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Surpasshostings Guide to CPANEL 6.4

Welcome to CPANEL 6:
When you log into your CPANEL using:
http://mydomain.com:2082/
or
http://IPaddress:2082/
(if your domain name hasn’t propagated yet)
You will be asked for your username and password (which was provided to you in your welcoming E-mail – NEVER throw this away!)
Let me cut to the chase: CPANEL is my favorite of the two web administration control panels that I have used. Hands down.
That being said, when you log into your account’s CPANEL you will note that there is no help function built-in to CPANEL 6. In fact, if you go to:
http://www.cpanel.net/
You can view documentation for CPANEL V4 only (and it isn’t even final documentation). Even the website itself only mentions CPANEL 5. Yet they charge $1400 for a lifetime license with support. Let’s hope the support is more up-to-date than their website. This can make it a bit tough for those of you who are new to CPANEL.
Thankfully, CPANEL’s interface is cleanly designed and informative without being distracting. At the top of the screen you will find information about your web hosting account. On the right, you are welcomed to your domain and under that there is the name of the server you were last recorded as logging on from (this may help you figure out if you account has been compromised, if so, change the password immediately and check the rest of your site for damage). Under that is your domain’s contact address. You can change this as needed by clicking on the words “up to date” below where the e-mail address is listed. To the left is additional account information: your domain name, followed by the name of the hosting package you signed up for and then the server that your account is located on. Here’s a screenshot of what the main screen looks like:


Figure 1 - The Main CPANEL Screen
To the left side of your screen is a column with a lot of information about the features of your account and the server your account is located on. From top to bottom:
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Subdomains: Subdomains are “subdomain.yourdomainname.com” This will list the number of subdomains you currently have and the maximum your account is allowed.

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Parked Domains: Parked domains are other top-level domains you own “your2nddomainname.com” that are currently “parked” at your account. Parked domains point to your main domain name’s content. For example, if you park “MySecondDomain.com” at your account where “MyDomain.com” is your “main” domain name, then any time you go to “www.myseconddomain.com” it will take you to “www.mydomain.com.” Generally, most bargain web hosts don’t offer this. (Bidforhost.com does with their Gold account). This is a nice feature if you own a domain name but don’t want to have a separate web site for it.

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Add-on Domains: Similar to parked domains, except that an add-on domain creates a special set of folders in your main web account so that your add-on domain gets treated like it was separate from your main domain. “www.myseconddomain.com” would not be the same as “www.mydomain.com.” This is great if you own more than one domain name and you want to have totally separate content for each site. Add-on domains are not really separate; they still count towards your main account’s disk space and bandwidth limitations. Again, most bargain web hosts don’t offer this to their customers (Bidforhost.com does for their Gold plan).

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Databases: This shows the current and maximum number of MySQL (or other) databases in your account. Many php and cgi scripts require the use of at least one MySQL database to work properly.

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Disk Usage: How much disk space on the server that your account is using for ALL features and options. Keep an eye on this to make sure you don’t go over your maximum allowed disk space.

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MySQL Disk Usage: This shows how much disk space your MySQL databases are currently using. This number is included in the total disc usage number above.

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Space Available: How much of your allowed disk space you currently have left for your hosting package.

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Bandwidth Usage: Watch this number to make sure you don’t get too close to your account bandwidth limits in any given month.

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E-mail Accounts: How many real, POP3 E-mail accounts you have created vs. how many you are allowed to have. Keep in mind that the first e-mail address in your account will be “youraccountnameyourdomainname.com” and this doesn’t typically “count” against your maximum # of e-mail accounts allowed. Keep in mind that every e-mail account you create uses disk space on your server and contributes to the amount of disk space you are using for your account.

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Forwarders: Forwarders are what I think of as “e-mail aliases” They are e-mail addresses you create “aliasnameyourdomainname.com” that aren’t “full-fledged”


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POP3 e-mail accounts. Forwarders do just that, forward any mail you send to that address to another e-mail address. It is important to note that you can forward mail to ANY e-mail address, even if you don’t own the domain. This item will show you how many you currently have set up vs. how many you are allowed to have.
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Auto-Responders: These are special rules you set up that basically say whenever someone sends an e-mail to X e-mail address (for your domain only), then respond with this bit of canned text. This feature can be used to set up “on vacation” or “out-of-the-office” auto responses. You can also use auto responders to send directions or other common information to someone via e-mail whenever they send mail to a particular address.

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Mailing Lists: If you want to send out regular updates, newsletters or special offers to a large group of people via e-mail, then a Mailing List is what you want. I’ll discuss the features later. This item lists the current number of active mailing lists vs. the total number you are allowed to have.

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E-mail Filters: E-mail filters help to block SPAM or unwanted messages from getting delivered to any mailbox. You set up the rules and any e-mail that matches those rules will not get delivered to any e-mail account at your domain. This shows you how many you currently have set up vs. the number you are permitted.

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FTP Accounts: The number of File Transfer Protocol accounts you currently have set up vs. the maximum you can have. More on this feature later.

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Operating System: This should be obvious.


This is followed by information about the server your account is on:


Figure 2 - Server Status
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Server Status: This will tell you if all the server’s various services are up and running OK. Green is good, red means that service is either very busy or down right now.

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Kernel Version: This is the version of the core of the operating system. This way you can monitor the server to make sure it has all the latest security patches, etc.

