Looking for some help with cpanel, linux web hosting (apache, mysql , php)

[PhaZe]

Hello all,

First off, some background: I have some programming experience, mostly in C, but very minimal experience with web development

Basically, a relative of mine contracted a freelance web dev group (I think it was on elance), paid some money, and essentially received a zip file of source code of a website he hired them to do. All of the development/demo/presentation was done on their servers, and they have pretty much finished what they were contracted to do and have moved on. The site was built with the LAMP stack.

Now, it is time to migrate it to to my cousin's recently purchased managed linux server (think it's liquidweb).

Now because my great cousin knows I did some C back when and know how to install RHEL (and thats all), he's hoping I can help set up the site on the linux server.

So far, I know how to SSH into the server, and it has CentOS x64. It comes with apache, php, and mysql already installed.


My question is, if I can at least get the contactors/developers to help with the migration, how should I proceed to do so? Should I set up some FTP access, or create a linux account for them to SSH in? The latter may sound like a security risk to me.

I'm trying to gauge the level of access they would need in order to help migrate the site. I don't want to hand them the keys to the car.

If I can't get them to migrate the site, does anyone have any links or guides on how to set up the site (where the files should reside , and in what directories)

The only experience I really had was doing some C# and .net environment, which was in windows so it was straight forward.

Any information, suggestions, or pointers would greatly be appreciated. If you need more details I will happily provide them in a PM.

Thanks,
phaze

 

[DaveSimmons]

I use Plesk not CPanel at work, but the control panel should have a wizard for setting up an empty domain with the basic DNS entries and the user name / password for FTP access.

It may also have built in PHPMyAdmin that you could use for importing any MySQL databases that you were given.

Assuming they wrote the PHP scripts with relative paths (or with the proper domain already applied), you might just need to FTP in and upload all of the script files. You can do this using the IP address of the domain you set up if the DNS is not resolving yet. (In Plesk with CentOS, when you FTP in you need to go to the httpdocs folder to upload the script files.)

The other common step I can think of (which they ought to have documented) is possibly needing to create some temp folders and set their permissions properly. You can do that with the FTP program.

If the MySQL import and PHP files upload isn't enough, you could always give them FTP / SSH access then change the passwords. Unless you have other content on the site already that you care about there isn't much of a risk in giving them temporary access to an empty server.

PS: no, I don't do any freelancing, work keeps me more than busy enough . I'm also just a Win32/C++ developer that got roped into doing some server maintenance and PHP coding since we don't have a full-time person to do it. There are many people here who know more about this than me.

 

[Broheim]

it would help if you could tell what files are in the .zip folder...

I can walk you through the process if I know exactly what needs to be done.

 

[Ka0t1x]

You need to determine a few things..

Have you checked the .zip for a Read Me or .nfo?
Were you given a .sql MySQL import file?
Were you given MySQL setup instructions? (Where to put database information)

All of this should and can be done over cPanel (and PHPMyAdmin). There's no need for SSH.

Depending on the file structure, almost all of the files should go in your /www/ or /public_html/ folder. I'm taking a leap and assuming they're somewhat competent developers.

As Broheim has said, give us some more info, its a relatively easy process after some bases are covered.