Hostdime s. Guide to CPANEL 9.9. Created and Maintained by: Aric Pedersen

Transcription

1 Hostdime s Guide to CPANEL 9.9 Created and Maintained by: Aric Pedersen [email protected] Page 1 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

2 Hostdime s Guide to CPANEL 9.5 Table of Contents Table of Contents 2 Introduction: Welcome to CPANEL What is CPANEL? 4 Notes on Guide Conventions 4 Where to Find the Most Recent Copy of this Guide 4 Chapter 1: Getting Started with CPANEL 5 How Do I Log In? 5 Chapter 2: The Main CPANEL Screen - Sidebars 7 Chapter 3: CPANEL Mail Manager Options 12 Chapter 4: Change your Main Account Password 25 Chapter 5: Parked and Add-on Domains 26 Chapter 6: FTP Manager Options 28 Chapter 7: The File Manager 31 A List of Some Popular FTP Clients 32 Chapter 8: Disk Usage 34 Chapter 9: Backup Do It Often! 35 Chapter 10: Password Protection 38 Chapter 11: Custom Error Pages 40 Chapter 12: Subdomains 42 Chapter 13: MySQL Databases 44 Chapter 14: SSH/Telnet/Common *nix Commands 47 Chapter 15: Standard Redirects 49 Chapter 16: FrontPage Extensions 50 Chapter 17: Web Statistics 51 Chapter 18: Raw Log File Manager and Some CPANEL Repetitiveness 53 Chapter 19: Search Engine Submission 54 Chapter 20: Chat Rooms and BBS/Forums 55 Chapter 21: CGI Center 58 Chapter 22: Shopping Cart(s) 61 Chapter 23: CRON Jobs 62 Page 2 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

3 Chapter 24: Network Tools 63 Chapter 25: MIME Types and Apache Handlers 64 Chapter 26: GnuPGP Key Generation and Storage 66 Chapter 27: Hotlink Protection 67 Chapter 28: Index Management 69 Chapter 29: IP Deny Manager Stop People from Accessing Your Site! 70 Chapter 30: Selecting CPANEL Languages 71 Chapter 31: SSL Management 72 Chapter 32: CPANEL Pro Features Error! Bookmark not defined. Chapter 33: Fantastico 73 Chapter 34: Security and You 75 Chapter 35: Helpful Links for Webmasters 79 Page 3 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

4 Introduction: Welcome to CPANEL 9.5 What is CPANEL? CPANEL is a powerful web-based control panel that allows you to all of the special features included with your web hosting package. You can access your CPANEL from any web browser on any computer with an Internet connection. If you are new to web hosting or new to CPANEL, then all the various options and features of CPANEL could seem a bit overwhelming. This guide is designed to walk you through every single feature of your CPANEL and also to help introduce you to some basic concepts that you will need to understand to get the most out of your hosting package. CPANEL.NET provides basic documentation for CPANEL here, but it not up-to-date and is often sparse on detail. This guide was written to help fill in those gaps in an easier to follow (and hopefully easier to understand) format. Notes on Guide Conventions In several places in this guide examples of website addresses or server addresses will be used. In these cases the guide will refer to domain.com (not affiliated with or intended to refer to the real in any way) or to the IP address Anywhere you see this, you should replace it with your own site s domain name or IP address. Screenshots in this guide use the new default Xskin v2.5.x theme for CPANEL. Where to Find the Most Recent Copy of this Guide You can always download the latest copy of this guide here: Page 4 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

5 Chapter 1: Getting Started with CPANEL How Do I Log In? When you log into your CPANEL using: or (if your domain name hasn t propagated yet.) NOTE: Replace domain.com with your domain name in the first example and with the IP address of your server that your account is on (Hostdime provided you this information in your initial welcome after finishing the sign up process and paying for your account. DO NOT LOOSE THAT !). You can even log in securely using SSL in your browser if you prefer: or You will then be asked for your username and password (which was also provided to you in your welcoming or letter from Hostdime). At the top of the screen that appears after you log in, you will find information about your web hosting account. You are welcomed to your domain (domain.com) and next to 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/hacked, if so, change the password immediately and check the rest of your site for damage). Under that is a place to change your domain s contact address. You can change this as needed by clicking on the word here near where the address is listed. It is VERY important that you put a valid address into this contact area or the server will not be able to contact you if your site is near its bandwidth or disk space limits. Your host may also have difficulty contacting you if this info is not kept up-to-date. Here s a screenshot of what the main screen looks like: Page 5 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

6 Figure 1 - The Main CPANEL Screen: Yours may look slightly different, but the basic options remain the same. Page 6 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

7 Chapter 2: The Main CPANEL Screen - Sidebars 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: Hosting Package: This is the package that you are currently in. A hosting package is a collection of features and server resources that you have access to. The package should match the plan you ve been assigned in terms of the features and server resources you are permitted access to. Shared/Dedicated IP: If your account has a dedicated IP address, it will be displayed in this area. Otherwise, you will see the shared IP address of your site. Subdomains: Subdomains are subdomain.domain.com This will list the number of subdomains you currently have created and the maximum your account is allowed. Parked Domains: Parked domains are other top-level domains you own seconddomain.com that are currently parked at your account. Parked domains point to your main domain name s content. For example, if you park seconddomain.com at your account where domain.com is your main domain name, then any time you go to seconddomain.com it will take you to domain.com. This is a nice feature if you own a domain name but don t want to have a separate web site for it. Hostdime offers this service, and as of the writing of this guide, add-on domain and parked domain credits can be interchanged (just contact support). Additional add-on or parked domain credits cost $15 each (one-time fee). Add-on Domains: Similar to parked domains, except that an add-on domain creates a special set of directories in your main web account so that your add-on domain gets treated as if it were separate from your main domain. seconddomain.com would not be the same as domain.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. Your plan may come with some free add-on domain slots. If not, or if you use up your allotted amount, it costs the same as a parked domain name, $15 per add-on or parked domain credit. Add-on and parked domain credits can be interchanged for free by contacting support. 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. 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. If you keep your contact address up-to-date in CPANEL, you Page 7 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

8 will receive an before you run out of disk space so you can free up room or contact support for additional disk space. MySQL Disk Usage: This shows how much disk space your MySQL databases are currently using by themselves. This number is included in the disk usage number above. Disk Space Available: How much of your allowed disk space on the server you currently have available for use. Bandwidth Usage: Bandwidth is the measure of traffic both TO and FROM your web site or account. Watch this number to make sure you don t get too close to your account bandwidth limits in any given month. Keep in mind that we reset bandwidth counters at the beginning of every month, regardless of when your billing date is. Also, accounts suspended due to bandwidth overage might only be restored (even if you contact us and upgrade your package or buy more bandwidth) once per 24-hour period when the server checks for bandwidth overage, so it is a very good idea to buy more bandwidth before you need it, not after. Accounts: How many real POP3/IMAP accounts you have created vs. how many you are allowed to have. Keep in mind that the first address in your account will be [email protected] and this doesn t count against your maximum number of accounts allowed. Keep in mind that every account you create uses disk space on your server and contributes to the total amount of disk space you are using for your account. Forwarders: You can think of forwarders as aliases. They are addresses you create ( [email protected] ) that aren t full-fledged POP3 or IMAP accounts. Forwarders do just that; forward any mail you send to the forwarding address to a different address or addresses. It is important to note that you can forward mail to ANY address, even if you don t own the domain. This item will show you how many you currently have set up. Auto-Responders: These are special rules you set up so that whenever someone sends an to X address (for your domain only) or that matches certain other criteria, a response is automatically sent with a bit of canned (prepared) 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 whenever they send mail to a particular address. Mailing Lists: If you want to send out regular updates, newsletters or special offers to a large group of people via , then a mailing list is what you want. CPANEL includes special mailing list software called, appropriately, Mailman ( This item lists the current number of active mailing lists vs. the total number you are allowed to have. Keep in mind that we STRICTLY PROHIBIT THE SENDING OF SPAM FROM YOUR ACCOUNT. Page 8 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

