General

• What is Installatron?
• What control panels are supported?
• Is it called Installatron or Installtron?
• Can I recommend a web application for Installatron?
• How often are the application installers updated?
• How secure is Installatron?
• How is Installatron better than Fantastico and Power Pack?
• How does Installatron maintain cross-platform support?
• Does Installatron work with the RVSkin cPanel theme?
• Are all web applications open source?
• What web application versions does Installatron currently install?
• When was the end of life for Installatron 3.x and 5.x?
• 20% Discount on Soholaunch ProServer Unlimited

How-To: Users

• How do I import something I installed outside Installatron?

How-To: Administrators

• How do I install Installatron?
• How do I upgrade/update Installatron?
• How do I uninstall Installatron?
• How do I translate Installatron?
• How do I create application installers?
• How do I make Installatron work with my own control panel?
• How do I transfer Installatron to another server?
• How do I change the IP on my license?
• How do I fix Installatron?
• How do I uninstall Installatron?
• How do I renew a monthly or annual license before it expires?
• How do I create a Personal Archive Mirror (PAM)?
• How do I use the LIST BUILDER in Installatron?
• And for everything else: troubleshooting...

Installatron is a state-of-the-art web application auto-installer and auto-upgrader (also known as a script installer) plugin for web hosting control panels.

Once Installatron is installed on your server your users are able to install, manage, and upgrade a growing list of web applications at the click of a button.

What control panels are supported?

Support is maintained by Installatron for these control panels:

cPanel/WHM
DirectAdmin
Parallels Plesk Linux/Unix
Parallels Plesk Windows

These control panels are supported by the panel developers:

LxAdmin (problems with LxAdmin control panel integration should be reported to LxLabs and server issues should be reported to Installatron)

Additionally, a number of hosting providers with in-house control panels use the Installatron Integration API to integrate Installatron.

Is it called Installatron or Installtron?

Contrary to the popular misspelling, it is called Installatron. Think of installation with an r instead of an i.

Can I recommend a web application for Installatron?

We are not taking any more application recommendations. The existing installers are already keeping us very busy, plus we have a long list of recommended apps to look at next.

We add critical updates within hours of release, guaranteed within 24 hours, but normally in less than 12 hours. This includes non-business day releases.

Non-critical updates weigh speed with stability, and in some cases the developers actually let us know when they think the latest version is ready to add to Installatron. Standard releases for stable or popular web applications usually follow the "critical" update path, while larger version changes (and certain applications) might be given some breathing space to ensure stability.

Some of the benefits of Installatron over Fantastico and Plesk 9 Power Pack include:

• Installatron has the fastest new-version-updating.
• Our official set of applications installers are automatically enabled and updated.
• Helps keep installations secure and up-to-date by allowing the administrator to mass-upgrade user installations.
• Automatic filtering of applications and versions that are incompatible with your server.
• Users can create and restore snapshots/backups of installed applications at any time.
• Installatron will offer to create a backup prior to upgrading an installed application so that the upgrade can be reverted if something doesn't work out.
• Users can import existing manual installations into the Installatron system for easy backups and upgrading.
• Supports root-directory and password-protected-directory install locations.
• Installatron licenses are multi-platform, so if you change to a different control panel or operating system you can take your Installatron license (and existing installs) with you.
• Costs much less than Power Pack and Fantastico, has more licensing options, and a FREE-EDITION.
• Installatron does not have upgrading fees, only renewal fees.
• Features a completely brandable UI and many other Theming/Localization options.
• Make your own application installers.

And additional benefits over Plesk 7 and Plesk 8 Application Vault:

• Installatron and application installer updating is performed automatically by a crontab process.
• The ability to limit certain scripts to certain users via the Access Control tool.

Plus, we're constantly working on improving Installatron. If there's something you'd like to see us do, we'd be happy to listen.

Visit the features page for a full features comparison.

Installatron develops a native interface for each supported control plugin.

The Installatron Integration API is capable of interfacing with any web hosting control panel, on both Linux/Unix and Windows, or indeed any user interface at all.

Yes. Installatron fully and automatically integrates with the popular RVSkin cPanel theme. See also this RVSkin features page.

No. Most applications are released on the GNU/GPL open source license, but not all.

