Four CPanel Tasks Beginners Should Learn To Use

When you create your first site, there's a good chance you'll be hosting that site on a server that uses Cpanel as its control panel. CPanel is great but it can be a little intimidating to a newbie. You'll likely find it easy enough to locate and handle some tasks, such as setting up a new email account, but others may not be so obvious. Rather than focus on showing you how to use every feature of CPanel, I want to touch on just four tasks that you'll probably need to understand at some point, but aren't already obvious in how to use them.

Addon Domains

Many hosts allow you to create one account, while giving you the ability to host multiple domains from that one account. One way they might handle this is to use the Addon Domains feature. Let's assume you own four domains, which we'll call maindomain.com, thisdomain.com, thatdomain.com and theotherdomain.com, for example purposes. The Addon Domain feature essentially lets you store each of your additional domain files (thisdomain.com, thatdomain.com, and theotherdomain.com for example) all in separate subfolders under your maindomain.com. Then the server's under-the-hood magic treats each as separate entities, without having to create four different accounts. You don't have to understand how it works. All you need to know is how to set it up, and it's very easy.

Simply look in the Domains section and click on Addon Domains. Then just place the domain name (such as thatdomain.com) in the New Domain Name field. The Subdomain/FTP Username and Document Root fields will automatically populate based on your domain name, and you can just leave them as is. Just enter a password, and you're ready to host a new site on your existing account.

Setting Up A Database

Many scripts (such as WordPress or forum scripts) expect you to set up a database before installing the script. This is very easy to do. Keep in mind that the process involves three steps:

1. Creating a new database
2. Creating a new user (if you haven't already created one for a previous database)
3. Adding that new user to the database (which really means giving that user access to the database with all priveleges to use it)

To begin, click on MySQL Databases in the Databases section. In the Create New Database area, type a name for your new database and click the Create Database button. It doesn't matter what you name this database, but I recommend you make it one descriptive word (no space or odd characters), so you'll recognize what it's for in the future.

Next, scroll down to the Add New User form under MySQL Users, and type in a username and password, and then click the Add User button.

Finally, in the Add User To Database area, choose the user you created and the database you created, and click the Add button. On the following screen, be sure to give the user all priveleges (check all the checkboxes) to the database.

Make sure to write down the database name, user name, and user password, because you will probably need to supply that information to your script's install process. It's also very likely that your Cpanel process will add some word (perhaps your Cpanel username) to the beginning of whatever database name and username you created. So if your Cpanel username is janedoey for instance, and you create a new database called mywpblog, then Cpanel may tell you that the name of your new database is now janedoey_mywpblog. Anything it puts in front of what you entered is part of the actual name that you'll need to supply to your script's install process.

Using the File Manager

Although using an FTP program, such as Filezilla, is generally much faster and easier than using Cpanel's File Manager, there is one particular instance when using File Manager makes much more sense. If you ever need to delete a large group of files within a subfolder (and perhaps that subfolder contains many other subfolders and files), it's an instant process if you use File Manager. Just click on the folder to delete, and within the blink of an eye, everything within that folder gets deleted right away. If you were to try to delete a folder containing a lot of files and subfolders using an FTP program, you'd be pulling your hair out as you wait for each file and folder to delete itself one at a time, very very slowly.

So, if you need to use the File Manager, either to delete entire folders, or perhaps because FTP just isn't working for you for some reason, simply go to the Files section of Cpanel and click on File Manager. (If you also see Legacy File Manager, ignore that option, as it's an old version of File Manager).

Backing Up Files and Databases

I can't stress the importance of backing up your site enough. It's hugely, vitally important. Just do it, and do it often. Even if your host does it for you, do it yourself as well. Treat backups as an absolute must-do, and don't even think about slacking off. Ok, now that the lecture is over, backing up is really simple. Just click on the Backups button in the Files section. On the next screen, click on the Home Directory button listed under Download a Home Directory Backup. Then click on a database name under the Download a MySQL Database Backup section. Simple, right?

I'll revisit Cpanel in a later tutorial, and touch upon other tasks you might need to learn about, but for now, these four should help in most situation you'll encounter as you set up your first website.

Tags: cpanel

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 22nd, 2011 at 8:36 am and is filed under Building Websites. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.