How to use the LiteSpeed Control Panel Plugin

In this video, we will cover the main functions of the Lightspeed plugin, which we've developed for cPanel, Plesk, and Direct Admin web hosting control panels. You'll learn how the plugin can help you to manage Lightspeed web server, plus you'll see how easy it is to manage LS Cache plugin installations for WordPress across your entire server. We'll be demonstrating these functions with cPanel WHM, but you can do all of the same tasks with Plesk or Direct Admin. To get the most out of this tutorial, you'll need the following software installed. A supported web hosting control panel, those are cPanel, Plesk, or Direct Admin. The Lightspeed plugin for that control panel, and a licensed or trial copy of Lightspeed web server. If you need help installing Lightspeed web server or the Lightspeed plugin for any of these control panels, please see the links in the video description. In this tutorial, we will cover the plugin's handy management tasks for Lightspeed web server and LS Cache for WordPress. Let's start with Lightspeed web server. We'll be covering the following topics. How to set a port offset, how to switch between Lightspeed and Apache, how to restart detached PHP processes, and how to access more configuration options. Let's begin by setting a port offset. This is a simple way to test Lightspeed web server before putting it into production. By binding Lightspeed web server to a different port than Apache, you run both servers at the same time. Apache will continue to handle your production sites, while you get Lightspeed web server configured and tested. A port offset is not meant to be permanent. It should only be used to test your setup. So, if you already have Lightspeed running in production, you should skip this step. Open the Lightspeed plugin in your control panel. Scroll down and click Change Port Offset. For this example, we'll offset Lightspeed web server port by 3000. Enter 3000 in the Set New Port Offset field and press the Change button. You will see a green notification to confirm that the port has been changed. Click OK to return to the plugin homepage. Click Restart Lightspeed and then click the Restart button to confirm. You will see some important pieces of information. First, you'll see that Lightspeed is running and you'll see what the process ID is and what the port offset is. Then you'll see that Apache is also running and its process ID will also be listed. And lastly, you'll see confirmation that Lightspeed restarted successfully. You can verify the network ports for each web server if you like. Open an SSH connection to the server and run the List Open Files commands as shown on the screen. If you want to copy and paste, you can also find the commands in the video description. Now that you have both web servers running concurrently on different ports, you can test your new Lightspeed installation. We'll use the ls-example domain to demonstrate one of the ways we do this. If your domain is a WordPress domain, make sure you're not logged into wp-admin. Navigate to your test domain and analyze the structure of the page including graphics, fonts, and images. This is the page as served by Apache. Open a new browser window and navigate to your test domain, but this time, append the port to the end of the URL. The HTTPS port is normally 443. With the 3000 offset, the Lightspeed HTTPS port would be 3443. So for example, to see your page as served by Lightspeed via HTTPS, you would visit your URL with colon 3443 on the end as shown on the screen. Verify that the pages shown in each window are identical by comparing fonts, font styles, font size, images, and graphics, as well as the general page structure of the site. If you'd like, you can split your screen to view the sites side by side. If you'd like to see for yourself that Lightspeed is serving the site on a port offset, use the browser developer tools. We're using Chrome, so we access the tools by clicking the browser menu icon and selecting More Tools, then Developer Tools. Once you've accessed the tools, click the Network tab and reload the page. Notice there are two entries for ls-example.com. Look at the status column, and you'll see a 301 redirect status code on the first domain and a 200 status code on the other. Select the entry with the 301 status, and you should see information that verifies that Lightspeed is serving the request. For example, in the General section, the 3443 port should be tacked on at the end of the request URL and the remote address. In the Response Header section, notice the Server header should be set to Lightspeed. Once you've confirmed that Lightspeed is working the way you want it to, you can reset the port offset to 0 and start using Lightspeed web server full time. Let's look at how to switch back and forth between Lightspeed and Apache web servers. This is useful for both troubleshooting or testing purposes. If you're currently running Lightspeed, you can use the Switch to Apache button. A new page will be loaded, which shows you the currently running server, process ID, and port offset, and asks you to confirm that you want to make the switch. Click the Switch to Apache button to confirm. When the switch is complete, you'll see a message which confirms three things. Lightspeed is not running, Apache is running and its process ID is listed, and a confirmation that you've successfully switched to Apache. If you want to switch back to Lightspeed, click the Switch to Lightspeed button. A new page will be loaded, which shows you the currently running server, process ID, and port offset, and asks you to confirm that you want to make