PageMotor on Hostinger, the picture-by-picture guide
The fool-proof version. Every step below has a screenshot of exactly what you will see, so you just match your screen to the picture. By the end PageMotor is running on a proper VPS, where your designs actually save.
▶ Watch the whole setup (2 minutes 43 seconds), narrated, with captions. Or follow the pictures step by step below.
Read the narration instead
Buy the VPS. Start on the Hostinger dashboard and click Get VPS. Buy a KVM plan, never shared or web hosting. That is the whole point: a VPS lets PageMotor write its files to disk, and shared hosting blocks that, which is why designs never seem to save. Then choose CloudPanel, generate a panel password, and keep it somewhere safe.
Build the server. Choose a location near your visitors and finish setup. Hostinger builds the server in about three to six minutes. You can close the page, it emails you. When it is ready, note the server’s IP address.
Log in to CloudPanel. Open CloudPanel on that IP. Your browser warns the connection is not private. On a brand new server that is normal, so click through and log in.
Create the site. Add a site, choose a PHP site, and fill in your domain and a site user. CloudPanel creates the folders and the web server entry for you, then opens the new site in the list.
Create the database. Here is the trap: CloudPanel rejects underscores in the name or the user, so use hyphens instead. Save the password, and note the host, 127.0.0.1.
Upload PageMotor. In the File Manager, open htdocs and then your domain folder. Delete any placeholder index file, because PageMotor brings its own. Upload the PageMotor zip, extract it, and give the extracted folder a name you will remember. Then check the files landed.
Configure PageMotor. Rename config-sample.php to exactly config.php. Edit it, and set the four database lines to the values you just saved. Then, in Settings, point the site’s root directory at the PageMotor folder.
Point your domain and add SSL. Add an A record for your domain and for www, pointing at the server. On Cloudflare, leave it grey clouded for now. Then issue a Let’s Encrypt certificate.
Finish. Visit /admin/ and create your administrator account straight away, before you share the address. The first person to open that screen becomes the administrator.
Use this guide with any AI assistant
Download it as a prompt file, paste it into Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or any LLM, and it will walk you through every step interactively.
Buy the VPS
1Start your VPS order
Log in to Hostinger and, on the home dashboard, click Get VPS. Buy a VPS (KVM) plan, never Shared or Web hosting. This is the whole point: a VPS lets PageMotor write its files to disk; shared hosting blocks that, which is why designs silently never apply.
2Open the Control panel tab
On the Choose what to install screen, click the Control panel tab, then find CloudPanel (the blue cloud icon, top right).
3Select CloudPanel
Click CloudPanel. The popup should say Installed in Ubuntu 24.04. Click Select.
4Set your panel password
Click Generate, then the eye icon to reveal the password, and save it somewhere safe. This is your CloudPanel login. Leave the SSH key blank. Click Next.
5Choose a plan
Pick a plan. KVM 1 is plenty for one PageMotor site; KVM 2 gives headroom for several. Click Select.
6Choose the term and pay
Pick a billing term (1, 12 or 24 months; 24 is the cheapest per month). The renewal price is higher than the promo. Click Choose payment method and pay.
Build the server
7Choose a server location
Pick the data centre closest to you or your visitors, then Next.
8Finish setup
Leave the free Malware scanner unticked, then click Finish setup. The scanner "blocks malicious files, suspicious activity, and potential threats", and a blocking layer it does not explain is exactly the shape of problem behind most of the MCP troubleshooting guide: host security interfering with machine-to-machine endpoints. Add it later if you want it, once Claude is connected and working. Hostinger may walk you back through the install choices once more first; just make the same picks (CloudPanel, your password, features).
9Wait while it builds
Hostinger builds your server, about 3 to 6 minutes. You can leave the page; it emails you when it is ready.
10Note your server IP
When it says you are ready, write down your server IP address. You will need it for the certificate and your domain. (In this example it is 82.29.190.61.)
Log in to CloudPanel
11Open CloudPanel
Open your VPS in hPanel and click Manage panel. Note your CloudPanel username is admin.
12Get past the certificate warning
Your browser warns This Connection Is Not Private. That is completely normal on a raw IP, it is your own brand-new server. In Safari: Show Details then visit this website. In Chrome or Edge: Advanced then Proceed.
13Log in
Log in with username admin and the panel password you saved.
Create the site
14Add a site
You are now in CloudPanel. Click + ADD SITE.
15Choose a PHP site
Choose Create a PHP Site.
16Fill in the site details
Enter your domain, a Site User (a short name like mysite) and a saved Site User Password. Set PHP Version to 8.3. Leave Application on Generic. Click Create.
17Open your new site
Your site appears in the list. Click Manage to open it.
Create the database
18Add a database
Open the Databases tab, then click Add Database.
19Watch out, no underscores
If you put an underscore in the name or user, CloudPanel rejects it with This value is not valid.
20Use hyphens
Name it with hyphens, for example pagemotor-db and user pagemotor-user, with a saved password. Click Add Database. Note the host shown is 127.0.0.1.
21Database created
Your database and its user are created. Keep the name, user, password and host (127.0.0.1) handy, PageMotor needs them shortly.
