Complete Guide to cPanel

The first thing we need to do before moving on to the next steps is to log in to our cPanel. To do this, simply open a web browser (Google Chrome, Firefox, Explorer, etc.) and enter the IP address and port for accessing our cPanel in the URL bar.

Next, the cPanel login screen will appear, where you’ll need to enter your username and password.

Once you’ve entered the correct username and password, you’ll have access to your cPanel and can proceed with the next steps in this guide.

To add a new domain, go to the "Domains" section of your cPanel and select the "Additional Domains" option .

Once there, the following window will open:

Fill in the first field labeled “New Domain Name” with the name of your new domain—for example, “pruebadominio.com”—which is the one we’ve used for this guide, as shown in the next slide.

Once we’ve entered our domain name in the first field, the remaining fields will be filled in automatically, and all we’ll have to do is click the “Add Domain” button .

Next, a message should appear confirming that the process was successful and that your domain has been added correctly.

Finally, you can verify that your domain has been created successfully.

To add a new subdomain, go to the "Domains" section of your cPanel and select the "Subdomains" option .

A window will open with blank fields to fill out; enter the details for your new subdomain there.

Fill them out as follows: in the first field, enter the name of your subdomain; directly below that, select the domain you want it to be associated with; the last field will be filled in automatically once you choose a name for your subdomain.

Once you’ve completed all these steps, click the “Create” button to start the process of creating your subdomain.

If the entire process has been completed correctly and without any issues, the following confirmation message will appear; you can then return to the previous window.

Finally, you’ll see that your new subdomain has been added.

To create a redirect, go to the "Domains" section of your cPanel and select the "Redirect" option .

The following window will appear, in which you must fill in the blank fields to create the redirect.

• In the first field, you can select the type of redirect—whether you want it to be 301 (Permanent) or 302 (Temporary).
• Next, select the domain from which you want to set up the redirect.
• You’ll need to choose the folder within the previously selected domain that you want to redirect.
• The domain to which you want to redirect.
• Finally, you can decide whether to include “www” in the redirect and whether to use a wildcard redirect.

Once these steps are complete, click the “Add” button to add this new redirect.

You can verify that the redirect has been added to the list of created redirects.

To create an alias that allows us to access a website using other names, we need to go to the "Domains" section of our cPanel and select the "Alias" option .

There, you’ll see the following window, where you’ll need to fill in the domain field with the name of the new alias:

Click the “Add Domain” button, and a message should appear confirming that the process was successful.

After that, you’ll be able to see the new alias in the list of created aliases, and you can edit it if you want to add a redirect.

To install an SSL certificate and redirect from http to https, follow these steps.

First, go to the “Security” section of your cPanel and select the “SSL/TLS” option .

Once there, you’ll be taken to the following window, where you should select the Certificates (CRT) option.

A new window will open, and you’ll need to scroll down the page until you reach the “Generate a New Certificate” section .

In this section, you must fill in the following fields to generate the new certificate:

• Key: Leave this set to the default option (Generate a new 2048-bit key).
• Domains: Enter the domain(s) for which you want to generate the key.
• City: Any city you choose, preferably where the company is located.
• State: The same applies as for City.
• Country: Same as for City and State.
• Company: The name of our company.
• Division: The division of that company.
• Email: An email address we have access to.
• Description: A brief description of the certificate.

After generating the certificate, the following message will appear; simply click the “Install” option as shown in the screenshot below.

Another window will open where you should select your domain, click the “Auto-fill” button to have the certificate filled in automatically, and finally click “Install.”

Finally, a message will appear confirming that the installation was successful.

To create a MySQL database—which will be very useful for our websites regardless of the CMS we use to build them—the first thing we need to do is go to the “Database” section and select the “MySQL Databases” option .

A window will open where you can create a database, create a user, and associate the user with the database.

The first thing we need to do is create a database. To do this, in the first field labeled “New Database,” we’ll enter the name of the database we want.

Next, we need to create a user.

Once we have created a user and a MySQL database, we’ll link that user to the database and grant them the desired privileges.

The first thing we need to do is access the phpMyAdmin section; to do this, we'll go to the "Database" section and then select "phpMyAdmin."

When we access phpMyAdmin, a main window will open where we can see the databases we created earlier.

At this point, you can access each database and edit or modify it as needed.

