User Guide - Adding Sites (Websites) to your VPS

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User Guide - Adding Sites (Websites) to your VPS

Overview

The Parallels PBA Control Panel allows you to add and manage the web sites on your VPS using a convenient browser based interface. Using the PBA Control Panel, you can set and manage the Administrative user for a site, change the DocumentRoot for a site, and manage the web server configuration.

This User Guide is a quick start reference on adding Sites to your eApps VPS. For more information on managing the Apache web server and your sites, see the following User Guides:

Note This User Guide is for creating sites that use the Apache web server, not an application server like Tomcat, JBoss, Ruby on Rails, or GlassFish. For information on creating sites using those application servers, see their specific User Guides - http://support.eapps.com/kb


Adding Sites to your VPS
New Website
Administrative User
Options
Creating the Site

Uploading Files to your site

eApps Support Guidelines
Links to other information

Adding Sites to your VPS

Note Before you can add a domain as a Site, the domain has to be added to the PBA Control Panel. See the User Guide - Managing DNS and Domains - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/dns for more information on how to add a domain to your Control Panel.



To add a Site to your VPS, log in to the PBA Control Panel, and click on the System Tab. If necessary, click on the Select Another System (Subscription) link on the left, and choose the correct Virtuozzo Container.

Then click on the Site tab, and click on Add Site. This opens the Add Site wizard, which has three sections: New Website, Administrative User and Options.

Add site wizzard


New Website

New Website

The New Website section is where you specify the domain for the site, and set the IP address.
  • Domain - choose the domain you want to add as a Site from the drop down menu. If you want this domain to resolve as www.domain.com, make sure the 'www' check box is selected.
  • Use an existing IP address - select the IP address you wish to assign to this site from the drop down menu. Even if you only have one IP address for your VPS, you will still need to select it from the drop down menu. If you wish to purchase another IP address, click on the buy more IP addresses link to purchase.
  • Share IP addresses with other websites - leave this checked unless you have a separate IP address just for this site that you have chosen. If you uncheck this, and have other sites that use this IP address, those sites will no longer resolve - they will be down.


Administrative User

Admin User

The Administrative User section is where you set the Admin user for the new site.

A note about the Administrative User - the Admin user for a site is the user who "owns" the site, and the files for the site. By default, only the Admin user can upload or modify the files for the site. If you need to access the site files via FTP, you must connect as the Admin user for the site. Other users will not be able to modify the files for the site. There are work-arounds for this to allow other users to access the files for the site, but the default is for only the Admin user to have access.
  • Existing User - if you want to use an existing user as the Administrative User for this site, choose that user from the drop down menu.
  • New User - click the New User button to create a new user as the Admin user for this site. Enter the name of the new user in all lowercase letters, and use between 6 to 8 characters. You can use numbers and letters only.
  • Password - enter the password for the new user. Try to use a combination of letters, numbers and special characters, such as @#$% in the password.
  • Retype password - retype the password you entered to confirm
  • Administrator's e-mail - the e-mail address that error messages for the site are sent to. This does not have to be the e-mail address of the Admin user.


Options

Options
  • Make your website public - this is what will create the Virtual Host entries in the Apache web server configuration file when you click Update. Uncheck this box only if you want no access to your website at all, from anyone (even you). Unchecking this box will not make your website private, it will make your website totally disappear because the virtual host block for the web server config file will be removed.
  • Prevent hot-linking - hot-linking is when another site links to your content, such as images and media files, instead of hosting the content on their own site. If someone hot-links to an image or media file on your site, that can use your allotted bandwidth and server resources.
Why this is unchecked by default: A common practice is to have the image files such as header or footer graphics and logos or banners in a common folder for all sites. Then each site is configured to use this one folder instead of having separate folders for each individual site. This is technically hot-linking, since the sites are using content outside their own directory. If you check this box, you would disable the ability to share these images and content between sites.

If you have a site that has a lot of image content, and you find that other sites are hot-linking to your content without your permission, then make sure that you have the content for the site in the site directory (make sure that you are not hot-linking internally) and then check this box on. Then check all your images, logos, etc to make sure that all is working as you expect.

Creating the Site

Once you have entered all the information for the site, click on Update to create the site. This can take a few minutes, because the files and directory structure are being created, and the virtual host block for the site is being written to the Apache web server configuration file.

Once the files are written and the directory created, you will be taken to the Website Settings page for the new site.

Site created

Note Once the new site is created, it can take anywhere from 24 to 48 hours before that site is available, because the DNS for the site has to propagate. However, it normally only takes two to three hours for this to happen, and for the site to be visible on the Internet.