9 Filters: filters help to block SPAM or unwanted messages from getting delivered to any mailbox. You set up the rules and any that matches those rules will not get delivered to any account at your domain. This shows you how many you currently have set up. FTP Accounts: The number of File Transfer Protocol accounts you currently have set up vs. the maximum you can have. FTP is a method of transferring files from your computer to or from your server. You will probably use FTP to upload web pages to your hosting account. This is followed by information about the server your account is on: Operating System: This is the operating system that the server your account is on is running. Probably this will be Linux. Figure 2 - Server Status: Please don t panic if a service goes red for a short time. Server Status: This will tell you if all of the server s various services are up and running OK. Green is good, yellow means a service is busy or nearly full (in the case of partition disk space) and red means that service is either very busy or down right now. Page 9 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

10 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. Machine Type: This is the type of processor(s) your server uses. i686 is an Intel brand processor (as opposed to an AMD processor, for example). Apache Version: This is the version of the web serving software that the server is running. Perl Version: This is the version of Perl language that is currently installed on the server. Path to Perl: This lists the path to Perl on your server, needed for some Perl scripts. Path to Sendmail: This is where sendmail, the process that handles sending mail is. Figure 3 - Installed Perl Modules - Note that this is not a full screen shot. Perl Modules: Perl s functionality can be enhanced by various modules. If you click here you can see exactly what modules are currently installed. PHP Version: This is the version of the PHP language that is currently installed on the server. MySQL Version: The version of this open source database that is currently installed. 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 more recent builds. For example 9.9.8S6. S in the build means that it is a stable build, R means it is a release build (updated more often with bugfixes and features but Page 10 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

11 perhaps not as bug-free), C is a Current build, with some basic bug testing, but not as much as a Release build, E is an edge build that undergoes very little testing and is updated very often (several times a day in some cases). CPANEL Theme: This is how the CPANEL interface will look. We use Xskin. Documentation: Click this link to see a copy of the CPANEL documentation from CPANEL.NET. CPANEL Pro: Due to popular demand, Hostdime does offer the beta-level CPANEL Pro features (Submit a Support Request, Image Manager, Boxtrapper, Leech Protect, Stats Configuration), but we can t provide support if these features DON T work as planned (since they are still beta). If you have a problem with this, please do not use the CPANEL Pro features. We continue to support all other features as normal. This line notes the version currently installed. Page 11 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

12 Chapter 3: CPANEL Mail Manager Options 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 you see in this guide. 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: You have three choices by default. o Webmail: You can go here to access one of three different webmail programs, Neomail, Horde or SquirrelMail. Discussing all the features of both mail programs is a bit beyond the scope of this guide. SquirrelMail. offers a clean interface with the ability to add lots of plugins or change the look of the webmail client through use of themes. Please note that the default install of SquirrelMail in Page 12 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

13 CPANEL doesn t include any plugins (like a spelling checker, language translation, SPAM reporting, HTML mail viewing, etc.). Horde is another good webmail client. It includes a calendar, to do list and memo area as well as fairly robust services. Neomail is OK, but it offers fewer features and doesn t seem as well laid out as the other two. Of course it is the simplest webmail client which might be good for those that find too many features to be distracting. You always have a choice to use any of them. Going to: or or (if you want to log in securely to your webmail client via SSL) Figure 6- Choose your Preferred Webmail Client and Access Common Options for Your Account. will take you to the screen where you can select one or the other of the webmail programs, change your password or other common options. You may prefer to set up a subdomain at webmail.domain.com that takes the user directly to your preferred webmail client to log in. Direct Links to Webmail Clients in CPANEL: Neomail: Horde: SquirrelMail: To check your mail using the account you set up initially with Hostdime, you should enter your CPANEL username and password. For all other accounts that you set up for your domain, you should enter the full address Page 13 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

14 (including ) and the password. You can also use +. %, or : in place of sign if you prefer or if your client for some reason doesn t signs in usernames. o Domain Forwarding: This is a new feature which you may or may not see in your CPANEL depending on what version is currently installed. When you add domain forwarding it forwards mail from your main domain, subdomain, add-on or parked domain to any valid domain name on the Internet (you DON T have to have the domain you want to forward mail to hosted in your CPANEL account). Once set up, this will redirect mail that is supposed to go to [email protected] (your CPANEL main, sub, add-on or parked domain) to [email protected] (the domain you choose to forward to). So if you have [email protected] set up in your CPANEL and you have domain forwarding to otherdomain.com on, the message will be sent to [email protected]. Figure 7 - Add/Remove Account: Click Show Disk Space Used to see how much mail each account has in it. o Add/Remove This is where you go if you want to set up a real POP3 or IMAP account, replete with storage space for mail in your hosting 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 an account for you as the administrator. You can t change, delete or otherwise modify this e- mail account. If you want to change your 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, and your FTP account. To create another account, just click the Add Account button at the bottom of the screen. This will take you to the new account setup screen. Here you set the username for the address ([email protected]), 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 Page 14 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

15 hosting account runs out of disk space. If you do set a mailbox size, then that e- mail account will stop accepting mail once it hits the quota 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 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 account for someone, then you will probably want to send/receive mail from that account in your favorite program (Outlook (Express), Eudora, etc.). For any given domain name: Account/Username: [email protected] OR username+domain.com Password: the password you set up for that account in your CPANEL. Mail Server: mail.domain.com SMTP Server: mail.domain.com SMTP Authentication: YES (use password SMTP Authentication and use the same username and password as above) or NO but if you don t use SMTP Authentication, then you MUST check your via POP3 BEFORE trying to send mail or it will FAIL! Return Address: [email protected] Figure 8 - Default Addresses: In this case all unrouted mail for webmail.domain.com is going to [email protected]. 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 account or forwarding. By default, any mail sent to an address that doesn t exist goes to your administrator account. You can set it to go to any address you prefer (even an external address). Alternately, you can set mail to nonassigned addresses to just be instantly discarded with no warning (set the action to :blackhole: ) or have the bounced back to the sender with a message noting that the was undeliverable (set the action to :fail: no such address here ). Page 15 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

16 Figure 9 - Create AutoResponder: Improper use of this feature could upset people on any mailing list(s) you are on (as they may receive copies of your autoresponse message on the list). o Auto-Responders: This feature automatically sends an to anyone who sends a message to a particular 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 . Be careful with this because if you subscribe to a mailing list, the mailing list could receive notification that you are away! Another use might be to provide an able 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 to a person who sends mail to [email protected] giving them answers to common problems and asking them to send mail to a different address if they still need help. If you specify a From address, then that autoresponse message will ONLY be sent to with that particular From address rather than to all messages received at that account. In addition, you can select the type of character set you want to use (for the language the message is written in) and even send out HTML mail this way, just click the HTML checkbox and type or paste in some HTML code. Page 16 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

17 Figure Block Filters: Goodbye SPAM! Create throwaway addresses to use when filling out forms. Use a new one for every form you fill out. Block it as soon as you start getting SPAM. There are companies that make big money offering this exact service and you get it for free as part of your CPANEL provided to you by us! o Block Getting SPAM and want to block someone from sending you e- 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 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 , 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 you create through your newly created filters to see if they work. Figure Forwarding: In this example, sent to [email protected] will be redirected to [email protected]. You can forward mail to any address or even multiple addresses! o Forwarders: As previously mentioned, you can think of forwarders as aliases. Forwarders are not full accounts. sent to a forwarding e- Page 17 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

18 mail address gets redirected to another address anywhere on the Internet. Forwarders are VERY useful, particularly if you want to have a number of different addresses without the hassle of having to check several different accounts. Just create the forwarding address and point it to your real e- mail account of choice. In fact, you can even have sent to a forwarding address that gets redirected to many other recipients. To do this, set up the same forwarding address with multiple recipients (you can add multiple addresses at one time by separating each with a comma or you can set up each one separately if you prefer). You can use this feature to create simple group addresses. For example, you can set a forwarding address that automatically redirects any mail sent to that address your 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 forwarding account by setting up a new personality or account in your program of choice and making the name and return address your forwarding address and then using the standard mail/smtp (send mail) addresses for your preferred real account. For example to send mail so it looks like it comes from [email protected] : Display name for Administrator2 Return Address: [email protected] Incoming Mail Server: mail.domain.com Outgoing Mail Server: mail.domain.com Username for POP3 and SMTP Authorization: [email protected] Password for POP3 and SMTP Authorization: password of your admin account Note: Some ISPs do not allow sending mail that isn t from your real ISP-provided address. Page 18 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