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Last Reboot: This is the last time the server had to reboot. Obviously, your web site isn’t on-line when the server is off-line.

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Apache Version: This is the version of the web serving software that the server is running.

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Perl Version: This is the version of Perl language that is currently installed on the server.

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Sendmail Path: This is where mail that is ready to be sent is saved on the server.




Figure 3 - Installed Perl Modules - Note that this is not a full screen shot.
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Perl Modules: Perl’s functionality can be enhanced by various modules. If you click here you can see exactly what modules are currently installed.

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PHP Version: This is the version of the PHP language that is currently installed on the server.

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MySQL Version: The version of the opensource database that is currently installed.

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CPANEL Version: This is the version of CPANEL that the server is running.

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CPANEL Build: Each version can have several builds of a single version. Every time the developers modify the code a new build is created of the program. Higher numbers are generally better.

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CPANEL Theme: This is how the CPANEL interface will look. Your web host can pick from several and this will change not only the look, but in some cases the featureset of CPANEL.


Next to that column of information is row-upon-row of icons. These icons allow you to access or change any features that your web host provides to you. Keep in mind that depending on your web host, you may have more or less options available than this.


Figure 4 - Mail Manager Main Menu
• Mail Manager: This is where you go when you want to edit mail-related functions. It contains the following sub-options:


Figure 5 - Webmail
o Webmail: You can go here to access one of two different webmail programs, Neomail or Horde. Discussing all the features of both mail programs is a bit beyond the scope of this part of the New Webmaster’s series, but I may discuss this in more depth in a future article. I find that I prefer Horde. It offers more features (including a calendar, memo area, to-do list, etc.). Neomail is OK, but it offers fewer features and isn’t as well laid out in my opinion. You always have a choice to use either one. Going to:
http://www.yourdomain.com/webmail/
will take you to the screen where you can select one or the other of the webmail programs. I personally set up a subdomain at webmail.mypersonaldomainname.com that takes me directly to horde to log in.
To check your mail using the account you set up initially with your web host, you just enter your username and account password. For all other e-mail accounts that you set up for your domain, you should enter the full e-mail address (including the “” ) and the e-mail password.


Figure 6 - Add/Remove E-mail Account
o Add/Remove E-mail: This is where you go if you want to set up a real POP3 e-mail account, replete with storage space for mail in your account (any mail storage will affect the amount of disk space your account uses). You will see that there is an account already set up for you. This is a mail account for you as the administrator. You can’t change, delete or otherwise modify this mail account. If you want to change your mail password you need to use the “change password” option from the main screen of your CPANEL. This will affect your password for all services that you log into as administrator including CPANEL, mail and your FTP account.
To create another e-mail account, just click the “Add Account” button at the bottom of the screen. This will take you to the new e-mail account setup screen. Here you set the username for the e-mail address “usernameyourdomainname.com”, the password and choose the quota (more commonly referred to as mailbox size) for the account. If you leave the quota blank, then the mailbox can grow until your web hosting account runs out of disk space. If you do set a mailbox size, then that e-mail account will stop accepting mail until the mailbox is cleaned out to make room for more messages.
Once you create the account, it is immediately active. You can view the amount of disk space any e-mail account is using, change the password, change the quota, delete the account or read the mail in that account via webmail.
Of course, if you go through the trouble of setting up a real e-mail account for someone, then you will probably want to send/receive mail from that account in your favorite e-mail program (Outlook (Express), Eudora, etc.). The exact settings may change slightly from web host to web host, so make sure you check with your hosting provider. For any given domain name:
Account/Username: usernamemydomainname.com OR username+mydomainname.com Password: the password you set up for that account in your CPANEL. Mail Server: mail.mydomainname.com SMTP Server: mail.mydomainname.com SMTP Authentication: YES (this option makes sure to send your username and password when sending mail) Return Address: usernamemydomainname.com


Figure 7 - Default E-mail Addresses
o Default Address: This allows you to set what action will happen when mail is sent to a user at your domain for whom you have NOT set up an e-mail account or e-mail forwarding. By default, any mail sent to an address that doesn’t exist goes to your administrator e-mail account. You can set it to go to any e-mail address you prefer (even an external address). Alternately, you can set mail to non-assigned addresses to just be instantly discarded with no warning (set the action to “:blackhole:”) or have the e-mail bounced back to the sender with a message noting that the e-mail was undeliverable (set the action to “:fail:”).


Figure 8 - Create AutoResponder
o Auto-Responders: This feature automatically sends an e-mail to anyone who sends mail to a particular e-mail address. This can be used for several different things. Perhaps the most common use is setting up an “on vacation” or “out of the office” message that automatically gets sent back to anyone who sends you mail. Be careful with this because if you subscribe to a mailing list, the mailing list will receive notification that you are away! Another use can be to provide an e-mailable FAQ covering commonly asked questions about a service you are running, or about your company. So for example, you can create an autoresponder that automatically sends e-mail to a person who sends mail to “techsupportmydomainname.com” giving them answers to common problems and asking them to send mail to a different e-mail address if they still need help. If you specify a “From” address, then that autoresponse message will ONLY be sent to mail with that particular “From” address rather than to all messages received at that account.


