Introducing Sympl
Unfortunately Sympl doesn’t include easy to manage graphic designers.
Hot on the heels of the Debian Buster release, we’re pleased to announce our first release of Sympl, an open-source hosting management platform for Debian.
What is Sympl?
Sympl is easiest to explain by example.
Want to create a secure website for https://example.com?
Simply create a directory:
mkdir -p /srv/example.com/public/htdocs
That’s it. Point the DNS at your server and start uploading your content. An SSL certificate will be obtained automatically from Let’s Encrypt.
Want to create a new mailbox for Brian? Simply create a directory:
mkdir /srv/example.com/mailboxes/brian
Your server now accepts mail for brian@example.com.
Mail is accessible using webmail, or using any device via secure IMAP/SSL.
Configuration is all done over SSH, so you gain all the security advantages of a highly locked down server, with much easier configuration management.
Works with you, not against you
Unlike other solutions, which take an all-or-nothing approach to managing your server, Sympl happily accepts you customising the configuration and will avoid overwriting any configuration files that you alter.
When it writes configurations for you, Sympl automatically picks best practice options. This includes things like limiting permissions for PHP, secure connections for web and email, and of course, IPv6 support throughout. It’s built on Debian Linux and runs on our dedicated servers, virtual servers and we also build the packages for the Raspberry Pi.
Sympl is 100% open source. It’s completely free to use, irrespective of the number of servers or domains you might want to use with it.
Installing Sympl
If you have a Mythic Beasts virtual server running Debian Buster you can install Sympl easily by using the install script:
wget https://gitlab.mythic-beasts.com/sympl/install/raw/master/install.sh bash install.sh
If you want a managed Sympl server, we’ll do this for you as part of the setup.
Server management
Sympl pairs well with our managed hosting service. We monitor your server 24/7, apply security updates and take a daily backup leaving you to manage the sites running on it.
Future plans
Future plans for Sympl include automatic DNS configuration using OctoDNS, which supports a wide range of DNS providers, updated Let’s Encrypt support allowing automatic wildcard SSL certificates, and a fully functional command line parser for day to day administration tasks.
Find out more info on Sympl at sympl.host, which is (of course) hosted using Sympl.