To manage your sites, please see the Managing Web Sites with the PBA Control Panel - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/manage_sites

Uploading Files to your Site

Once the site has been created, you will need to upload your files to the site DocumentRoot directory. There are several methods available to move your files (usually from your local computer to your VPS) to your site: PBA Control panel, FTP, SFTP, and scp.

  • PBA Control Panel - the Control Panel can be used to upload files, but only if the files are smaller than 5 MB, and only three files at a time. This can be quite restrictive if you have a large site or large files. Generally, the PBA Control Panel is the last choice to upload files.
Files can be uploaded from the Site tab for the site or from the File Manager on the System Tab.

Site tab - go to Website Settings, then Manage Documents. This takes you to the Website Files and Scripts link, and from there you can click on Upload File. Follow the steps on the screen to upload your files.

System Tab - click on the File Manager, and navigate to the DocumentRoot of your site. To see the DocumentRoot for the site, go to Website Settings for that site, and in the General section will be the full path to the site DocumentRoot, in the form of /home/admin_user/domain.com/html. Click on Upload File, and follow the instructions on the screen to upload your files. Be aware that if you are on the System tab, all the files uploaded will have the owner and group of root, and will need to be changed to the correct Admin User for the site.

  • FTP (File Transfer Protocol) - this is the most common way of uploading files. With FTP there is generally no file size restriction, or restriction on the amount of files you can upload at once (your ISP may have file size restrictions - you will need to check with them if you encounter issues trying to upload very large files).
With FTP, it is very important that you connect as the correct user. You will need to use the Admin User of the site to be able to access the site DocumentRoot. See the FTP User Guide  - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/ftp for more details.

  • SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) - despite the similar sounding names, SFTP is not part of FTP. SFTP is actually part of the SSH protocol. Many FTP clients, such as FileZilla or CyberDuck, can also function as SFTP clients.  The SFTP User Guide - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/sftp has more details on using SFTP, including how to change an FTP user into an SFTP user.
  • SCP (Secure Copy) - scp is used from the command line to move files, and is part of the SSH protocol. scp is for advanced users who are familiar with working from the command line of a Linux server. scp is the fastest way to move files from one VPS to another, as you would be doing when migrating a site from an old VPS to a new VPS.  There is extensive online documentation for scp - http://www.google.com/#hl=en&source=hp&q=scp+command

eApps Support Guidelines

eApps Web Hosting is responsible for the Apache Web Server as installed in your VPS. It is our responsibility to ensure that Apache is installed correctly, and that the default Welcome Page shows correctly in a browser. We use a standard install of the latest version of the Apache server that was available to us from Parallels when the VPS was created. If you are using PHP for your sites, it is our responsibility to ensure that PHP is installed correctly and functioning.

eApps Web Hosting is not responsible for your sites, or the content of your sites, or the functionality of your sites. If the Apache Web Server is running, and the default Welcome Page shows for a new or default site, then that is technically the extent of our responsibilities.

If your sites have mission or business critical data or configurations, it is your responsibility to make sure that the content for the sites is safely backed up. Do not rely on eApps to have current copies of your data or files.

Any server modifications, such as htaccess files or mod_rewrite directives, are outside of our support boundaries. It is assumed that if you are making these types of modifications to your web site that you are familiar with the setup, configuration, and troubleshooting for these types of modifications, or that you know where to search to find the answers. Any assistance with server customizations such as htaccess files or mod_rewrite, or any assistance troubleshooting your site content or functionality could be considered billable support, at our standard rate of $15 per 10 minute increment.

If you make manual changes to httpd.conf, or add modules or make any other configurations changes to the web server, be aware that any support needed to correct problems caused by these modifications will be billable, at our standard rate of $15 per 10 minutes.

If you have made manual, unsupported changes to httpd.conf or to any other part of the web server and are requesting eApps Support assistance, please let us know, as this could save valuable time troubleshooting the problem.

The general assumption, if you are making unsupported changes to httpd.conf or to the web server, is that you are an expert in Apache web server configuration, and will not require any support assistance from eApps if you encounter any problems.

All changes to the virtual host blocks in httpd.conf must be done from the Control Panel. If you manually edit the virtual hosts in httpd.conf, the Control Panel will overwrite your changes, and your sites may stop functioning. This is a feature, not a bug, and this behavior cannot be changed.

As always, eApps support will go the extra mile to assist you with any problems you may have with your websites, but with the understanding that the content and functionality of your sites is ultimately your responsibility.

Links to other information

Adding a Domain to the PBA Control Panel - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/dns
FTP User Guide - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/ftp
SFTP User Guide - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/sftp
SSH User Guide - http://support.eapps.com/hsp/ssh

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