A Beginner’s Guide to Using cPanel

When you buy hosting, the hosting company will give you cPanel login information.

So what is cPanel?

Simply, cPanel is software that helps you manage the hosting service you just purchased. Learning how to use cPanel is not difficult.

But if you are a beginner, it will take some time to get used to the cPanel working environment.

I myself was initially confused when using cPanel. Because inside it also quite a lot of different functions.

This article of mine makes it easier for you to learn how to use cPanel.

1. Basics of cPanel?

As I mentioned above, cPanel is where you perform many tasks related to your hosting account.

Here are a few common tasks:

And a lot of other things like checking the bandwidth and resources you used.

2. How you login to cPanel

You can find login information including URL, username, and password in the email that the hosting company sends you.

Many hosting companies have a link to cPanel when you log into your hosting account. This saves you from having to log in again.

For example, when I log into my A2Hosting account , I can see the link to cPanel on the right side:

Or you can directly access cPanel via the following link: https://yourdomain.com:2083 . Then log in using the username and password that the hosting company provides.

3. Overview of the interface of cPanel

As soon as you log in, you will see a screen like this:

This is the latest version of cPanel 2016. It uses a theme called “Paper Laterns”

If your interface looks different, go to the ” Preferences ” section. And click ” Change Style “. Choose your favorite interface.

Search Bar

At the top of the cPanel under the navigation bar is the search bar. You use the navigation bar to quickly find the function you want

Navigation bar

In the left corner of the screen is a navigation bar that includes: “Search Features”, Account Management, Notifications and Logout.

Search Features is like search bar, you can use it from any page in cPanel

Account Management is where you change your password, language, interface style, and contact information. You can also reset the page with just one click.

Notifications is where you will receive important updates from cPanel.

Sidebar

Along the left hand side of your screen you will see a sidebar with 2 buttons: Home and UserManagement. The right side is the general information and Statistics section.

Note : you can rearrange the sections on the main screen, as well as collapse and expand to your liking.

4. Manage users in cPanel

For some reason, you need to add more users to your hosting plan. At this point, you use the User Manager function. 

Clicking on ” User Manager ” in the Preferences or left sidebar will take you to the user management screen.

In the above screen, you will see all the accounts set up in cPanel. In each account, there are 3 buttons with the following meanings:

• Mail Envelop (mail envelope image): indicates the account whose mail account is set up in cPanel
• Delivery Truck (picture of truck): indicates an account that can access FTP.
• Disk Drive: Indicates the user can use web disk services.

You can easily edit any user’s information, change the password or delete it with the options listed below the account name. Except for the main account you are not allowed to change.

To add a new user, click on the ” Add User ” button in the upper right hand corner.

You will be taken to the following screen:

You enter the user’s full name, username, domain associated with that user and a contact email address.

Below you set the password for the user. Or you set the password yourself. Or let the user create a password.

The Services section has a number of items as follows:

• Email allows you to enable/disable email accounts for users and limit the amount of space the account has.
• FTP allows you to enable/disable accounts that can access FTP or not. If you enable it, you can choose which folders the user is allowed to access and limit the amount of FTP transfers.
• Web disk: relative to the user’s authority over the specified directory.

When you are done setting up, remember to click the ” Create ” button at the bottom to create a new User.

5. Domain Management in cPanel

The ” Domains ” section of cPanel allows you to add the domain name you purchased to your hosting account, manage subdomains, or redirect the domain you own to another site.

Add a new domain name

To add a new domain to cPanel, click on ” Addon Domains “.

” Domain Addon ” allows you to host multiple websites on one hosting package. How much depends on the hosting package you choose.

On the ” Addon Domains ” screen you will enter the new domain name, subdomain and document root

New domain name : is the exact domain name you registered, remove the www part

Subdomain : create a subdomain for the main domain – this is automatic and visitors will never know they were redirected from subdomain.originaldomainname.com to your new domain.

Document Root : is the location on the server where the files of the new domain are located.

When you enter your new domain name in the New Domain Name section, cPanel will automatically fill in the remaining 2 text boxes. You should keep the same setting.

Click ” Add Domain ” to finish adding the domain.

6. Manage email accounts

The Email section gives you many tools to manage your email accounts, from adding new accounts and dealing with spam issues to creating mailing lists and auto responders.

To add a new email account, click on ” Email Accounts “.

You enter the following information:

1. In the email field, enter the address you want for example yourname
2. Choose the word domain for the email account. If you haven’t added your domain to cPanel yet, you need to do it first as in the step above.
3. Create a password
4. Adjust the Mailbox Quota for the account.

Finally, click ” Create Account “.

As soon as you add your email account, you will notice the added email in the email list below

Here, you can change the password, quota for each account. Also know how to configure email client to connect to mail server.

Access webmail

You have created an email account. So how to access the mailbox?

You can install an email client such as Microsoft Outlook or Mozilla Thunderbird. Personally, I’m used to using Outlook. The configuration is also simple.

Or the fastest way is to access by webmail. Open a browser and type in the following address: http://yourdomain.com/webmail ,

7. File Management with FileManager

FileManager in cPanel allows direct management of files in your website instead of using FTP.

Click the FileManager button to go to the FileManager screen:

The screen interface of FileManager looks like this:

Above is the toolbar. To the left is the directory tree, and to the right is the contents of the folder you selected on the left.

Create a new folder

To create your folder, locate the folder and click ” +Folder ” on the toolbar. A dialog box pops up. You enter the folder name and the location to create the folder

Upload a file

To upload a file, click on the folder you want to upload. For example in the image below, I choose “cache”

Then, click on ” Upload ” on the toolbar as shown below:

On the next screen, I just need to drag and drop the file I want to upload or simply click the ” Select File ” button and select the file to upload.

8. One-click WordPress installation

cPanel allows easy installation of WordPress and many other applications using Softaculous Installer.

In the article on how to install WordPress   , I mentioned how to use Softaculous. So this part I do not guide in detail.

9. How to create a database on the host using cPanel

To create a database on the host, you need to access the Databases section. And click on ” MySQL Databases “.

The database management interface appears.

Creating a database is quite simple. You just need to follow these steps:

1. Enter the database name and click ” Create database ” button.
2. Scroll down to create a user for the database
3. Grant permissions for users to access the database in the Add User to Database section.

Epilogue

cPanel is software that is not difficult to use. In fact, you don’t need to know all the features of cPanel.

You just need to know how to perform a few common tasks as follows

• Add domain to cPanel
• How to create an email account
• How to use FileManager to manage files
• How to manage the database

I hope you found this article useful.

If you have any problems using cPanel, please leave a comment below.