the second use PHP-CLI, the only difference is CLI does not have time limit to run a script. Because this way, the wp-cron will not impact page loading speed, it’s highly recommended to use linux cron instead of default WordPress cron.

You can change */10 with */5 to run the cron each 5 minutes instead of each 10 minutes.

How to use Nginx as reverse proxy with Docker

Sun, 04 Sep 2016 06:57:00 +0000

I have already write some articles about EasyEngine, and I’m really in love with this command line tool, because it make Nginx easier to use than Apache. But I haven’t talk about all functionality of EE yet. If it provide you the ability to setup a WordPress website easily, you can also use EasyEngine to create a vhost for a static html website … Or use Nginx as a reverse proxy !

And that make of EE the most complete tool available to use Nginx without having to read thousands of documentation pages to understand how to create a vhost. But don’t worry, this article will not only talk about this awesome tool which is EasyEngine.

I have used docker several times in the past, because it’s the fastest way to test an application without having to setup a VPS especially for that. But to run several Docker containers in a single VPS, it could quickly be a problem because some container provide you the ability to use a domain like WordPress for example. And some other will use directly your VPS IP and the port of your choice, which is not very friendly when your app is running on http://192.168.0.1:3000 …

That’s why we will use Nginx to act as a reverse proxy for our Docker containers, and we will be able to run several containers on the same server and to access them with the domain of our choice. So the first step is to install Docker. Don’t worry you should not need to read the documentation if you are using a VPS with a recent linux distribution and a kernel 3.13+

### install Docker with a single command on debian/ubuntu/centos
wget -qO- https://get.docker.com/ | sh

Docker is now running on your server ! So let’s install EasyEngine :

## Install EasyEngine Debian7/8 or Ubuntu 14.04/16.04 LTS
wget -qO ee rt.cx/ee && bash ee

So we have now Docker and EasyEngine installed and we can launch our first Docker App before routing it with Nginx. We will start with Rocket.Chat, a complete live chat solution to build a community or to provide live support.

## Launch MongoDB container 
docker run --name db -d mongo:3.0 --smallfiles

## Run Rocket.Chat linked to the db and expose port 3000
docker run --name rocketchat -p 3000:3000 --env ROOT_URL=http://localhost --link db -d rocket.chat

So you should be able to access to Rocket.Chat using http://YOUR-VPS-IP:3000. And to use Nginx as reverse proxy with your domain :

ee site create yourdomain.com --proxy=127.0.0.1:3000

That’s it ! You can now use http://yourdomain.com to access to Rocket.Chat

Some other apps to run with Nginx as reverse proxy :

## Hastebin
docker run --name redis -d redis
docker run --name hastebin -d -p 7777:7777 --link redis:redis -e STORAGE_HOST=redis rlister/hastebin

## Pasteboard
docker run --name pasteboard -e ORIGIN=mydomain.tld -e MAX=7 -v /srv/pasteboard/images:/pasteboard/public/storage -p 4000:4000 anthodingo/docker-pasteboard

New VPS for the Blog - Setup Guide

Fri, 05 Aug 2016 18:59:00 +0000

I was using a VPS with Plesk Onyx to host the Blog, but even with Redis in a Docker container to make it faster, it wasn’t enough …

So I have setup a small VPS on my dedicated server with Ubuntu 16.04 LTS using VMware vSphere 6. I will make another post about virtualization but in this post, we will talk only about the VPS setup with easyengine, which is really my favorite tool for WordPress setup. You can also read my first post about easyengine : Here

First step, easyengine install :

 wget -qO ee rt.cx/ee && bash ee

Then WordPress setup :

 ee site create anystack.xyz --wpredis --php7 --letsencrypt

And it’s already good for the server setup with nginx, php7, mariadb, redis-cache and let’s encrypt for the SSL. Check your DNS are pointing to your server before launching let’s encrypt or it will fail to setup the SSL certificate.