The first thing we need to do is access the DNS zone creator and editor; to do this, go to the “Domains” section and then select “Zone Editor.”

A window will open where you can view every domain that has been created, and for each of these domains, you can create a DNS zone with an “A Record, ” “CNAME Record,” or “MX Record.”

Depending on which one you select, you’ll see several fields to fill out to create that DNS zone.

A CRON job is a scheduled task in our cPanel that will run a command at regular intervals that we have previously set.

The first thing we need to do is access the CRON job settings. To do this, go to the “Advanced” section and select the “CRON Jobs” option .

Once there, you’ll see a section called “General Settings, ” where you can enter the command’s execution time and the command itself.

In the first fields, you can enter the minutes, hours, days, month, and day of the week. cPanel also provides some default options to simplify the process; for this guide, as an example, we’ve used the 5-minute option.

Next, we must enter the command we’ll run during this time period for this scheduled CRON task.

For this guide, we’ll use the following command as an example:

wget -q -O /dev/null -t 1 "http://unejemplo.es/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron" >/dev/null 2>&1

And finally, we’ll select the option to add a new cron job to add the new task.

Now we can see the new cron job that has been created.

The file manager is, as its name suggests, simply a file explorer or browser very similar to the one you might find in a graphical operating system like Windows or Ubuntu, but with the difference that it is somewhat more limited since it is a cPanel web-based file manager.

The first thing we need to do is access the file manager; to do this, go to the “Files” section and select the “File Manager” option .

Once you’ve accessed this option, you can start working with the File Manager. In the first window, you’ll see a layout where, on the left, there’s a list of all the folders—this lets you see how many folders you have and access them quickly. On the right, you’ll see a much more detailed view of each folder’s contents.

From the right-hand panel, you can move, copy, download, and perform other actions on your files.

The first thing we need to do to check how much storage space has been used in our cPanel is to go to the “Files” section and select the “Disk Usage” option .

We can view the used space in two ways; the first is a more visual representation broken down by folder.

Or in a tree view, where you can see directories and their contents.

First, go to the "Files" section in cPanel and select the " Directory Privacy" option .

The first thing you’ll see is a list of folders, which you can select to set permissions.

Once we select one, the following window will open, where we can enter a name for the protected directory and also create a username and password for our protected folder.

To create an FTP account, first navigate to the "Files" section in cPanel and select the " FTP Accounts" option .

A page will open that is divided into three sections: one for creating an FTP account, the second for existing FTP accounts, and the third for accounts created by default, known as special accounts.

In the section where you can add an FTP account, enter the username you’ll use for this account, along with the domain it will belong to, the password, the directory where it will be located, and its quota—which, in our case, will be unlimited.

Click the “Create FTP Account” button; a message will appear confirming that the account has been successfully created, and you can now see the account in the list of created FTP accounts.

Finally, at the bottom of this window, you’ll see the accounts created by default, labeled “Special FTP Accounts.”

The first thing we need to do is go to the JetBackup section (to do this, we must have the JetBackup module installed), where we'll see all the backup options that cPanel offers.

Depending on the type of backup you want, select one of the options offered by JetBackup; the process is similar in all cases.

In our case, we select the “Full Account Backups” option, and the following window opens, displaying a list of the most recent backups sorted from newest to oldest.

For all backups, you can either restore them or download them.

If you select the restore option, an alert window will open where you must accept the terms and conditions and enter an email address to which a notification will be sent once the restore is complete.

With the “Generate Download” option, you can request a download link for that backup. After a waiting period (which varies depending on the backup’s size), you’ll be able to download it without any issues.

In the case of the “file backups” option, the process is slightly different, as this option allows you to view each folder and file in the backups, enabling you to make a more precise selection of what you want to restore or download.

Once you select this option, a window will open where you must select a backup from the list, which is sorted by creation date from most recent to least recent.

Select the “File Manager” link for the backup you want, and you’ll be able to view and select the folders within that backup.

Once you’ve selected these folders, you can choose what to do with them: restore them, download them, or deselect them.

First, go to the " Email" section and select the " Email Accounts" option .

When you click on it, a window will open , and you should select the “Add Email Account” option .

Fill in the fields, select the domain or subdomain you want it to belong to, and click “Create Account.”

The auto-reply feature in cPanel is a very basic system that allows you to set a specific email address to automatically reply to all emails sent to it. The first thing you need to do is navigate to the “Email” section and select the “Auto-reply” option .

