Using BOA
The hosted-customer guide: run your sites from the Ægir control panel and your own limited oN.ftp shell, without ever needing root or touching the server.
This guide is for you if you have a site on a BOA/Ægir host — a hosted
account. You work in two places: the Ægir control panel (a web login where
you point and click to create, clone, verify, and back up your sites) and your
own limited shell (o1.ftp — an SSH/SFTP login into your account only, where
Drush and the self-service tools live). Your login number may be o2, o3, and
so on; the number is just your account.
You manage your sites; your host runs the server. You never need root, you never touch the box, and nothing here asks you for either. The files you can edit are the settings files inside your own account — everything underneath (the server, the firewall, the web server, the database engine, security patching, and BOA upgrades) is your host's job, not yours.
Everything is written from where you sit: "your site", "your account", "your shell". When a task genuinely needs the server operator — something only they can do, with access you don't have — we say so in one line and tell you to open a support request, instead of sending you somewhere you can't finish.
Not sure where to start? Read Welcome & your account first, then Connecting to your account to get into your shell.
Welcome & your account
What comes with your hosted account — the Ægir control panel, your own limited shell, and the self-service tools — and where to begin once you are settled in.
Connecting to your account
How to reach your account over SSH and SFTP or FTPS: your login details, setting up an SSH key, what the limited shell allows, fixing a refused login, and separate limited logins for your developers.
Managing sites & platforms
Running your own sites from the Ægir control panel — the platform-and-site model, everyday tasks, cloning, migrating and domain aliases, no server access needed.
SSL for your sites
Serving your sites over HTTPS is a single control-panel setting — free, auto-renewing Let's Encrypt certificates, with nothing to buy, upload, or run from a shell.
Tuning your site & platform
The dials BOA leaves in your hands, turned from your own shell without touching the server: the INI control files, your PHP version, and the modules BOA manages.
Caching on your sites
How the caching layers on a BOA host fit together — the Nginx front cache, Drupal's page cache, the Redis/Valkey object cache, and PHP's opcache — what each one does for your site, and which dials are yours to turn.
Drush in your instance
Drush comes ready to use from your own shell: the right version for each site, an alias per site, and the correct PHP already wired up — no install, no config.
Deploying your own code
Bring your own Composer-built or Git-tracked codebase, register it as a platform from your own shell, and run sites on it — no root, no touching the server.
Backing up & restoring
Nightly database backups run automatically; add on-demand snapshots and rollbacks in the panel, encrypted offsite copies to your cloud storage, and file recovery.
Search, mail & access
The extras around a running site: adding Solr search, BOA's built-in access protections, browsing a database with Adminer, how outbound mail leaves the server, New Relic monitoring, and the system print/PDF binaries.
When something's wrong
A calm first stop for troubleshooting from the control panel and your shell: quick safe checks, reading task status, resetting a login, and when it's your host's job.
Backdrop CMS sites
Backdrop CMS as a first-class citizen: the same panel tasks as your Drupal sites, automatic caching and cron, and bee — Backdrop's own CLI — next to drush.
Local development with DDEV
Using the ddev-boa add-on to pull your hosted site's database and files into a local DDEV project over your existing shell login, for developing on your own machine.