Installing on Linux with Linode

yoga1

New member
Hello
I want to install Xenforo on Linux using Linode. Do you provide instructions on how to set it up? In the past I used Cpanel, but I now want to use Linux.

Thanks
 
Xenforo doesn't provide instructions on how to setup a LAMP/LEMP server.

If you never used a VPS before I would not recommend it. It's a security issue waiting to happen. Hire someone to setup your VPS.
 
Linode has excellent instructions about how to set up varions LAMP/LEMP stacks on their VPS shapes.

To install XenForo on Linode, you would first need to set up the stack per Linode's tutorials, and then use the instructions here to install XenForo. Again, XF provides pretty good instructions on how to install it.

If you want to use cPanel, you will need to specify CentOS (not Debian, ubuntu or other variants) as the linux variant when you set up your VPS. To my knowledge, cPanel does not work with Debian/Ubuntu variants.
 
Easiest solution is to get @eva2000's CentMin Mod and use it. Works like a charm but has no graphics panel and assumes some working knowledge of accessing a server via SSH. It's not that hard to do and WELL worth the time it takes to learn for the increased performance benefits.
I've been using it for years and have been WELL pleased with it.
Most of the simple administration is text based menu


Screen Shot 2020-12-02 at 9.36.13 PM.png

The added benefit is you don't have issues with security holes that you can find with many of the free web based control panels.
Now, if you want to host your own mail server (which is another issue in itself getting it recognized by the major players like Hotmail, Google, Yahoo, etc) then you have to do like I do and set up a separate VPS (I use mailcow dockerized to host all my domains) and configure mail services on it. You can do it on the CentMin server but it's easier to just get another VPS and use one of the prepackaged mail server setups.
 
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Easiest solution is to get @eva2000's CentMin Mod and use it. Works like a charm but has no graphics panel and assumes some working knowledge of accessing a server via SSH. It's not that hard to do and WELL worth the time it takes to learn for the increased performance benefits.
I've been using it for years and have been WELL pleased with it.
Most of the simple administration is text based menu


View attachment 241141

The added benefit is you don't have issues with security holes that you can find with many of the free web based control panels.
Now, if you want to host your own mail server (which is another issue in itself getting it recognized by the major players like Hotmail, Google, Yahoo, etc) then you have to do like I do and set up a separate VPS (I use mailcow dockerized to host all my domains) and configure mail services on it. You can do it on the CentMin server but it's easier to just get another VPS and use one of the prepackaged mail server setups.

Can I install this on Linode under their basic $4/month plan?
 
How is the performance using Ploi.io versus CentMin Mod? What about security?
They are not directly comparable. Using ploi.io is like hiring a system administrator who installs and configures everything, manages and updates the server - except that ploi.io is a bunch of scripts instead of a human. Ploi.io security settings are great and basically it doesn’t affect performance. Of course somebody at Ploi.io makes sure that updates are working great before they are installed on their customers’ servers. So it’s not 100 percent just a bunch of scripts - which is good.
 
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Can I install this on Linode under their basic $4/month plan?

Probably best to do a test VPS/site install and learn the ropes before doing a live forum install/move. I outline this in my Guide to learning more about Centmin Mod sticky thread.

How is the performance using Ploi.io versus CentMin Mod? What about security?

Security for Centmin Mod has less surface area for attack as there is no public facing control panel. It's pure SSH command line based. I developed and maintain Centmin Mod for 9+ years without issues and have Centmin Mod personally running on 160+ servers of my own. There's currently around 3,000+ new Centmin Mod installations per month so there's quite a few users including 10+ % of the largest known Xenforo forums also run Centmin Mod LEMP stack https://community.centminmod.com/th...p-powers-10-of-xenforos-largest-forums.16435/ including Alexa Top 5000/10000 sites.

Most traffic site I know running Centmin Mod receives around 2+ million visitors per day :)

I did some benchmarks comparing Centmin Mod LEMP stack without LEMP stacks in the past and summary at https://blog.centminmod.com/2019/07...-vestacp-vs-oneinstack-lemp-stack-benchmarks/ with link to forum full thread.

I've consulted and worked with some of the largest online community forum sites on the internet for past 18+ years including forums with 60,000+ concurrent users online and >500K unique IP visitors/day - half of those years was working at vBulletin. So what I've learnt goes into Centmin Mod LEMP stack and that is why it performs and scales as it does :)

You can see other additional performance boosting tips for Centmin Mod at https://centminmod.com/perf/ including enabling PHP Profile Guided Optimizations for PHP 7+ which can boost PHP performance by another 5-20%. Here's latest PHP 8 vs 7.4 vs 7.3 vs 7.2 vs 7.1 vs 7.0 benchmarks comparing a REMI YUM repo version of PHP and Centmin Mod's PHP versions at https://community.centminmod.com/threads/php-8-0-0-ga-stable-release.20739/#post-87295

Another example is I am working on adding rsync 3.2 support to Centmin Mod which adds support for xxHash hashing algorithm and zstd compression support allowing rsync transfers to be between >30-90% faster than rsync 3.1 default CentOS for file transfers so if you're moving data between Centmin Mod servers via rsync, it will eventually be faster - privately tested right now but some benchmarks at https://community.centminmod.com/th...nstall-time-in-123-09beta01.20756/#post-87316

Again I stress, best to try all different control panels and do test installs first and see which suits your best. A tool is only as good as the person using it and you'll only get as much out of it as the effort you put into learning about it etc :)

Hope that helps
 
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Probably best to do a test VPS/site install and learn the ropes before doing a live forum install/move. I outline this in my Guide to learning more about Centmin Mod sticky thread.
I am going through the setup guide. My domain is registered with Bluehost and they don't allow for subdomains without a cpanel account with them. So do I need a subdomain in order to set up Centim Mod?
 
I am going through the setup guide. My domain is registered with Bluehost and they don't allow for subdomains without a cpanel account with them. So do I need a subdomain in order to set up Centim Mod?

Only time Centmin Mod needs a subdomain is for configuring the main hostname from Getting Started Guide step 1 https://centminmod.com/getstarted.html but for testing purpose you don't need a valid DNS entry for that main hostname as it's only used for admin/stats for nginx, php-fpm, Memcached etc and you do that via server IP generally.

Or you can use a domain and subdomain for main hostname hosted with another DNS provider i.e. Cloudflare free plan. There is no requirement that main hostname setup in Getting Started Guide step 1 needs to be same domain used for your actual forum site which you create in Getting Started Guide step 2.

But if you have Centmin Mod questions, might want to join community support forums at https://community.centminmod.com/ :)
 
Only time Centmin Mod needs a subdomain is for configuring the main hostname from Getting Started Guide step 1 https://centminmod.com/getstarted.html but for testing purpose you don't need a valid DNS entry for that main hostname as it's only used for admin/stats for nginx, php-fpm, Memcached etc and you do that via server IP generally.

Or you can use a domain and subdomain for main hostname hosted with another DNS provider i.e. Cloudflare free plan. There is no requirement that main hostname setup in Getting Started Guide step 1 needs to be same domain used for your actual forum site which you create in Getting Started Guide step 2.

But if you have Centmin Mod questions, might want to join community support forums at https://community.centminmod.com/ :)
I joined the Centmin Mod forum but I cannot post any questions. How do I ask a question in the forum?
 
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