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EHCP Installation Guide On Ubuntu 14.04 VPS

A detailed guide (with pictures) for newbie on how to install and configure Easy Hosting Control Panel (EHCP) on a server / vps running Ubuntu 14.04. I believe this can be one of your alternatives in looking for free web based control panel to make your server hosts your websites or blog.

What is EHCP?

EHCP is an open-source and powerful hosting control panel which you can download, install and use it for free on your server. Just like many other control panels (Vesta CP, Kloxo, etc), EHCP allows its users to install full stack of web server, ftp server, dns server, and mail server. It means with EHCP you don’t need to install necessary software manually. Just install EHCP and you’ll have a ready to use web hosting server. Unlike VestaCP that is currently running Nginx as frontend proxy with Apache as backend, EHCP can and is also the first free hosting CP supporting native Nginx with PHP-fpm. How cool is that?

Some of its key features:

  • Full php, full opensource, easily modifiable, customazible, ehcp templates;
  • Unlimited “resellers, panel users, domains, ftp users, emails, mysql databases”;
  • Domains, subdomains, ftp, mysql, dns (automatic), email etc. management;
  • Password protected domains;
  • Email forwarding, autoreply, catch-all emails;
  • Web-stats (webalizer);
  • Web-ftp (net2ftp);
  • Easy Install Scripts/Programs (programs such as wordpress, durpal easily downloaded and copied by means of server; no need to deal with ftp etc. A total of 51 programs – just like Softaculous);
  • Add/setup domain & install wordpress in single ste ;
  • Add domain, easy add domain, add domain to existing ftp, (use sub-ftp accounts);
  • Add ftp in main ftp, add custom ftp space (custom location);
  • Disk quota control;
  • read more features here.

Prerequisites

What you need before installing:

  1. A SSH client like Putty and basic knowledge about how to use it.
  2. Basic knowledge about common Unix command to SSH to your server.
  3. A server or VPS with at least 512MB of RAM (1GB recommended). If you not already have one then you can read my list of recommended VPS providers or these top low end cloud server providers. Quick recommendation: Atlantic.net, Digital Ocean and RamNode.
  4. Make sure your server is running Ubuntu 14.04. In this article I use a 512Mb cloud server from Atlantic.net running Ubuntu 14.04 LTS Server 64-bit.
  5. About 1 hour and 15 minutes of your time
  6. a cup of coffee or tea.

How to install

Step 1 – Login to your server via SSH as root or as a user with root (sudo) privilege:

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Step 2 – You can now download full EHCP package (latest version) using wget command:

wget http://www.ehcp.net/ehcp_latest.tgz

That command will always grab the latest version of EHCP. Feel free to always check its latest version here.

download-ehcp-package

Step 3 – Next, extract the package with this command:

tar -zxvf ehcp_latest.tgz

extract-ehcp-package

Step 4 – Now lets install EHCP with its simple magic command:

cd ehcp/
./install.sh

Step 5 – Once you issued above command, it will then shows you EHCP installation page with a bunch of information and instruction about what will happen next. All you need to do is to read it carefully and proceed by hitting Enter button. Please do remember that the install process will occur in approx 1 hour and it will ask you series of questions you have to answer (like defining your passwords for some services). So hold tight and make sure you have uninterrupted Internet connection.

install-ehcp-package

MySQL Setup

Step 6 – Enter the password for the MySQL root user and hit OK then re-enter the password again.

setup-mysql-ehcp-package

Step 7 – Next, EHCP will ask your name and your email. Enter it correctly:

enter-name-ehcp

Step 8 – Enter the password for MySQL root user which you’ve setup earlier. In my case, I use servermom as password for all what it asks.

Step 9 – Now enter password for mysql user of “ehcp” then you’ll also have to enter it again (twice for confirmation)

enter-password-ehcp

Step 10 – Enter your hostname, IP address, preferred language, etc. If you want to leave defaults, just hit Enter on your keyboard.

select-language-ehcp

Roundcube Setup

Step 11 – Next, you will be asked to configure database for roundcube with dbconfig-common. Select Yes and then press Enter.

Step 12 – In the next page, you have to select which database will be used by roundcube. It is recommended to simply use mysql.

Step 13 – Enter password of the database’s administrative user.

Step 14 – Enter MySQL application password for roundcube to register with database server. Enter it twice for confirmation.

setup-roundcube-ehcp

PhpMyAdmin Setup

Step 15 – Next, you’ll be asked whether to configure phpmyadmin using dbconfig-common setting or not. Simply select Yes.

Step 16 – Enter password of the database’s administrative user to proceed:

Step 17 – Enter MySQL application password for phpmyadmin to register with database server. Enter it twice for confirmation.

Step 18 – Next, the web server that should be automatically configured to run phpMyAdmin. Simply use Apache.

setup-phpmyadmin-ehcp

Postfix Setup

Step 19 – EHCP makes use of Postfix as its mail server so in the next page you have to configure its basic setting. Hit OK then choose Internet Site.

Step 20 – Now in the next page you’ll be asked to enter your mail server name. You can simply use your server’s FQDN or something like mail.domain.tld (ex: mail.servermom.org)

Step 21 – Create directories for web based administration? Answer it with Yes.

Step 22 – Next, simply choose OK to install necessary SSL certificates.

Step 23 – Now the installer will ask you to also install Nginx. This time you can select No because you’ve already choose to use Apache earlier.

install-process-ehcp

Done! The EHCP installation has been complete. It will display something like this (below), you can now launch your favorite web browser and open EHCP dashboard.

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