the switch. Click the Switch to Lightspeed button to confirm. When the switch is complete, you'll see a message which confirms four things. Lightspeed is running, its process ID is listed and there's no port offset, Apache is not running, a confirmation that you've successfully switched to Lightspeed, and Apache has stopped. Another function of the Lightspeed plugin is to restart detached PHP processes. With Lightspeed Web Server, PHP runs in detached mode by default. This means that when you restart the web server, PHP is not restarted at the same time. It also means that you can restart PHP anytime without disturbing the server process. If you've made changes to your php.ini file, you might want to restart PHP to put your changes into effect right away. Click Restart Detached PHP Processes. On the next page, press the Restart button to confirm. Lightspeed Web Server will be notified to restart all detached PHP processes. Click Lightspeed Configuration to access more configuration options. These include the Web Admin Console, which is a graphical user interface to all of Lightspeed Web Server's settings, Cache Root Setup, which we'll talk about in a minute, and PHP SU-EXEC Quick Configuration, which allows you to turn PHP SU-EXEC on or off and to set the maximum number of allowed SU-EXEC connections. Now let's look at how the Lightspeed plugin helps you manage your server's LS Cache installations for WordPress. We'll be covering the following topics, how to set the cache root, how to discover all hosted WordPress sites, how to mass enable or mass disable the plugin, how to manage the LS Cache plugin version, and how to get a list of current Quick Cloud IP addresses. Before you can manage LS Cache across your server, you need to define a server-level cache root and a virtual host-level cache root. Navigate to Lightspeed Configuration, then Cache Root Setup. Cache roots are displayed in a table. If both are set, you'll see only a Back button. If either cache root is missing, there will be a Set Missing Cache Roots button. Press that button to set the missing values. Now let's search for all of the WordPress sites across your server. From the Plugin Home page, click Manage Cache Installations. Click the Scan button to search for all WordPress sites hosted on your control panel. When the scan is complete, click Back and you will see a list of discovered sites. The Cache Status column usually displays a lightning bolt. Green indicates the LS Cache plugin is enabled for that installation, and gray indicates that it's not. There can also be warnings or error icons in this column if there's some problem with enabling LS Cache for an installation. The Flag column displays a flag icon. Orange indicates that installation is flagged, and gray indicates it's not. If an installation is flagged, it will be excluded from all future Mass Enable slash Disable operations. When you hover over an installation on the list, you will see a Power Toggle icon. When the icon is green, you can click it to enable the LS Cache plugin on that site. When the icon is red, you can click it to disable the plugin. If you have many WordPress sites on your server, installing the LS Cache plugin individually may not be a practical approach. Instead, you can use the Mass Enable or Disable Cache feature. Before you begin, if you would like to exclude some sites from the Mass Enable or Disable Cache feature, return to Manage Cache Installations and flag the sites you would like to exclude. From the plugin homepage, click Mass Enable slash Disable Cache. Click the Start button on the Mass Enable section to install the plugin on all sites. Or click the Start button on the Mass Disable section to uninstall the plugin on all sites. CurrentVersion is the version of the LS Cache plugin that's used in mass installation actions. It defaults to the latest available stable version of LS Cache. But you can change it if you'd like. To change a version, click CurrentVersion on the plugin homepage and open the Lightspeed Cache plugin version manager. The current active version indicates which version of the plugin should be used when enabling LS Cache. If you want to change this for some reason, click the New Active Version dropdown, select your preferred version number, and click Switch Version. You can also use the Lightspeed Cache plugin version manager to update or downgrade the LS Cache plugin for all existing installations. Scroll down to the Force Version Change for All Existing Installations section. You can either select all to update every installation, or you can select a version from From Versions so that only certain installations get the update. Select the new version to downgrade or upgrade to in the Upgrade To field and click the Upgrade button. You can watch the upgrade process as it works through all of the installations. The LS Cache plugin includes many optimization services that are provided through QuickCloud. If your firewall configuration does not whitelist QuickCloud IP addresses automatically, your users may face issues connecting their sites to QuickCloud. From the plugin homepage, click QuickCloud IPs to get a list of all of the QuickCloud IP addresses currently in use. Add these IPs to your firewall's Allow List. See the video description for more information about Allow List and QuickCloud IPs. And that's it! This should be enough to get you started with the Lightspeed Web Server and LS Cache for WordPress in your control panel. To learn more, please see the video description for links to our documentation and other helpful resources. Thank you for watching, liking, sharing, and subscribing. See you next time!