ispmanager 6 lite, pro, host

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Web servers in ispmanager

Web servers in ispmanager

The web server processes requests to sites and web applications on the server and returns the requested pages to the client.

Requests to the ispmanager panel are served by the built-in web server ihttpd. Requests to sites — by the web servers:

Static and dynamic requests

Static website content is stored on the server as files (HTML, CSS, JS, images) and is served to the client as is. Dynamic content is generated right before being sent by executing code and accessing databases, external APIs and other data sources. Examples of dynamically generated content are social media feeds, search results, shopping carts etc.

Web servers process requests for static content, and the execution of code to generate dynamic content is delegated to one of the handlers:

Request processing

In general, requests to websites are processed in the following way:

  1. Web server receives and analyzes the request from the client.
  2. Web server processes the request:
    • If static content is requested, the file is immediately sent to the client.
    • If dynamic content is requested, the request is passed to the handler. The handler executes the code and sends the generated file to the web server. The web server sends the requested page to the client.
  3. Web server terminates the connection with the client.

Selecting web server

The choice of a web server depends on many factors:

  • website load — thanks to the asynchronous architecture, Nginx, OpenLiteSpeed ​​and LiteSpeed ​​can handle more simultaneous requests than Apache
  • amount of static content on the site — thanks to caching and compression, Nginx, OpenLiteSpeed ​​and LiteSpeed ​​are better at serving a large amount of static content than Apache
  • the use of CMS — for example, websites using WordPress or other CMS's perform better with LiteSpeed thanks to its built-in LSCache caching module
  • type of hosting — Apache is more suitable for virtual (shared) hosting, since it allows configuring settings at the virtual host level by using .htaccess files
  • amount of server resources — Nginx, OpenLiteSpeed ​​and LiteSpeed ​​consume less CPU and RAM and are less demanding on resources when scaling up
  • website's language — Python and JavaScript require Nginx or a combination of Apache + Nginx
  • compatibility with the site code — some sites require support for certain Apache modules
  • need for additional features

It is recommended to use Nginx and Apache web servers together.

Additional features

✅ — the feature is configured via the ispmanager panel or is enabled for the web server by default

“Manual configuration only” — the feature is configured by editing configuration files/installing additional modules

❌ — the feature is not supported

FeatureApacheNginxOpenLiteSpeedLiteSpeed
awstats log analyzer

✅

✅

✅

✅

Web disk

✅

❌

❌

✅

Access to the panel by domain

manual configuration only

✅

manual configuration only

manual configuration only

Protection against DDos

manual configuration only

✅

✅

manual configuration only

Caching static content for sites

manual configuration only

✅

✅

manual configuration only

Log rotation

✅

✅

✅

✅

Compressing static content for sites

manual configuration only

✅

✅

manual configuration only

CGI scripts

✅

✅

❌

✅

HTTP/2

❌

✅

✅

✅

Node.js

❌

✅

❌

❌

open_basedir

for the "PHP as an Apache module" mode

❌

❌

✅

PageSpeed

✅

✅

✅

❌

PHP Composer

✅

✅

✅

✅

WAF

✅

✅

✅

✅

Python

❌

✅

❌

❌

SSI

✅

✅

❌

✅

webalizer

✅

✅

✅

✅

.htaccess

✅

❌

only mod_rewrite directives

✅

Web server configuration files

The panel settings related to the web server are written to:

Web server settings are written to:

If Apache and Nginx are used together, two configuration files are created for the site — one for Apache and one for Nginx.

Configuring sites manually

Configuration files for sites and additional features are generated automatically when creating and editing a site based on templates.

To add your own settings to the configuration of a single site, edit the configuration file for that site.

To add your own settings to the configuration of all sites on a server with ispmanager, edit the templates of site configuration files.

Editing configuration files and site configuration file templates is available to an account with superuser rights.

If manual edits were made via the command line, restart the web server.

Details
Restarting Apache on Debian-based operating systems:
systemctl restart apache2
Restarting Apache on RHEL-based operating systems:
systemctl restart httpd
Restarting Nginx:
 systemctl restart nginx
Restarting OpenLiteSpeed/LiteSpeed:
systemctl restart lsws

If edits were made via the panel's web interface, restarting a web server is not required.

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