Question

Manually install WHMCS on a droplet

Posted on June 14, 2016
Getting Started DigitalOcean 1-Click Apps Marketplace
Asked by Wade Beckett

Hi, I recently launched a start-up web development company. I am looking at using a droplet for my WHMCS billing system. I have also been looking online for a guide that would take me through step-by-step installing WHMCS on a VPS, including the installation of it’s required components. I can’t seem to find anything on google as most guides relate to installation using cPanel, which I am trying to avoid. Could you recommend a guide or perhaps have one created?

PS I would like to use the same droplet for my website and mails as well.

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Andrew Herrington

DigitalOcean Employee

• August 10, 2016

Accepted Answer

Hey there,

WHMCS can be a bit complicated to get working, but once you have the base requirements down.

Your first needs are going to be a LAMP stack - Linux, Apache, Mysql, and PHP. We have a great tutorial on getting that setup: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-install-linux-apache-mysql-php-lamp-stack-on-ubuntu-14-04

Once you have a working LAMP stack, it is time to work on the requirements for WHMCS. The best documentation I’ve found for this come to WHMCS itself: http://docs.whmcs.com/Installing_WHMCS. One thing in their documentation that is a bit confusing is setting up a database. We have a tutorial that walks through that here: https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/how-to-create-a-new-user-and-grant-permissions-in-mysql

Best Regards,

–Andrew

andrewnicholasm • March 3, 2017

Hello,

If you have a static website I would simply choose the most minimum droplet to host and serve the files and use another droplet for smtp that way if one system fails your whole entire platform and way to contact customers do not, i would also have a separate droplet just to backup the sql database in case you need to move whmcs to another droplet and then connect to the spare sql server until you can get everything up and running again.

If your website uses wordpress like most sites use something like server pilot which will deploy wordpress and provides an easy interface to manage instead of using command lines and they also have a free plan right now. so you have many options I currently have over 40 servers 5 of them are just for backup and if the main infrastructure goes down I can quickly spin something up to operate at the bare minimums until my admins can find the solution to whatever caused a crash, something i have learned from being in this business is not to put all your eggs in one basket.