You’ll see a list of existing autoresponders, if any, but we’ll click the “Add Autoresponder” button .

Next, you’ll need to fill out the following required fields to create the auto-reply:

• Character set: In our case, we’ll leave it as the default setting.
• Interval: The time (in hours) between responses to the same email address.
• Email: The email address that will automatically reply to all incoming emails using this autoresponder.
• Domain: The name of the domain to which this email address belongs.
• From: The email address that will appear in our replies.
• Subject: The subject line of the reply.
• Body: The content of the reply email.

All that’s left to do is select the “Create/Modify” option .

The first thing we need to do is go to the “Email” section and select the “Forwarders” option .

When you open this option, you’ll see a list of existing forwarders and the two types of forwarders you can create: “Add Forwarder” or “Add Domain Forwarder.” You can also choose which domain to add the forwarder to or whether to add it to all domains.

With “Add Forwarder,” you can set up forwarding so that all emails are forwarded to another email address that you specify.

When adding a domain forwarder, the goal is similar to the previous option, except that in this case, you can forward all emails from one domain to another.

To find the information needed to set up an email client in cPanel, the first thing you need to do is navigate to the “Email” section and select the “Email Accounts” option .

Once there, you’ll see a list of the email accounts you’ve created; select the “Access Webmail” option to view the details.

With the email delivery tracking option in cPanel, you can see whether an email sent from a cPanel server email account has reached its destination.

To do this, first go to the “Email” section and select the “Track Delivery” option .

Once there, you’ll be able to see the list of sent emails and their delivery status.

We need to closely monitor our bandwidth usage through cPanel. A very useful tool for this task is the “Bandwidth” feature located in the “Metrics” section .

Here, you can view statistics on the bandwidth used over the past few days.

To access the AWStats log analyzer, the first thing you need to do is scroll down to the “Metrics” section and select the “AWStats” option .

Once there, you’ll see a list of your domains; select the domain for which you want to view the AWStats.

To check resource usage in cPanel (RAM, CPU, etc.), the first thing we need to do is install Cloudnix, which will allow us to view resource statistics.

Scroll down to the “Metrics” section and select the “CPU and Concurrent Connection Usage” option .

The following window will open; select the “Details” option to view the statistics on resource usage.

To enable and disable ModSecurity, the first thing we need to do is scroll down to the “Security” section and select the “ModSecurity” option .

Once there, you’ll see a list of your domains and can enable or disable ModSecurity for the domain of your choice.

The first thing we need to do is go to the “Security” section and select the “Direct Link Protection” option .

A window will open where, in addition to enabling this option, we can add URLs to allow access to, add extensions to block direct access to, or even enter a URL to which to redirect the request.

Knowing how to defend against attacks originating from specific IP addresses is very important; for this reason, cPanel offers a very useful tool for dealing with this type of attack.

The first thing to do is navigate to the “Security” section and select the “IP Blocker” option .

Once there, the first thing you’ll see is the field where you can enter the IP range you want to block.

Once you’ve entered the IP address you want to block, it should appear in the list of blocked IP addresses located just below.

To activate Deflate, you'll need to follow one simple step: first, go to the "Software" section and click on the "Optimize Website" option .

Next, check the second box labeled “Compress all content.”

Click the “Update Settings” button, and a confirmation message will appear.

To select the PHP version you want for cPanel, the first thing you need to do is scroll down to the “Software” section and select the “Select PHP Version” option .

Once the page opens, you can select the desired PHP version.

To select PHP extensions or modules, the first thing you need to do is navigate to the “Software” section and select the “Select PHP Version” option .

The next window will display the PHP modules and extensions for each PHP version; simply check or uncheck the ones you want.

To configure PHP variables and limits, the first thing you need to do is scroll down to the “Software” section and select the “Select PHP Version” option .

In this window, select the “Switch to PHP Options” option located on the right side of the window.

A table will open where you can edit the PHP variables and limits as desired.

To install a CMS from Softaculous, first go to the “Softaculous APPS Installer” section and select the “Softaculous Apps Installer” option .

In the Softaculous window that opens, you’ll see a list of CMSs you can install; for this guide, we’ve chosen “PrestaShop.”

Select it, and then simply click the “Install” button next to the description.