How To Install CentOS Web Panel In CentOS

About CentOS Web Panel

There are so many free and paid Control panels available nowadays. We will, today, discuss about CentOS Web panel(CMP), specially designed for RPM based distributions like CentOS, RHEL, Scientific Linux etc. CWP is a free, Open Source control panel that can be widely used for deploying a Web hosting environment easily. Unlike other Control panels, CWP is automatically deploy the LAMP stack with Varnish Cache server.

Features

CWP comes with lot of features and free services. As I mentioned before, CWP automatically installs full LAMP stack (apache, php, phpmyadmin, webmail, mailserver etc.) on your server.

Here is the complete list of features and software that will be automatically installed and configured during CWP installation.

List of softwares to be installed and configured during CWP installation:

Apache Web Server
PHP 5.4
MySQL + phpMyAdmin
Postfix + Dovecot + roundcube webmail
CSF Firewall
File System Lock (no more website hacking, all your files are locked from changes)
Backups; AutoFixer for server configuration

3rd Party Applications:

CloudLinux + CageFS + PHP Selector
Softaculous – Script Installer (Free and Premium)

Web Server:

Varnish Cache server
Compiles Apache from source
Apache reCompiler + Additional modules
Apache server status, configuration
Edit apache vhosts, vhosts templates, include configuration
Rebuild all apache Virtual hosts
suPHP & suExec
Mod Security + OWASP rules
Tomcat 8 server management
DoS protection
Perl cgi script support

PHP:

Compiles PHP from source
PHP Switcher (switch between PHP versions like: 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5)
PHP Selector select PHP version per user or per folder (PHP 4.4, 5.2, 5.3, 5.4, 5.5, 5.6)
Simple php editor
Simple php.ini generator in the users panel
PHP addons
PHP.ini editor & PHP info & List modules
php.ini per user account
FFMPEG, For Video streaming websites
CloudLinux + PHP Selector

User Management

Add, List, Edit adn Remove Users
User Monitoring
Shell access management
User Limit Managment
Limit Processes
Limit Open Files
User FTP & File Manager
CloudLinux + CageFS
Dedicated IP per account

DNS:

FreeDNS
Add, Edit, List and Remove DNS zones
Edit nameserver IPs
DNS zone template editor
New Easy DNS Zone Manager (with ajax)
New DNS Zone list with Additional resolving information using google (also checking rDNS, nameservers….)

Email:

Postfix & dovecot
MailBoxes, Alias
Roundcube webmail
Postfix Mail queue
rDNS Checker Module
AntiSPAM
SPF & DKIM Integration
Re-Build Postfix/Dovecot Mail server with AntiVirus, AntiSpam Protection
Email Auto Responder

System:

CPU core and clock info
Memory usage info
Detailed Disk status
Software Info like kernel version, uptime etc.
Services Status
ChkConfig Manager
Network port usage
Network configuration
SSHD configuration
Auto-Fixer (checks important configuration and tries to auto-fix issues)

Monitoring:

Monitor services eg. top, apache stats, mysql etc.
Use Java SSH Terminal/Console within panel
Services Configuration (eg. Apache, PHP, MySQL etc)
Run shell commands in screen/background

Security:

CSF Firewall
SSL generator
SSL Certificate Manager
CloudLinux + CageFS

SQL:

MySQL Database Management
Add local or remote access user
Live Monitor MySQL process list
Create, Remove database
Add additional users per database
MySQL server configuration
PhpMyAdmin
PostgreSQL, phpPgAdmin Support

Additional options:

TeamSpeak 3 Manager
Shoutcast Manager
Auto-update
Backup manager
File Manager
Virtual FTP users per domain
cPanel Account Migration (restores files, databases and database users)
And many more.

Install CentOS Web Panel In CentOS 6

At the time writing this tutorial, CWP only supports upto CentOS 6.x versions. It doesn’t work on CentOS 7 and later versions.