19 o Mailing Lists: Sometimes the basic one-to-many simplicity of forwarding s isn t full-featured enough, especially since it requires a lot of manual entry of addresses. However, if you are going to send a newsletter or other regular 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-featured, but it has so many features that it is beyond the scope of this guide. Mailman does have built-in help so it should be enough to answer most of your questions. If you need additional assistance, please check out the documentation at: Figure 12 - Mailman Mailing List Administration: Set up your own mailing list. Page 19 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

20 Figure 13 - Spam Assassin: Much more useful in CPANEL than it used to be. o Spam Assassin: The Block option is good if you want to block all 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. It blocks known spammers and rewrites the headers of other messages so you can filter them out from your program if you wish. Click Enable SpamAssassin to turn it on, then click Configure Spam Assassin to edit the rules that SpamAssassin will use and what exactly it will do to incoming mail: Page 20 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

21 Figure 14 - Set up SpamAssassin to catch unsolicited commercial . The first 5 lines in the configuration area (blacklist) are reserved for you to add e- mail addresses that you notice SpamAssassin is not marking as spam, but should be. Any mail from these addresses will be automatically marked as spam. Required_hits affects how aggressive SpamAssassin is in marking messages as spam. A hit is when SpamAssassin finds a match in its list of common spam characteristics (out of hundreds of possible matches). The default is 5 hits, which makes SpamAssassin aggressive in labeling messages as spam. Change this to a higher number if you find that messages are not spam are getting constantly labeled as spam. The next line, rewrite_subject can be either 0 (zero) or 1. If this is set to zero, as it is by default, SpamAssassin will not change the subject line on any incoming . If you change this to 1 then SpamAssassin will append whatever you type in the next line subject_tag to the front of the subject of all suspected spam. This will make it easier for you to identify spam and to filter it out of your inbox automatically, should you desire to do so. Note that if you add _HITS_ (without quotes) to the subject_tag line, wherever that appears will be replaced by the actual number of hits the suspected spam had Page 21 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

22 and if you add _REQD_ will be replaced by the threshold you set in required_hits. Example: If you change rewrite_subject to 1 and the subject_tag to: **Spam** (Had _HITS_ hits, threshold is _REQD_)- and you receive a piece of mail that SpamAssassin considers to be spam with the subject: I need your help with a financial transaction SpamAssassin would rewrite the subject to become: **Spam** (Had 12 hits, threshold is 5)-I need your help with a financial transaction If you choose not to have SpamAssassin rewrite the subject, you can still examine the headers of every that SpamAssassin scans because there will be a wealth of information there that you can use to see why SpamAssassin did or did not mark that message as spam. The last five lines are for whitelisted addresses. These are addresses that SpamAssassin automatically marks as spam but that you feel should not be. Note that you can use * as a general wild card, or? as a single-character wildcard (e.g., *@sudom1234.org would permit any mail from the domain sudom1234.org to pass without being labeled as spam,[email protected] would permit [email protected] through automatically, regardless of how many hit SpamAssassin finds in the message, while [email protected] would be checked (and labeled) by SpamAssassin normally. o Spam Box: SpamAssassin may not be all that useful to you if you haven t set up an filter in CPANEL to filter out any messages marked as spam or if you aren t handy with your client s filter messages capability, because the spam is still landing in your in-box. CPANEL now includes a separate, server-side method of automatically filtering out messages marked as spam by SpamAssassin, called Spam Box. If you turn on Spam Box, the mail server will automatically place all spam into a special directory on the server. You can view it if you use a webmail client (or check mail via IMAP instead of POP3). You can also view it by appending /spam to the end of your account username in your client. When you do that, Spam Box will retrieve only the mail that it finds in the special spam directory on your server. If you are going to use your client to check the Spam Box, you will probably want to set up another account (or at least a filter) in your client so that when the spambox gets checked, the messages don t get dumped Page 22 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

23 into your in-box, but get placed into another folder so it is easy to tell the messages apart. If you find that SpamAssassin is incorrectly labeling files, return to your CPANEL and edit the SpamAssassin settings. Figure Address Trace: Helps you figure out if there is a problem sending mail to the address. o Address Trace: This allows you to graphically see a map of where gets sent. It will also help diagnose problems sending mail to that address. It will map out any connections the address has and can provide information that may help your Hostdime tech support diagnose problems. It will be most useful for addresses not on the same server that you are on, since you will only see one entry for addresses on your server (since the mail doesn t get routed anywhere else). Figure 16 - MX Entries Don t change these settings unless you know what you are doing! Page 23 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

24 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. Unfortunately, this cannot be used to add MX records (for backup mail service, for example). If you need extra MX records added to your domain, contact support. Whew. One CPANEL icon down, 38 more to go. Thankfully, many of them are not as complex. Read Webmail: This takes you to Neomail, Horde or SquirrelMail as described earlier. Page 24 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

25 Chapter 4: Change your Main Account Password Figure 17 - Change Password: Good luck finding one that is accepted by CPANEL that you can remember. 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 and no nonalphanumeric characters. Good luck! Page 25 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

26 Chapter 5: Parked and Add-on Domains Figure 18 - Parked Domains: Point seconddomain.com to the same content as domain.com. Parked Domains: As 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 domain.com and domain.net and you want someone who goes to either one to see the same pages or services. We do offer this service, but no plans come with parked domain credits by default. You can ask support to switch unused addon domain credits to parked domain credits. If you don t have any unused add-on or parked domain credits, one credit costs $15 (one-time fee). Just contact support and let them know what sort of credit you d like (parked or add-on). Page 26 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

27 Figure 19 Add-on Domains: thirddomain.com displays totally different content than domain.com. There will be a 3domain directory in your account s public_html directory. Add-on Domains: Add-on domains are top-level domains that you point to a subdirectory in your current web hosting account. To people visiting that domain in their web browser, it looks as if it is a totally separate 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 addon 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/directory name/subdomain name (one name for all three, which will be created as a directory inside your public_html directory) 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. Your plan may come with some free add-on domain slots.. If not, you can ask support to switch unused parked domain credits (if you have any) to add-on domain credits. If you don t have any unused add-on or parked domain credits, one credit costs $15 (one-time fee). Just contact support and let them know what sort of credit you d like (add-on or parked). Page 27 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

28 Chapter 6: FTP Manager Options Figure 20 - FTP Manager Main Menu: Set various FTP-related options. FTP Manager: This is where you go when you want to set up or control FTP access and accounts. There are several options: Figure 21 - FTP Account Creation: Create an FTP account for other users so they can access only those directories you want them to. Page 28 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

29 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 or by CPANEL automatically 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 directory inside your public_html directory and nothing else. If you change the directory to / then the FTP user will have complete access to your public_html directory, 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. PLEASE NOTE: For FTP accounts that you create, the username to log into the FTP server is [email protected] or username+domain.com. 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. Figure 22 - Anonymous FTP Controls: Allow anonymous access to your public_ftp directory. o Anonymous FTP Controls: Here you can set two options: The first is a checkbox to allow you to allow anonymous (public) FTP access to ftp.domain.com (only the public_ftp directory). The next checkbox option is to allow anonymous (public) FTP upload access to your ftp.domain.com/public_ftp/incoming/ directory. You should only turn this feature on if you really do want people to have such access, because it is a potential security risk. Page 29 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

