Installing extensions (like 'unaccent') in private Postgres instance

If you need to use extensions, such as unaccent, in your Postgresql database, you cannot do it with a shared database instance as you need to be a superuser to install extensions.

Follow these steps to get it running with your own private db instance:

1. Create a private instance of the postgresql database server as detailed in the webfaction docs and follow the steps up until step 4 - the CREATE USER point.
2. Now at this point you have a choice. Either create your database user as a superuser, or create your user as a normal user (as specified in the docs) at this point. If you create a normal user that account will not have permissions to install extensions either - you will need to create another user as superuser which will have the necessary permissions to install the extension on your database.
3. Either way you create your superuser account by running: CREATE USER your_superuser WITH PASSWORD 'your_password' SUPERUSER;
4. Once your superuser is created grant access with: GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES ON DATABASE your_database_name TO your_superuser;
5. Now exit psql (type: \q at the prompt) and re-enter as your superuser: psql -h localhost -p your_port_num your_database_name your_superuser;
6. Type: CREATE EXTENSION unaccent; and the extension is created/installed and is now available to the users of that database.

And that's it. This took me a few days to resolve with the good folks at webfaction, but it is now working. Hopefully someone else gets some benefit from these instructions.