I want to host my domain, including my email accounts, email forwarders, and web site. First things first. I need step by step procedures to (re) create everything on my server so that moving my domain to here will go as easy as possible.
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Hello, @mwollin
I will recommend to setup a droplet with a GUI like cPanel/WHM or Plesk.
You can check our existing tutorial on how to install cPanel here:
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-cpanel-on-a-virtual-server-running-centos-6
You can also check the official cPanel installation guide:
https://docs.cpanel.net/installation-guide/install/
cPanel is a third party application which is also available through our Marketplace. New installations of cPanel come with a 15 day free trial. For further use beyond that point a valid license will need to be purchased directly through cPanel. https://store.cpanel.net/view/cpanel/license-options?type=VPS
Keep in mind that if you use the one-click app this will spin up a new droplet. If you still want to use your existing droplet you can check the first two links that I’ve sent.
Please refer to below link for further details:
https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/cpanel-whm
You can check Plesk here: https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/plesk
Hope that this helps! Regards, Alex
You’d rather deploy a Free Control Panel which will help you manage your domains, FTP users, Databases, Email Accounts, DNS Records, etc. There are many a Control Panels which will suffice your requirements.
DO is un managed so you have to get everything done by your self…
I too started like you… Moved from a cPanel setup to my own server here…
Create your server…
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-your-first-digitalocean-droplet-virtual-server
In my case I chose CentOS 6.5 x86… Since I wanted the 512MB plan so choose 32bit OS…
Back up everything in your old Host
In my case, I have three domains, with WordPress and CopperMine so I zipped the website files and downloaded the database from phpmyadmin…
Configure the basics of OS Setup…
In my case it was CentOS 6.5 hence I followed that tutorial available here… If you choose anything else, follow that tutorial…
Install the needed services…
Typically that would be Apache / Bind / mail servers and such… SInce I was a newbie and coming from cPanel based hosting, so I tried few Control Panel, I decided to give zPanel a try…
So I installed zPanel (Now Sentora Panel), which comes with everything that web server would need…
There are many free panels, you can try and choose the one you like…
if you mess up, no issues, just rebuild the droplet from scratch and try something else…
Once you get things installed properly now you can move towards transferring the website…
Setup DNS
Update your domain DNS at registrants end, then setup DO DNS…
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-set-up-a-host-name-with-digitalocean
Add the domain in your control panel acc
This is in your hosting control panel, like zPanel of mine, you can have your own panel, there add the domain, which will create its file system and DNS… Edit DNS entry in panel if required…
Use your panel (in my case zPanel) to create emails / forward / ftp or what ever you need…
Start the transfer
Upload the web content in the designated directory of your new server… Create and Map the database as per new settings…
Wait for DNS to update
Usually takes 6 to 8 hours for DNS to update world wide…
:)
tweak
If you find everything running fine, start doing few things like Firewall config and swap file and things which might be related to fine tune your setup…
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-add-swap-on-centos-6
https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-setup-a-basic-ip-tables-configuration-on-centos-6