But the work is not finished yet, because I have to upload my database and my files to get my content back. For that i will need to have access to the database, so let’s do that with phpmyadmin :

 ee stack install --phpmyadmin

phpmyadmin is now available at http://my-server-ip:22222

Butt protected by an ACL, and to change the user and the password, you just have to use :

 ee secure --auth

And to have your login details for phpmyadmin :

 ee site info anystack.xyz

So I have now uploaded my database, and I need my files. But it’s not needed to install ftp. The easiest way to do, is to add a password to www-data and to allow sftp access :

 passwd www-data

And you will just have to replace /usr/sbin/nologin by /bin/bash in the file /etc/passwd. As FTP/SFTP client, I use Cyberduck which is the fastest client I have found, and you can use it for almost all protocol, including S3 storage at AWS or Google Drive.

After uploading my files, just have to purge the redis cache, and that’s already over.

How Cloudflare speed up and protect your website - Part 1.

Mon, 01 Aug 2016 18:57:00 +0000

You don't know what is Cloudflare ? So let's see how cloudflare make your website loading faster, and why you should already use it for all your websites.

) Cloudflare DNS - Free & Fast

Cloudflare provide at first one of the best DNS hosting service available. And to make a website faster you can already start with using a fast DNS hosting.

DNS Provider Speed Comparison by solvedns.com

![/images/2016/10/draw.jpg)

It's only few Milliseconds but as you can see, Cloudflare is faster than many other providers and most of them offer paid services only. So before paying few dollars for a Premium DNS package, you should try cloudflare. Another feature you will love, is a propagation time around 5 minutes when you edit a record on your DNS. So if you need to migrate your website soon, this is really a good reason to register now.

2. ) Cloudflare - Reverse Proxy with caching

But cloudflare does not provide only DNS Hosting. It's also a complete solution to speed up and secure your website. For that when Cloudflare manage your DNS if you activate the optimization and security (orange cloud), instead of sending your server IP when a visitor make a DNS request, it will act as a proxy and all your visitors will view only the Cloudflare servers IP when they do a request.

![/images/2016/10/overview.png)

And Cloudflare will not only act as a simple proxy, it will also cache all the static files and deliver them all around the World to your visitors from the nearest Cloudflare datacenter.

The result is awesome because it will make your website faster as it will handle less requests, and it will also save a lot of bandwidth by limiting the number of file requests.

As you can see, with 80 000 visitors per month, it's more than 20GB of bandwidth saved and also more than 20GB of static assets which have been delivered faster.

3) Cloudflare - Website Protection

By acting as a proxy Cloudflare also provide a complete security solution which include :

Browser integrity check : Each visitor request is checked using the HTTP header and if a thread is found it can be challenged using a captcha or blocked.
Visitor reputation : Cloudflare analyze daily thousands of IP, and if a visitor try several times to perform any form of hack, it will be marked as a potential thread for Cloudflare
Page rules : You can use the page rules to allow or disallow access to a part of your website. For example with wordpress your can use a high level of secuirty onthe page http://yourdomain.com/wp-login.php to protect your website.
DDoS protection : As your visitors have to use cloudflare servers to get access to your website, they will never have access to your server IP and any attack attempt will simply be blocked by the Cloudflare servers.

But to protect totally your server, you have to be sure there is not any records which point directly to your server. The most common error will be to have a email server with a MX record pointing on your server IP. In this case, Cloudflare will not be able to protect your website because the attacker will send the traffic directly on your server IP, and will not have to use the Cloudflare proxy.

4) Cloudflare - Website Optimization

And if it wasn't enough, Cloudflare is also able to optimize your website. It can minify all your assets, including the html, reduce the number of connections, and with rocket loader it will make deliver your assets asynchronously. That mean instead of waiting for each file to be downloaded, with cloudflare your browser will download all the assets in the same time when you visit your website, and it will be up to 3x times faster.

The last optimization tool available for free is Rocket Loader, currently in beta, it's a script used by cloudflare to deliver your assets, without blocking the page display. It use the asynchronous loading to load your javascript at the end of the page display and this way it will really improve your pagespeed score. But like any beta, it could create error with some javascript or break your website design by loading too late some assets.

For this reason you have 2 mode to use Rocket loader :
- Automatic : Rocket loader will optimize any javascript available on your website but you have the ability to forbid the optimization manually by adding data-cfasync="false" before the script source.
```
<script type="text/javascript" data-cfasync="false" src="/js/tether.min.js"></script>
```
Manual : This time you will have to add data-cfasync=“true” for each script you want to optimize with Rocket Loader

I will complete this article with the HTTP2 and Cloudflare in the next few days.

