amuck-landowner

Website and Forum on Linux VPS

F

FliP

New Member
Hello vpsboard community.

I'm the owner of a small VPS I use to host a TeamSpeak Server for my Guild. I still have enough Bandwidth and Resources left on it so I would like to create and host a website and forum on it, as well as adding a custom domain.

I did read some tutorials on how to create a website and how to create a forum, but I have no idea how to do all of that combined into 1 single website.

What I had in mind was something like www.website.com and www.website.com/forum

Could anyone help me out or point me in the right direction?
Thank you advance for your help.
 
MannDude

MannDude

Just a dude
vpsBoard Founder
Moderator
What Linux OS are you running?

First things first, you'll need to make sure a webserver is installed on the VPS like Apache or Nginx. You're also going to need to install MySQL and PHP for the forum as well. You can google, "[LAMP/LEMP] stack [CentOS/Debian/Ubuntu]", just be sure to choose either LAMP (apache) or LEMP (nginx, the 'e' is for how nginx is pronouced: engine-x, instead of using an 'n') and choose your OS. You can pretty much just copy/paste the commands into your VPS via SSH to get setup. If you encounter any errors, let us know.
 
F

FliP

New Member
The Linux is Ubuntu 14.04 64bit.

Website should be easy, but what is confusing me is how to install the forum software and manually set domains and urls.
 
MikeA

MikeA

New Member
Verified Provider
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Just be sure to pick one of the popular open source forum software packages :)

cPanel is a good tool to have / pay for if you aren't technical enough to glue the software mess together.   Multiple open source forum packages in there.
 
F

FliP

New Member
I got some spare time today so I decided to get to it.

Apache is installed and works. MySQL is causing me trouble. No matter what I try (and I tried all I could find on the internet), it wont set a new MySQL Root Password.

No matter what I try, I always get stuck on:

"Unable to set password for the MySQL "root" user                           x
x                                                                            x
x An error occurred while setting the password for the MySQL                 x
x administrative user. This may have happened because the account already    x
x has a password, or because of a communication problem with the MySQL       x
x server.                                                                    x
x                                                                            x
x You should check the account's password after the package installation.    x
x                                                                            x
x Please read the /usr/share/doc/mysql-server-5.5/README.Debian file for     x
x more information.                                        "

With the following messages:

"

start: Job failed to start
invoke-rc.d: initscript mysql, action "start" failed.
dpkg: error processing package mysql-server-5.5 (--configure):
 subprocess installed post-installation script returned error exit status 1
Setting up libhtml-template-perl (2.95-1) ...
dpkg: dependency problems prevent configuration of mysql-server:
 mysql-server depends on mysql-server-5.5; however:
  Package mysql-server-5.5 is not configured yet.

dpkg: error processing package mysql-server (--configure):
 dependency problems - leaving unconfigured
Setting up php5-common (5.5.9+dfsg-1ubuntu4.11) ...

Creating config file /etc/php5/mods-available/pdo.ini with new version

Creating config file /etc/php5/mods-available/opcache.ini with new version
Setting up php5-mysql (5.5.9+dfsg-1ubuntu4.11) ...

Creating config file /etc/php5/mods-available/mysql.ini with new version

Creating config file /etc/php5/mods-available/mysqli.ini with new version

Creating config file /etc/php5/mods-available/pdo_mysql.ini with new version
Setting up php5-json (1.3.2-2build1) ...
Processing triggers for libc-bin (2.19-0ubuntu6.6) ...
Errors were encountered while processing:
 mysql-server-5.5
 mysql-server
E: Sub-process /usr/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)
website@Eternal:/root$ Unable to set password for the MySQL "root" user    "
 
HalfEatenPie

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Honestly...  just make life easier.

Reinstall Ubuntu/Debian (since they prefer a clean installation before you do anything else).  Install VestaCP.  Put the Teamspeak server back on it.  

Go into the VestaCP control panel and do everything you need to do there.  

Live life and realize how much easier you just made everything. 

Warning: If course since you're basically automating everything if apache or nginx or MySQL mess up you won't know what the first steps are to fixing it (if you go with that tutorial you can probably slowly figure it out but it'd still take some outside help).  

VestaCP (since it's adding on another layer of software on top of just running the barebones webserver + Database) can provide an additional "point of failure" (especially if someone is able to get into your admin account on it).  However VestaCP will help you with configuration and server management.  It's probably one of the easiest ways of doing it and you can easily add on another site if you want to.  

Good luck and have fun.  
 
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F

FliP

New Member
I'd re-install it, but is there a way to avoid that if possible?

Or at least to completely backup my TeamSpeak, since it didnt work when I tried it once.
 
HalfEatenPie

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Yep.

