Steps I just went through to set up a new CentOS 7 box, for possible future edification

setup

# set up a non-root user
# below commands assume you're running from root
useradd <USER>
passwd <USER>

# install another python
yum -y update
yum groupinstall -y 'development tools'
yum install python-devel
# maybe don't need this?
yum install -y zlib-dev openssl-devel sqlite-devel bzip2-devel xz-libs readline-devel ncurses-devel

curl https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py | python
pip install virtualenv

# cron jobs are good
yum install cronie
service crond start

# http hosting
yum install httpd
service httpd start

# ftp hosting
yum install vsftpd
vi /etc/vsftpd/vsftpd.conf # Change allow_anonymous to NO
service vsftpd restart

# python packages, not for general consumption
# optionally switch to a virtualenv here
curl http://softlayer-dal.dl.sourceforge.net/project/python-irclib/python-irclib/0.4.8/python-irclib-0.4.8.tar.gz | tar zx
cd python-irclib-0.4.8
python setup.py install
pip install cobe
pip install tweepy

On your home machine, run: ssh-copy-id -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub <USER>@<IP>