Linux & SSD : How to speed up your VPS

Tue, 28 Jun 2016 00:41:00 +0000

When you want to buy a VPS, most of them use SSD, because a SSD have a better capacity for reading/writing than a Hard Drive and it also have a response time up to 40x faster than HDD.

But there are some small configuration to edit to get the best performances with your SSD as linux systems are not totally optimized for them.

So we will see how to speed up your VPS and how to configure debian/ubuntu to use a SSD properly. For a new install of a server the rules are :

Use a recent linux system : Kernel 3.60+
Keep some free space on a disk (5-15%)
Use ext4
in /etc/fstab add the noatime setting

# / was on /dev/sda1 during installation
UUID=33XXX-XXXX / ext4 noatime,errors=remount-ro 0 1

Limit the swap usage :

If you use :

cat /proc/sys/vm/swappiness

The system should answer 60. So you just have to add the line below in /etc/sysctl.conf

vm.swappiness=1

Then reboot your system. And it's done your VPS should already be faster

[Review] Plesk - A powerful web server control panel

Fri, 20 May 2016 15:08:00 +0000

Like anyone who want to manage easily multiple websites on a VPS or a dedicated server, i was looking for a control panel with good performance and ready for production. I have tested many control panels : (following panel are ranked by me and it's only my personal opinion)

CentOS webpanel (free) : To young to be use in production, but many good features (varnish cache + nginx + Apache) and it will be always free.
cPanel (paid) : The most powerful after plesk and cheap, but only compatible with Apache
Serverpilot.io (free and paid) : First cloud control panel, the easiest to run a WordPress website on a VPS. Many awesome features with the paid level (10$ / month) like free ssl, http2, nginx reverse proxy etc.. For me you should try it and it will be one of the best panel in the next years.
Ajenti (free) : Good panel with many features and a good compromise between interface configuration and text config. But i have no feeling with it.
Webmin (free) : If the design don't hurt your eyes, it's a complete control panel with many features and with good documentation.

And the last which is not a control panel yet because it have no GUI, easyengine.io, only for Power User at the moment but one of the lightest web server manager, and a good website with many tutorials.

But today i will make a small review of Plesk, the best control panel for me.

1) What is Plesk ?

Plesk is a full control panel, you can manage multiple website with a clean web interface, it's really secured and always update. There are 3 pricing plans depending on what you want : - Web Admin (10 domains) : to run some website on a VPS it's perfect - Web Pro (30 domains) : including the WordPress toolkit, it's the best ratio quality/price - Web Host (no limit) : If you want to run your own web hosting services

2) But why should I choose Plesk as control panel ?

Because you can test it for free during 15 days ? No, it's not the only reason. I recommend to try (to use) Plesk because it's a control panel for any webmaster. There is 3 views available, from the beginner view with simple configuration (domain, database, ftp) to the power user view with full access to advanced features like nginx config, PHP config, firewall etc You can use Plesk with or without web hosting knowledge, and you will find a documentation for you at Plesk's website.

As you are waiting for features :

For Beginner : - Website builder (you haven't to code) - Many Apps you can install in a single click : Wordpress (with themes, plugins and update management), Prestashop, PhpBB, MyBB, Drupal, Joomla - Security : SSL in 2 clicks with let's encrypt, backup to ftp or dropbox, webmail - Softaculous available (59 ready to install apps)

For Power User (yes i know you are waiting for real features and it's for them i love Plesk) :

Performance : - Nginx reverse proxy with caching (disk or memcache) - Apache 2.4 with HTTP2 - Multiple PHP version from 5.4 to 7.0 and PHP-FPM (so easy to use ) - Many PHP extension : GD, ioncube, opcache, - Last MariaDB release - Litespeed web server (i haven't test it yet) - JXCore and NodeJS (if you want trending techno) - Java, ruby, python, .Net support - DNS management - Docker (only in Plesk Onyx, in beta currently)

Security : - Monitoring, logs, backup with increment - mod_security, firewall and fail2ban - SSL - Google authentication - Cloudflare integration - Antispam - Antivirus - file scanner - ddos protection

