Control Panels

Server and hosting control panels for running sites, mail, databases, DNS and backups behind one login, with installation guides and the operating system each one expects.

A control panel is what turns a bare server into something you can hand to a client: sites, mail, databases, DNS and backups behind one login, instead of a terminal and a stack of configuration files.

What a panel actually manages

Virtual hosts and PHP versions per site, TLS certificates and their renewal, mailboxes and forwarders, MariaDB users and databases, DNS zones, and scheduled backups to a destination you choose. The point is that each of those stays reproducible after the person who set it up has moved on.

Sizing and compatibility

Panels install on a clean machine and take it over, so put one on a server with nothing else on it. Two gigabytes of RAM is a realistic floor once a database and a mail stack are running, and the image's own page states the operating system it expects. Installing a panel on a server that already runs a hand-configured web stack is the usual way people break both.

Migrating an existing site in

Move the files, the database dump and the DNS records in that order, and keep the old host live until the new one serves the same pages. Lowering the DNS TTL a day before the switch shortens the window where visitors are split between two servers.

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