One-Click Drupal

This article contains information about the Drupal application that can be deployed on Vultr.

App Details

Drupal runs on the Ubuntu Server LTS operating system. If needed, you can log into the application VPS with an SSH client using the root login found on your Vultr control panel.

Before you get started, you will need to complete the Drupal installer. The installer is accessible through your web-browser by visiting https://[SERVER_IP]/install.php. Replace [SERVER_IP] with the IP address of your VPS. For security purposes, a login prompt was added to this page. The credentials for the login prompt can be found in the my.vultr.com control panel. The installer will prompt you for database settings, which are also listed in the Vultr control panel (or you can setup your own database).

Once the setup process is complete, you can access your Drupal website at http://[SERVER_IP]/.

If you plan on giving your Drupal site a domain name (like www.example.com), make sure that you point the DNS "A record" to the [SERVER_IP] of your Drupal app. Drupal may detect your domain name automatically after you set the DNS record. If it doesn't, you can force the URLs to match your domain name by updating the $base_url variable in /var/www/html/sites/default/settings.php. Note that you will need to SSH into the app VPS to change this file.

Your Drupal app has been configured to support uploaded themes and modules (up to 2GB each). These can be configured in the "Modules" and "Appearance" sections, after logging into Drupal as an administrator user.

A MySQL database is running on your VPS for Drupal. If you need to access it directly, you can connect by running mysql -u root after SSH'ing into your VPS as the root user. The MySQL root password is saved in /root/.my.cnf.

Nginx Fails to Load

If your instance was deployed after December 1st 2019 we have included a script for your convenience to reset your your Nginx config files back to the default for you.

1. Login to your server using ssh as root.
2. Run the command /opt/vultr/fix-vhost.sh

SSL Details

Drupal can be accessed with both http:// and https:// URLs. By default, the https:// URL uses a self-signed certificate, which displays a security warning. This can be safely ignored.

To disable https:// support, do the following:

1. Login to your server using ssh as root.
2. Move the HTTPS vhost file out of the web server conf: mv /etc/nginx/conf.d/drupal_https.conf /root/
3. Restart the web server: systemctl restart nginx.service && systemctl restart php7.2-fpm.service ( PHP version may vary )

If you want to offer an https:// URL without the certificate warning, you would want to update the certificate to one provided by an actual certificate authority. To install a new certificate, do the following:

1. Obtain a certificate from a certificate authority for your domain.
2. Login to your server using ssh as root.
3. Replace the server.crt and server.key files in /etc/nginx/ssl/ with the updated certificate. Details on converting certificate formats are outside of the scope of this article.
4. Restart the web server: systemctl restart nginx.service && systemctl restart php7.2-fpm.service ( PHP version may vary )

Free SSL with Let's Encrypt

Certbot, the software used to obtain, install, and renew Let's Encrypt certificates is included with this One-Click by default. To use it simply login via SSH and run the following command

certbot

About Vultr Applications

Vultr applications use modern releases of software packages. Applications are configured to be deployed with specific versions of software. Over time, the Vultr team will update the application offerings to include newer operating systems, package versions, etc. This document only provides up-to-date information about the latest version of this application. Vultr applications are updated without notice. If you plan to build a project or infrastructure based on our application templates, we recommend taking a snapshot of the application used in your initial deployment.