Author: Chris Wik

How to use Installatron to automatically install and manage WordPress

WordPress installation on DirectAdmin using Installatron.

In this short tutorial, we will demonstrate how to install WordPress using the DirectAdmin control panel included with all our Web Hosting accounts. It is very easy to install WordPress using Installatron. Installatron is a one-click web application installer that enables photo galleries, forums, shops, and other top web applications to be instantly installed on your desired domain name.

Here are the steps to follow if you want to install WordPress on your Web Hosting account.

1) Login to https://your-domain-name.com:2222 using the account details we sent to you by email.

2. Once you are in, you will be redirected to the Dashboard of your account. See sample picture below

3. At the left pane you will see icons of your available settings for your account and one of those is using Installatron.

4. You can click on the 4 dots icon at the top left corner of the side bar to view full details of the available options or settings for your account.

5. Now click the 4 dots icon on the sidebar to view the available options for you and click on “Extra Features” then “Installatron Application Installer”.

6. You will be redirected to the Installatron dashboard page of your account.

7. At the top right of the page you will see a tab “Applications Browser”, click on it to view available apps for you to install thru Installatron. You will see a lot of apps listed in category and just scroll down to the Apps for Content Management category and look for WordPress Icon then click on it.

8. After you clicked on the WordPress icon, you will be redirected to the installation page.

9. Click on the “+ install this application” button. You will be redirected to the page where it will ask you for a lot of details like the domain name that you want to use. You can skip the Directory field which is optional and only required if you want to install WordPress in a sub-folder of your domain, eg. your-domain.com/blog/.

11. Take note that you will only need to modify the domain field. Next, navigate to the settings area and set your preferred admin details and as well admin contact details.

12. Once you are done filling the settings area, navigate to the bottom of the page to start the installation of your WordPress site.

You will have to wait until the installation is 100% or complete before you can start viewing your website. Links are provided in Installatron to access the back-end WordPress admin area where you can customise your site and start creating content.

Passwordless SSH logins using private keys and .ssh/config

These instructions will work on any computer that uses OpenSSH such as macOS or most Linux/Unix systems. The process for generating keys on other platforms will vary but the general principle is the same.

  • Open your Terminal app and generate a new key pair by typing ssh-keygen at the shell prompt. You should see:
Generating public/private rsa key pair.
Enter file in which to save the key (/home/username/.ssh/id_rsa):

Press Enter to confirm the default location (that is, ~/.ssh/id_rsa) for the newly created key and the press enter twice more when prompted for a passphrase.

  • After this, you will be presented with a message similar to this:
Your identification has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.
Your public key has been saved in /home/username/.ssh/id_rsa.pub.
The key fingerprint is:
e7:97:c7:e2:0e:f9:0e:fc:c4:d7:cb:e5:31:11:92:14 alfie@example.com
The key's randomart image is:
+--[ RSA 2048]----+
|             E.  |
|            . .  |
|             o . |
|              . .|
|        S .    . |
|         + o o ..|
|          * * +oo|
|           O +..=|
|           o*  o.|
+-----------------+
  • Change the permissions of the ~/.ssh/ directory to 700 to ensure it is only accessible by your user ID:
$ chmod 700 ~/.ssh
  • Copy the content of ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub into the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on the machine to which you want to connect, appending it to its end if the file already exists.
  • Set the permissions of the ~/.ssh/authorized_keys file using the following command: 
$ chmod 600 ~/.ssh/authorized_keys

How to create an SSH shortcut

To create a custom ssh connection so you don’t need to type the IP address of your server every time, type from your home directory:

nano .ssh/config

then enter the following below

Host shortcutname
HostName 10.11.12.13
IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa
PreferredAuthentications publickey
Port 22
User root

Save the file and exit nano. You can now connect to the server using the command ssh shortcutname without having to enter any additional connection information or password.

Upcoming USA1 datacenter migration

What is happening?

Over the coming weeks we will be migrating customers hosted out of our usa1 (Chicago) datacenter to a new datacenter facility which is also located in Chicago approx 2 miles away.

Why?

The new facility offers us higher power availability, better connectivity and more redundancy. We are also taking this opportunity to complete the roll-out of improved firewall and encryption subsystems on our virtualization hypervisors to further improve our cyber security defenses.

What is the impact?

Affected customer VMs will be migrated one by one to new hardware running in the new datacenter. Both facilities are connected by a VLAN which will facilitate seamless transition of IP traffic. No IP renumbering or other changes will be required. Once migration is complete you can expect lower latency, faster performance and better security.

Migration will require a brief disruption while we sync changed data and reboot VMs on new hardware. We will schedule migrations with affected customers individually at the most convenient time slots.

Questions?

Please contact support@anu.net if you have any questions about this migration.