30 Figure 23 - Anonymous FTP Message Editor o Anonymous 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 displays 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. Figure 24 FTP Session Control: You can see anyone connected to your FTP server here and click the small icon (or the lack of one, as above ) next to the session information to kill (end) that process. This feature only works with ProFTP or the very latest version of PureFTP. 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. The session information shows this information (in order): type of FTP service running, the account logged in, the IP address (using reverse lookup if possible) of the person logged in, what they are doing, when they logged in. Click the broken picture link next to the logon time to kick off that user s session. Note, you can t kick the administrator s account, so be sure you keep the password safe (for a whole host of obvious reasons). This only works if a server is set to use ProFTP or the latest version of PureFTP with the latest or later release of CPANEL. Page 30 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

31 Chapter 7: The File Manager Figure 25 - File Manager: Useful because it logs into your account as a superuser and can delete files and directories you can t. File Manager: CPANEL gives you access to a file manager to upload, download, delete or modify files on your site. Clicking on this icon will open a new window that will take over your screen. On the left are your site and all files and directories. Clicking on the name of a file or directory will allow you to work with or rename that item. Clicking the small icon next to a directory will open that directory 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 directories you select (like view, edit, changer permissions, throw them in the site trash, etc.). If you make a mistake and put something in the trash that you want to get back, just click the name of the directory or file under the trashcan icon of the item you want to recover. Clicking the Page 31 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

32 trash icon itself will delete any directories or files that you have permission to delete which are currently listed as being in the site trash. This action is not undoable. Make sure you actually DELETE files in the trash or they will still count against your disk space limits for your account (because the file is not actually deleted yet). Close this window when you are done and you will be back at your CPANEL. CPANEL s file manager is not really designed for heavy-duty file manipulation, but it can come in handy if you just need to make a few quick changes and you aren t in a place where you have access to a real FTP client. However, there is one very nice thing about the file manager; it is logged into your account as a superuser, so it can delete files and directories that you may not be able to delete in your FTP client because you aren t listed as the owner of the file or directory. Be sure to give it a try before contacting support for help. A List of Some Popular FTP Clients If you are going to do any real work with files or directories in your account, you will need a good FTP client (you cannot use Internet Explorer for serious work). It is beyond the scope of this guide to explain how you work with an FTP client to manipulate files (see the documentation for your preferred client for help with that). However, if you are new to hosting, you may not be familiar with the various FTP clients that are available, so here is a partial listing of some of the more common FTP clients available for various common operating systems. Please keep in mind that we are not responsible for providing you with support on how to work with the FTP client you choose. You should contact the support department for the FTP client you use if you need help with the program. Better yet, be sure to READ the manual or documentation that comes with your FTP client before contacting their support department. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, nor should this list be construed as endorsement of the FTP clients mentioned. Take a look at the various clients available to you and find one that best meets your own needs. Page 32 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

33 Operating System(s) Supported Windows 95 XP Pro Windows 3.1 XP Pro Windows 95 XP Pro / Mac OS 8.5 X 10.3 Mac OS X Mac OS X Mac OS 9.x X 10.3 Mac OS 7 X10.3 Linux/Wind ows FTP Client Name URL Notes FileZilla Free, popular. WS_FTP Pro CuteFTP /file-transfer.html ftp/ $ $84.95 depending on version and service agreement. $39.99 or $74.99 with priority support and free upgrades for a year. Now comes in a Macintosh version. RBrowser Lite serlite/rbrowserlite.html Free, lacks advanced SSH/SFTP options. Rbrowser $29 for basic edition, or $49 for Pro (Pro) with access to lots of file xfer types. Transmit $24.95 Fetch $25 One of the very first Mac OS FTP clients. Igloo Pro $29.95 Yes, Linux Shareware! wnload.html Also comes in a Windows version. Page 33 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

34 Chapter 8: Disk Usage Figure 26 - Allows you to get an idea of where all your disk space is currently being used so you can figure out where to start trimming some fat. The disk usage area in CPANEL allows you to see all the various directories in your account and how much each is taking up of your valuable account disk space. The disk usage viewer starts at the top level of your account, showing every directory, INCLUDING the invisible ones (ones that begin with a. ). You can expand the list to show more levels of directories. Keep in mind that the space used figure for any directory includes any subdirectories. If you have a lot of directories, you may wish to click Hide Small Files so that you only see the directories using a non-trivial amount of disk space. Page 34 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

35 Chapter 9: Backup Do It Often! Figure 27 - Backup and Restore: Use the separate Home Directory, MySQL and Alias and Filters backups often (preferably in times when CPU load is low, like late night). Full backups CANNOT be restored by you the user using CPANEL s restore feature. Backup: This area really should be called Backup and Restore (and in some CPANEL themes 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). 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 or aliases or filters) just click the link on the top-left side of this page Download a home directory 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; use the Restore a Home Backup field (click Browse, select the compressed home directory backup 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 in plain text what files it is restoring. Page 35 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

36 This part can take an even longer amount of time. Plus, there is no indication that the process is finished (other than when your browser s built in features let you know it is done loading a page, which may mean that the browser displays DONE in the status bar at the bottom of the current window or perhaps a progress bar disappears). 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 link in the header at the top of the Backup CPANEL screen. If all went well, you should have everything restored in your home directory now. To download a MySQL database, click a link (the name of the database) 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. You also have an option to send a COMPLETE backup, including all MySQL and filter and alias data to a remote FTP server or to save a copy in your home directory: Figure 28 - Full Backup: You can use this to backup EVERYTHING in one file which you can FTP to a remote server or save a backup in your home directory. Page 36 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

37 To backup to your own server, and just place a compressed backup file in your home directory, select Home Directory as the backup destination and fill in your address. The server will immediately begin backing up your entire account into a single file and will show (in progress) next to the file name under Previous Full Backups saved in Home Directory: When it is done, you will be able to click on the name to download the backup. Please note that downloading the backup this way is not free in terms of bandwidth as the other backups are. It is also important to note that hovering over the backup link shows the link with your main FTP account s username and password visible in plain text. This means that if you leave this screen open, someone could steal your account! So PLEASE MAKE SURE if you walk away from your computer that you CLOSE the browser window so no one can gain access to this information. Hopefully a future version of CPANEL/Xskin will fix this. To FTP your backup to an off-site server directly from your account, choose the FTP option (use the passive option if you have problems with the transfer). Enter the remote FTP server name, and your username and password for that system. Then click Generate Backup. The file will be created and transferred to the remote system and you will be notified of problems with the transfer. Please note that the FULL backup option cannot be automatically restored by CPANEL, it is designed to allow quick and painless transfer of backups to a remote server. If you need to restore files from a full backup, you will need to place the files into the appropriate places in your account. In the case of MySQL databases, you will need to use something like phpmyadmin to restore your databases. If you need everything restored and you are having problems doing this yourself, upload the COMPRESSED original full backup file into your home directory (that is the one above the public_html directory) if it isn t already there and contact support and let them know where you placed the file. PLEASE BE AWARE that this should only be used as a last-ditch option. It is not our responsibility to restore your backups. Please use the separate /home, MySQL, filter and alias files with CPANEL s restore feature normally. Page 37 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

38 Chapter 10: Password Protection Figure 29 - Password Protection: This is where you can protect sensitive directories from prying eyes. 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 directory inside your public_html directory that will contain your protected content. You can name it whatever you like. You can use your FTP client to create this directory or you can use CPANEL s file manager described earlier. Now come back to the Password Protection area. You will see a list of EVERY directory inside your public_html directory and also a link for the current folder (which is your public_html directory in this case). If you click the small icon of a folder next to the directory s name, you will be able to see any directories nested inside that one. This way you can chose to protect a nested directory. If you click on the actual name of the directory you will be taken to the security and account creation screen in Figure 29. There are actually two separate things to do on this screen. The top half of this screen turns security on and off for this directory. If you want security to be ON, then click the check box next to the Folder [sic] requires a password to access via 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. 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 Page 38 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

39 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 directory 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. Please be aware that under CPANEL, you can NOT password protect the public_html directory, it is not permitted. Note that you should NOT try to use this feature if you are using the FrontPage extensions. FrontPage handles page security through those server extensions rather than use the standard directory protection feature. If you have password protection set in CPANEL and you install the FrontPage extensions, then all of your settings for password protection will be DELETED and you will need to use FrontPage to manage security until you remove the FrontPage extensions, at which time you will have to RE-ENTER all Password protection information into CPANEL. Page 39 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