Just move the folder with your teamspeak server to another place or download it as a zip or something.

Everything your teamspeak server needs is in there.  I had to migrate our teamspeak server from one server to another and just moved the folder back. 

However, since I'm pretty sure you want to actually get more detail on this rather than some random guy on a forum, I'd like to redirect you to this Support Document from Teamspeak directly on what you need to move your teamspeak server from one server to another: https://support.teamspeakusa.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/315/16/i-want-to-move-my-server-to-another-machine-which-files-should-i-copy
 
F

FliP

New Member
Well, that's exactly what I did once, but I ended up with no channels etc.

But reading the link you posted I may have missed the ts3server.sqlitedb.

I'd like to only re-install Ubuntu as last resort and if nothing else can be done. Aren't there any commands to completely remove all traces of Apache and Mysql so I can try fresh? I could even remove the required directories and files manually.
 
HalfEatenPie

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Stop the services.

Remove those services (I think apt-get --purge remove apache2 mysql-server is the line you want?).  

Wouldn't hurt to restart the server anyways.

IIRC the VestaCP script is pretty forgiving, so who knows it might work perfectly.  Just sometimes there is that odd package that was installed that screws with something.  Mostly it's just to avoid these kinds of potential headache.

Oh and also as a word of advice, backup anything and everything before you mess with it.  I don't see how this would even be an issue but there could potentially be a conflicting problem with running the teamspeak server on top of VestaCP (more than likely this will never be a problem but doesn't hurt to be prepared).  So...  Yeah back everything up before you go around screwing with it.  
 
F

FliP

New Member
Managed to get it working by completely removing mysql per command and manually deleting everything associated to mysql.

I got LAMP installed now and my domain works too.

Kinda offtopic, but does anyone know a decent, noob friendly (no HTML or PHP knowledge) tool to create html websites?
 
souen

souen

Active Member
There's Raptor Editor (haven't tried it). KompoZer hasn't been actively developed for some time, but for quick static pages it'll do the job.

If you don't want to touch HTML at all, you could also consider installing some kind of light blog or CMS that has a collection of themes, pick one and done.
 
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HalfEatenPie

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Looks like your CSS isn't loading. 

I'm willing to suspect it's a permission issue or your uploaded file is broken, but not too sure since this can be many factors involved.  

Try reuploading and reinstalling vBulletin.  As a note and PSA you should only be using a legal paid version of vBulletin.  Never used the "cracked" or "nulled" versions ever.  Most of them contain backdoors and other vulnerabilities that you just don't want to deal with.  Not saying I'm accusing you of using a nulled software, just in general working with legit paid software will save you a ton of headaches down the road.  
 
Last edited by a moderator:
F

FliP

New Member
It looks to me that the forum file location is set wrong in the config, even though I did as described in multiple tutorials and checked my config files countless times for stuff I may have missed.

It seems like it is loading the index, but no images and no links are working. So I'm assuming it must be a directory configuration problem.

The Forum is located in var/www/html/mywebsite/public_html/forum and that seems to be fine since I installed it that way.

A common problem is that the admincp cannot be accessed as it should be accessed through website.com/admincp, instead I have to access it through forum/core/admincp so that already indicated that something is wrong.

My root config.php core setting is default

// Assumes default location of core. 
// These are the system paths and folders for your vBulletin files
// This setting is for where your vbulletin core folder is
$config['core_path'] = realpath(dirname(__FILE__)) . '/core';

$config['php_sessions'] = false;
and the config.php located in core/includes has the following setting

$config['Misc']['forumpath'] = '/var/www/html/mywebsite/public_html/forum';
I tried to play around with this setting, but nothing worked.
 
HalfEatenPie

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
Sorry but we're not a vBulletin support forum.  And I mean that as in you're probably going to have more luck asking on a forum focused on vBulletin installation.  I personally am not too familiar with vBulletin so I can't help you with that.  
 
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F

FliP

New Member
Sorry, I thought maybe someone has some experience regarding forum software.

I'll just try another forum software since the VB License was my roommates anyway.
 
HalfEatenPie

HalfEatenPie

The Irrational One
Retired Staff
FliP said:
Sorry, I thought maybe someone has some experience regarding forum software.

I'll just try another forum software since the VB License was my roommates anyway.
Click to expand...

Oh not a problem.  I'd love to have helped out in it but I never had to install and manage a community with vBulletin.  

qrwteyrutiyoup said:
If you have enough resources, take a look at discourse. https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/docs/INSTALL-cloud.md
Click to expand...

iirc Discourse is very javascript heavy.  This is still true right?  I remember when for a long time their "Anti Spam" process was "We use Javascript.  Bots can't read javascript.  #winning".  Besides that they don't really have any good anti-spam system in place.  
 
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