Looking for the steps to install OpenLiteSpeed on the DirectAdmin server?

The OpenLiteSpeed web server is known for handling heavier website traffic, making websites faster, etc.

However, any incorrect web server switch can cause website downtime.

At Bobcares, customers often approach us to install OpenLiteSpeed, as a part of our Server Management Service.

Today, we’ll see how our Support Engineers install OpenLiteSpeed on DirectAdmin.

OpenLiteSpeed support in DirectAdmin

OpenLiteSpeed is the open-source edition of the LiteSpeed webserver. It is a powerful cache engine with Apache-compatible rewrite rules.

In general, websites serve static as well as dynamic contents. From our experience in handling web servers, we see that OpenLiteSpeed gives the best results with static websites. That is the website that do not need frequent updates. Therefore, our Support Engineers recommend OpenLiteSpeed for serving static content websites.

The OpenLiteSpeed comes with a feature-rich web admin interface.

It easily integrates with DirectAdmin web hosting control panel. It has a web-based graphical interface. This makes the task of website administration easier.

However, OpenLiteSpeed supports its virtual host. That is, it cannot read Apache virtual host configurations. But control panels like DirectAdmin works based on Apache virtual host configuration.

Then is it possible to integrate OpenLiteSpeed and DirectAdmin?

Yes, the DirectAdmin developers had made an effort to integrate both. But this is possible only with the help of Custom Build 2.

Let’s see in detail how is this possible.

How to install OpenLiteSpeed on DirectAdmin?

Before integrating OpenLiteSpeed and DirectAdmin, there are certain prerequisites. Here are the major requirements.

1. To install OpenLiteSpeed, we need the DirectAdmin 1.57 version or higher. The current version is version 1.60.3.

2. Next, we need to have Custom Build 2.0 and the current is version is already 2.0.0.

Custom Build 2 is a built-in tool that comes with DirectAdmin. It allows the users to install, remove and recompile programs.

The Custom Build 2 converts the Apache configurations to OpenLiteSpeed virtual host configurations. Thereby enables an easy upgrade from Apache to OpenLiteSpeed on DirectAdmin.

Once the requirements are met, we run the following configurations in /usr/local/directadmin/custombuild. This include,

./build update
./build set webserver openlitespeed
./build set php1_mode lsphp
./build set php1_release 7.2
./build openlitespeed
./build php n
./build rewrite_confs

This completes the process. Now we have OpenLiteSpeed running on a DirectAdmin server.

As we already saw, switching web servers is a major change. Therefore our Dedicated Engineers always take sufficient backups of the web server configuration. This helps to deal with any website errors related to the OpenLiteSpeed switch.

[Still, having trouble in installing OpenLiteSpeed? – We can help you.]

Conclusion

In short, OpenLiteSpeed can make websites faster and efficient. Today, we saw how our Support Engineers install OpenLiteSpeed on the DirectAdmin server using the CustomBuild.