Figure 9 - E-mail Block Filters
o Block E-mail: Getting SPAM and want to block someone from sending you mail? Or perhaps an unscrupulous company is using the WHOIS records for your domain to send you SPAM. What can you do? Set up a filter to block e-mail based on your criteria. You can block based on the TO: header, or the FROM: header, the subject line, a word or words in the body of the e-mail, or any other header line. Just select the criteria you want to block (one criterion per filter) and then click Activate. CPANEL will even offer you the ability to test your new filters by running a test e-mail you create through your newly created filters to see what happens.

o Forwarders: As I mentioned, I personally think of forwarders as “e-mail aliases.” Forwarders are not full e-mail accounts. E-mail sent to a forwarding e-mail gets redirected to another e-mail address anywhere on the Internet that you can set. Forwarders are VERY useful, particularly if you want to have a number of different e-mail addresses without the hassle of having to check several different accounts. Just create the forwarding e-mail address and point it to your “real” e-mail account of choice. In fact, you can even have e-mail sent to a forwarding address that gets redirected to MANY other recipients. Just set up the same forwarding e-mail address with multiple recipients (you’ll have to do each entry separately). You can use this feature to create simple group e-mail addresses. For example, I have set a forwarding e-mail address that automatically forwards any mail sent to that address to my entire family. This is great for personal announcements or a small mailing list without the hassle of setting up a full-fledged mailing list. You can send mail so that it looks like it came from an e-mail forwarding account by setting up a new “personality” or account in your e-mail program of choice and marking the name and return e-mail address as your e-mail forwarding address and then using the standard mail/SMTP (send mail) addresses for your preferred “real” e-mail account.





Figure 11 - Mailman Mailing List Administration
o Mailing Lists: Sometimes the basic one-to-many simplicity of forwarding e-mails isn’t full-featured enough, especially since it requires a lot of manual entry of e-mail addresses. However, if you are going to send a newsletter or other regular e-mail to many people, you’ll probably want to set up a mailing list. You create one by clicking the Add List button and then filling in the name of the list, the domain name it should come from and the mailing list administrative password. Then click Create. You will be shown that several files and entries were created to handle this new mailing list. Click Go Back and then click on the edit list button to finish setting up the mailing list. Once you enter your mailing list administrative password, you have access to all the features of the mailmail mailing list software. Mailman is very full-featued, but it has so many features that it is beyond the scope of the current article. Perhaps I will cover it in a future installment. Mailman does have built-in help so it should be enough to answer most of your questions.

o Spam Assassin: The Block E-mail option is good if you want to block all e-mail sent to a particular address or if you want to block mail sent from a particular address, but it would be a pain to set up comprehensive SPAM filters using that option. Spam Assassin fills in the gaps in your anti-spam corpus. However, all is not well in paradise. In CPANEL, Spam Assassin is either ON or OFF. There are no options to set, no exceptions. It is all or nothing. The problem with Spam Assassin is it will block legitimate E-mail as possible spam and there is no way to alter this behavior or recover any mail that has been assassinated. Spam Assassin also applies to ALL e-mail addresses (and forwarding addresses) for your domain, you can’t pick the accounts individually. Therefore, unless you have a HUGE problem with spam, I recommend that you leave this feature turned OFF.

o Edit Mail Exchanger (MX Records): Don’t touch this unless you know what you are doing. This allows you to change the server that handles all incoming mail for this domain.




Whew. One CPANEL icon down, 34 more to go. Thankfully, many of them are not as complex.
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Read Webmail: This takes you to Neomail or Horde as I described earlier.

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Change Password: This changes your administrator password, which applies to trying to log in to your CPANEL, mail account, FTP and SSH accounts. Keep in mind that if you change your password, you will need to follow CPANEL’s rules for a “safe” password: 7+ characters, NO words found in a dictionary, at least one number, no non-alphanumeric characters. Good luck! •

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Parked Domains: As I mentioned earlier, parked domains are top-level domains that you want to point to the same services as you have available at your main domain. For example, perhaps you have mydomain.com and mydomain.net and you want someone who goes to either one to see the same pages or services. For every top-level domain that you park, 3 slots are typically taken up, one for the top level domain, one for the subdomain mail.myseconddomain.com and another for ftp.mysecondomain.com. Any domain you want to park has to be pointed by your registrar to the same nameservers that your main domain uses, otherwise the parking cannot take place.

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Add-on Domains: Add-on domains are top-level domains that you point to a subdirectory in your current web hosting account. To people going to that domain, it looks as if it is a totally different web site. Of course, this add-on domain shares the disk space and bandwidth with your main domain, but if you have a family member who wants to have their own website without all the hassle, then an add-on domain may do the trick. As with a parked domain, you need to make sure that the add-on domain points to your web host’s nameservers before you can add it to your account. Just add the domain name, create a main username (that will be created as a folder inside your web hosting disk space) and a password for that user. The user will be able to FTP to their web space by going to ftp.theirdomainname.com. They won’t be able to access your space or log in to CPANEL at their domain.

