Crucial Web Hosting

The first time you login to cPanel, you'll need to set a primary and secondary (optional) contact email address. These should be set to an address other than one associated with the primary domain or any domain you plan to host on this account.

Once this is set, you'll receive disk space, bandwidth, and mailbox quota emails to this address. You'll also be able to reset your password from the login page in case you forget it. Once you've set up your contacts, you can access the rest of cPanel.

So let's take a look at the main page. We'll start with the sidebar, which contains useful information about your account, resource usage, etc.

Account Information

Here we have the primary domain associated with this account, your username, IP address, and the hosting plan you're using. If you're on Split-Shared, it will also show the tier in another row.

Account Usage

This information is specific to your user only, so you can see how much disk space and bandwidth you're using, how much space your databases consume, and resource-specific information about your CPU and RAM usage, how many files your account takes up, the number of running processes, and how many active HTTP connections are in use. Moving your mouse over the left column in each section will explain what each section means.

Account Limits

From here you can get a quick view of the account limits for email, FTP, addon domains, sub domains, parked domains, and databases.

Container Usage

Unlike the Account Information section, which only shows usage for a single user, this shows the usage for the entire container/server you're on. This is probably the most useful information because it lets you know if your container is using too many resources, whether it's disk, CPU or RAM, files, processes, or HTTP connections.

Container Information

Here you can see the container name, or short hostname, the current time and timezone of the server, the 5, 10, and 15 minute load averages, how long the container has been up, and links to view program paths and program versions (we'll explore this later).

Now that we've covered the sidebar, let's move on to the available features (starting from the top left and going down):

Crucial Web Hosting

This just has links to our home page and the Account Center, where you can view/pay invoices, update billing information, etc.

Preferences

Contact Manager

This is something you've already seen, as it's the first page that comes up. You shoudl always keep the contact email addresses in here current,

Change Password

Change the primary user's password, which includes the password you use for cPanel, FTP, SSH, and email.

Email

Email Accounts

Add or delete email accounts, change an account's password, and view the mail configuration options necessary to access your email (like incoming/outgoing mail server, port numbers, etc.).

Email Forwarders

Setup email forwarders that will forward mail sent to one address to one or more addresses.

Default Email Address

Determine how mail should be handled when it's sent to an invalid address, e.g. one you haven't created an email account or forwarder for. You can choose to forward the email to another address, discard it (which will send an email back to the sender with an error message), or pipe it to a program.

DNS

MX Records

Tell the server how your mail should be routed (locally or remotely). For example, if you use Google Apps for email, you would set mail to be handled remotely. You can also add, edit, and delete MX entries.

DNS Zone Editor

Control the zone file for your domain by adding, editing, or deleting A, CNAME, or TXT records. You can also reset your zone file back to the default setting.

Files

FTP Accounts

Create, delete, and change passwords for FTP accounts.

File Manager

You can do a lot of things in here, like create files and folders, copy and move files and folders, upload/download files, delete files, edit files, change file and folder permissions, and even compress (archive) or extract (unarchive) files.

Resources

File Usage

Allows you to see how many files your account is using. Split-Dedicated and Dedicated Server clients can also view the entire container's file usage, and the file usage for every cPanel account that's setup on the container.

Disk Usage

Shows the largest directories on your account, which you can browse deeper. This is useful to see what folders on your account take up the most space.

Bandwidth Usage

View charts of your daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly bandwidth usage. An easy way to see traffic trends, if your site is growing, or possibly identify a problem (e.g. a huge spike might indicate someone linking to your images or media from another domain).

CPU/RAM Usage

A two week overview of your daily CPU/RAM usage. This is a good tool to use to see if your account is using too many resources, which might indicate a problem or that you need to upgrade your hosting plan.

Logs

Mail Log

Shows you how the server handles incoming and outgoing email, allowing you to troubleshoot any issues, like a blocked or rejected email.

Cron Log

Shows you if and when a cron job runs.

Error Log

Shows the contents of the error_log file, if available, from your public_html directory.

Access Log

Download the raw HTTP and HTTPS (if available) access log for your account, which you can analyze in a text editor or a log analyzer program.

Slow Query Log

Enable and disable MySQL slow query logging, and view the output of the log file.

Security

SSH Keys

Setup SSH keys for your account, which allows you to login via SSH, SFTP, or SCP without having to enter a password.

IP Deny Manager

Block an IP address or an entire class of IP addresses from accessing your site.

Password Protection

Enable and disable password protection on web-accessible directories, and create users who can access these directories.

Advanced

Cron Manager

Add, edit, or delete cron jobs, and also set a contact address to receive emails with output from cron jobs.

PHP Configuration

View common master and local (if set in your .htaccess file) configuration values for PHP. There's also some information on how to override PHP settings (like changing the memory_limit) and how to create and PHP info file.

PHP Extension Manager

Install, update, reinstall, or uninstall PEAR extensions. You can also view system installed PEAR packages.

Support

This just has links to the Status Alerts page and the Support Center.

SSL

Generate CSR

Generate a CSR and Private RSA Key so you can purchase an SSL certificate from a third-party (or create a self-signed certificate).

Install SSL Certificate

Install a certificate that you purchased from us or a third-party.

Purchase SSL Certificate

Just a link to our SSL certificate page, where you can purchase GeoTrust or VeriSign certificates.

SSL Manager

View and delete .csr, .key, .crt, and .cabundle files.

Domains

Addon / Sub / Parked Domains

View, add, and delete addon, sub, or parked domains.

Redirect Manager

Quickly add or delete permanent or temporary redirects for one or all of your domains. For example, you can redirect all requests to www.mydomain.com to mydomain.com, or myotherdomain.com to mydomain.com.

Databases

MySQL Databases

Create and delete databases and database users, and assign users to a database.

Remote Access Hosts

Grant access to a remote domain or IP address so it can connect to one of your databases.

phpMyAdmin

An open source MySQL administrator that allows you to create, modify, or delete tables, fields, or rows, and execute SQL queries.

Backups

Download Backups

Download a backup of your files or databases.

Restore Backup

Restore a backup of your files or databases.

Accounts

View Accounts

From here you can view all of the cPanel accounts on your container. It will show you the domain, IP address, username, and disk space used. You can also delete accounts from here.

Create Account

Create a new cPanel account with a shared IP address (you can request a dedicated IP address for this from Billing once the account has been created).

Container

Disk Usage

View and browse through the largest directories on your container so you can see what is taking up the most space.

Service Status

Shows whether a service (FTP, Cron, SSH, POP3, SMTP, HTTP, IMAP, MySQL, etc.) is up or down. You can also view the load, CPU/RAM usage, and disk usage.

Restart Services

Restart FTP, HTTP, IMAP, MySQL, POP3, SSH, and SMTP services.

Process Manager

View and kill running processes for your user. Will also show you the process ID, amount of CPU and RAM its using, and how long its been running. On this page you can also view a week's worth of the top 3 processes for your account, which can be useful to find scripts that are using too many resources.

Software

Install Magento

Install the latest version of Magento, with or without sample data, in the directory and domain of your choice.

Tools

Domain Lookup

Runs a DiG lookup on a domain, which will show you the DNS zone information.

Email Delivery Route

Enter an email address and visually see how the email is handled, whether locally or remotely. Combined with the Mail Log, this is a great way to troubleshoot email problems.