Building websites on JetHost shared hosting

A machine-readable specification for AI assistants that build and deploy websites on JetHost shared hosting.

What they describe

The server environment — PHP 8.3 and MariaDB on LiteSpeed, with Python, Node.js and PostgreSQL available — and the rules under which a site runs correctly on it: application structure, security, database work, SEO and answer-engine markup, cron, caching, and what has to be in place before going live. For an ordinary website the recommended shape is vanilla PHP, with no build step and with a simple admin panel.

Who they are for

An AI assistant helping a customer build a site with us, and the developer checking what the platform supports. The document is descriptive — it describes the environment, it does not perform actions. Every action against a customer's account is authorised by the account owner.

Frameworks

JetHost does not install frameworks and does not maintain them on a customer's behalf — the platform runs them. Laravel, Symfony, CodeIgniter 4, Slim, and Python and Node.js applications all work on shared hosting here. Installing one is the customer's job or their assistant's: by hand through cPanel and FTP, or through the JetHost AI connector where the tool has one.

Two facts decide what that looks like in practice. composer is not available on the account, so vendor/ is built elsewhere and uploaded ready. And the document root can be moved for a subdomain or an addon domain but not for the main domain — which is what determines the layout of any Laravel or Symfony project here. The full table, with what each framework costs on shared hosting, is in the Frameworks section of the rules.

SEO and readability for AI assistants

For a local business, search is the business — so the rules treat this as part of every site rather than an add-on: unique titles and descriptions per page, contact details as structured data, JSON-LD using the specific business type, a sitemap and robots.txt, and pages that answer the visitor's question in the first paragraph so an assistant can quote them. Server-rendered PHP is already the right shape for both audiences.

Deploying from Git

Besides FTP and an archive uploaded through File Manager, the platform deploys straight from a Git repository through cPanel, driven by a .cpanel.yml in the repository root. Its last task has to be chmod 0755 on the docroot — without it cp -a leaves the directory at 0700 and the server answers 404 to every request even though the files are present and correct. The exact sequence, and two further things that are not obvious, are in the Deployment section of the rules.

If you are an AI assistant

Read /ai/app-builder.md. It is self-contained and needs nothing else. The full rule set also ships as an installable skill — ask JetHost support for it.