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FTP Manager: This is where you go when you want to set up or control FTP access and accounts. There are several options:

o FTP Account Maintenance: This is the place to go if you want to set up more FTP accounts or delete them. Once you create a FTP account/user, you can’t edit it, only delete it, so type carefully. There will probably already be two or more FTP accounts listed here as “main account” you can’t delete them or do anything to them. They were created by your system administrator and need to remain as they are. Click “Add Account” to add an FTP account. Choose a name for the new user and put it in the login area. The directory path will automatically update to match your user’s name. If you want to create a subaccount with its own web space, this is exactly what you want. The FTP user you create will ONLY have access to their own folder inside your public_html folder and nothing else. If you change the directory to “/” then the FTP user will have complete access to your public_html folder, and thus have the ability to work on your web site just as you do (but they won’t have access to your home directory). The directions printed at the bottom of the screen make this all pretty clear. Back at the main FTP Account Manager screen you will also note that you have quick access here to a link for each add-on and sub-domain’s raw web logs. Click a link and your browser will download the logs to your computer.

o Annonymous FTP Controls: Here you can set two options. In the version of CPANEL that I am using (6.4.0) there is a typo (actually, it looks like a code error) in BOTH options. The first is a checkbox to allow you to allow anonymous (public) FTP access to your ftp.yourdomainname.com (only the public_ftp directory). Note that the version I am using says ftp.testdomain.com/tr> which is a typo. The next checkbox option is to allow anonymous (public) FTP UPLOAD access to your ftp.yourdomainname.com/public_ftp/incoming/ directory (again, there is a typo and they add “tr>” at the end of the URL). You should only turn these features on if you really do want people to have such access, because it is inherently a potential security risk.

o Annonymous FTP Message: If you want people logging in via anonymous FTP to see a custom message from you when they log into your server, then write it here. This will only get displayed if the FTP client the person is using reports messages from the server. Most browsers will see the message, but many people turn off viewing such messages if they are using a dedicated FTP program.

o FTP Session Control: Here you can see anyone who is currently logged into your FTP site and choose to kick them off the server. Note, you can’t kick the administrator’s account, so be sure you keep the password safe (for a whole host of obvious reasons).



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File Manager: CPANEL gives you access to a half-way decent file manager to upload, download, trash or modify files on your site. Clicking on this icon will open a new window that will basically take over your screen. On the left is your site and all files and folders. Clicking on the name of a file or folder will allow you to work with or rename





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that item. Clicking the small icon next to a folder will open that folder and show you the contents, where you can upload, download or work with files there. On the right side of the screen is a “sidebar” where you can perform basic actions on files or folders you select or move them to the trash. If you make a mistake and put something in the trash that you want to get back, just click the name of the folder or file under the trashcan icon of the item you want to recover. Clicking the trash icon itself will delete any folders you have permission to delete that are currently listed as being in the site trash. This action is not undoable. Close this window when you are done and you will be back at your CPANEL.

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Backup: This area really should be called Backup and Restore (and in some skins it is), because you do both things here. You can download a complete backup of all the files on your website instantly right from your browser (compressed so that it takes up less space and bandwidth). You can also backup all of your MySQL databases and subdomain files. In addition, you can take these downloaded backups and re-upload them directly from your CPANEL to restore everything back to the way it was when the backup was made. To download a backup of everything in your home directory (this doesn’t include MySQL databases) just click the link on the top-left side of this page “Download today’s home backup” and you download should start up within seconds. Be sure to keep this file in a safe place because it could save your butt if anything goes wrong on your server. To upload this backup back to your site and restore everything the way it was when the backup was made, just use the “Restore a Home Backup” field (click BROWSE, select the compressed file from your hard drive and then click the UPLOAD button). Unfortunately the user interface for this process isn’t very good. After the file uploads to your server (which can take a while depending on the size of the backup file) the browser window will clear and start displaying as plain text what files it is restoring. This part can take an even longer amount of time. Plus, there is no indication that the process is finished (other than your browser’s built in features to let you know it is done loading a page, which may mean that the browser display DONE in the status bar at the bottom of the current window if you are lucky). The only other way to tell if the process is done is

to scroll down to the bottom of the browser window and see if more text is being added or not. If it has stopped and remains that way for a while, the process is probably done. If so, click BACK in your browser and then click the HOME button at the top of the Backup CPANEL screen. If all went well, you should have everything restored now. To download a MySQL database, click a link under the “Backup MySQL Database” on the backup screen. Each link is a different database, and you must download each one separately. Restoring the database is similar to the process for restoring your Home directory. You can also choose to back up any subdomains or add-on domains that you might have created and restore them individually. Again the process is similar to those described above.

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Password Protection: Do you have content in your website that you would like to restrict access to? CPANEL makes the process fairly painless. The first thing you have to do is to create a folder inside your public_html folder that will contain your protected content. You can name it whatever you like. You can use your FTP client to create this folder or you can use CPANEL’s handy File Manager described earlier. Now come back to the Password Protection area. You will see a list of EVERY folder inside your public_html folder and also a link for the “current folder” (which is your public_html folder). If you click the small icon of a folder next to the folder’s name, you will be able to see any folders nested inside that one. This way you can chose a nested folder for protection if you wish. If you click on the actual name of the folder you will be taken to the security and account creation screen. There are actually two separate things to do on this screen. The top half of this screen turns security on and off for this folder. If you want security to be ON, then click the check box next to the “Folder requires a password to access via http://” item. Below that is where you can enter a short name or phrase that will appear in the dialog box that pops up asking you for your username and password.



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This item is purely optional, but it is a nice touch so that your users know what area they are trying to log into, in case there is more than one secured area. If you are done you can click SAVE and security will be set for that folder/directory. But wait! Before you click that save button, what about the bottom half of this screen? You need to create at least one user or no one will be able to access the files in this folder unless they log in as the administrator via FTP. To create a username and password, just type them into the appropriate boxes and then click the button next to the Username field “Add New User.” This user will now appear in the Active Users list, which means they now have access to this directory. Create as many users as you need. If you need to change the password of a user that has already been created then just type the user’s exact username and then type in a new password and then click the button next to the Password field “Change Password.” You will then be notified that the password for that user has been changed. When you are all done, then you can click SAVE to commit all the changes you made. If the directory has been successfully secured, you will see a small lock icon next to the folder icon for that directory.

