Installing Drupal

Opterius Panel installs Drupal using Composer (drupal/recommended-project) and the Drush CLI. Nginx is automatically configured to serve from Drupal's web/ subdirectory.

Requirements

An active domain or subdomain on your account
PHP 8.1 or higher
Composer available on the server (installed by default with Opterius)
At least 500 MB disk space (Drupal + dependencies)

In the sidebar, go to Software → Drupal
Click Install Drupal
Fill in the form:
- Domain — the domain or subdomain to install on
- Install Path — leave empty for the domain root, or enter a subdirectory
- Site Name — your site's display name
- Admin Username / Password / Email — your Drupal administrator credentials
Click Install Drupal

Installation takes 2–3 minutes. The panel:

Runs composer create-project drupal/recommended-project:^11
Updates the Nginx document root to point to web/ inside the project
Runs drush site:install to complete the setup

Your site is live at https://yourdomain.com. The admin panel is at https://yourdomain.com/user/login.

After Installation

Log In

Go to https://yourdomain.com/user/login and sign in with your admin credentials.

Install a Theme

Download a theme from drupal.org/project/project_theme
Install via Composer from the project root:
```
composer require drupal/gin
```
Enable it at Appearance in the admin menu

Install Modules

composer require drupal/admin_toolbar
drush en admin_toolbar

Or use the Extend page in the admin UI.

Enable SSL

Issue an SSL certificate for your domain, then enforce HTTPS in Drupal's settings.php:

$settings['mixed_mode_sessions'] = FALSE;

Or configure it at the web server level — Opterius handles HTTPS redirects in Nginx automatically once a cert is issued.

Nginx Document Root

Drupal stores its actual web files in a web/ subdirectory. The installer configures Nginx automatically, but if you ever reset the domain's Nginx configuration, you'll need to set the document root back to:

/home/{username}/{domain.com}/web/

You can verify this in Domains → Nginx Directives or by checking the vhost file.

PHP Version

Drupal 10+ requires PHP 8.1+, Drupal 11 requires PHP 8.3+. Switch the domain's PHP version before installing if needed:

Go to PHP in the sidebar
Set the version for this domain

Troubleshooting

Composer times out

Composer downloads can be slow on first install. The installer timeout is generous, but if it fails, re-run — Composer caches packages locally.

500 error after installation

Check web/sites/default/settings.php exists and is readable. Also check the PHP error log for the domain.

"Drush not found"

Drush is installed as a Composer dependency of the project at vendor/bin/drush. The installer uses the local version, so a global drush is not required.

Installing Drupal

Requirements#