PageMotor · Hosting

PageMotor on a VPS the easy way, with CloudPanel

A point-and-click way onto a proper VPS. CloudPanel gives you a clean web panel, and PageMotor gets the writable, correctly-owned filesystem it needs. One paste in the terminal to install the panel, then everything else is clicks.

🖥 GUI, not the terminal ✅ Free panel ⏱ about 20 minutes

Why this route: our Vultr guide builds the same stack by hand on the command line. This one does it through a panel instead, for people who would rather click than type. You still get a real VPS with a writable, properly-owned filesystem, which is the thing PageMotor needs and a locked-down shared host On Hostinger? Follow the picture-by-picture Hostinger guide, every step shown as a screenshot.

Tested on Hostinger, June 2026, four small traps to dodge:

Pick CloudPanel inside the order wizard. On the "Choose what to install" screen, open the Control panel tab and choose CloudPanel on Ubuntu 24.04, not a plain OS.
No underscores in the database name or user. CloudPanel rejects them ("this value is not valid"). Use hyphens, for example pagemotor-db and pagemotor-user.
Choose PHP 8.3. The new-site form may default to a newer version. PageMotor needs 8.2 or newer, and 8.3 is the safe choice.
Uploading with File Manager? Extract makes a subfolder. Let it extract into a folder such as pagemotor, then point the site at it: open the site, Settings, set Root Directory to yourdomain.com/pagemotor, Save.

1A VPS with plain Ubuntu

Spin up a VPS at any provider, Hetzner, DigitalOcean, Vultr or Hostinger, with at least 2 GB of RAM and a plain Ubuntu 22.04 or 24.04 image. CloudPanel wants a fresh box, so don't install anything else on it first.

On Hostinger you can skip the next step: at setup, choose the CloudPanel template instead of plain Ubuntu and the panel is installed for you. On any other host, do step 2.

2Install CloudPanel (one paste)

SSH into the box as root and run these three lines. The install takes five to ten minutes, and it is the only time you touch the command line.

apt update && apt upgrade -y
curl -sS https://installer.cloudpanel.io/ce/v2/install.sh -o install.sh
sudo bash install.sh

When it finishes, open https://YOUR-SERVER-IP:8443 in your browser (expect a certificate warning the first time, that is normal on a raw IP) and create your admin account. From here on it is all panel.

3Create the site

In CloudPanel go to Sites → Add Site → Create a PHP Site, and set:

Application: Generic / PHP.
PHP version: 8.3 (PageMotor needs 8.1 or newer).
Domain: your site's domain.
Site user and password: set them and write them down. This is the user that owns the files and that PHP runs as.

CloudPanel creates the Nginx vhost, the PHP-FPM pool, and the document root at /home/<site-user>/htdocs/<domain>/.

4Create the database

Go to Databases → Add Database. Give it a name, a database user and a password, and note all three, PageMotor needs them in a moment. CloudPanel runs MySQL / MariaDB, which PageMotor is happy with.

5Upload PageMotor

Put the PageMotor files into the site's document root (/home/<site-user>/htdocs/<domain>/) using CloudPanel's File Manager, or SFTP with the site-user login.
Copy config-sample.php to config.php and fill in the database name, user and password from step 4.

Because the files are uploaded as the site user, they are owned by the same user PHP runs as. That is the whole game: PageMotor can write its compiled theme CSS to disk, which is exactly what a locked-down shared host won't let it do.

6The one PageMotor tweak

PageMotor routes every request through index.php, so the vhost needs the standard front-controller rewrite. Open the site's Vhost tab in CloudPanel and make sure the main location block reads:

location / {
    try_files $uri $uri/ /index.php?$query_string;
}

Save, and CloudPanel reloads Nginx for you. That single line is the difference between clean PageMotor URLs and a wall of 404s.

7Turn on SSL

Point your domain's DNS at the server's IP first (an A record) and wait for it to resolve. Then in the site go to SSL/TLS → Actions → New Let's Encrypt Certificate, add your domain, and Create and Install. CloudPanel issues and renews the certificate for you.

Why this fixes the “design won't save” problem

The most common PageMotor “bug” is a design that won't apply: you save it, nothing changes, no error. Nine times out of ten that is a host refusing to let PHP write the compiled stylesheet to disk (more on what hosts block in the shared-hosting guide).

On a CloudPanel VPS that is gone by construction. It is a real server with a normal, writable filesystem, the site files are owned by the user PHP runs as, and nothing firewalls PHP from doing its job. PageMotor compiles its CSS, writes it, and serves it, exactly as it is meant to.

🛠 Prefer the command line, or want no panel at all? The Vultr guide builds the same Nginx + PHP 8.3 + MariaDB stack by hand, no panel involved.