• Custom Error Pages: Let’s face it, errors happen. It could be that a typo or missing page sends your users to a page that doesn’t exist, or perhaps your server is having “issues.” In any case, you have the option of creating custom pages that your server will display when that error happens. Each custom page you can edit is referred to by the error number. What are these error numbers and what do they mean? Take a look here:
http://www.htmlcenter.com/tutorials/tutori...cfm/66/General/
The most common error is type 404, which just means that the user has tried to access a page that doesn’t exist on the server. If you’ve been using the Internet for more than a few days, you’ve probably seen this error before.
With CPANEL, you can create custom pages to perhaps give them a more friendly error message or to make that message match the style of your website. Just click on the number of the error that you want to create a custom error page for from the list in CPANEL, then paste in standard HTML code into the text entry area and click SAVE. You don’t have to worry about editing the saved file name. If you want to add special tags to your error message to display the user’s web browser, the page they were trying to access, etc. you can just click the appropriate tag button at the top of the text entry area. Clicking one of these buttons will insert a special line of code AT THE END of your current document. You can cut and paste this wherever you would like that tag to appear in your error page.
Of course, error editing in CPANEL is provided as a quick-and-dirty way of getting the custom page you need created with a minimum of fuss. It doesn’t display or render HTML code, and if you are like me, you may not be good at analyzing or editing raw HTML code. In this case, feel free to create your own custom error page in your favorite HTML editor (I use Adobe GoLive). Just save the custom error page with the number of the error and append “.shtml” (for example “404.shtml”) then save that file loose in your public_html folder on your server. One thing to keep in mind is that by default the Windows version of Internet Explorer displays its OWN custom error pages, unless the custom page on your server is larger than 10 K in size, so your users may never see your finely crafted masterwork.

• Subdomain Maintenance: Subdomains are addresses like: “subdomain.mydomain.com.” Your primary domain is “mydomain.com” (or “www.mydomain.com”). The subdomain can either act as if it were an entirely different site, not part of your primary domain or it can serve as a “shortcut” to redirect you to another place either in your site or to anywhere on the Internet. In any case, the first thing you need to do is the same: You need to create the subdomain. To do this, just type the subdomain you want into the field next to your domain name, then select the domain name you want the subdomain to be a part of and click ADD. It is interesting to note that you can select subdomains that you have already created from this list. Therefore it is possible that if I created a subdomain “is” at “mydomain.com” (assuming I owned that domain), I could subsequently create a subdomain “this” at “is.mydomain.com” ending up with “http://this.is.mydomain.com”
All subdomains default to loading the index page in a similarly named folder. For example, if you create the following subdomain:
gallery.mydomain.com
it will attempt to load pages found inside the directory "gallery" found inside your "public_html" folder. If this is what you want, just make sure you've created the "gallery" directory via FTP or the File Manager in CPANEL and upload at least a single "index.html" page into that folder. Don't try to add a redirect to the same directory that the subdomain points to by default or you will get a "maximum redirection" error when you try to visit the subdomain since it now points to the same directory infinitely.
Keep in mind that adding a subdomain may take several hours before everyone on the Internet can access it since the DNS records need to get updated. In practice, however, most people should be able to access it almost immediately, but if not, don’t panic.
If you want the subdomain to redirect, all you have to do is to select it from the Setup Redirection drop down list in the Subdomain Maintenance area and then click the button next to the list. This will take you to another screen where you can type in the exact address (including the http:// or ftp://) that you want the subdomain to point to and click SAVE. If you later want to remove this subdomain redirection, select the subdomain out of the drop-down list next to the Remove Redirection button and then click that button. To delete the subdomain altogether, just select it from the delete drop-down list and click the DELETE button.
What if you want to have the subdomain to have its own web directory (perhaps you have a family member or user that wants their own webspace)? You need to create the subdomain then go to the FTP Manager in your CPANEL and create a new FTP account that has exactly the same name as the subdomain you created (but don’t include the primary domain name). For example, if you create a subdomain “webmasters.mydomain.com” then the FTP account you create should be called “webmasters”. This will create a folder in your public_html folder called “webmasters” If you put an “index.html” file in this folder, then that page will automatically get displayed when someone types in “http://webmasters.mydomain.com/”. In addition, that person’s website could also be accessed by going to “http://mydomain.com/~webmasters/”.

