Basic VPS Configuration Instructions

Basic VPS Configuration Instructions

Once you have selected a VPS service that suits your needs, you will sign-up for the service. During the sign-up process you will typically be asked for some configuration details, similar to this.
Fill out the VPS order form like above, using a password that you can remember, but leave your root domain name out of it. If you enter your domain name as part of the Hostname or Nameserver prefixes it will be confusing to the Apache http server later on, since a third-party control panel will be handling domain hosting for you using a different directory structure than Apache uses. Therefore, it’s best to just enter the Hostname and NS prefixes generically, as illustrated above, during the setup process.

Once you signup you’ll be given login information for your VPS account. Go to the address they give to you and login. It should look something like this.

Under “Virtual Servers” click the Manage button on the far right. The new view should look something like this.

You can use that panel to start, stop, or reboot your server. You can also click “Re-install OS” to reinstall the entire operating system to get a fresh start or change to a different flavor of Linux. If your operating system is not currently CentOS 5.x 32-bit then you will want to change that now by clicking “Re-install OS” and selecting CentOS 5 32-bit. After confirming that you want to reinstall, you might need give it maybe 20 to 30 minutes to complete the reinstall process, but a fast VPS might only take 5 minutes. It won’t actually tell you when it’s done, but you can check the disk & memory usage statistics. If they stay the same for two consecutive checks about a minute apart, you can be pretty sure that it’s done.

As an added note on VPS operating system templates, you may see an option to install CentOS 5.x 32-bit with Kloxo in the operating system list. While you will be using Kloxo, you will be installing Kloxo separately from the operating system. The reason is that installing to combination will automatically provision abbreviated web & DNS servers, where separate installs will provision Apache & BIND. For that reason you will want to select CentOS 5.x 32-but without Kloxo.