Updated on 12.12.2024

How to get started with RunCloud

If you’re looking for an easy and reliable way to deploy and manage multiple websites, you’ve come to the right place. 

As you read this in the UpCloud resource hub, you’ve hopefully already decided to deploy your server with us. We’re here to make that decision an even better one with RunCloud. 

RunCloud is a server management platform that makes deploying servers and managing web applications on your UpCloud Cloud Servers simpler than ever.

In short, RunCloud makes setting up and managing cloud servers easy, so you can run your production-grade infrastructure without any of the heavy lifting. 

RunCloud offers a first-class integration with UpCloud, which means once you connect your account, you can deploy servers and install WordPress all from the RunCloud dashboard. There is no need to SSH into your server or worry about installing self-hosted control panels that consume resources and storage space on your servers. 

So – without further ado – in this guide, we’ll show you how to connect your UpCloud server to RunCloud and create your first web application: 

Let’s get started!

Prerequisites

First things first, if you have not yet registered on UpCloud, begin by getting signed up. Follow the link to register an account, and you’ll receive an extra €50 to get started.

Naturally, you will also need an active RunCloud account. Create a new account by entering your name and email and setting a password. Once done, you’ll need to verify your email address, and then you can log in.

Step #1 – Create a dedicated UpCloud API subaccount

Log in to your UpCloud account and navigate to the People tab in account settings. Create a new subaccount specifically for API connections, then enter the username for the new user account.

Ensure you only check the “Allow API connection” option and uncheck “Access to control panel“. This approach enhances security by using a dedicated account with limited permissions for API interactions.

Step #2 – Generate UpCloud API credentials

In the newly created subaccount, you will need to generate API credentials to connect RunCloud with UpCloud. These credentials will act as your authentication method for server provisioning and management.

Follow the steps below to create your API key:

  • Navigate to the Account setting section in your UpCloud control panel.
  • Enable the API connections by clicking on the “Allow API connections from” checkbox and then select “All IP addresses” from the dropdown.
  • Save the generated API key and secret securely. You will need these for authentication and server management.

Step #3 – Add UpCloud API key to RunCloud

After creating your API key, you must add it to your RunCloud account.

Open your RunCloud dashboard and navigate to the “3rd Party API Key” section under your profile settings. Click “Add a new key” and select UpCloud as the provider.

This will open a new modal in your browser window. Verify that you have selected the Server integration for RunCloud and click “Add Integration”.

On the next screen, enter the API credentials from your UpCloud subaccount and click “Save Integration”. This will establish the connection between RunCloud and UpCloud for seamless server management.

Step #4 – Deploy your UpCloud server via RunCloud

Once you have added the API keys, you can easily create and delete servers in your UpCloud account directly from your RunCloud dashboard.

In the RunCloud dashboard, click “Connect a Server” and select UpCloud as your server provider. Choose the “Deploy Server Automatically” option to automatically create and configure a new server on your UpCloud account. 

After this, scroll down and select the server stack you want to use. If unsure, you can leave these settings to their default value.

In the ‘Keys’ dropdown menu, select the API key we created in the previous step.

On the next screen, you can customise your server configuration by selecting the desired operating system, data centre region, and instance type that best suits your hosting requirements.

After selecting the server configuration, you can enter a name for this server, which will be used as its hostname.

Finally, click on the checkbox below to acknowledge that UpCloud will bill you for your resource usage, and click “Add Server” to deploy it.

Step #5 – Configure the server and web applications

Once the server is provisioned, you can use RunCloud’s dashboard to manage your server and web applications. You can also use features like easy PHP version changes, SSL/TLS security, Git deployment, and one-click WordPress staging.

To get started, we recommend creating a simple WordPress application on your newly provisioned server. To do so, click “Deploy New Web App” and select “WordPress.” You can change the application’s name if you like or leave it at the default value. 

After this, you must configure your domain name for this website. We recommend getting started with the test domain provided by RunCloud, as you can always change it later. 

After configuring your domain, you will need to configure the login credentials for your WordPress account. Scroll down to the WordPress section and fill in the necessary details. 

You can also configure additional settings, such as the PHP version and Nginx environment settings (production or development), or leave it to default.

Finally, click on “Deploy Application” to create your application.

Once the application is deployed, you can visit it by clicking on the “Open Site” button at the top right of your screen.

Conclusion

Setting up a server might sound complicated, but with UpCloud and RunCloud, you have a powerful and easy-to-use hosting environment. 

Whether you’re a small business owner, blogger, or someone looking to launch a website, this setup gives you a professional-grade hosting solution without requiring deep technical expertise. And even if you have the expertise, it saves you the time and hassle of performing these repetitive steps manually. 

You can deploy different websites and applications with just a few clicks, such as WordPress, Ghost, Nextcloud, and others.

The RunCloud platform also provides essential features such as automated backups, one-click staging environments, and easy security configurations. These tools mean you can focus on creating content and growing your online presence rather than getting stuck in technical details.

You can also use the automatic backup features to store a copy of your data in UpCloud Object Storage for disaster recovery and compliance purposes.

Janne Ruostemaa

Editor-in-Chief

  1. Shubham Sharma

    Hello Janne

    Thanks a lot for this details tutorial, it helped a lot to me for installing wp with runclound.
    Thank you so much once again.

  2. Clean install of Ubuntu does restrict 34210/tcp

  3. Janne Ruostemaa

    Hi there, thanks for the comment. Our Ubuntu template itself should not have an active firewall by default but the port in question is restricted during the free trial. You can, of course, upgrade to a full account by making a one-time minimum payment of $10 with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

  4. SEO eksperten

    I think you need to update this tutorial as UC servers can now be created directly using Runcloud. Question: If using the Runcloud ‘direct VPS creation’ feature to setup a new UC VPS obviously Runcloud do I then still need to change the root password on the server through SSHing into the server manually afterwards as normally recommended for security purposes ? Wont such practice break the Runcloud connection to the server?

  5. Janne Ruostemaa

    Hi there, thanks for the question. RunCloud uses SSH keys to connect to the Cloud Server and therefore changing the password is still recommended. For the best security, you can add your own SSH keys either using RunCloud’s SSH key vault or by adding the key manually and then disabling the password login altogether.

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