Figure 26 - MySQL
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• MySQL Database: This is the place to go if you want to create, edit or delete a MySQL database, you can also access phpMyAdmin that will allow you to view, edit, create or add data to any database you create. Creating databases and users is easy. Type the name of the database into the “Db:” field then click the ADD DB button. A database will be created and its name will be displayed at the top of the page. Note that depending on your web host, the ACTUAL name of the database may be slightly different than the one you choose. Most likely, the database will be created with your username and an underscore character prior to the name you chose when you created the database. Example: “jeff_mydatabase”
Creating a database just creates a blank shell. Before you can use the database, you need to put at least one user into the database. To do this, you need to type a username and password into the appropriate fields and then click ADD USER. This will create a user with the password you define. Don’t forget this password.
You aren’t done yet. You now have to put this user into the database you created. Just above the Add Db field is a set of drop-down lists. The first of these allows you select a user that you have already created and the second allows you to select the database that you want to put that user into. Click ADD USER TO DB and you are done. You can add a single user to multiple databases if you want to.
Once you add a user to the database you created, you will notice that the listing for that database gets more detailed. It will show you the database name (which you can delete by pressing the DELETE button next to the name) and then it will show you every user in that database, along with sample code that shows you how to connect to the database in a PHP or Perl script. Next to the username is a button marked DELETE, but this is deceiving because deleting a user from a database only removes the user from that database (and any records the user had in that database), it doesn’t affect the actual user you created, which can still be in several other databases.
At the very bottom of this screen is a link to phpMyAdmin that will open a new window with the phpMyAdmin interface. phpMyAdmin allows you to actually add, change or remove data from the databases you’ve created. phpMyAdmin is somewhat complex, and there is a link to the on-line documentation directly from the first page of the phpMyAdmin interface. I am not going to go into a lot of detail here about this very advanced tool.
You can select a database you’ve already created from the sidebar on the left side of the phpMyAdmin screen. Once you select a database, all of the main database categories will be listed. Clicking on a category shows you all of the data entries (rows) in that category on the main part of the screen. You can then add, delete, edit or view any data in any row that you want.
You can also choose to export, delete (drop) or clear a database by clicking on the
appropriate tab along the top of the screen.

Close this window to go back to your CPANEL.
It is always advisable to make sure you have a current backup of any database you edit in case anything goes wrong.
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SSH/Telnet: Your web host may not offer this service, so please check with them if you think you are going to want this. Clicking on this entry in your CPANEL will open a java-based terminal program that you can use to connect to any telnet or SSH server, including your own website if your web host allows it. If you want or need this, you probably know what it is already, and this review would get very long indeed trying to explain Telnet or SSH protocols.

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Manage Redirects: Here you can specify a redirect in the following form:



http://yourdomain.com/redirectname
that will instantly take you to any web address you specify. The idea is that such a redirect is likely to be easier to remember and generally shorter than the normal URL for the address you want to go to. If you have unlimited subdomains, you may prefer to use the redirect features of the subdomain creation area, since that URL is likely to be even shorter and easier to remember than the kind of redirects you create in this area. You can make the redirect temporary or permanent. If you think you will want to change or delete the redirect, it is a better idea to choose to create a temporary redirect, which is the default. You can delete temporary redirects from this screen as well, just by clicking the delete button next to the redirect you wish to cancel.

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Frontpage Extensions: If you use Microsoft Frontpage (Why?! ) then you will want to go here to install the Frontpage extensions into your account. If you are NOT going to use Frontpage then it is recommended that you not install the extensions. If you DO install the Frontpage extensions and you have directories protected with the Password Protection feature of CPANEL, you will LOOSE all of the protection and user accounts you set up. You will need to go back to the Password Protection area and redefine your secure areas and users. Therefore it is a good idea to install the Frontpage extensions before you do any other work on your website if you think that you are going to use Frontpage. If you come to your senses and realize you don’t want to use Frontpage with your site, then you can delete the extensions from this area as well and then run out and buy Adobe GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver. (My apologies to those of you who love using Frontpage, but I think any HTML creation program that requires server-side extensions to work properly should be avoided like the plague.)

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Raw Access Logs: If you have an external program that takes the raw data from your hit logs and analyzes it, then click on this icon from your CPANEL to instantly start downloading a compressed copy of the access logs. If you would rather view the logs in your web browser, then you will want to choose the next item.

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Web/FTP/Subdomain Stats: These are actually two different icons in CPANEL, but they offer the same kinds of information. The first, Web/FTP Stats offers statistics on your main domain, while Subdomain Stats offers the same kind of info on your subdomains (if you have any). All the data you will find in these two sections are culled from the raw access logs and then analyzed to help you look for patterns and meaningful information. You have the following options:

o Analog: Choose a month you are interested and Analog will quickly generate a report with graphics showing you a lot of information about the activity on your website for that month. Analog is quick, but doesn’t offer quite the amount of information as the next option.

o Webalizer: Clicking on this will bring up a quick graph of activity at your site for up to 12 months in a single chart. If you want more detail about a particular month, click the name of the month in the data table below the 12-month chart. This will cause Webalizer to generate a lengthy report about the activity and visits to your site including lots of charts and graphics.

o Subdomain Stats: This takes you to the subdomain analysis pages for Analog and Webalizer (sometimes CPANEL is both repetitive and redundant in its efforts to be helpful. )

o Latest Visitors: Shows you information about the last 5 or so of the most recent visitors to your website and what they tried to access.

o Bandwidth: This will show you how much bandwidth your domain(s) have been using in terms of web, FTP and E-mail traffic.

o Error Log: This will show the last 300 errors that someone encountered while accessing your website, so you can track down the problems and fix them.





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Error Log: Another of CPANEL’s repetitive redundancies. This is exactly the same as the Error Log list in the Stats above.

•
Search Engine Submit: This will submit basic information about your website to the major search engines all from one simple screen. Just click the box next to each search engine you want to submit to and then answer the basic questions about your site and click SUBMIT. You’re now on your way to more traffic.

