DirectAdmin
Writing to DirectAdmin Through Panel Forms When the API Only Reads
Notes on letting a back-office app create and edit hosting packages in DirectAdmin when the official CMD_API only provides read operations, requiring POST requests directly to control panel forms, with verification rules that prohibit regex and two layers of kill switches disabled by default.
tinker Sends Mail but the Web Can't — proc_open Disabled in FPM
Sending mail from tinker works perfectly, but submitting the actual form sends nothing, and the mail log has no entries — because CLI and PHP-FPM are not the same PHP environment. Includes a working SMTP AUTH configuration for DirectAdmin hosting and the From rule you must get right.
Site Not Updating After Deploy — Clear All Five Cache Layers
The files are uploaded, but the site still shows the old version, even after Ctrl+F5 — because five cache layers sit between the files on disk and what people see, and each needs a different clearing method. This article covers the sequence I use regularly, along with the trap that leaves the site stuck on 500 after clearing the view cache.
route:cache Turns Every GET into 405 — The Sub-path Trap
Deployment finished, I ran optimize as the guides suggested, and every page returned 405 Method Not Allowed even though route:list confirmed the routes were correct — a route cache that breaks only on certain servers, how to isolate it in 30 seconds, and three other issues I found while deploying an app under a sub-path.
Static on DirectAdmin: GET Returns 404 but HEAD Returns 200
I uploaded a static site to public_html and could not open it. Small files worked, large files returned 404, but HEAD returned 200 for every file. The cause was Laravel's .htaccess at the docroot, funneling everything into the front controller. This article covers the diagnosis and three ways out.
Laravel Behind a Proxy Sees 127.0.0.1 — Silent Form, No Error
A contact form on DirectAdmin says the sender is not human, sends no mail, and leaves every log silent — the cause is Laravel behind nginx-to-apache seeing $request->ip() as 127.0.0.1, failing the bot check and returning before the mail is sent, with an explanation of why TrustProxies must not use '*'
Migrating vBulletin 4.2.5 to Flarum: Lessons from 200,000 Posts
Migrating an old vBulletin 4.2.5 forum with over seven thousand members, over twenty thousand threads, and over two hundred thousand posts to Flarum — notes on pitfalls that cost real time, from guest userid 0 breaking FK constraints across an entire batch, nested md5 hashes for old passwords, and converting BBCode to s9e XML, to attachments stored on disk instead of in the DB and why I had to scp scripts instead of using heredoc
Set DirectAdmin Admin Backup Cron from the CLI Without the Panel
CMD_ADMIN_BACKUP takes five steps to set up a cron job, but DirectAdmin actually just appends one line to backup_crons.list and lets dataskq pick it up. Here is how to write directly to the file from the CLI, including common traps with when=now, base64, and append_to_path.
WordPress 500s, Empty debug.log — The Fatal Is in the Apache Log
WordPress returns 500 only on portfolio pages, but debug.log is empty — because the fatal error during theme rendering happens before WP logging is ready. The answer is in the apache error log (proxy_fcgi), along with a fix for a child theme with a stale template copied from an older parent version.
Lost the .com: Move to .net on DirectAdmin Without Data Loss
A .com domain expired and ended up with a domain squatter — how I moved the whole site (files/mail/DNS/SSL) to a new .net domain on DirectAdmin with a single CMD_CHANGE_DOMAIN command, plus 4 follow-up tasks that do not happen automatically
Per-User Redis on DirectAdmin Without Buying pro_pack
How to set up per-user Redis object cache on DirectAdmin shared hosting with a systemd template + unix socket + cgroup limit, using a custom provisioning script instead of the DA panel that requires a pro_pack license, with connection recipes for WordPress, Flarum, and Laravel
DirectAdmin from CentOS 7 to Debian 12 on Proxmox (Series Index)
Notes on migrating a DirectAdmin shared host from CentOS 7 (EOL) to Debian 12 on Proxmox, serving 80+ customers, split into 5 parts with an overview of the process and links to every part
Moving DA from CentOS 7 to Debian 12, Part 4 — Cutover and 17 Issues
The actual cutover, where the near-0 downtime plan fell apart because of the DA Legacy license and slow qcow2 reads, ended with 1 hour of downtime and 17 issues in quick succession after the switch — critical web stack outages, medium issues affecting subsets of services, and minor debugging notes.
DA Migration Part 3 — DirectAdmin + CustomBuild on Debian 12
Installing DirectAdmin through setup.sh, then assembling a stack with multiple PHP versions, MariaDB, ModSecurity, and rspamd using CustomBuild on a staging VM behind NAT, including pitfalls I ran into myself.
DA CentOS 7 → Debian 12 on Proxmox Part 1 — NAT pre-stage
Preparing a new VM on an internal bridge with NAT while the old VM continues serving customers, reducing downtime when migrating DirectAdmin from CentOS 7 to Debian 12 on Proxmox.