40 Chapter 11: Custom Error Pages Figure 30 - Custom Error Pages: You can use this to create error messages that hopefully none of your users will ever see. Use HTML code. 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: Page 40 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

41 Probably 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 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. If you aren t good at analyzing or editing raw HTML code, feel free to create your own custom error page in your favorite HTML editor (Adobe GoLive, Macromedia Dreamweaver or Contribute, etc.). 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 directory on your server. One thing to keep in mind is that by default some older Windows versions of Internet Explorer display their 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. Page 41 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

42 Chapter 12: Subdomains Figure 31 - Subdomain Maintenance: Here is where you can create subdomains, but be sure not to redirect the subdomain to the same directory it already points to by default (the same named directory inside your public_html directory) or your subdomain won t load. If you have a Mac, you will see a redirection error in your browser of choice. If you use IE on Windows, you ll just see a blank white window and no warning at all most of the time. Subdomain Maintenance: Subdomains are addresses like: subdomain.domain.com. Your primary domain is domain.com. The subdomain can either act as if it were an entirely different site, not part of your primary domain (using the Add-on Domain feature) 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 regardless of what you want the end result to be: 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 you created a subdomain my at domain.com (assuming you owned that domain), you could subsequently create a subdomain is at my.domain.com ending up with is.my.domain.com and then finally adding this to come up with: this.is.my.domain.com All subdomains default to loading the index page in a similarly named directory. For example, if you create the following subdomain: Page 42 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

43 gallery.domain.com it will attempt to load pages found inside the directory gallery found inside your public_html directory. 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 directory. 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 (or just a blank white page depending on your browser) 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 to a different location, 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 or ftp://) that you want the subdomain to point to and click Save. If you decide later that you 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 who wants their own webspace)? You need to create the subdomain and 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 (sans the primary domain name). For example, if you create a subdomain webmasters.domain.com then the FTP account you create should be called webmasters. This will create a directory in your public_html directory called webmasters If you put an index.html file in this directory, then that page will automatically get displayed when someone types in In addition, that person s website could also be accessed by going to They would connect to that subdomain directory via FTP using the username [email protected] and the password assigned to that FTP account. They would only be able to access /public_html/webmasters or any directory found inside webmasters. They would NOT be able to access the public_html directory or any other directory above or at the same level as webmasters. Page 43 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

44 Chapter 13: MySQL Databases Figure 32 MySQL: It s confusing because there are several steps needed to create a database and they are ALL listed on this one screen. 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, download or add data to any database you create. Creating databases and users is easy. Type the Page 44 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

45 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: The ACTUAL name of the database will be slightly different than the one you choose. The database will be created with your username and an underscore character prior to the name you chose when you created the database. Example: domain_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. Again, the database username will be your CPANEL username followed by an underscore and then the username you chose. Example: domain_jeff 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 (you can delete the database 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, Perl or JDBC script (JDBC is not supported on Hostdime servers). Next to the username is a button marked Delete, but this can be 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. Also, there is a Check button that allows you to check that database for problems, and then click Repair if it reports errors. If that doesn t do the trick, contact support. 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. It is beyond the scope of this guide to go into a lot of detail here about this very advanced tool. However, the basics are as follows: 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. If you click the SQL tab along the top, this Page 45 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

46 will take you to a screen where you will be able to enter MySQL commands. Look for the text entry box near the bottom of this screen. This is where you can type in (or paste in) MySQL commands (which are commonly called queries). Click the button to submit the command/query and MySQL will tell you the results of the command (success or failure due to an error). 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. Page 46 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

47 Chapter 14: SSH/Telnet/Common *nix Commands We do offer SSH access as a paid add-on to all accounts if needed. It costs a one-time fee of $20 and you must also fax or scan and a copy of your valid photo identification (passport, drivers license, etc). We request photo ID because SSH access is a potential security risk and we need to know exactly who is accessing it. Contact support if you need SSH access. 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. Honestly, it is slow and not a good idea if you are going to be doing serious work. Get yourself a real SSH/Telnet client. If you want or need this feature, you probably know what it is already, and this guide would get very long indeed trying to explain all the nuances of what telnet/ssh is and how to use it. However, here are a few basics to get you started: Telnet is a protocol for interacting remotely with a computer via a text-based interface. SSH is a secure form of telnet. It is rare that anyone uses plain telnet these days. Having SSH access will allow you to connect directly to your account on your web host s server and interact with it using standard Linux/Unix (*nix) commands. Here are a few common ones: CD: Change Directory does just what you d expect, allows you to switch to a different *nix directory. Thus it is similar to MS-DOS s command of the same name. Keep in mind that./ in *nix speak means from the current directory and../ means back/up one level. So: cd../../public_html would go back or up (depending on how you like to think of these things) 2 directories, and then open the public_html directory. CHMOD: chmod stands for CHange MODe and is used to change permissions. All *nix files and directories have permissions that tell *nix who is permitted to access that file or directory and what (if anything) they should be allowed to do with it. You will most commonly hear CHMOD values described as a series of 3 numbers, listed together from 000 to 777. The three numbers each stand for a different class of *nix user (in order listed): the owner of the file or directory (typically this is the user that created or uploaded the file or directory), the group that the owner of the file may be a part of (thus allowing several people to work with files even if they aren t the owner) and finally, the world (everyone else who is not the owner or in the same group as the owner). Each number is 0-7 depending on the level of access the class has access to 0 = no access at all, 7 = total access; can do nearly anything with the file or directory. Each class of user can have three different kinds of file or directory access in any combination: read (view the contents of the directory or file, but not make changes), write (change items or write to a directory or file), execute (allow the user to run a Linux command file, binary file or script). Each type of access is assigned a certain number that gets added to the other access types a given user type is permitted to come up with a number from 0 to 7. Read = 4 points, write = 2 points, execute = 1 point. Example: 755 = User can read, write and execute items in the directory or file (4+2+1), Group can read and execute but not write to the directory or file (4+1=5), and World Page 47 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

48 can also read and execute items in the directory or file but not write changes. NOTE: 777 allows everyone complete read, write and execute access, which can be a serious security risk, so be careful using that level of permissions! You can see how the CHMOD number system works a bit more graphically, by selecting Modify Permissions in your CPANEL s file manager or by going here: Typically, if you want to use a permission number to change permission on a directory or file, the syntax is: chmod -R chmod #( ) filename of directory or file (including path if needed) (note that there is a required space between the CHMOD number and the filename) LS: ls stands for LiSt directory and is used to display a list of the files and folders (or directories in *nix speak) in the current directory. If you add -l the display will include some additional important information about the file, including permissions (CHMOD) information. Add -a to list ALL the files and directories in the current directory, including hidden files (in *nix, all files or directories that begin with a. are considered invisible and are only shown if you use the -a modifier. You can stack both modifiers if you want (as you can with most *nix commands) like this: ls la OR ls al (the order is not important) PICO: Is a commonly used *nix text-based text editor (much like the old DOS versions of WordPerfect for example). You can make changes to any text file just by typing: pico filename (including path if needed) Pico is a bit complex, although it is probably one of the easier of the common *nix text editors for new users to learn. Use the MAN command if you want to learn more about how Pico works. MAN: The MAN command stands for MANual and is the help command in *nix. You should type: man commandname to get help on the command you are interested in. If you need additional assistance, sometimes: commandname --help will do the trick. If you would like to learn more about Linux or Unix try searching on Google or click here to search for books on Amazon.com. Page 48 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

49 Chapter 15: Standard Redirects Figure 33 - Manage Redirects: You can save your users some typing and use subdomains instead. Manage Redirects: Here you can specify a redirect in the following form: 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. You 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. Page 49 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

50 Chapter 16: FrontPage Extensions Figure 34 - FrontPage Extensions: The BANE of support personnel the world over! 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 do not install the extensions (in fact, you should MAKE SURE they AREN T installed). 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 decide you d rather work with a different HTML editor, you may wish to check out Adobe GoLive or Macromedia Dreamweaver or Contribute. Page 50 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

