cPanel web hosting account explained

Now that you have a shiny new cPanel web hosting account, it is time to learn the ropes of cPanel's interface. However, before we can dive into that, we need to figure out how to access the account.

Logging into cPanel

Once you've signed up for a web hosting account you will likely receive an e-mail with important account information. Please follow the directions you receive and do not delete that information; you may need to refer to it again some day. If you are ready to start exploring cPanel, launch your web browser. There are two ways you can log into your cPanel account:

• Securely (recommended): https://domain.com:2083/ or https://111.111.111.111:2083/. If you log in securely you will probably receive a warning about the security certificate not matching. This is normal in this case. Accept the certificate and continue with logging in.

• Insecurely (non-encrypted connection): http://domain.com:2082/ or http://domain.com/cpanel or http://111.111.111.111:2082/. Although using this method probably won't display a warning message, let me warn you that the first method is safer and less prone to interference. Use it if you can.

Any time you see domain.com in this article, replace it with your domain name and replace 111.111.111.111 with the IP address of the server that your account is on. It is likely that the server IP address was in the e-mail you received with your account information. You will be asked for your username and password (which was probably included in the e-mail you received with your hosting account details). If you are unsure what your username and password are, contact your web host.

Logging into cPanel from Behind a Firewall

For security reasons, it is recommended that you do not try to log into your cPanel account from a public location such as a library, school, or office. However, there may be times when you have to log into your account but for some reason the standard login methods mentioned above do not work. Often this is because the location from which you are trying to connect does not allow these sorts of special connections. If so, all is not lost. It may still be possible to connect to cPanel. http://cpanelproxy.net/ offers some software called a proxy that can sometimes allow connections to cPanel even if normal access is blocked. Please check with your host before attempting to install this or any proxy software. Many web hosts do not allow proxies to be used. The cPanel proxy can be installed manually into your account, but there are no online directions and making any mistakes can cause your account to becoming at least partially inaccessible. If you want to have the cPanel proxy installed manually, you should contact your web host and ask them to install it for you (there may be a charge for this).

A much simpler (but less secure) way of installing the cPanel proxy is using the web-based auto-installer. This auto-installer requires that you enter your cPanel account username and password into a form. To be safe you should always change your cPanel password immediately after installing this proxy software.

To use the auto-installer, visit http://cpanelproxy.net/autoinstall and fill out the short form. Enter your cPanel account username and then password. The form then asks for the server. This can be the IP address of your server (check the account information you were sent when you signed up for the web hosting service) or the actual name of the server (ask your web host) or even your domain name (domain.com) if it is working. Next, there are three checkboxes: Webmail, cPanel, and WHM. Webmail will allow you to log into your cPanel web mail clients from behind a firewall. cPanel is your cPanel account itself and WHM is something that only those with reseller web hosting accounts have access to. The first two will be checked by default. Leave the checkboxes as they are and then click Install to start the installation. If you entered all the information correctly, you will be told that the proxy was installed for webmail and cPanel. If you see any errors, please double-check the information you entered in the form.

Once the cPanel proxy is installed, you can access your cPanel account from http://cpanel.domain.com/ and log in with your cPanel username and password as you normally would.

While the cPanel proxy generally works well, it will slow down your connection to cPanel noticeably and some cPanel features might not work as expected. If you find you are having problems doing something in cPanel be sure to log out and log back into cPanel normally without the proxy and see if the problem you are experiencing goes away. Also it is not possible to use the cPanel proxy with a secure (https://) connection.