It turns out there is a nice script for moving sites from cpanel to cyberpanel. It definitely made migrating my sites a lot easier, although not 100% problem free. The script to move cpanel sites to cyberpanel can be found here. They also have this post which shows the old fashioned hard way to move sites.
Here is the script:
/usr/local/CyberCP/bin/python /usr/local/CyberCP/plogical/cPanelImporter.py --path /path/to/files
Basically, you create and then download the backup from cpanel. I did wind up setting up FTP software, which was just the usual hassle, but not horrible. I used that to create a backup directory for my files on the vultr vps. I used the console command from within the vultr website so I didn’t have to use putty, and then I typed the command, using the path to the backup directory I created. I figured out the vultr console requires using the taskbar on the left to have a way to paste the clipboard – which makes typing that command easier without errors. The script will unpack the backup files, and then migrate them into the proper directory, install the mysql database, and do whatever magic needs to happen to have the website work.
Of the 10 sites I imported this way, 9 of them imported without a hitch, other than when I would go into the cyberpanel file manager, I had to click “fix permissions” in order to be able to view all the files in public_html. Once I did that, everything was visible. I was amazed.
For the 10th site, a wordpress site, I got a message that it was unable to connect to the database. It turns out that site had two mysql databases and for whatever reason, only one of them got imported. Other sites with more than one mysql database imported just fine – so I’m not sure what happened. Now that I think about it, it was possible that I ran out of disk space – I hadn’t accounted for the space of the backups, the unextracted backups, and then the imported sites – basically it was using 2-3x the normal disk space that all of my websites would have used. Also, a few were much larger than normal because I had backup files stored within the backups – not a very efficient way to do things. It was a bit of a headache to sort out, but cyberpanel has an option to use phpmyadmin – which made things a lot easier. I exported the mysql database from the old host, and then imported on the new host. And it all seems to work fine now. Amazing.
I am thinking this set-up is about right for my skill level. If you are a novice, I can’t really recommend it, unless you are willing to do a decent amount of learning and trouble shooting along the way. It did seem for every issue I ran into, I was able to find a solution on google. If I couldn’t solve something, I probably could have asked in a forum somewhere, but so far, I haven’t had to do that.
I’m finding cyberpanel has all of the critical features plus man “nice to have” features.
I think the only feature I’m potentially missing, but maybe I just need to look, is a notification when I’m running out of space and then a way to find the directories that are using up the most space. It shouldn’t be that hard to find a solution for that problem.
And so far, the sites all seem to be loading nicely – even on the $6 VPS from Vultr. I have about 10 low traffic wordpress sites. Granted, I am using the built in openlitespeed cache combined with cloudflare, which should dramatically reduce the load for a static site.
I do have some very old phpbb websites I need to figure out what to do. They are heavily modified forums and they were never upgraded to work beyond PHP 5. The mods don’t work on the current version of phpbb and I’m not sure how much work would be involved to modify the code to be compliant on php 7 or 8. Cyberpanel does not work with php 5, so I haven’t fully migrated those sites over yet.
I’m tempted to find a new option for phpbb, but I do find the old version works well for my needs.