51 Chapter 17: Web Statistics Figure 35 - Stats Main Menu: Get all the info you need on the usage of your account here. 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. Keep in mind the information you see here only gets updated one time per day (except Awstats, which allows you to update the information manually at any time by clicking a link at the top of the Awstats stat display page). You can always install a stat analysis program on your local computer and download the raw access logs. In this menu, you may 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 Awstats: Another graphical stat program. Offers good detail and is fairly quick. The only stat program that can be updated by you, the user, with current data at any time. 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. Page 51 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

52 o Subdomain Stats: This takes you to the subdomain analysis pages for Analog, Awstats 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 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. Raw Access Logs: If you have an external program that takes the raw data from your hit logs and analyzes it, then you ll want to click on this icon from your CPANEL to instantly start downloading a compressed copy of the access logs to use with that program. The raw log is GZIP (.gz) compressed. If you work in Windows and have a.com address, Windows will incorrectly assume your raw log is a DOS COMmand file. Change the name to remove the.com and add.txt instead and you should be OK. Page 52 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

53 Chapter 18: Raw Log File Manager and Some CPANEL Repetitiveness Figure 36 - Raw Log Manager: If you'd like to keep archives of raw logs, you can set those options here. Raw Log Manager: If you would like to be able to save old daily logs, then you ll want to take a look at the options here. Check the first item to save the logs, check the second to delete the archives every month. You can also access those archived logs here by clicking on a link to the archived log you d like to download. Error Log: This is exactly the same as the Error Log list in the Stats area mentioned in the previous chapter. Subdomain Stats: In an attempt to be helpful, CPANEL also has an icon for subdomain statistics. This icon takes you to the same place as the Subdomain Stats link mentioned in the last chapter. Page 53 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

54 Chapter 19: Search Engine Submission Figure 37 - Search Engine Submit: Not the best search engine submitter, but it is free and easy to use. You can search the web for other search engine submission services (some free, some not). 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. Keep in mind that to be prominently listed at a search engine like Google, you have some work to do. To learn more about the major search engines and how they rank sites, take a look here. Page 54 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

55 Chapter 20: Chat Rooms and BBS/Forums Figure 38 CGI and Java Chatrooms: We do not permit you to use the Java and CGI chatrooms that CPANEL offers to install. Chat Rooms: This area offers 2 of 3 different types of chat room software that you can use on your site with only a few clicks in CPANEL. Generally, you should only pick one type. Hostdime does not permit access to these two kinds of CPANEL installed chat rooms. Chat rooms can use a lot of server resources, so if you do choose to run one, be aware that if it becomes a hog, we may need to restrict or even suspend your account. There is one additional chat room that you may have access to and Xskin now provides it as a separate icon from the main CPANEL screen: phpmychat. Figure 39 - phpmychat: Probably the best of the available CPANEL chat rooms. Page 55 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

56 phpmychat: phpmychat is a PHP-based chat room with more options than the CGI or Java chatrooms that CPANEL also provides. PhpMyChat is multi-lingual and feature rich. There have been reports of previous versions not working with the built-in AOL browser, so you may want to check this before opening the chat room to the public. If you would rather do a manual installation of the very latest version of phpmychat, or learn more about it, you can do so here: Figure 40 - Install phpbb (BBS): This installs version Forum/BBS: You can install phpbb 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: 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) we suggest you take advantage of CPANEL s autoinstaller. You can install Invision Board as well (in the Scripts Library area of CPANEL). 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 directory in a directory that you specify. Don t try to install it inside another directory. You will then be able to access your new BBS at: CPANEL will automatically create a MySQL database called username_xmb and a new user username_xmb 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 Page 56 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

57 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, log in with your administrator account and then click the link to your administrator 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. If you would like help manually updating your phpbb installation, or if you d like to learn how to add modifications, you can read about it in this thread (it refers to an old version of phpbb, but the basics remain the same): If you need more help, please go here: If you are looking for additional themes or modifications for your phpbb, try here: Page 57 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

58 Chapter 21: CGI Center Figure 41 - CGI Scripts: More advanced add-ons for your site. CGI Center: Your account comes with several CGI scripts installed by default. CGI stands for Common Gateway Interface. You can learn more about CGI here: 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. This is not needed on our servers, since we run suexec. Clicking on this item will create an scgibin directory in your public_html directory. You can run CGI-BIN files from here as well, if you wish. o Random HTML: This CGI script inserts random HTML code from a list into a web page that is Server Side Includes (SSI) enabled. It is handy to dummy up webpages on a site you are working on with random text so you can see what the Page 58 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

59 design looks like with content. 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 PHP safe mode must be OFF on your server. PHP safe mode, as the name implies is makes the implementation of PHP safer because among other things it restricts what a PHP script can do and how long it can run for. Many PHP scripts won t run properly in safe mode, and this is one such script. We do not use PHP safe mode on our servers. NOTE: If you ve installed this guestbook using an older version of CPANEL, you should upgrade your copy, as there is a well-documented bug that can let almost anyone take over control of your guestbook as administrator. 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? Click on this item and a new window will open that will allow you to set the look and feel of the counter. You can also create a clock or countdown timer here as well. 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/clock/timer to appear will be displayed. If you want a different counter script, please look at for a counter script that you like and use that instead. o Clock: Clicking this item will take you to a screen where you can set up a Javabased 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 This takes input from a form on your website and s 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 ed to you via the web will appreciate this. o FormMail Clone: This provides the same basic service as CGI , but goes about the task slightly differently. FormMail Clone has on-line documentation, but it may not be the easiest to use. The problem with FormMail Clone is that it is very insecure and no longer actively developed. We have disabled this script on the server. Spammers use well-known flaws in this script to send out spam from your account. This is DEFINITELY a script to avoid at all costs. Use CGI or better yet, a free php-based form processing script from We do not permit users to use FormMail Clone (Matt s Archives) derived mailing scripts due to the serious potential for abuse. 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. Page 59 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

60 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. Scripts Library: Additional CGI and PHP scripts that you can install on your website. CAUTION: While autoinstalling scripts are easy and allows you to quickly test/delete scripts, you are STRONGLY urged to make sure you UPDATE any scripts you use (autoinstalled or not) to the very latest versions offered by the script developers. Page 60 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

61 Chapter 22: Shopping Cart(s) Figure 42 - Shopping Carts - DON'T USE INTERCHANGE if you have it as an option to install in CPANEL! Shopping Carts: Shopping cart scripts simplify the process of offering goods and services for purchase. These scripts support a number of different types of payment options and gateways and can make selling products on the web a lot easier. CPANEL offers up to two different shopping carts, Agora, and Interchange. We provide access to 1 of the 2. The first of these is Agora. The second, Interchange, should not appear in your CPANEL, but if it does, resist the temptation to install it. The problem is that the way CPANEL currently installs Interchange may cause it to fail regularly. Interchange also does not provide any support for CPANEL installed shopping carts, so you are on your own if you choose to install it. You will also find some other shopping cart choices in Fantastico. Choosing a shopping cart that meets your needs is VERY important, so if you are looking to use one, please make sure you visit each shopping cart provider s website and look at some of the demos and ask questions of others who use that kind of shopping cart to see if it meets your needs before you install it. You will probably spend a long time working on configuring a shopping cart and it would be a shame to discover that the shopping cart you ve been configuring for the past two hours doesn t offer some critical feature you need. Providing detailed support for these shopping carts is beyond the scope of this guide. Please visit the appropriate website (see the links above) to get support for these shopping carts. Page 61 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

62 Chapter 23: CRON Jobs Figure 43 - Standard CRON Manager Window: Use this if you aren t familiar with Unix commands. Cron Jobs: This is a very advanced feature. It is beyond the scope of this guide 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. We 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 format CRON jobs. CRON jobs can execute any fully automated script or even *nix commands and this makes this very powerful indeed. For example, one enterprising client (thank you Andy!) has mapped out how to semiautomate site backups using CRON jobs and some basic scripting, something that you probably should look into if you are not good at remembering to do manual backups often. Page 62 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

