Creating a New cPanel Account on Your Server (WHM) Print

What this is

On your own VPS, you create and manage the individual cPanel accounts that host your websites, and you do that in WHM, the control panel that sits above cPanel. Each cPanel account is one website with its own login, its own files, its own email, and its own space, and WHM is where you create them, one per site you want to host. This article walks through creating one safely.

This applies to VPS server owners. If you are on shared hosting, your account is already made for you and this is not something you need, our shared-hosting and cPanel articles cover your setup instead.

Before you start: know your packages

Every cPanel account is created from a package, a preset that defines what the account gets: its disk space, bandwidth, number of mailboxes, databases, and so on. Your server has packages set up, and the account you create inherits whatever the chosen package allows.

This matters because the package and feature limits are the boundaries of what an account can do. They are set deliberately, and they are how the server's resources are shared out sensibly among the accounts on it. Create accounts from the packages available, and you stay within a configuration that works. If you need a package that does not exist yet, or different limits, that is a moment to talk to us rather than to go changing the underlying configuration yourself, for the reasons the last section explains.

Creating the account

1. Log in to WHM on your server.
2. In the search box top-left, type Create and open Create a New Account.
3. Domain: enter the domain this account is for. WHM uses it to suggest a username, which you can adjust.
4. Username and password: confirm the username and set a strong password, use the generator, a cPanel account password is exactly the kind of credential our security articles urge you to make strong and unique.
5. Email: enter a contact email address for the account.
6. Package: choose the package that suits this site, which sets its resources and limits as described above.
7. Leave the remaining options at their defaults unless you have a specific reason to change them, and click Create.

The account is created in moments, and you can then log in to its cPanel, point the domain at the server, and set the site up exactly as our cPanel and getting-started articles describe. From the account's point of view, it behaves just like any cPanel hosting account.

After creating an account

• Point the domain at the server so the account is reachable, and remember you can work on it via the server's IP while DNS propagates, as our FTP and order articles cover.
• Set up the website and email inside the account's own cPanel, the same tasks as on any hosting account.
• Keep a note of the account's details, its username, its package, and what it is for, because a server with many accounts is easy to lose track of.

Managing and removing accounts

WHM also lists your accounts and lets you suspend, unsuspend, modify, or terminate them, under the account-management tools findable via the search box. Two cautions worth stating: modifying an account's package changes its limits, and terminating an account permanently deletes it and everything in it, the website, the databases, and the email, with no undo. Before terminating any account, make sure it is genuinely finished with and that anything worth keeping has been backed up, exactly the discipline our backups article stresses. Termination is immediate and final.

What to leave to us

Creating, managing, and removing accounts from your existing packages is safe self-service, and it is yours to do. Changing the server's underlying configuration is not: editing the feature lists, altering what packages fundamentally allow at the server level, or changing server-wide settings can undermine the security hardening and tuning we maintain on your behalf. So create accounts freely from the packages available, but if you need the packages themselves changed, or new ones built, or limits adjusted server-wide, ask us and we will set them up correctly. You fill the server with accounts; we look after the server underneath them.

Good to know

The mental model that keeps this simple: on your VPS, WHM is for managing accounts, and each account's own cPanel is for managing that one website. Create an account per site, from a sensible package, with a strong password, and it behaves exactly like the hosting you already know. And because terminating an account is instant and irreversible, treat that one button with respect, everything else in account management is safely reversible, but deletion is not.