What you need
A fresh server
- Ubuntu 26.04, freshly installed. Whitesmoke SMP sets up Nginx, PHP, MariaDB and more, so don't put it on a server that already runs other web software.
- Root access with
sudofrom your own user (not by logging in as root). - Size: we test on a server with 4 GB of memory, 2 CPUs and 80 GB of disk. The panel itself uses under 1 GB of memory and about 4 GB of disk; the rest is for your sites, their databases and their backups, which are kept on the same disk.
Open ports
| Port | For |
|---|---|
| 22 | SSH: your own login, and SFTP for your sites |
| 80 | Let's Encrypt checks your domains here; visitors are sent on to HTTPS |
| 443 | The panel and your sites, over HTTPS |
If your provider has a firewall in front of the server, open these three there too.
A domain for the panel, before you install
Pick a name for the panel, for example panel.example.com, and point it to the server
(an A record, and an AAAA record if the server has IPv6). Do this before you install:
the installer asks Let's Encrypt for the panel's certificate, and that only works once the name
points to the server. DNS changes can take a while to reach everyone; check with
dig +short panel.example.com.
Choose a panel name you won't host sites under. A site at shop.panel.example.com would count
as the same site as the panel in browsers. Use other domains for your sites.
Secure SSH first
Before you install, make sure SSH accepts keys only and refuses root logins. After the install,
sudo smp-harden check --admin "$USER" shows what applies, and one more step lets SFTP work for
your sites: see Security notes.