Softaculous

How special is Softaculous that it deserves it’s own blog post? I’ll explain my story on how I became a fan.

I run my own personal website, which hosts my RSS Reader (Fever, which I’m a huge fan of!) and then a simple Gallery script where I store pictures from various vacations. I’d link to it, since I know everyone is dying to see my mug, but a few weeks ago it was … destroyed. I had manually installed the Gallery script 3-4 years ago, and I tried to keep it up to date. I really did. I failed at it. I wasn’t even very good at uploading photos in a timely manner, so updating the software was definitely out of the question. As a result, it was hacked, and my photos were lost, along with two hours of my day that I spent cleaning up the hack job.

How is this relevant? Softaculous is an automated script installation tool, that not only installs over 130 different scripts, but it also has the tools to keep them upgraded. Had I used Softaculous it would have seriously been a one button upgrade process. So, not only does it make your installations significantly easier, but it also helps you keep your site up-to-date, and safe and secure.

If you’re in the business of hosting websites from VPS.NET, I can tell you that your customers will LOVE Softaculous. They’ll have access to easily install scripts like WordPress, Joomla, phpBB, CopperMine, MediaWiki, SugarCRM, Magento and so on. It’ll cut down on the number of support inquires you have, broken software problems, and it’ll give them that pleasure of just playing around with the various scripts available to them.

Now the other cool thing that Softaculous does is it will import any installs you did with Fantastico. Fantastico is another piece of software that automatically installs scripts, but it doesn’t quite have as many scripts available, and they’re not quite as fast getting updates on the scripts out, which is really important. So if 3 years ago you installed a Gallery script using Fantastico, Softaculous will support that and still give you the option of doing a one click upgrade.

Softaculous directly integrates in with cPanel, DirectAdmin & ISPManager, and is a simple install. VPS.NET offers Softaculous at a rate of $9 (£6) a year, and is available through the license manager in your VPS.NET control panel. I highly recommend it, especially for those who use one of the scripts available in it simply for ease of administration. If you’re running a web host, like I said, your customers will LOVE it, and will thank you 1,000x over again for giving it to them.

On a side note, if someone can tell me how to pronounce the name (Is it Soft-a-culous?), I’ll give them a shout out in the next blog post!