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.

Hosted Email: Disabling TLS 1.0/1.1 support in January 2022

We take the security of your confidential data very seriously which is why we take proactive steps to adopt modern security and phase out older protocols over a period of time.

Back in 2020, we enforced encrypted connections on our Hosted Email platform. This meant that all connections had to be encrypted, keeping your emails safe in transit. You can read more about this here.

TLS is the successor to SSL although the term SSL is often still used to describe TLS. On January 31st 2022 at 9PM UK time we will be disabling TLS 1.0/1.1 support on our Hosted Email platform. This will mean that all connections will require TLS 1.2 or higher. TLS 1.0 and 1.1 are deprecated, deemed insecure and should be avoided to prevent the compromise of your private emails.

All modern mail clients and our Roundcube webmail already support TLS 1.2 and the vast majority of our clients will not be affected. Our latest investigation showed that 2.2% of connections used TLS 1.0, and 0.1% of connections used TLS 1.1. You can read more about our recommended mail client settings here.

If your mail client does not support TLS 1.2, we recommend that you check out Mozilla Thunderbird. It is free, open source, very easy to use and the client used by most team members at Anu: https://www.thunderbird.net/. We have a handy guide available for customers here.

Another alternative is to use our Roundcube Webmail: https://roundcube.anu.net/ – recent updates have brought in a new, modern web interface which works seamlessly across all devices (PCs, Laptops, Tablets and Phones).

We will be contacting affected customers directly over the next 8-12 weeks to make them aware and provide assistance where necessary.

If you need any further help or advice, please do not hesitate to contact us by emailing support@anu.net.

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.