How to Install Vesta Control Panel and Set Up a Website on Ubuntu.

Introduction

The Vesta Control Panel is a free, open source website control panel with website,
email, database, and DNS functionalities built in. By the end of this tutorial we will
have Vesta installed and running on Ubuntu 14.04 with a working website.

Installing Prerequisites

# apt-get update && apt-get upgrade && apt-get dist-upgrade

Step 1 — Installing Vesta

Download the VestaCP installation script:

# wget https://vestacp.com/pub/vst-install.sh

Then, as root, execute the installation script:

# bash vst-install.sh

When asked if you want to proceed, enter y. You will then be asked to enter a valid email address, enter your email address and press ENTER. Now you will be asked to enter a hostname. This can be whatever you want.

The installation process will begin. It claims to take 15 minutes but I've found it to be around 5 with SSD and Gigabit Internet speeds, like on DigitalOcean Droplets.

This installation script will install the control panel and all its dependencies to your server. This includes:

• Nginx Web Server
• Apache Web Server (as backend)
• Bind DNS Server
• Exim mail server
• Dovecot POP3/IMAP Server
• MySQL Database Server
• Vsftpd FTP Server
• Iptables Firewall + Fail2Ban
• Roundcube mail client

It will also change your hostname to whatever hostname you entered at the beginning, however it will not change the hostname in your DigitalOcean control panel. I recommend you change that hostname as well for Pointer DNS records to match your domain, which will at the very least help emails sent from your server not to get sent to spam.

After the script finishes its work you'll have some information displayed on your screen. It concludes that the basic installation of your control panel. We can now continue to the web panel.

Note: In Ubuntu 16.04 Apache has its Default config enabled to disable it run the following command :

# sudo a2dissite 000-default.conf

Step 2 — Setting up Vesta

Now we will set up your Vesta control panel. Go to the URL given to you at the end of the install. In my case it was https://panel.example.com:8083/, but yours will vary based on the hostname you entered at the beginning. You will get an SSL warning.It is completely normal because it is using a self-signed certificate. It is completely safe to continue. Click to proceed anyway. The exact steps vary by web browser. For Chrome, click Advanced and then click Proceed. Once you're at the login screen, enter the two credentials displayed in the server console after the installation finished. These credentials were also emailed to you using the email you entered at the beginning of the install.

 The first thing we'll do is change the admin user password. In the top right-hand corner of the web panel click the admin link:

In the Password field, enter any password you'd like, or click Generate to make Vesta
generate a secure password for you.

Press Save at the bottom of the page when you're finished.

Step 3 — Setting up a Website

 Now we can set up your first website. On the homepage of Vesta, click WEB at the top.

Then click the green + button. In the Domain field on the next screen, enter the domain you'd like your website to be accessible from, or the one you registered to point to this IP address such as example.com. Also in some situations you may have multiple IP addresses under the IP Address dropdown, usually if you have Private Networking enabled. Make sure the IP address listed is your public IP address for your Server. Now click the Advanced Options link. Under Aliases enter any subdomains you also want this website to be accessible from, such as www.example.com. You can also choose webalizer as a statistics option under Web Statistics for server side analytics. This option will give you accurate analytics for your website.

You should also choose Additional FTP so you can easily upload files to your hosting. Enter a Username and a Password in their respective fields. Note that whatever you enter in the username field will have admin_ added as a prefix (entering example will result in admin_example).

Be sure to click Add at the bottom of the page after making any configurations you'd like.

On your computer, you now need to connect via FTP

There will be a bunch of files in the directory, but we only need to worry about the public_htmldirectory. That's where all the files that are web accessible are stored. You can edit the index.html file to whatever you'd like, or upload your own. Anything uploaded will be instantly available at example.com. Be warned, any files you upload with the same filename will overwrite existing files on your server.

Try visiting http://example.com now to make sure it works.

If you want to make changes to your domain later, click *WEB at the top of the Vesta control panel. You will see the domain you just created and the domain name for the Vesta control panel, such as panel.example.com.

Conclusion

Congratulations, you now have a fully functioning web site installed on your Server. You can repeat Steps 3 to add more websites.