63 Chapter 24: Network Tools Figure 44 - Network Tools: Quick & dirty tools to look up domains and trace the route from your machine to a particular server on the Internet. Network Tools: For slightly more advanced users, this section provides a quick interface to a couple of common network tools (domain lookup and trace route). Domain lookup will return the IP address for whatever domain you type in to this location as well as basic information about the domain (from the DNS zone). 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, high numbers mean your connection may be adversely affected. You may be able to get more complete results from: The only problem with using a site like network-tools.com is that the traceroute is listed from THEIR servers to the destination. If you want to see the route between your current location (your home PC, perhaps?) and the destination server, you need to run traceroute from your current location. On PCs running Windows, you can go to the START menu Run and then type: tracert domain name or IP address On a Macintosh, running Mac OS X, go to Applications/Utilities and then double click on Terminal. At the command prompt, type: traceroute domain name or IP address For *nix, the process is similar to Mac OS X (since Mac OS X is based on OpenBSD), just drop to your favorite shell command line if you aren t there already and type in the same command as above. Page 63 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

64 Chapter 25: MIME Types and Apache Handlers Figure 45 - MIME Types - Note that there are many more types configured than shown here. 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 to or from your web site. Most MIME types are already installed on the server and can t be directly 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. Page 64 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

65 Figure 46 - Apache Handlers: You can define special file types and tell Apache how to handle them here. 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 (which is the open-source software that serves most of the web pages on the Internet, including yours) to handle. There are a few already installed. If this doesn t make any sense to you then you probably don t need to worry about it. Page 65 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

66 Chapter 26: GnuPGP Key Generation and Storage Figure 47 - GnuPGP Key Generator Screen: Create a key that you can use to encrypt files here. GnuPGP 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 GnuPGP (the open source version of PGP) keys, but as it stands right now, the GnuPGP generator doesn t work in CPANEL. However, if you ve already created keys, you can upload them OK. To learn more about PGP, go here: Page 66 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

67 Chapter 27: Hotlink Protection Figure 48 - Hotlink Protection: Stop people from linking directly to your files. 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. Page 67 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

68 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. To allow direct links, click the checkbox just above the Activate button. Click Activate to turn on hotlink protection. Click Deactivate to stop using hotlink protection. Page 68 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

69 Chapter 28: Index Management Figure 49 - Index Manager: Stop people from seeing the files in a directory if you don t have an index.html file in that directory. Index Manager: Typically, if you try to access a directory (rather than a file) that exists on your server, and there isn t an index page (index.html, index.htm, index.php, default.html, default.htm, default.php) 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 directory), then you can use the Index Manager to turn off directory listing on a per-directory basis. Just click on the directory you want to turn on/off directory listing in and then choose the level of protection you desire: leave the directory set to the default system setting, do not allow any directory indexing, provide only a plain text listing of documents, or provide a list that includes text links and small graphics to represent the type of file or directory the item listed is. Click Save to commit your changes to that directory. Page 69 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

70 Chapter 29: IP Deny Manager Stop People from Accessing Your Site! Figure 50 - IP Deny Manager: Stop a person or whole groups from accessing your website. IP Deny Manager: If you find that people from a particular location are abusing your website (check your error logs and raw Apache logs), 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 blocking. For example: will block only that IP address, whereas entering will block ALL addresses from to inclusive. Page 70 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

71 Chapter 30: Selecting CPANEL Languages Figure 51 - Select a language here. This will affect the site stats as well (but only AFTER the next time the server processes the logs (typically in 24 hours). Configure Language: You may or may not have the same languages as listed above. Also, not all languages are completely translated. However, for whatever languages are installed on your server, just select one of them from the list and click Change. The language displayed in many CPANEL areas will change to match the language you chose. Any parts of the interface not translated in the language file you chose will be displayed in English. If you would like to help us by more fully translating a language, or adding a new language, please contact support and we will provide you with the English language base file and the partially translated language file for you to work on. Just return the translated file to us when you are finished. The language you choose will also affect the web stats programs the next time the server processes the logs (typically this would be in about 24 hours). Prior to that, the stats will remain in English. Page 71 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

72 Chapter 31: SSL Management SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer and it is what allows secure communication between your web browser and the site itself. SSL certificates are what makes (secure web connections) possible. Most people probably don t need an SSL certificate for a personal site, but if your site is designed for doing business, then you almost certainly will want your own SSL certificate for your site, so you can handle financial transactions securely. We can handle the entire process for you, from obtaining the certificate, assigning your account its own IP address and installing the certificate. The total per year currently is $115 or $80 a year if you already have purchased an SSL certificate that you want to use. If you d like to obtain your own SSL certificate rather than use the ones we provide they range in price from about $49 to several thousands of dollars per year. A great place to start to learn more about SSL and why it matters what kind of SSL certificate you get, please go here: If you ve decided to take the plunge, contact support and tell us if you have your own certificate or if you want us to get one for you. The certificates we use are widely compatible with over 98% of browsers. Page 72 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

73 Chapter 32: Fantastico Figure 52 - Fantastico - Not a standard part of CPANEL but a nifty add-on autoinstaller. Fantastico: Fantastico is not part of a typical install of CPANEL, but we do offer it. Look for the small smiley face (probably the last icon in the last row of your CPANEL). Fantastico is an autoinstaller/uninstaller for some commonly used PHP/CGI scripts. Installing a PHP or CGI script by yourself can be a bit daunting if you don t know what you are doing. Fantastico takes all the hard work out of installing several different scripts such as: Moodle (a content management system specially designed for offering on-line courses and training), phpnuke or PostNuke (standard content management systems), WordPress (a blogger script), Crafty Syntax Live Help (customer service manager and help desk), 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). Not only can you install any of these things, but Fantastico can also deinstall any script that it installs. If you d like to learn more about Fantastico, please go here: Please note that while Fantastico does offer the ability to upgrade a current Fantastico installed version of a script to a newer version (when a new version of the script is added to Fantastico) it won t work if you. In that case, visit the website of the people who Page 73 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

74 maintain the script you want to update (not Fantastico s website) and look for an upgrade from your current version to whatever the latest version is. When you click on the Fantastico icon, if you have any Fantastico installed scripts that Fantastico has a newer version of, you will be prompted to upgrade your older versions. Fantastico s interface is available in a number of languages (see the option in the EXTRAS area). Choosing a language here only affects the text in Fantastico s interface (and s). It DOES NOT affect what language the script you ve chosen is installed in. Each script may or may not have languages other than English available, but this depends on the developer of the script and not Fantastico. After installation, Fantastico offers to send an with the installation details to an e- mail address you specify. This contains a handy reminder of what was installed and where it was installed so you can refer to it later. Fantastico is updated often with new versions of scripts, additional features or new scripts, so it is a good idea to click Fantastico often to see if there is anything new available. Page 74 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

75 Chapter 33: Security and You Lots of people ask what they can do to protect themselves and their websites from hacker attacks. First the bad news: As it stands right now on the Internet, if a hacker REALLY wants to get into your website or take your site off the web, then he or she can probably do so (given some time and effort) and there isn t a great deal you can do about it. After all if a hacker can get into the FBI or CIA website and cause problems, what chance do you have? Don t cry, and above all, DON T PANIC! There are some basic steps that you can take to help guard against anyone gaining illegal access to your site and also to help you get back up and running again if the worst really does happen. As the saying goes: Hope for the best, plan for the worse and expect anything in-between. Here are some common ways that hackers gain access to your site (or even home computer) in no particular order: 1) Weak Passwords: While using a short, simple password at every Internet site you access (and at your own web site) may make life somewhat easier for you, it also makes hacking into your site nearly child s play for a hacker. A small note pad or notebook and pen or pencil will probably cost you less than US$1.00, but it can make it simultaneously much easier for you to remember what complex password you used at a given website and also that much harder for a hacker to gain access to your private information. Use different usernames and passwords on every website you access and keep a log of them all. Don t use simple passwords that are words. Make sure the password contains letters and numbers, and ChAnGe ThE CaSe if the website password is case sensitive. If you decide to write your password and usernames into a book, it is recommended that you not actually write the passwords themselves in the book, in case you loose it. Write a hint to yourself that you know will be easy for you to reconstruct the correct password. For example, if you password is MpImHig66, then you might write something like: My password is: my host is good 2x3x2. That is rather simplistic, but you get the general idea. There are also several computer programs that offer to save passwords and other sensitive information heavily encrypted so only if a person knows the (hopefully hard to guess) master password will they be able to access your private info, even if they steal the file itself. 2) Insecure Scripts/Programs: Although phpmycoolscript v1.0 might be the best thing since the advent of the Internet, that doesn t mean that it is totally secure. Hackers constantly look for holes that will allow them to bypass the security built into a script or program and the more popular a script is, the more likely that hackers will target it to try and find holes. Once you make a choice to install a script or program on your website (whether you use CPANEL s autoinstaller or something like Fantastico) it will be up to YOU to make sure that you keep up with installing the latest versions of a script (it is NOT up to CPANEL.NET, us or anyone else). New versions of scripts don t only add new features; they very often fix identified security holes. If you are uncertain how to go about updating the scripts you use, ask other people who use the same script or visit the Page 75 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

