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Misc

How to Run a Simple FTP Server

This is an advanced tutorial. ServerPilot cannot provide any support for running an FTP server. The easiest way to run an FTP server is with a Python script that starts a simple FTP server.

How to Use Cron to Schedule Scripts

Introduction The most common way to automatically run scripts at scheduled times is through cron. For example, you can use cron to make scheduled web requests to a specific URL on your website.

Where to Find Your Log Files

When things go wrong with your apps, looking through your log files is the first step to troubleshooting your problems.

How to Use Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs)

Internationalized Domain Names (IDNs) are domain names that contain non-ASCII characters. For example, the domain bücher.ch is an IDN because it has the character ü.

How to Install the ImageMagick Executable

If your app requires the ImageMagick executables (for example, your app's configuration page asks for a path to ImageMagick) rather than the ImageMagick PHP extension, you can install the ImageMagick package by logging in to your server as root and running this command:

How to Automatically Deploy a Git Repo from Bitbucket

This article shows you how to automatically deploy your app from a git repo hosted at Bitbucket. That is, whenever you push your master branch to Bitbucket, Bitbucket will POST to a URL on your server, which will then pull and deploy the repo.

How to Install FFmpeg

FFmpeg is a tool for converting video and audio files. Installing FFmpeg on Ubuntu 16.04 or 18.04 On Ubuntu 16.

How to Use Nano to Edit Files

There are several text editors for the command line, but nano is probably the easiest to use. Editing files at the command line can save you time as you don't need to download the files, edit them locally, and then upload them back to the server.

How to Reset Your Root Password

While you can manage your system user and database passwords through ServerPilot, you must contact your server provider if you need to reset your root user password.

How to Use a Dedicated MySQL Server

The content of this article is for advanced users and expert sysadmins. ServerPilot cannot offer support with using a dedicated MySQL server.

How to Host html and Other Static Websites

Along with your dynamic PHP apps, you can easily host your normal html and other static files on your server managed by ServerPilot.

How to View the Memory Usage of Your Server

On the Business plan, ServerPilot gives you insight into your server's memory usage. The First Class plan also lets you view memory usage by each app's PHP processes.

How to Use the 'top' Command

If you notice an increase in CPU or memory usage on your server, the top command is one of the easiest and most reliable means of determining what is using those resources in real time.

How to Connect to Microsoft SQL Server from PHP

To communicate with a Microsoft SQL Server (MSSQL) database, ServerPilot supports the ODBC extension in all PHP versions. Starting with PHP 7.

Bitnami Alternative

When Amazon EC2 left beta in 2008, many developers wanted to begin running their websites on Amazon EC2. However, there was no easy way for developers who weren't sysadmins to install a web stack on EC2 servers without learning server administration.

How to Change the Timezone of Your Server

You can change your server's timezone by SSHing in to your server as root and running this command: sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata Then, follow the prompts to pick your preferred timezone.

HostGator Alternative

Over the past decade, the web hosting industry has changed. Developers all over the world have moved from crowded shared hosting to fast and secure cloud servers managed by ServerPilot.

How to Install Memcached

Careful! We can't provide support for customizations or for any errors, downtime, or vulnerabilities you introduce through customizations. Unless you're absolutely sure about what you're doing, you should stop now!

How to Install MongoDB

To install the MongoDB NoSQL database server, log in to your server as the root user and run the following command:

How to Install Redis

To install the Redis key/value store, log in to your server as the root user and run the following command:

Gzip Compression is Enabled by Default

ServerPilot automatically enables gzip compression on all of your apps. How Gzip Compression Works The gzip compression system works by temporarily replacing similar strings in files with shorter ones, making the total file size smaller.

How Log Rotation Is Configured

ServerPilot configures daily log rotation for your application's log files. One week's worth of log files are kept for your application.

How to Confirm HTTP/2 Works on Your Site

Google Chrome offers a quick and easy way to check if HTTP/2 is supported on your SSL-enabled site. First, visit your site in Chrome over HTTPS.

How to Determine What Is Using Disk Space

If you notice an unexpected amount of your server's disk being used, you can run the command line tool ncdu to track down what is consuming the most disk space.

How to Install Locales

Installing additional locales enables you to use PHP's setlocale() function so various other functions, such as localeconv() and strftime(), will return text formatted for a specific language or region.

How to Make URLs Case Insensitive

Case sensitivity is a good thing; it prevents the server from returning the wrong directories or files and decreases confusion.

How to Restart Services

If you have customized Nginx, Apache, or PHP on your server, you will have to restart that service before it will function properly.

How to Run Apps in Any Language

Careful! We can only provide support for PHP apps. Unless you're absolutely sure about what you're doing, you should stop now!

How to Safely Customize Your Server's Configuration Files

To customize the global configuration files (files in /etc/) that belong to Nginx, Apache, or PHP, you can use the following instructions:

How to Use a Load Balancer

Load balancing should only be used if you or one of your team members is an expert sysadmin. If used by developers who are not experienced with server administration, the complexity involved in load balancing will result in downtime and other breakage.

How to Use Autoscaling

Autoscaling should only be used if you or one of your team members is an expert sysadmin. If used by developers who are not experienced with server administration, the complexity involved in autoscaling will result in downtime and other breakage.

How to Use CloudFlare with ServerPilot

For additional security from online threats to your site, CloudFlare is a popular—and free—content delivery network (CDN) that accelerates your site while protecting it from DDOS (distributed denial of service) attacks.

Why You Should Not Install mod_cloudflare

If you use CloudFlare, you should not install mod_cloudflare. In fact, there's nothing you need to install or configure on your server.

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