Learning about the skeleton directory in WHM

Learning about the skeleton directory in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn about the skeleton directory.

Click the Account Functions link.

Then click Skeleton Directory.

The skeleton directory is where you put a temporary home page for all accounts you create in WHM.

The temporary home page is what visitors will see in their browsers, until they create a new home page.

In this tutorial , the WHM’s account’s main username is demoreseller, so that’s where the skeleton directory is located as shown here.

To change the temporary (or default) home page, simply upload a new page to the cpanel3-skel directory in the location show above, using either an FTP program or the file manager tool in your main account’s cPanel.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know about the skeleton directory in WHM, and what it’s used for.

How to limit bandwidth usage in WHM

How to limit bandwidth usage in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn about setting bandwidth limits for specific hosting accounts in your WHM.

Click the Account Functions link.

Then click Limit Bandwidth Usage.

A hosting account’s bandwidth limit cannot be exceeded. When it’s reached, the account will stop working until either:

1) The end of the month (When bandwidth usages are reset) or

2) The bandwidth limit is increased.

Every account in WHM already has a bandwidth limit, as it would have been set when the account was created.

Let’s go ahead and check the bandwidth limit on one of the listed hosted accounts.

Click the Limit button.

Here we can see that the anotherdomain.com account has used 0 megabytes of bandwidth.

It has a bandwidth limit of 100,000 megabytes.

Let’s go ahead and increase this account’s bandwidth limit by typing in a new value here.

Then click Change.

That’s it! The bandwidth limit for this account has been changed.

Now click View Bandwidth Usage.

From here you can see the bandwidth used by each individual account in WHM.

You can see the modified bandwidth we just set here.

The amount of bandwidth used is shown in this column.

We can click here to see how much bandwidth each account used last month.

Click Show Units in Megabytes, to show the bandwidth usages and limits in megabytes instead of gigabytes.

Bandwidth limits and usages are now shown in megabytes.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage bandwidth limits for your hosting accounts and how to check current and past bandwidth usages.

How to login to WebHost Manager

How to login to WebHost Manager

In order to login to WebHost Manager, you must first have your login details including:

1) Login IP Address

2) Username

3) Password

This tutorial assumes you already have this information and have navigated to the IP address login page shown here.

Since your WHM is a secure environment that only you have access to, you now have to enter your username and password to gain access.

Before you login to WHM, you can now select your desire locale (language) as per your needs.

To view more available languages, click the 3 dots icon.

Enter your username and password, then click Login.

That’s it! You’ve successfully logged in to WebHost Manager (WHM), and can now begin setting up new web hosting accounts, creating packages and dozens of other tasks to help you manage your web hosting business.

When you’re finished with WHM, simply close your browser, or click the logout link.

This the end of the tutorial. Be sure to check out all other WHM tutorials to learn how to use the specific features in WHM.

Managing DNS zones in WHM

Managing DNS zones in WHM

Now let’s learn how to manage our DNS zones.

Keep in mind that you rarely (if ever) have to modify your DNS zones, since WHM does that for you automatically. You should only attempt to modify DNS zones if you know exactly what you are doing.

Click the DNS functions link.

Then click Add a DNS Zone.

This is the screen where you can add new DNS zones, but we’re not going to do that in this tutorial.

Click Delete a DNS zone link.

This is the screen where you can delete DNS zones.

To delete the DNS zone for mynewtestdomain.com, select that account here.

Then we would click this delete button, but we’re not going to do this, as it would render the account useless.

Now click the edit DNS zone link.

We are now in the edit DNS zone screen.

Select mynewtestdomain.com, then click Edit.

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

This is where you can edit the DNS zone properties of the mynewtestdomain.com account.

All of these zones properties (or records) can be modified from here. But again, do not change anything unless you know exactly what you are doing.

Click the Edit MX Entry link.

Select mynewtestdomain.com, then click Edit.

This is where you can specify a custom MX entry. You may want to do this for customers who want their email hosted elsewhere on another server. In those cases, you would enter the other server’s IP address here and click Save.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage DNS zones in WHM. Remember that WHM automatically manages DNS zones for you, so you should rarely have to do it manually.

Managing MX entries in WHM

Managing MX entries in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to manage our MX entries.

Click the DNS Functions link.

Then click Edit MX entry.

Now select the account for which you want a customized MX entry.

Click Edit button.

This is where you can specify a custom MX entry. You may want to do this for customers who want their email hosted elsewhere on another server. In those cases, you would enter the other server’s IP address here and click save.

