How to host Drupal on Hostinger VPS - ServerAvatar

Drupal is an open-source content management system (CMS) designed to accommodate businesses of varying sizes, providing essential tools for content creation, website management, and user engagement. Drupal supports complex web solutions while remaining user-friendly for developers and content editors alike. Hosting Drupal on Hostinger provides a dependable and scalable solution. Hostinger provides a wide range of instance types and configurations to match various performances with flexible deployment options. ServerAvatar simplifies the process by providing a clear, step-by-step guide to setting up your Drupal application on Hostinger VPS.

Create a VPS in Hostinger

Getting started with Hostinger:

Discover how simple it is to create an account and set up a cloud VPS on Hostinger, one of the top hosting providers. Follow our step-by-step guide to swiftly establish your account to deploy a server and complete its initial setup.

What Is Hostinger?

Hostinger is a popular web hosting company known for its affordable hosting solutions and user-friendly interface, offering services like domain registration, website hosting, and cloud hosting to help individuals and businesses manage their online presence effectively.

Step 1: Create an account

• Log in to your Hostinger account. If you don’t have an account, create an account on Hostinger.
• After login, Click on the VPS option as shown in the image below.

Step 2: Select the plan

• Next, you will see various plans offering different specifications for hosting your VPS. Select the plan that best fits your requirements.
• To host Drupal, the minimum requirements are 1GB of RAM and 2GB or more of disk space, depending on your traffic, size of your product catalogs, media files, contributed modules, and themes. You can select another plan of higher configuration as per your requirements and usage.

Step 3: Complete your Payment

• Now, you have to proceed to complete the payment for your VPS plan.

Step 4: Start with Setup

• Once the payment is complete, you will be redirected to the page to begin setting up your VPS. Click on the Start Now option to proceed.

Step 5: Select Location

• Next, you have to select the location for your server. Hostinger provides various locations for setting up your VPS.
• The general rule is to select the region that is closest to your audience. It means that for the majority of your audience, Your sites will load faster due to lower latency.

Step 6: Select an Operating System

• In this step, you need to select your server operating system. We recommend selecting Ubuntu 20.04 LTS x64 or Ubuntu 22.04 LTS x64. If you are using ServerAvatar to manage your servers, these operating systems are required.

Step 7: Adding Additional Feature (Optional)

• The next option is to install an additional feature to your VPS. You can enable the malware scanner by selecting the provided checkbox. This step is optional; if you want to add it, select the checkbox and click on Continue.

Step 8: Login Method

• Next, you need to set a Root Password for your VPS and provide a Hostname. Additionally, you can add an SSH Key, which is optional. Once you have completed these steps, click on Continue.

Step 9: Finalise Details

• In the last step of this process, you need to verify the VPS information. Click on the Finish Setup option to complete the setup process.

• After clicking the Finish Setup button, You can see the Initiating Setup process as displayed in the image below.

Step 10: VPS Management and SSH Key Access

• Once the setup is complete, you will find the option to Manage VPS, allowing you to manage your VPS from its Custom Dashboard. Additionally, you will have the SSH Access option, which enables server access via Terminal.

• Congratulations! You have successfully created your Hostinger VPS, which is now ready to connect with ServerAvatar.

Initial Server Configuration

The Initial server configuration includes the installation and configuration of various packages required to host your website. Usually, You have to write commands and modify configuration files. Luckily, With ServerAvatar, Your full server configuration and optimization can be automated.

Here are the three ways to automatically configure your server with ServerAvatar.

wget https://srvr.so/install
chmod +x install
./install

Install and Setup Drupal CMS with ServerAvatar

Step 1: Download the Drupal Latest Release Zip file

Visit Drupal's official site and Download Drupal Latest release zip file. You can see the download page in the following image.

Step 2: Create a PHP Application

On the server panel, access the Application tab from the sidebar and click the Create button, as shown in the image below.

Next, fill in the required details to create an application, including the Application Name and Domain Name.

The latest version of Drupal runs on PHP version 8.1. So to change the version, check the Show Advanced Options box and change the PHP version of your application like the below image.

Note That:

If you want to host Drupal CMS on your domain, then make sure to point your domain to the current IP address of your server, and for that:

1. Log in to your hosting provider site, where you buy your domain. You can check your domain information with one click.

2. Access DNS Manager to edit your DNS records(contact the support team if you don’t find them)

3. Change the IP address of A Record of your website to the current server’s IP address.

Click the Create Application button after filling in the required details.

Step 3: Create a Drupal Database

On the server panel, Click the Database tab from the sidebar to create a MySQL database for Drupal.

ServerAvatar will create a database by filling in database details, including Database Name, Username, and Password.

Once you are done, Click the Create Database button, and ServerAvatar will create your database in seconds.

Step 4: Upload the Drupal Zip file

ServerAvatar has a built-in File Manager feature, so you won't need FTP clients to manage files.

To Upload a zip file on your application, go to the application panel of your created application in step 2 and click the File Manager tab.

Delete the index.html directory

Now access the public_html directory and delete the index.html directory to avoid forbidden errors on the site.

Upload Drupal Zip file

After deleting the file, it’s time to upload the Drupal zip file to the public_html directory. And for that, Click on the upload icon or Drag and Drop the zip file from your system.

Uncompress the Zip file

Unzip/Uncompress the uploaded Zip file in the public_html directory like the following image.

Delete the zip file after successfully uncompressed.

Move files to the public directory

Click on the folder created in the public_html directory where all the files are located. Select all files, including hidden files, and move them to the public_html folder.

Step 5: Install SSL Certificate

SeverAvatar allows you to install automatic SSL certificates with one click to keep users' data secure and verify your site ownership.

To install SSL on your website, click the SSL Certificates tab from the application panel.

Click the Automatic Installation button like the above image. You can also ensure Force HTTP to HTTPS to secure the communication between the browser and your website.

Step 6: Install and Setup Drupal

Open the URL of your application on the web browser. The setup page will appear like the following image.

Choose language

Drupal supports more than 100 languages.

Choose the one you want for your site and click the Save and Continue button.

Choose Profile

Select a profile from the given three installation profiles.

It would be recommended to Install the Standard profile and click the Save and continue button.

Verify Requirements

It verifies your site requirements and redirects to the next step if everything is fine.

Set up database

Enter the database credentials that we have created in step 3. It includes the database name, database user, and password.

Advanced Options include-

• Host: leave this field as it is if your database is hosted on the same server as an application
• Port Number: 3306 is recommended for MySQL/Aurora/MariaDB
• Table Name Prefix: Enter the database table name prefix as your choice

Click the Save and continue button.

Install Site

It can proceed to install Drupal on your site if all the information is correct. It’ll show you the installation status like the following image.

Configure Site

Site Information

Enter your site information, including-

• Site Name: Enter the name of your site as you want.
• Site Email Address: Automated emails related to the site, including reset password and registration details, will be sent from this email.

Site Maintenance account

Enter a Special user account information that can perform account-level tasks such as making backups and applying site updates. The account you set up has full administrative privileges.

• Username: Enter a username that is used for logging in to the Drupal Administrative interface
• Password: Enter the password for the admin login
• Email Address: Ente admin email address

Regional Settings

Enter the regional-specific information, including-

• Default Country: Select the name of your country.
• Default Time Zone: Select a time zone based on your location

Tick all the boxes under the Update Notification section to automatically check for updates and receive notifications.

Click the Save and continue button after filling in the required details.

Step 7: Drupal Admin panel

Completing all the above steps results in access to the Drupal admin panel, which looks like the following image.

That’s it. Now you can create an intuitive website or complex web application easily with a few clicks.