Prerequisites:

Before installing CWP, you must know the following information:

CWP only supports static IP addresses. It does not support dynamic, sticky, or internal IP addresses.
CWP doesn’t has an uninstaller. After you install CWP, you must reinstall the server to remove it.
Only install CWP on a freshly installed operating system without any configuration changes.
Need atleast 512MB RAM for 32 bit systems.
1024MB for 64 bit systems.
Need 4GB RAM or more to deploy all modules.
At least 20GB or hard disk space is required.

For testing purpose in VirtualBox, 640MB RAM and 10GB hdd space is enough.

Update server:

Install wget package first. This is needed to download CWP.

yum install wget -y

Update your server using command:

yum update -y

Reboot once to take effect the changes.

Install CWP:

Change to /usr/local/src/ directory:

cd /usr/local/src

Download latest CWP version with command:

wget http://centos-webpanel.com/cwp-latest

If the above URL doesn’t work, use the following link instead.

wget http://dl1.centos-webpanel.com/files/cwp-latest

Then, start CWP installer using command:

sh cwp-latest

Sample output:

The installation will take upto 30 minutes or more depending upon your Internet speed.

Finally, you’ll see the installation completed message like below. Note down the details such as mysql root user password and login URLs of CWP. You”ll need them later. Then Press Enter key to reboot your system.

After booting into the system, you will see the CWP welcome login message.

Adjust Firewall/Router:

The CWP default web console ports are 2030(http) and 2031(https). You should allow the both ports through firewall/Router in order to access the CWP web console from a remote system.

To do that, edit:

vi /etc/sysconfig/iptables

Add the following lines:

[...]
-A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 2030 -j ACCEPT
-A INPUT -p tcp -m state --state NEW -m tcp --dport 2031 -j ACCEPT
[...]

Save and close the file. Restart iptables service to take effect the changes.

service iptables restart

Accessing CWP Web Console

Open up your browser and type:

http://IP-Address:2030/

https://IP-Address:2031/

You will see the following like screen.

The login credentials are:

Username: root
Password: your root password

This is how CWP dashboard will look:

Congratulations! CWP has been successfully has been installed.

CWP Basic Configuration

Next, we have to do couple of things such as:

Setup nameservers
Setup shared ip (must be your public IP address)
Setup at least one hosting package (or edit default package)
Setup root email, etc.

Setup nameservers:

To setup nameservers, go to DNS Functions -> Edit nameservers IPs.

Set your nameservers and click Save changes button.

Setup Shared IP And Root mail ID:

This is important step to host websites on your host. To setup shared IP, go to CWP Settings -> Edit settings.

Enter your Static IP and Email ID, and Click Save settings button.

Now, CWP is ready to host websites.

Setup hosting package:

A hosting package is nothing but a Web hosting plan that consists of allowed diskspace, bandwidth, no of FTP accounts, no of email ids, and no of databases etc. You can setup any number of web hosting plans as your wish.

To add a package, go to Packages – Add a Package from the CWP console.

Enter the name of the package, amount of Diskquota/RAM allowed, FTP/Email accounts, Databases, and subdomains etc. Click Save settings button to create the web hosting plan.

Now, CWP is ready to host your domains.

Adding Domains:

To create a new Domain, you to have at least one user account.

To add a user, go to User Accounts -> New Account.

Enter the domain(ex.unixmen.com), username, password and Email id etc. Finally, click Create.

Now, let us add a new domain.

To add a domain, go to Domains -> Add Domain.

Enter the Domain and assign the domain the users of your choice.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we have seen how to install and configure CentOS Web Panel to create a simple web hosting environment. CWP is very simple to install and use. Even a novice user can create a basic web hosting server in a couple of hours. Also, CWP is completely free to use and open source. Give it a try! You won’t be disappointed.

You can find the more details about CWP in the CentOS Web Panel Wiki page.

Cheers!