We are not going to do this now, because we don’t want to disturb the existing settings.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to manage MX entries in WHM. Remember that unless you want to point mail to a different mail server (not in this server), you never have to modify your MX settings.

How to modify an account in WHM

How to modify an account in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to modify (or edit) an existing hosting account in WHM.

Click Account Functions.

Then click Modify an Account.

Click the account you wish to modify… we’ll choose the anotherdomain.com account.

Then click the Modify button.

This is where you can modify an account. You can change the cPanel theme, the number of allowed email accounts, mailing lists, MySQL databases, FTP accounts, subdomains, parked domains and/or addon domains.

Let’s go ahead and change a few things..

When finished click Save.

If there is conflict between the package and your chosen settings, choose one of these options. We’ll create a new package with these settings.

Click Proceed.

That’s it! The account has been modified.

You can return to the modify an account screen at any time, as customers may periodically want to upgrade their accounts.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to modify an account in WHM.

How to modify an accounts quota in WHM

How to modify an accounts quota in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to change the amount of storage space allowed (quota) in a specific hosting account.

Click the Account Functions link.

Then click the Quota modification link.

This page lists all the accounts in your WHM and the total amount of storage space used by each one.

Let’s go ahead and change the quota for the anotherdomain.com hosting account.

Click Modify button.

Enter the changes you want to make to the quota, then click Save.

That’s it! We just modified the account anotherdomain.com so it can now use up to 100,000 megabytes of storage space.

You may want to use this feature if customers upgrade their accounts or if they’re running low on available storage space.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to change the storage space quota for any account in your WHM.

How to modify the suspended accounts page in WHM

How to modify the suspended accounts page in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

With WHM, you have the ability to suspend hosting accounts so that they will no longer work.

You may want to do this if an account is using too many server resources, if the customer hasn’t paid their bill, or if they’ve reached their monthly bandwidth limit.

Let’s learn how to modify the page that displays in a visitor’s browser if an account is suspended.

Find the Web Template Editor link on the left side which is located under Accounts Functions

Now click the Web Template Editor link.

Next, click the Account Suspended tab.

Here is where you modify your suspended accounts page.

Let’s go ahead and paste the custom HTML code that corresponds to our suspended accounts page.

Select everything in the text box (we’re going to replace the entire HTML code).

Now enter (or paste) the HTML code of your new suspended account page.

When finished, click Save.

That’s it! We’ve just modified the page that displays in place of any account’s home page that is suspended.

You can preview the page you just modified by clicking the Web Template Editor link again.

Scroll down and click the Preview button.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to modify your suspended account page.

How to park a domain in WHM

How to park a domain in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to park a domain in WHM.

Customers can park domains themselves from their cPanel control panels so you’ll rarely have to use this feature in WHM.

Click the DNS Functions link.

Then click the Park a Domain link.

Parking a domain will automatically setup a DNS zone in the server.

In this tutorial, we want to point

(or park) a new domain to an existing domain

Select the existing domain here.

Then enter the new domain name in the Domain to Park window.

Then click Submit.

That’s it! We’ve just created a new DNS zone so that our new domain will point to our existing domain.

Make sure that you now update the nameservers of the parked domain to the same values as anotherdomain.com.

Both domain names must have the same nameserver settings and after 24-48 hours of propagation, the new domain will be successfully pointing to the original domain.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to park a domain in WHM. Remember that your customer can do this themselves with their domains from their cPanel.

Checking your server status and information in WHM

Checking your server status and information in WHM

Let’s take a look at the server status section of WHM and the two options: Server Information and Service Status.

Click the Service Status link.

Now click the Server Information link.

Here you will find a list of services running in your server and their status whether the services are up or whether they’re failing.

From the check marks, we see that the services here are all up and running fine.

If you see Red Stop box (failing) or Yellow box (about to fail), then more investigation would be needed to find out why and how to get the services back up and running.

One of the more important item in this list is the server load. It is good indication of how hard the server is being run. If the load gets much above 1.00 multiplied by the number of CPU cores in your server, the server may be overloaded and you should address this with your server administration.

Here at the bottom of the list of services, is a list of your hard drive partitions and how much storage space is being used by each. It is typically the /home directory where all the hosting account files are located, so your should ensure there’s lots of space available here.

On the server information page, you can see the complete details of your server.

In this case, the server has 2 processors each running with 16MB cache since its a VPS.

The server has 3.8 GB of RAM.

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

It has one hard drive named vda1, which is a 60GB drive.