And if you want to (or already have) run your own web hosting company, Plesk is available as VMware or KVM image, with Cloudlinux (Linux distribution for hosting company)

I don't think i need to tell you more about Plesk features, but it's for them I use plesk in production. The most important for me is the security, and with fail2ban, a firewall, free ssl management and cloudflare integration,I'm sure to avoid most dangers. And the feature which decide me to choose Plesk is the Nginx Reverse proxy to handle all static files faster and with less res sources usage. But I'm maybe trying too much to sell you Plesk, so like it's a user review, I will also talk about the negative aspects of Plesk :

- There is a good documentation online, but if you have never use nginx before -> start learning how nginx work now because the Plesk documentation explain how it's work but there is not any how to .. I have lost many hours to understand nginx and how to configure it correctly with Plesk - There is no free version : if you can try it during 14 days, you have to pay after. And I recommend you to buy it from your hosting company if you can, it will be cheaper than the Plesk Store. Prices (for VPS) : 5$ for the Web Admin, 15$ for the Web Pro, 25$ for the Web Host But you can have nice discounts with your hosting company, and sometimes it will be free with a dedicated server. Currently I pay 9$ a month for the Web Pro. - There are many apps and extensions available but some of them are not free. - It can be frustrating sometimes (often ^^) to use a full control panel like Plesk, because you are not free to add modules to nginx, to install something not included in Plesk. It's a very powerful tools if you accept to use only included tools. Don't think about adding Pagespeed modules, or to setup a custom version of Apache. With the version 17, you can customize your PHP modules but not more.

There are good and bad aspects with Plesk, like any control panel but I recommend it to any beginner who want to start using a VPS and to manage himself. And I recommend it too, to Power Users because if you can't customize all components, you will have a stable and powerful web server with features normally reserved to "trending control panels in beta". So now it's time to add a referral link and to earn some money But i'm not a Plesk Partner yet ...

Quick summary of my review :

Control panel to try : Serverpilot.io ( everybody should try it ) Plesk ( Read again from the beginning if you don't know why ..)

FAQ : Can I use Plesk if i'm a beginner ? Yes but you need to buy a VPS or a dedicated.

Can I try it for free ? yes you only have to register with a valid email.

How can i install it ? First Go to Plesk Website to read server requirement. On any recent linux OS :

## Plesk 12.5 auto-installer
sh <(curl http://autoinstall.plesk.com/one-click-installer || wget -O - http://autoinstall.plesk.com/one-click-installer)

## Plesk Onyx auto-installer
sh <(curl http://autoinstall.plesk.com/one-click-installer || wget -O - http://autoinstall.plesk.com/one-click-installer) --tier testing

## Run Plesk 12.5 with Docker
docker run --privileged -d -it -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -p 8880:8880 -p 8443:8443 -p 8447:8447 plesk/plesk

## Run Plesk Onyx with Docker
docker run -d -it -p 80:80 -p 443:443 -p 8880:8880 -p 8443:8443 -p 8447:8447 plesk/plesk:preview

What OS should I choose for Plesk ? Debian 8 64Bits

Can I install Plesk on a small VPS ? Yes, for testing i run it on a 3$ VPS with only 2GB RAM. But for production 4GB is a minimum if you use the mail server or the DNS server.

I need some help with Plesk ! Read the doc, browse Plesk knowledge base, and PM me if you don't find what you need.

Plesk is too expensive for me ! Buy it from your web hosting company to get nice discounts. With OVH -> Web Admin Plan cost 2$ a month on VPS

Are you working for Plesk ? No, i have only lost too much time to setup web servers and to try many control panels before trying Plesk.

I use another Panel currently, can i migrate to Plesk ? Yes, it's a paid solution, they always have many tools to help you to buy a license ^^

Feel free to ask anything about Plesk here. I'm also open to all suggestions or opinions.

This review is my personal opinion about control panels.

Plesk is maybe not the best control panel for you, and there are many alternative to Plesk.

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[Review] Plesk - A powerful web server control panel

1) What is Plesk ?

2) But why should I choose Plesk as control panel ?

Quick summary of my review :