⚡ PHP Web Terminal - PWT

A lightweight, browser-based terminal for shared hosting environments where SSH/Terminal access is blocked.

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📌 Background

Most affordable shared hosting providers block SSH and Terminal access by default. This tool was built to solve that — providing a real terminal experience directly through the browser using PHP's execution functions.

Built & battle-tested on Indonesian shared hosting (cPanel, PHP 8.2, CloudLinux).

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✨ Features

• 🔐 Password protected login screen
• 💻 Real-time AJAX execution — no page reload
• 📁 cd navigation with persistent directory across commands
• 📜 Unlimited scroll history — scroll up to see all previous output
• ⬆️⬇️ Arrow key history navigation (like real terminal)
• 🎨 Linux-like dark UI with green prompt
• 🔄 Smart PHP CLI detection — uses correct PHP binary, not web PHP
• 📦 Composer & Git & Laravel Artisan compatible

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📸 Preview

(work in progress)

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🚀 Quick Start

1. Upload

Upload terminal.php to your public_html via cPanel File Manager or FTP.

2. Set Password

Open the file and change on line 3:

define('PASS', 'your-secure-password');

3. Access

https://yourdomain.com/terminal.php

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📦 Install Composer (No SSH Required)

Since shared hosting blocks SSH, download Composer binary directly:

Step 1 — Find PHP CLI binary

which php
# or use full path:
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php --version

Step 2 — Download Composer binary

curl -o composer.phar https://getcomposer.org/download/latest-stable/composer.phar

Or with wget:

wget -O composer.phar https://getcomposer.org/download/latest-stable/composer.phar

⚠️ Do NOT use curl ... | php or php -r "copy(...)" on shared hosting
— it may execute via web PHP and output HTML instead of binary.

Step 3 — Verify

/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php composer.phar --version
# Composer version 2.x.x

Step 4 — Create alias (optional but recommended)

alias php='/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php'

Now you can use php composer.phar normally.

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🏗️ Deploy Laravel on Shared Hosting

Full workflow from zero to running Laravel — no SSH needed.

1. Clone / Pull from Git

git clone https://github.com/username/your-laravel-repo.git .
# or update existing:
git pull origin main

2. Install Dependencies

COMPOSER_HOME=/home/username/.composer /opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader

If fileinfo extension error, either:

• Enable via cPanel → Select PHP Version → Extensions → fileinfo
• Or add flag: --ignore-platform-req=ext-fileinfo

3. Setup Environment

# Copy env file
cp .env.example .env

# Open and edit database config
nano .env
# or edit via cPanel File Manager

Edit these values:

APP_NAME=YourApp
APP_ENV=production
APP_DEBUG=false
APP_URL=https://yourdomain.com

DB_CONNECTION=mysql
DB_HOST=localhost
DB_PORT=3306
DB_DATABASE=your_database
DB_USERNAME=your_db_user
DB_PASSWORD=your_db_password

4. Generate App Key

/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan key:generate

5. Run Migration

/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan migrate

With seeder:

/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan migrate --seed

Fresh migration (reset all):

/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan migrate:fresh --seed

6. Storage & Cache

# Link storage
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan storage:link

# Clear & optimize all cache
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan optimize:clear
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan optimize

7. Set Permissions

chmod -R 755 storage
chmod -R 755 bootstrap/cache

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🔁 Daily Deploy Workflow

After pushing code updates:

git pull origin main
COMPOSER_HOME=/home/username/.composer /opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php composer.phar install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan migrate
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan optimize:clear
/opt/alt/php82/usr/bin/php artisan optimize

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🟢 Node.js Deploy (Coming Soon)

Node.js workflow example will be added here, inshaAllah.

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⚙️ Recommended PHP Extensions

Enable these in cPanel → Select PHP Version → Extensions:

✅ fileinfo     ✅ mbstring     ✅ curl
✅ zip          ✅ gd           ✅ pdo_mysql
✅ opcache      ✅ xml          ✅ openssl
✅ json         ✅ tokenizer    ✅ bcmath
✅ ctype        ✅ intl         ✅ sodium

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🛡️ Security

⚠️ This file provides command-line access to your server. Handle with care.

Best practices:

• ✅ Use a strong unique password
• ✅ Delete the file after deployment is done
• ✅ Move to a hidden path (e.g. /private/tools/)
• ✅ Restrict by IP via .htaccess:

<Files "terminal.php">
  Order Deny,Allow
  Deny from all
  Allow from YOUR.IP.ADDRESS
</Files>

• ❌ Never expose on production long-term
• ❌ Never commit with password in plain text

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📂 Project Structure

php-web-terminal/
├── terminal.php     # Single-file web terminal (AJAX-based)
├── term.log         # Command history log (auto-created, gitignored)
└── README.md

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🌐 Tested On

Hosting	PHP	Status
Indonesian Shared Hosting (cPanel)	8.2	✅ Working
CloudLinux + cPanel	8.2	✅ Working

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📄 License

MIT License — Free to use, modify, and distribute.

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⭐ Support

If this helped you, give it a ⭐ on GitHub!