You can see a breakdown of how the 3.8GB of RAM is being used here.

Finally, a detailed breakdown of the hard drive partitions is shown here at the bottom of the page.

This is the end of the tutorial. If you ever have problems with the service you get from your server, you should return to the server status section to see where the problems may be occuring.

How to setup your remote access key in WHM

How to setup your remote access key in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to set up a remote access key.

A remote access key is what’s needed if you want to have a script automatically connect to your WHM for the purpose of creating new accounts, deleting the accounts , etc..

Click the Remote Access Key option in the Clusters section.

The remote access key is a random series of alphanumeric characters. If you copy this key and paste it into a script that’s designed to connect to WHM, you’ll be able to have that script perform tasks that you would normally have to login to WHM to do.

You may need to reset your remote access key when setting up a new script. Let’s do that now.

Click the Generate New Key button.

That’s it! The remote access key has been reset, and is shows here at left.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to set up your remote access key and where to go to retrieve it for use in scripts that connect to WHM.

Suspending or unsuspending an account in WHM

Suspending or unsuspending an account in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to suspend a hosting account in WHM.

Click the Account Functions link.

Then click Manage Account Suspension.

This is the page where you can suspend a hosting account or unsuspend a previously suspended account.

Let’s go ahead and suspend an account.

Select the account you want to suspend…

Alternatively, we could have selected the account’s username.

Type a reason for the suspension (this is for your own reference).

Then click the suspend button.

The account has been suspended! Now when someone browses to this account’s website, they’ll see the suspended account message instead of the home page.

You can customize the suspended account page by clicking the Web Template Editor link; however, we won’t do this now.

Let’s go back to the manage account suspension page.

All accounts highlighted in red are suspended.

Let’s unsuspend the account… select the domain, then click unsuspend.

The account has now been unsuspended.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to suspend and unsuspend hosting accounts in WHM.

Terminate an account in WHM

Terminate an account in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to terminate (or delete) a hosting account from WHM.

Keep in mind that terminating an account in WHM also permanently deletes it off the server so be very sure you want to do this before proceeding.

Click the Account Functions link.

Then click Terminate Accounts.

Select the account you want to delete… then click Remove.

Remember, clicking the Remove button here is permanent. You will only be able to get the account afterwards, if there is a backup of it on the server, or if you’ve backed it up yourself somewhere else.

Click the… Yes, remove this account button to confirm.

That’s it! The account has been deleted from WHM and the server.

Now go to the account information menu in the left side panel.

Click the List Accounts link.

The account we just deleted is no longer listed here in the list of accounts.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to terminate (or delete) a hosting account in WHM.

How to upgrade/downgrade an account in WHM

How to upgrade/downgrade an account in WHM

Click the Account Functions link.

Then click Upgrade/Downgrade an Account.

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Upgrading or downgrading an account uses account packages. In other words, we’re simply going to assign a different packge to one of the accounts in WHM.

Select the account you wish to upgrade…

Now let’s learn how to upgrade (or downgrade) an account in WHM.

The account is currently set up as a silver package as shown here.

Click the Modify button.

Note the demoreseller appended to the begining of the package name. that is the username of this WHM reseller plan’s main account, and indicates that the silver package was create solely for the use of this reseller plan.

The packages listed here at the top (without demoreseller in front) are global packages created by the root user fo this server.

Let’s upgrade this account… select the new package…

… then click the Upgrade/Downgrade button.

That’s it! The account has been upgraded to the new package.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to upgrade or downgrade an account in WHM.

Using the Feature Manager in WHM

Using the Feature Manager in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn about the Feature Manager and how you can use it help create hosting accounts.

Click the Packages link.

Then click Feature Manager.

Feature manager let’s you assign a custom set of features to a specific package.

The first thing we must do is Add a feature list name.

This is a list of the features available in cPanel. We can either select all the features or can configure it as per our needs.

We will select all the features.

Now, Let’s go ahead and configure the feature list as per your needs.

When finished , scroll down and click Save button.

That’s it! we’ve just created a custom feature list.

You can always edit a feature list later.

In order to use the feature list we created, it must be linked to a specific package.

Click the Packages link.

Then click Edit a Package.

Select a package, then click Edit.

Click Feature list drop down and select the feature list we created.

Then click to Save your changes.

That’s it! Now, any time we create a hosting account and assign it the silver package, the account will only have those features available to it that we assigned when we created our custom features list.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to use the feature manager tool in conjuction with account packages to limit the availability of features to certain accounts.

