How to create server through your control panel
First step is to sign up a the control panel’s sign up page. This asks for your email address and your password for management of your JEL-tech account.
After you sign up, you can assign two-factor authentication to your account for better security. You can use an app like Google Authenticator or Authy to be your account’s second factor generator token.
After hitting “Sign Up” the first page you’ll see is ‘/servers’ – there are no servers. A method of payment first needs to be added to your account. The HostLaunch service uses Stripe to securely process your credit card and meets all compliance regulations for security. You will be billed in US Dollars.
At ‘/settings/billing’, you will add your card. This asks for your card number, expiration date, and CVC (Card Verification Code) which will be on the back of your card.
After adding a credit card, you will then return to your the account’s billing page with the card on the account. You can create a new server on your account at this time, or modify other account settings such as Password or 2-step authentication.
Now, click on the “Servers” item in the navigation bar to go back to the main portion of the control panel. A new server can be added at any point after adding a credit card to the account. Click on “new server” in the Get started paragraph and choose the appropriate tier (with the resources needed for your web applications) for your virtual server.
For this example we’re going to choose the 1GB and give the server a name of your choice. This is simply a descriptive field and does not affect the domains you’ll be able to add to your site later on.
Click on “Create Server” and your server will be spun up behind the scenes at our cloud provider. (good point to note “when are you billed” — billing occurs when a new server is created). You’ll see feedback that the new server’s IP address is pending and the process may take several minutes. The ‘check’ link will refresh the hostlaunch page.
Okay, after a few minutes, hit the “check” link again and you’ll see your server’s IP address in the server list. You can click on the server name in order to access its own page in the control panel.
Now, you can prepare the new server to host a site by clicking on “New Site”. What this does is prepare the web services stack to run an app. You’ll add a descriptive name for the Site, and add the primary domain that the site will be hosted from.
If you want, you can copy the server’s IP address from the header and paste it into the “domain” field in order to preview the site you are working on with your browser.
If you want to create a WordPress app you can select the checkbox next to “WordPress”. This will prompt for the name, user, password, and email address for an automatically created a WordPress app and admin user.
The PHP version can be selected (7.4, 7.3, or 7.2). Run the latest PHP if you are unsure.
Finally, for a new site you’ll select a new SSH/SFTP user and assign the username and password.
Because this is a fully managed server, we do not provide root access but we do provide SSH / SFTP access under the user that you create associated with the app. This allows the software to be fully managed by JEL-tech, by way of ServerPilot and HostLaunch.
Once a site is created, you can view the name of the site listed under the server that was created. The control panel allows you to perform additional actions such as creating a database, adding another domain to the web server’s configuration, changing the PHP version, turning on the AutoSSL function or adding a custom SSL certificate.