Upload PageMotor
22Open your document root
Open the File Manager tab, go into htdocs then your domain folder. If there is a placeholder index.php, delete it (PageMotor brings its own). Have the PageMotor files ready as a zip on your computer first.
23Upload the PageMotor zip
Click Add New → Upload file and upload the PageMotor zip into this folder.
24Extract it
Right-click the uploaded zip and choose Extract.
25Give the extract a folder name
CloudPanel insists on a folder name (leaving it blank is rejected). Type pagemotor and click Extract. We will point the site straight at this folder in two steps.
26Check the files
Open the pagemotor folder. You should see index.php, lib, config-sample.php and pagemotor.php sitting directly inside.
Configure PageMotor
pagemotor folder), then open
https://yourdomain.com/admin/ in your browser. The Install Wizard asks for the
same database details and writes config.php itself, which is quicker and
removes the chance of a typo in a file you edited by hand. The steps below are the manual
route, and still work on any version.27Rename the config file
Right-click config-sample.php, choose Rename, and change it to exactly config.php. PageMotor only reads config.php.
28Fill in your database details
Right-click config.php → Edit. Set the four database lines to your values: DB_NAME, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, and DB_HOST to 127.0.0.1. Leave every other line as it is. Save.
29Point the site at the PageMotor folder
Open the Settings tab and change Root Directory to yourdomain.com/pagemotor, then Save.
30The web server is nearly set up
Good news first: the routing is already done. On the Vhost tab you can see CloudPanel already routes every address through index.php (the try_files line), exactly what PageMotor needs for clean links.
While you have the Vhost tab open, make one small addition. PageMotor keeps a few directories private (error logs, Skill state, and protected uploads including Brain files). On Apache hosting that privacy is automatic; this server runs nginx, which needs to be told. Paste these three lines on their own, directly above the line that begins location / (not inside its curly brackets), then Save:
location ^~ /user-content/logs/ { deny all; }
location ^~ /user-content/skills/ { deny all; }
location ^~ /user-content/uploads/protected/ { deny all; }.htaccess protection stopped working the moment nginx took over, silently.
Point your domain and add SSL
31Point your domain at the server
In your domain DNS (Hostinger DNS Records, or Cloudflare if that is where your domain lives), add an A record for your domain (and one for www) pointing to your VPS IP. On Cloudflare, set it to DNS only (grey cloud) until the certificate is issued. Give it a minute or two before the next step.
32Create the SSL certificate
Once your domain points at the server: SSL/TLS tab → Actions → New Let's Encrypt Certificate. Check your domain is listed, then Create and Install.
33Certificate installed
Done. A real certificate is installed and renews itself automatically. Your site now loads over https with a valid padlock.
Finish
34Create your PageMotor admin
Visit https://yourdomain.com/admin/ and create your administrator account straight away. The first person to use this screen becomes the administrator, so do it before sharing the address.
35You are done
That is it. You are in the PageMotor admin, on a proper host, and your design changes will save and show up. Welcome to a PageMotor site that just works.
Connecting Claude from this host
PageMotor speaks MCP natively, so once your site is up you can connect Claude Code or Claude.ai to it and let Claude build pages, manage content and run plugins for you. The connection asks a little more of a host than serving pages does. Four things must be true: the Authorization header must reach PHP intact, PageMotor must be allowed to answer its dynamic /.well-known/ routes itself, PHP's clock must be on UTC, and nothing may redirect Claude's POST to /mcp (the trailing-slash trap).
In practice, connecting takes about a minute. In a browser at claude.ai:
- Go to Customize → Connectors (straight there: claude.ai/customize/connectors).
- Click +, then Add custom connector.
- Give it any name you like. For the URL, use your site’s connector address:
https://your-site.com/mcp/, all lower case, trailing slash included. - Click Add. Claude sends you to a sign-in page on your own site. Log in with your PageMotor admin account and approve it.
- Start a new chat, click the + at the lower left of the message box, hover Connectors, and switch yours on.
Then simply talk to it: “what pages do I have”, or “create a contact page”. A free Claude account is enough and allows one custom connector; Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise allow more.
You do not need to test any of those requirements by hand. Install EP Host Check and read its MCP / Claude connection rows: since v1.2.0 its five checks cover all of this from your admin panel, no working Claude connection required, each with a plain fix. If a row fails, or the connection misbehaves anyway, the MCP troubleshooting guide has the exact diagnostic and fix for every verified cause.
/.well-known/ from the filesystem for Let's Encrypt, which swallows the OAuth discovery routes Claude follows to sign in. Section 6 of the troubleshooting guide has the vhost fix that hands those routes to PageMotor while keeping certificate renewal working.Who looks after this server?
You do. Hostinger sell a self-managed VPS, and say so plainly on their own VPS page: “As our VPS solutions are self-managed, you will get full freedom to configure and manage the virtual server.”
Hostinger looks after the hardware, the network, DDoS filtering at the edge, and whatever backups your plan includes. Everything from Ubuntu upwards is yours: security patches, your control panel, PHP, the database, your TLS certificate, and PageMotor itself.
That is not a catch. It is the same freedom that makes a VPS fix the problems shared hosting gives PageMotor. But nobody emails you when a patch is published, and a server left alone for a year is running a year of known, catalogued, publicly indexed vulnerabilities. Budget about fifteen minutes a month.