{"id":362021,"date":"2026-05-28T10:52:38","date_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/som2nynetwork.com\/?p=362021"},"modified":"2026-05-28T10:52:38","modified_gmt":"2026-05-28T10:52:38","slug":"setting-up-a-node-js-application-on-cpanel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/som2nynetwork.com\/?p=362021","title":{"rendered":"Setting up a Node.js application on cPanel"},"content":{"rendered":"


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While a vast majority of applications in use across our network are PHP applications, and the next most popular language is straight HTML, these aren\u2019t the only languages supported on our hosting servers! They\u2019re also capable of hosting cgi-bin applications (often Perl), Ruby (including the on-Rails variant), Python, and Node.js.<\/p>\n

This article will focus mostly on Node.js use since it\u2019s starting to become more popular.<\/p>\n

What makes Node.js different?<\/h2>\n

Since PHP is the most popular choice, it has native support built into the webserver so no special tricks are required to get PHP to work. If a request to a specific URL lands on an index.php file, the server just knows how to handle the request, running that PHP code, and waiting for PHP to return the response headers and HTML output to pass along to the user visiting your site.<\/p>\n

Unlike PHP, a Node.js application is a single \u201ccompiled\u201d program designed to handle not just a specific location<\/em> on a site, but all<\/em> requests for a website. It\u2019s not compiled in the normal sense though since Node.js is still a \u2018Just in Time\u2019 language that converts to program code as it goes, but we\u2019re getting a bit too deep into the weeds to really discuss how this works here. The important point is that since this is how Node.js works, it tends to run very quickly<\/em> compared to PHP, as long as it\u2019s set up properly.<\/p>\n

Wait, All Requests?<\/h3>\n

Yes, Node.js is technically its own tiny webserver, and everything<\/em> for your website gets sent through it, including static content like javascript files, images, and CSS. Your application should probably use the Node.js Express<\/strong> module so that static resources can be served and cached by the webserver. If you don\u2019t use it, app performance will probably suffer under higher loads! See this Cloudlinux Coummunity forum thead<\/a> for full details on the topic.<\/p>\n

Before you Begin<\/h2>\n

There\u2019s two big warnings that apply to Node.js applications being deployed on our servers! The resource limits applied to all shared hosting accounts means that:<\/p>\n

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  1. The Starter Plan hosting package does not meet the requirements for Node.js deployment. For this reason we have disabled the icons in cPanel normally used for this task on this plan. All other packages still have these features enabled.<\/li>\n


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  2. There are not enough resources on shared hosting to run \u201cnpm run build\u201d. This means you will not be able to use the server as a development<\/em> platform to make your Node.js application. The \u201cnpm run build\u201d command can often require many gigabytes of memory to run properly, so your application will need to be developed and built on your own local equipment (or a VPS), and then transferred to our server after being built.<\/li>\n

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    Getting Started<\/h2>\n

    First, create a new folder outside<\/em> of public_html to use as your node.js application folder. It\u2019s very important that your Node.js app folder be outside of public_html because you do not want web requests to be able to retrieve your application source code.<\/p>\n

    Take a full copy of the entire Node.js application directory (exclude the node_modules<\/strong> folder), and upload it to your new project directory on the server. FTP works for this, but the easiest method is to just zip it up and transfer the zip file to the server, then extract it using the cPanel file manager.<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

    Once your application files are in place, head over to the Software<\/strong> section in cPanel and look for the Setup Node.js App<\/strong> icon. On the next page, click the blue Create Application<\/strong> button on the right. You\u2019ll get this form:<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/a><\/figure>\n

    Some Notes About this Form:<\/h3>\n