DEV Community: Alex Crivion

I Built an Open-Source Hosting Control Panel in Laravel (Meet Laranode)

Alex Crivion — Mon, 03 Nov 2025 11:16:33 +0000

Hey everyone 👋

I’m excited (and a bit nervous) to share something I’ve been working on for a while — Laranode, an open-source hosting control panel for your VPS, built entirely in Laravel & InertiaJS.

You can think of it as a simple, developer-friendly way to manage your web server without dealing with endless configs or expensive licenses.

👉 https://laranode.com

💻 https://github.com/crivion/laranode

Why I built it

I’ve always loved building things that give people more control over their tools.
When managing my own VPS, I found most panels either too heavy, too expensive, using non-popular stacks or just overcomplicated for simple hosting setups.

So I thought — what if there was a lightweight, open-source control panel built with Laravel that anyone could install and use in minutes?
That’s how Laranode was born.

What’s inside Laranode v1

This first release focuses on simplicity and core functionality — just enough to make your VPS a fully managed web server.

Here’s what you get out of the box:
✅ Multi-account support (admins & users)
✅ Website and file management
✅ One-click SSL with Let’s Encrypt
✅ Real-time CPU, RAM, and network stats
✅ Manage Apache, MySQL, PHP, and firewall
✅ Clean and minimal web interface

Built with Laravel

Laranode is powered by Laravel, with a focus on clean structure, maintainability, and speed.
I wanted it to feel familiar for Laravel developers who might want to contribute, extend, or even fork it for their own projects.

Everything — from the web-based file manager to live stats — was built from scratch using Laravel’s ecosystem and modern frontend tools.

What’s next

This is just v1, but I’m already working on:

Backup manager

PHP version manager

Improved real-time stats

More automation for server setup

The idea is to keep it simple — no bloat, no unnecessary features, just tools that make managing a VPS feel effortless.

How you can help

If you like the project:
⭐ Star it on GitHub — that helps more people discover it
💬 Share feedback or ideas for what you’d love to see next
🧑‍💻 Contributions are welcome!

👉 https://github.com/crivion/laranode

Final thoughts

Building Laranode as a solo dev has been a wild but rewarding journey.
If it helps even a few developers self-host their projects more easily, it’s already worth it.

Thanks for reading — and I’d love to hear your thoughts! 🙌

Autogenerate VHOSTS on macOS X

Alex Crivion — Thu, 29 Oct 2020 14:52:06 +0000

Every time I wanted to activate a new virtual host on my local macOS machine for development

I had to do the regular steps

create directory
create apache vhosts entry
create /etc/hosts entry

So, I have built myself a tool.

PHP-cli tool
Site Directories must end in .local to be picked up
example /path/site.local will become http://local.site

define('SITES_PATH', '/Users/your-user/Sites');
define('VHOSTS_FILE', '/etc/apache2/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf');
define('HOSTS_FILE', '/etc/hosts');

Usage (must be super user):

sudo php index.php

PHP-Cli Output Example

Find out on github:

https://github.com/crivion/autogenerate-vhosts-osx

Feel free to use as you wish.

Unlocking Medium.com Paid Content with the help of Twitter

Alex Crivion — Wed, 21 Oct 2020 17:17:53 +0000

Hello fellows!

While I have nothing against paying for services - here's a way I managed to find online on how to unlock medium.com articles that show you the message that you are required to pay for.

Using Twitter, you'll simply DM the link of the "premium article" to yourself, then clicking on that link will make it by miracle available to read freely.

Enjoy and spread the word

Check a quick demonstration on [link]