New to VPS and WHM/cPanel - Help?

[CMOwen]

A brief overview of what I intend to do with my VPS:
I am a graphic designer (yes, unfortunately a lot of my business is web design). Due to so many of my web design clients asking me to start hosting I thought I would give it a go and offer my design clients "Managed Hosting" services. They will not have access to cPanel or FTP ... I take care of everything for them and part of their "package" is X number of hours of site editing every month. This helps me in that I have ONE place to go to administer the clients' sites/email/page and db edits, etc.

My VPS plan is small but should be sufficient to host at least 10 static low-traffic sites at which point I could add more RAM or upgrade plans before I add client # 11+ (cost increase would be justified at this point).

I recently signed for a very basic VPS plan (Discovery with more RAM/Space/Bandwidth promo) running Plesk (on Virtuozzo). What a mistake that was! Parallels is killing Plesk - adware in the user interface is out of control, because Plesk is fully integrated with Virtuozzo there a lot of things you can't do as you can with a dedicated server (update cert for secure cp connection is a biggie)... enough about that, though.

Today I had JPC reprovision the VPS with WHM/cPanel. Staring at WHM, I am at a complete loss of where to begin.



1. In Plesk, I set up a client account for myself (I am my first client!), then set up my main domain in my account (my main domain matched the rDNS of the primary shared IP and hostname). Is this the same for WHM/cPanel? Or is there some special "Magic Server Owner" space/account already set up for the VPS's main domain (silly question, but I just want to make sure I do this right).

2. In Plesk, I can generate a CSR, use that CSR to buy a cert for www.mydomain.com, then install the cert as the default for the Shared Hosting IP. Since I set my account/site up on the shared hosting IP in plesk, I can get to https://www.mydomain.com and the proper cert is served (even though it is bound to the server shared IP). Is the same setup available in WHM, or do I need to use up one of my two remaining IPs (nameserver IPs) for my own site if I need SSL? I ask only because I purchased a 2 yr cert for my Plesk control panel (Plesk is only available over port 8443 with SSL enabled) only to find out that the default cp cert can't be replaced while Plesk runs in an "online" mode Virtuozzo container. I have 3 days left to get that cert re-issued with a new CSR (since i JUST bought it).

3. Is it possible to setup a primary domain for the shared hosting IP in WHM? (ie. say my shared IP is 111.222.333.444 ... someone types http://111.222.333.444 into their browser and POOF! my site shows up)

4. Are the "Securing your VPS" threads on this forum up to date? I bet I would be pretty unhappy if someone hosed my setup because I wasn't sure how to properly secure my VPS or had out of date settings ...

5. Are there any MUST HAVE addons that I should consider for WHM/cPanel? Keep in mind I don't need any addons for my customers as the closest they will get to a control panel will be changing their email passwords from the webmail interface.

6. Do I HAVE to setup "packages" and "features" before I add a client or can I add clients/domains "a la carte" as I go? I won't have that many clients and certainly won't be adding very many each month so I don't need these types of "shortcuts" if they aren't necessary.

7. This is a monkey for your viewing pleasure.

8. Any decent (and free) server monitors out there that are worth taking a look at? I can't justify the expense of a professionally monitored service as I don't have any paying hosting clients yet. Hopefully this will change in a few months.



I have several more "I have no clue what I'm doing" questions but answers to these (newb) questions will at least get me started. Thanks in advance for any help!

[Vin DSL]

Heh!

I love you!!!

Welcome aboard...

[jason]

Wow...that monkey is dancing in perfect sync with the song playing on Pandora right now. Weird.

I'm not a WHM user, so I'll give you more general answers. I'm sure that someone else with cPanel/WHM experience will chime in with more specific answers at some point.

1. This is typically how you do it in a control pannels. The admin side is just for the admin features, there is no specific "administrator's site" in the admin interface.
2. Since I don't have the WHM experience I can't give you specifics, but I know there is a way to set up a certificate to be used for accessing the administrative ports (cPanel, webmail, etc.), but it is separate from the SSL setup for individual sites. I think that's what you're asking...
3. In Inteworx (the control panel I use) the alphabetically-lowest domain on the server resolves to the IP address. I don't like this, and the IWorx community recommends setting up a 00000.domain.com site to trap it. I'm not positive, but in cPanel I believe that the Apache default site, though I don't know where cPanel configures that to be.
4. They're pretty good, yes. Just make sure that you have the latest versions of the tools you're downloading (and update them regularly) and you shouldn't have too many problems. The biggest threat to server security is probably unpatched/unupgraded user-installed web apps like blogs and CMSes, so if you use any in your sites be sure to keep them up to date as well.
5., 6. No comments...
7. Already commented.
8. I use hosttracker.com (their free plan) and I've been pretty happy with it. Of course my VPS hasn't been down, either, so I can't really be sure that host tracker is doing their job. If you need better than free service, their $5/month plan should be perfect for you (you only need to check on URL on a given server since if it is down for one its most likely down for all).

Hope this helps. And welcome aboard.

--Jason

[Ron]

Nice monkey. Have anything in the way of a Darth Vader or Jedi Knight?

[splitime]

Heh!

I love you!!!

Welcome aboard...

I know this will be completely random... but Vin... any reason you have a picture of Me as your avatar? Randomly testing tineye out today... and found this .

For more fun details... it was a pair of old black fly sunglasses (my buddies), a banana republic sweater and well... me. Original medium was large format Polaroid.

Not upset at all, just found it hilarious to see someone using a picture of me as their avatar... that well... wasn't me
Picture is from ~98-99 for a friends class project in lighting... its a picture of me .

[CMOwen]

As for #8 ... yes, accounts CAN be setup "a la carte" (no feature list, no package required). I didn't notice the check box for "Select Options Manually" the first time I looked at account creation. When you click that a new section appears for you to set limits, etc.

As for #7 ... it is STILL a monkey and it is STILL dancing! Stamina! I can't believe its not a hippo or kangaroo yet.

#1 ... configured myself as a reseller with most system resources (quotas) ... will just add my clients' accounts to my reseller account to simplify things (like logins, etc).

#2 ... still having a tough time with this one

#3 ... this one is driving me nuts. I still can't find an answer for how to configure a "default domain" for the shared IP ... back to google

@ Vin ... stop pretending you are splitime :P

[CMOwen]

I wish I could edit my original post to add what I have found out ...

Anyhow, #3 (Default Domain to show up when IP is typed in) ...
Rewrite /usr/local/apache/htdocs/index.html is about the best I could come up with.

I just backed up the original page:

# cp /usr/local/apache/htdocs/index.html /usr/local/apache/htdocs/index.html.original

Then created a new page (I use nano for text editor) with a meta-refresh (to redirect the user to my main site)

# cd /usr/local/apache/htdocs
# rm index.html
# nano index.html

Inside the newly created index.html (open in nano) I wrote:

<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<html>
<head>
<title>My Website ... It's STILL a monkey!!1eleven</title>
<meta http-equiv="REFRESH" content="0;url=http://www.mydomain.com"></head>
<body>
Please visit <a href="http://www.mydomain.com">MyDomain.com</a> for more information.
</body>
</html>

Save the file - now when any of the IPs are entered for the address it sends the user to my home page.

Would be nice if there were a cleaner way to do this.