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Chat Rooms: This area offers 3 different types of chat room software that you can use on your site with only a few clicks. Generally, you should only pick one type. CGI Chat is a simple chatroom that doesn’t require PHP to function. Click it, answer a couple of questions and then you will be provided with the information on how to connect to your new chat room. phpMyChatRoom is more customizable and full-

featured, but if your web host doesn’t allow PHP scripts, then you can’t use this chat room. Again, a few clicks and a couple of answers and then it will be installed and you will be given the information about how to connect. JavaChat: This is a Java 1based chat room that you can embed into any page on your web site and it doesn’t require CGI or PHP or any configuration. Just copy the link provided into your web page where you want the chat room to appear and assuming your user has Java turned on, they will see the chat room. My personal preference is phpMyChatRoom because it is multilingual and has some really nice features.

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Forum/BBS: You can install phpBB 2.0.4 quickly and easily from here. What is phpBB? It is an open-source bulletin board (forum) written in PHP. You’ve almost certainly seen a phpBB derived forum if you’ve surfed the Internet for a while. phpBB allows you to create discussion forums quickly and easily. If you want to see what phpBB looks like, try here:





http://www.phpbbhelp.com/
Installation and customization of phpBB can be as easy or as hard as you feel comfortable making it. To handle the initial installation (especially if you don’t have any experience with installing PHP scripts) I suggest you take advantage of CPANEL’s autoinstaller. If you have access to Fantastico (which is an add-on to CPANEL that I will discuss more a bit later), you can choose to install phpBB or Inversion Board (another BBS/Forum program). To install phpBB from CPANEL, all you have to do is to tell CPANEL what directory you want to install phpBB in. As noted on the phpBB installation screen, you should only install phpBB into a “top level” directory. This means that your forums will be installed inside the public_html folder in a folder (directory) that you specify. Don’t try to install it inside another folder. You will then be able to access your new BBS at: http://www.yourdomain.com/yourforumdirectoryname/ . CPANEL will automatically create a MySQL database called “username_xmb1” and a new user “username_xmb1” with the same password that you use to log into CPANEL. In addition, a single administrator account will be created in phpBB. That user will have exactly the same username and password as you use to log in to CPANEL, therefore, be sure to change it ASAP for security reasons. Once the BBS is installed, go to your new BBS and log in with your administrator account and then click the link to your control panel at the bottom of the forum index screen. From here you can edit all the options of your board and set it up the way you want. I will probably discuss customization of phpBB in a future series on working with PHP programs. If you want help, go to:
http://www.phpbb.com/

•
CGI Center: Your account comes with several CGI scripts installed by default. You may not need to use all/any of them, but you should explore this area to see what is available to you to see if any of it will be useful.

o CGIWrapper: This will allow you to run CGI scripts with your username. If you have no idea what this means or why you’d need it, then you don’t need it and shouldn’t worry about it. Selecting this item will create a new directory in your account inside your public_html folder: scgibin. Place CGI scripts in here if you need to run them as a user, if not just put your cgi scripts into your normal CGI folder.

o Random HTML: This CGI script inserts random HTML code from a list into a web page that is Server Side Includes (SSI) enabled. Again, if you don’t know what this means or why you’d need to use it then don’t worry about it.

o Simple Guestbook: If you don’t want a lot of whiz-bang features or you can’t run PHP scripts or don’t have any MySQL databases available then this is the guestbook for you. This allows visitors to sign comments about themselves or your website.

o Advanced Guestbook: This is a pretty neat guestbook, but it requires access to PHP and MySQL and safe mode must be OFF on your server. (If you are wondering what PHP safe mode is, please read the first article in this series.)

o Counter: Do you want to have a custom-designed counter to keep track of the thousands of people who will visit your site each day? This is a good choice. Just click on this item and a new window will open that will allow you to set the look and feel of the counter. When you are done, the HTML code that you need to paste into your web page at the location where you’d like the counter to appear will be displayed.

o Clock: Clicking this item will take you to a screen where you can set up a Java-based clock that can be displayed on any page on your website. Choose your options, click Make HTML to see a sample and to view the HTML code you need to paste into your website where you would like the clock to appear.

o Countdown: This item creates a counter that counts down to a specified date and time. Setup and use is the same as the Clock and Couter items above.

o CGI E-mail: This takes input from a form on your website and e-mails it to you in an easier to read format. Those of you who have struggled with the cryptic results you get when you have forms e-mailed to you via the web will appreciate this.

o FormMail Clone: This provides the same basic service as CGI E-mail, but goes about the task slightly differently. Use whichever one you find to be more convenient. FormMail Clone has on-line documentation, but it may not be the easiest to use.

o Entropy Search: This sets up an index of your website so that users can search the contents. You can also update the index for an already installed copy of Entropy Search if you wish.

o Entropy Banner: If you want to set up an advertising banner exchange program on your website, you’ll want to give this a try.



•
Addon Scripts: Additional CGI and PHP scripts that you can install on your website. You probably won’t have anything listed in this section unless your web host has set up extra features (like Fantastico).

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Shopping Carts: If you are going to open an on-line store, you may be interested in this area. DO NOT install a shopping cart unless you plan to use it because installing it includes some files that only your web host will be able to remove if you decide to stop using your cart. There are two shopping carts available for auto installation here: Interchange and Agora. Recently, Interchange has discovered an issue that might cause the Interchange shopping cart to fail to work properly. Further, Interchange refuses to provide support for CPANEL installations of Interchange, so you may wish to take a look at Agora.