How to create hosting packages in WHM

How to create hosting packages in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to create hosting packages.

Hosting packages help speed up the process of creating new cPanel hosting accounts by pre-defining several properties of the accounts you want to create (i.e. storage space, bandwidth, emails, parked domains etc..)

You can create as many hosting packages as you wish.

Click the Packages link.

Then click Add a Package.

This is where you setup a new pre-defined hosting account package.

Let’s go ahead a create a package called Silver.

Click here and make sure you enter a single word name. Don’t use any underscores or dashes.

Note that space and bandwidth must be entered in megabytes and not gigabytes. In this case we’ll enter 10,000 megabytes in disk quota which is equal to 10 gigabytes.

Let’s enter 100,000 megabytes for bandwidth which is equal to 100 gigabytes.

Now continue down the list, setting limits for each of the resources.

Generally you should sepcify an amount for space and bandwidth, but it’s also advisable to set an amount for parked and add-on domains.

You will also see maximum hourly email and other email options. It’s highly recommended that you set an amount; don’t use unlimited which can take your server down if a user starts spamming.

Here you can set some extra options. Generally you don’t need to change any of this. You can select dedicated IP if you want to give one with the package.

When finished, click the Add button.

That’s it! The new account package has been created, and can now be used to speed up the hosting account creation process.

Click the Packages link.

Then click Edit Packages.

Here you can see the new package that we just created.

This is the end of the tutorial. Remember that you can create as many hosting packages as you wish, and that they greatly speed up the process of creating new hosting accounts.

Using the Mail Troubleshooter in WHM

Using the Mail Troubleshooter in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Let’s learn how to use the mail troubleshooter feature in WHM.

Click the Email link.

Then click the mail troubleshooter link.

This is where you can test any email address by tracing it’s route from this server.

Let’s trace an email aaddress that would be on this server.

Enter an email address in the Email to trace box.

Then click Submit.

The trace didn’t go very far because the email address would be located on this same server.

Go back to the mail troubleshooter.

Let’s enter an email address that we know is not on this server.

This time the trace went to a server called smtpin.eastlink.ca and there were no errors in this trace. This email address appears to be working fine.

Click the mail troubleshooter link again.

This time enter a bogus email address that you know will fail.

This time we got an error saying it failed.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to check an email address by performing a trace using the email troubleshooter tool in WHM.

How to change an account password in WHM

How to change an account password in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to change an account password.

You may need to change an account password if it’s been forgotten, or if the customer wants it changed for security.

Remember that you can tell a customer that they can change their password themselves from their cPanel, so you really should only need to use the WHM password modification tool if it’s been forgotten and the customer cannot login to cPanel.

Click the Account Functions Link.

Then click the Password modification link.

Select the account that needs a password change.

Then enter a new password for the selected account…

… or click the Generate button to generate a new password.

To confirm the password, either re-type it or copy and paste it in the Confirm Password window.

Make sure to save the new password for your records.

When ready, click Change Password.

That’s it! This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to change the password of any account in WHM.

How to change your WHM password

How to change your WHM password

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn how to change our WHM admin password.

Click the Account Functions link.

Then click Password Modification.

Remember that the WHM password is the same as the cPanel password for your main account.

In this tutorial, our main account is demoreseller.com so let’s go ahead and change its password.

Enter and confirm a new password…

… then click Change Password.

That’s it! We’ve successfully changed our main password that’s used to login to WHM and cPanel for demoreseller.com.

Now let’s go try and do something else in WHM.

Click List Accounts.

Since we’ve just changed the WHM password, we are required to login again before being able to do anything else in WHM.

Login with your new password.

We are now logged back in to WHM.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to change your WHM password. Remember to keep your password in a safe place. Although you can change the password for any account in WHM, you cannot retrieve a lost password.

Using cPanel branding in WHM

Using cPanel branding in WHM

This demo assumes you’ve already logged in to WebHost Manager.

Now let’s learn about cPanel branding and how to display a custom logo in cPanel.

Click the cPanel link.

Then click Customization.

This is where you can insert your company name along with a Help URL and Documentation URL.

You can also brand cPanel with your own logo.

Click Browse button to locate and upload the logo and then click Save… that’s all there is to it!

Click Customize Style tab.

To view help documentation on customizing the style of your Cpanel, click this link.

To upload your own cPanel style, click the Upload a Style button.

From here, you can manage and set your default cPanel style.

This is the end of the tutorial. You now know how to use cPanel branding to replace the standard cPanel logo with your own.