You can find a list of licenses here.

Installatron is as secure as we can make it.

We cannot guarantee the security quality of the applications installed by Installatron.

Note: given the tasks performed by Installatron, which include server-level file manipulation and software installation, we recommend that you only use Installatron and installation-packages that you downloaded from our website (using the Update tool), or that you create yourself.

You can find a list of currently supported versions here. The last update was on 2010-03-09, and updates come regularly.

Installatron 5.x reached its end of life on May 15th, 2009 and can automatically be upgraded to Installatron 6.

Installatron 3.x reached its end of life on May 24th, 2008. Upgrade instructions to Installatron 6 are here.

Installatron clients are eligible to receive a 20% discount on Soholaunch ProServer Unlimited, which activates all of Soholaunch's advanced features. Soholaunch licensees also have access to marketing materials to help promote Soholaunch software to their end users.

To learn more about this special offer and other licensing options, including a revenue sharing program, visit installatron.soholaunch.com.

Click on your "Application Browser" tab, find the web application in the list that corresponds to the application that is installed, and then click the "Import Existing Install" button. This will initiate the import wizard.

Download and install Installatron.

Since version 5.0, Installatron automatically adds a CRON process to run the update/repair utility once per day. If you have removed the CRON entry you can reapply it by enabling the Automatic Core Updates option in Administration >> General.

You can also click run Installatron update now in Administration, or follow the steps on the upgrade page.

The Installatron Locale Translator tool allows anyone with a client login to translate lines, and can also be used to generate locale customizations for your server.

The Installatron Open Installer Format allows anyone create and maintain Installatron application installers.

The Installatron Integration API allows any web hosting control panel or user interface to incorporate Installatron.

To transfer Installatron 5.0+ to another server and retain all existing installs:

• Ensure that you are running the latest version of Installatron (6.0.8).
• Transfer the control panel user accounts to the new server.
• Disable Installatron on the old server.
• Use your account page to change the IP address or footprint on the license.
• Install Installatron on the new server.

To transfer Installatron 3.0+ to another server and retain all existing installations, the first option is to:

• Upgrade Installatron 3 to Installatron 5 (see upgrade steps) and then follow the process above.

Or if upgrading Installatron 3 is no longer an option:

• Copy the contents of installatron_dir/data/installs/* from the i3 server to /var/installatron/i3import/ on the i5 server
• Run Installatron update.

Login to your client account and save a new IP value for your license.

Please visit the Troubleshooting page.

How to uninstall Installatron.

Log into your client account and click the renew link for the license you wish to renew. This will create an invoice, email you the details, and take you to the payment page.

Licenses renewed before expiration have the renewal added to the existing expiration. There is no waste when renewing early.

A personal archive mirror allows you to use the Installatron archive cache on one of your servers to act as the primary archive mirror for your other servers. This saves bandwidth and server resources when you have a network of servers (a PAM is of no use to a single server).

To create a PAM:

• Create a symbolic link from any public location on one server to this directory:
  
  /var/installatron/archives
  
  For example:

  ln -s /var/installatron/archives /home/admin/yourdomain.com/public_html/installatron_pam

  That would make http://yourdomain.com/installatron_pam a URL to the archive cache on this server. This can be any public location on your server.
• Then, on your other servers, enter that URL in the Personal Archive Mirror (PAM) URL field (found in Administration>Settings>Caching). These servers will now use that archive cache as their primary mirror.

The List Builder administration settings allow you to generate a list of scripts that can be installed using Installatron with your hosting service. The resulting files (one for each hosting package) can be used by your website.

A couple of simple examples:
For more advanced script list displays, use the following code to generate a FLAT DATABASE file:
And you can then use the resulting |-separated database file to dynamically generate any list you can imagine. For example, a simple alphabetical list in PHP code:

<?php
  echo "<table border=0>";
  $data = file('default');
  natcasesort($data);
  foreach($data as $element)
  {
    $element = trim($element);
    $pieces = explode("|", $element);
    echo "
      <tr>
        <td><a href='http://{$pieces[1]}' target='_blank'>{$pieces[0]}</a></td>
        <td>{$pieces[2]}</td>
        <td align='right'>{$pieces[3]}</td>
      </tr>
    ";
  }
  echo "</table>";
?>