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Cron Jobs: This is a very advanced feature that your web host may not allow. It is beyond the scope of this article to fully explain how to use cron jobs. If you know how to use this feature it is recommended that you try to schedule the job to run late at night (3-4 AM) when demands on the server are likely to be light. Your web host will be upset with you if you run so many jobs that you bring the server to its knees. There are 2 different interfaces, a standard UNIX style advanced CRON manager, which is great if you know how to use CRON from a standard UNIX/Linux command line. Otherwise, you may wish to use the “Standard” CRON manager, which makes it easier to run CRON jobs.

•
Network Tools: For slightly more advanced users, this section provides a quick interface to a couple of common network tools (Domain lookup and traceroute). Domain lookup will return the IP address for whatever domain you type in to this location as well as basic information about the domain. This feature doesn’t always work well. Traceroute lists the route your data would take between your computer and the domain that you type in. Each stop on the trip will list the response (ping) time from each server in milliseconds (MS). Lower numbers are better. Honestly, you can get better and more complete results from:

http://www.network-tools.com/

•
MIME Types: MIME types let a server know what a given file is so that it knows how to accept or send that kind of file from your account. Most MIME types are already installed on the server and can’t be changed, but if you have a new type of file and people are having trouble accessing them (for example, instead of downloading the file, your web browser tries to display the file as a text document). If that happens, you may have to add a MIME type. You’ll need to know what the MIME type should be and also what “extensions” the file name typically has (jpg, jpeg are both common extensions that appear on the end of JPEG picture files). Separate all extensions with a space and do not include a period.

•
Apache Handlers: This is another advanced feature that most mere mortals probably won’t need to access. You can define types of files (by extension) that you would like Apache to handle. There are a few already installed. If this doesn’t make any sense to you then you don’t need to worry about it.

•
PGP Keys: PGP stands for Pretty Good Privacy and is a highly secure encryption system with public and private “keys.” You can upload your keys here if you already use PGP on your computer so that you can use those same keys to encrypt and decrypt files on your server. There is an interface to create PGP keys, but I’ve never gotten it to work properly in any CPANEL installation I’ve used. However, if you’ve already created keys, you can upload them OK. To learn more about PGP, go here:

http://www.pgp.com/

•
Hotlink Protection: If you run a website where digital content (pictures, files, etc.) is your livelihood, then you may want to turn on this feature. Hotlink protection will stop other people on other websites linking directly to your files unless they have approval from you. To turn this on you need to define 4 things: the list of domains that are permitted to link to your files and a list of file extensions (JPG, MP3, etc.) that you want to protect. CPANEL will automatically add any of your own domains to the list of approved domains and a list of common file extensions, but feel free to edit them as needed. Next you will have to list a URL to redirect people to if they try to hotlink to your files (typically a page on your site that says “Sorry, you can’t access this file unless you are a member of my site.”). Lastly, you need to decide if you want to allow people who manually type an address pointing to one of the files on your website to access the file or if you want them redirected to the same URL you entered above. Click Activate to turn on hotlink protection. Click Deactivate to stop using hotlink protection.

•
Index Manager: Typically, if you try to access a directory (rather than a file) that exists on your server, your web browser will display a list of all the files in that directory, you can then click on any of the files to view or download them. If you don’t want to allow people to do this (a good idea if you have sensitive files stored in a directory inside your public_html folder), then you can use the Index Manager to turn off directory listing on a per-directory basis. Just click on the folder you want to turn on/off directory listing in and then choose the level of protection you desire: leave the folder set to the default system setting, do not allow any directory indexing, provide only a listing of text (including HTML) documents, or provide a list of text and graphics (binary) files.

•
IP Deny Manager: If you find that people from a particular location are abusing your website, you can choose to block their IP address. You can block a particular address from accessing your site, or you can block an entire range of IP addresses from being able to access your site. This area will also list any IP addresses that you are currently





Figure 36 - Network Tools
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Page 42 of 44 Aric’s CPANEL 6.4 Guide © 2003 Do not republish without permission. R042303a
blocking. For example: 111.111.111.111 will block only that IP address, whereas entering 111.111.111 will block ALL addresses from 111.111.111.0 to 111.111.111.255 inclusive.
•
Mail Exchanger (MX): Don’t touch any settings here unless you are 100% sure you know what you are doing. Changing the settings here will redirect mail handling away from your server to a different server. Generally, you should NEVER need to change anything in this area.

•
Fantastico: Fantastico is not part of a typical install of CPANEL, but several web hosts do offer it, so I will mention it here. Fantastico is an autoinstaller/uninstaller for some commonly used PHP/CGI scripts. Installing a PHP or CGI script by yourself can be a bit



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daunting if you don’t know what you are doing. Fantastico takes all the hard work out of installing several different scripts such as: Inversion Board (a BBS like phpBB, phpNuke or PostNuke (content management systems), b2 (a blogger script), 4images Gallery (a media content system which can be used as a photo album), etc. Just select an item you want to install, answer a few simple questions and then follow the instructions you are given to access your new script(s). If you’d like to learn more about Fantastico, please go here:
http://www.cpanelthemes.com/fantastico.php
That covers all the features of CPANEL. Hopefully this discussion of the feature set will make it easier for new users to get up and running. Feel free to contact me at aric1hotmail.com if you have any questions.
FINISH!

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Disclamer: This is not a legal document. As with all information transfered via the internet, this message was subject to possible contamination and tampering I hold myself harmless as to its content as at appears at its intended destination.