DirectAdmin Tutorial Series 1: Introduction

Starting with a VPS for the first time is quite an undertaking. In our DirectAdmin tutorial series, we explain how to get started with a VPS using DirectAdmin. This covers not only hosting your website and email but also how to securely configure and update your VPS.

General information about DirectAdmin (for example, about the differences between 'Admin-, Reseller-, and User Level') can be found in our article 'what is DirectAdmin' (or try the demo). Order a VPS with DirectAdmin here if you don’t have one yet.

Setting up a VPS with DirectAdmin is covered in the following parts:

1. Introduction, order process, and admin email address
2. Securing your VPS
3. Updating DirectAdmin, PHP, and SQL
4. Linking domains and subdomains to your VPS
5. Uploading a website and database and using SSL
6. Creating and using email addresses
7. Additional articles and other questions

What kind of VPS do I need?

You might be wondering what kind of VPS you need. For hosting websites and email, a VPS with shared CPU cores usually suffices. However, we recommend choosing at least 4GB of RAM, simply because the operating system requires it. The right VPS for you depends on several factors, such as the number of websites and email addresses you want to host, the configuration of the website(s), the number of visitors, etc.

Therefore, it’s difficult to say exactly what size VPS you need. When in doubt, we recommend starting with a smaller VPS (such as the X4) and upgrading later to a larger VPS upgrading to a larger VPS. It is not possible to  downgrade a VPS due to the allocation of disk space on a VPS.

If you host websites using a CMS system (such as WordPress, Joomla, etc.), refer to the system requirements to get an idea of how many websites you can host on a VPS. It’s advisable to always leave about half a gig of free RAM (this is needed for the  PHP update process). 

View resource usage

Once logged into DirectAdmin, you can always check how many resources are available by opening ‘Process Monitor’ under ‘Admin Tools’ on the homepage and viewing the available resources (next to CPU it says ‘idle’, meaning free CPU capacity). In this example, on a newly installed X4 with no websites or mail hosted, 93.9% of the CPU and nearly 2GB of RAM are still available. 

Logging into DirectAdmin for the first time

After installation, we will automatically send you an email with the password for the DirectAdmin admin user and the root user of your VPS. Keep these safe, as the passwords are not visible to us, and we do not store them.

The email also contains the web address for DirectAdmin. This address is the IP of your VPS with the addition :2222, for example, 123.123.123.123:2222.

On the login page, you will see a message when you click on the ‘Username’ field that the connection is not secure. This message is due to the fact that no SSL is linked to the IP address of your VPS. You will no longer see this message after you configure SSL later in this tutorial series and use your hostname (e.g. server.example.com:2222) instead of the IP address to log in. In any case, log in to this page as the ‘admin’ user with the corresponding password.

You will now enter the main menu of DirectAdmin. If not, click on the DirectAdmin icon at the top left.

Changing the hostname and nameservers

We mentioned earlier the hostname, which is simply the name assigned to your server. A placeholder is used for this by default. It’s recommended to change this along with the nameservers so that you a) can log into DirectAdmin via your hostname address and b) use your DirectAdmin VPS as a nameserver (more on this in part 4 of this tutorial series).

Step 1

In the DirectAdmin main menu, click on ‘Server Manager’ > ‘Administrator Settings’ in the left menu, or in the tile menu on ‘Administrator Settings’.

Step 2

Click on the ‘Server Settings’ tab and change the Server's Hostname, NS1, and NS2 values to your own subdomain, as shown in the example below (replace transip.nl with your own domain). It’s important that the DNS records of the used (sub)domain correctly point to your VPS. In this guide, we explain how to point the DNS settings of your domain to your VPS. 

Changing the admin user’s email address

DirectAdmin automatically configures the admin user during your VPS installation. For this, an email address is also automatically created based on the temporary hostname of your VPS, for example, admin@cloud.example.com. 

This email address is automatically used by DirectAdmin, for example, for sending automatic emails for the ‘Brute Force Monitor’. However, the automatically created email address does not exist and does not work. Therefore, it’s best to change it immediately:

Step 1

On the DirectAdmin homepage, click on 'List Administrators' in the tile menu (or via the left menu on Account Manager > List Administrators).

Step 2

At this moment, there is only one administrator, namely 'admin'. Click on 'admin' under 'Name'.

Step 3

Click on 'User' > 'Account Info', change the 'Contact E-mail' address, and click 'Save E-mail'. 

If desired, you can also change the username (not the login account name), language, nameservers, and DirectAdmin skin (which determines the appearance) on this page.

IPv6

DirectAdmin does not use your server’s IPv6 address out of the box. For example, if you try to connect to your server via FTPS later in this tutorial series, it will only work via IPv4. To use IPv6 for services on your VPS, follow these steps:

Step 1

In the left menu (or the tile overview on the homepage) of DirectAdmin, click on ‘Server Manager’ > ‘IP Management’.

Step 2

Select the primary IPv4 address of your DirectAdmin VPS.

Step 3

Then select the ‘Link IP’ option.

Step 4

Select the primary IPv6 address and click on ‘link’. 

You will automatically return to the screen in step 3, and you will see a message ‘IP address will be linked in the background’. Give it a minute and then reload the page. You will now see the linked IPv6 address.

Step 5

The IPv6 address is automatically generated by your VPS but is probably not visible in the TransIP control panel. Add it in the TransIP control panel following the steps in this guide (only the ‘Adding an IPv6 address’ section). 

Creating a reseller or user package

DirectAdmin works with a system of administrators, resellers, and users. Are you the only administrator of your DirectAdmin server? Then you simply work with an administrator account (yourself) and user accounts (your customers). The user level is where you actually link domains to your server.

Before you can create a reseller or user, you need a package. In a package, you set limits such as the maximum number of domains, email addresses, and available disk space, but also whether SSH access is allowed.

You create a package for both resellers and users as follows:

Step 1

In DirectAdmin, click on ‘Manage Reseller Packages’ or ‘Manage User Packages’, depending on which you want to create.

Step 2

Then click on ‘Add Package’ at the top.

Step 3

Adjust the available options as desired, scroll down, and give your package a name. Finally, click ‘Save’ at the bottom. Below the screenshot, we explain the options for resellers and users that may be less familiar or self-explanatory.

Creating administrators, resellers, and users

In DirectAdmin, you create the different types of accounts largely in the same way. We describe them here collectively:

Step 1

Log in to DirectAdmin as an administrator and click on ‘Create Administrator’, ‘Create Reseller’, or ‘Add New User’, depending on which you want to create.

Step 2

Fill in the required information and click ‘Submit’. When creating a user, you can select an IP address. Usually, the choice is limited to a single IPv4 or IPv6 address, unless your server has multiple IPv4 or IPv6 addresses.

That concludes this introductory chapter. Click here to continue to Part 2: Securing your VPS.

Should you have any questions based on this article, please do not hesitate to contact our support department. You can reach them via the 'Contact Us' button at the bottom of this page.