76 website of the author(s) of the script in question and see if they have directions on how to upgrade from an older version. Chances are good that they will have upgrade directions. 3) Social Engineering: Believe it or not, hackers can very often gain access to your site directly from YOU. They might send you an claiming to be someone from your web host or some other official company, they might even tell you that you need to go to a particular web page and update your personal information or enter your credit card information. The website might even look legit on the surface. How do you defend against this sort of thing? First and foremost, PAY ATTENTION AND THINK ABOUT WHAT YOU ARE BEING ASKED FOR. Does it make sense? Does the e- mail address, URL, etc. not match what you think it should? For example, if your web host doesn t provide support via instant messaging clients and all of the sudden you get an instant message from someone claiming to be from your web host, be VERY careful and don t give out any personal information. Immediately contact your web host through official channels and find out if the contact is really from an employee or not. Most web hosts are very careful about this and will typically only contact you through official channels. Keep in mind that most web hosts use a payment processor like PayPal or 2checkout.com to handle credit card and payment options and so should never need access to your personal credit card information. Check with your web host to see what they would likely contact you about and ask you for and when in doubt do NOT provide personal information to anyone you don t feel comfortable with for any reason. 4) Virus/Worm/Keylogger/Spyware: If you don t have a good virus-scanning program, then you really should go out and get one RIGHT NOW. Also, be sure to keep it up-todate or it will basically be useless. Even if you have one that is up-to-date, don t allow this to lull you into a false sense of security, new viruses and other security threats are released basically every day, so it s possible your virus scanner could miss the very latest virus/worm or keylogger. Also, you need to be careful not to let that friend of a friend have unsupervised access to your computer, no matter how nice they seem. It only takes a few seconds for a prepared hacker to install a nearly invisible keylogger that records everything you type and sends a copy to the person who installed it. They can use that to gain access to all of your personal information. These are not the only ways that a hacker can gain access to your site or computer, but they are some of the most common. OK, now it s time for the plan for the worst part: What happens if your site DOES get hacked? First, don t panic! The damage is probably already done and isn t likely to get too much worse. This doesn t mean you should not attempt to take action immediately because you may be able to stop the problem from getting much worse. Whatever you do, DO NOT call/ us in a total panic and demand that we do something immediately!!!!!!! because this isn t going to help us or you. Try to calm down and provide your host with as much information as you can, including but not necessarily limited to: The domain name of the site that has been hacked, with a URL to a page illustrating the problem if possible. Page 76 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

77 Your CPANEL username and your server s IP address (or the server name if you know it). You can typically find the server IP address in the welcome account information that we sent you (NEVER delete this information). We will need to confirm that you are the legitimate owner of the site. Receiving an or call from you isn t necessarily good proof that you are who you say you are. Your host may ask you for your billing information like the name on the account, the billing address, last 4 digits of your credit card (but be wary if they ask for the entire number), the plan you originally signed up for, when you signed up, etc. Try to make sure you have as much of this information on hand before you contact your web host. You should provide as much information about the problem as you can manage: When did you first notice the problem? Did someone threaten to hack your site recently? Did you notice anything odd in your site error or raw logs in the days or hours leading up to the attack? If you don t know exactly when the hacking attempt happened, when was the last time you accessed your site and it worked fine? Once the hacker has been locked out of your account and your site returns to your control (make SURE you immediately change your site/script passwords), it is time to assess the damage and try to restore your files. Did you have any important private information on your site? (Credit card info, personal address information, etc.) You may want to contact your credit card company or any other users who might have been affected and let them know what happened so they can take steps to protect themselves. It is possible that we have backups of your files from before the hacking attempt happened, but you should not count on this. Believe it or not, it isn t our responsibility to keep current backups of your site. Even if we DO have a recent backup it may take time for us to locate your files and restore them for you. So what should you do? Restore from your OWN backups that you made using CPANEL s backup feature (or any automated method you had in place). Just go into your CPANEL, restore the home directory backup, alias and filters and MySQL databases. What? You don t have a recent backup? Who s fault is that? That s right! YOURS. Sorry to be so blunt about it, but if you don t take the maintenance and security of your site seriously, why would you expect anyone else to? It is important to learn from any such hacking experience so that you do everything in your power not to fall prey to the same kind of attack again. Hopefully this will never happen to you, but if it does it is always helpful to be prepared. Another common type of attack is a Distributed Denial of Service (DDOS) attack. This sort of attack uses many computers to flood your server with fake requests for information. While this won t affect the data in your account like a direct hacking attempt could, but it will slow down your server to the point where your website may no longer be accessible. Web hosts and data centers work hard to combat these sorts of attacks, but they are difficult to protect against. Please try to be understanding with us if your server is the subject of a DDOS attack, because it can take Page 77 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

78 a while to filter out all of the fake traffic and return things to normal. Rather than go into depth here, please read the following excellent article on what DDOSes are and how they work: Actually, there is a LOT of good security-related information available at this site, so take a few minutes to look around. It can even scan your personal computer for common weaknesses which may help to protect you from some of the items mentioned earlier. Page 78 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

79 Chapter 34: Helpful Links for Webmasters In this section, you will find some links that you, as a budding webmaster will probably find quite handy. Some of these links were already discussed in this guide; others are new. Category and Name Link Notes Information about CPANEL: CPANEL.NET HTML and basic website information for webmasters: HTML Basix Open Source Web Design Comteche GuiStuff Template Monster Programming and scripting resources for webmasters: HotScripts W3 Schools PHP World Bravenet CGI Spy Includes on-line and downloadable CPANEL documentation. Tips, tutorials and even automatic code generation tools for webmasters. Free HTML templates for webmasters, More free HTML and Flash templates. Not full templates, but lots of free web Graphic User Interface stuff. Sometimes you want something a bit more unique. For a small fee, you have access to thousands of web templates and tools. One of the premier places to find free and for-a-fee scripts to use on your site. Tutorials on almost any topic a webmaster might be interested in. A good site to visit if you are learning to program in PHP. Offers free web tools that require no setup and you don t even have to install any scripts. Advertising supported (or ad free for a fee). Similar to Bravenet. Also advertising supported (unless you pay a fee) Page 79 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,

80 Category and Name Link Notes Domain and DNS tools: WHOIS.sc Free DNS related tools (WHOIS, DNS Report Site monitoring and redundancy services: Secondary Site Uptime No-IP Programs to keep passwords and confidential data: Web Confidential traceroute, ping, etc.). Can tell you all kinds of important information about a site. Very useful if you are having problems reaching the site. Free redundant name service. Doesn t seem to work at the moment. Free or paid site uptime monitoring. Free dynamic IP redirection, also offers very good redundant nameservers and even backup mail services for a fee. Excellent cross-platform secure data/password keeper for Mac, Windows and even Palm OS Page 80 of 80 Hostdime.com s CPANEL 9.9 Guide Aric Pedersen,