How to create a cPanel hosting account in WHM?

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You can establish and administer several hosting accounts using the WHM interface, each of which is assigned to a domain name. Each hosting account so created can be handled by the respective user of the account via a cPanel interface. Let's see how to create a cPanel account under WHM.

The interface to create a new account in WHM can be accessed from Account Functions >> Create a New Account.

Let's look at and understand the various sections of the new account creation form:

1. Domain Information

Domain: The domain name for the account - say, mywebsite.com. Do not prepend www. to the domain name you specify here. Your website will be automatically accessible by visiting mywebsite.com or www.mywebsite.com in a web browser, without the need to specifically prepend www. in the domain name here.

Username: The username for the new account. The username must be unique (i.e. not clash with another cPanel account on the same server) and contain 16 characters or fewer. It must contain only lower-case alphabets and numbers, and must always start with an alphabet. It is better to keep the username to exactly 8 characters. This prevents issues with database prefixing and account transfers. If you are migrating an already existing cPanel account from another server to this server, assign the same username as that used in your source hosting account.

Password: The password for the new account.

Re-type Password: The password you entered in the previous text field.

Strength: This alerts you on the strength of the assigned password. The system evaluates the password that you enter on a scale of 100 points. 0 indicates a weak password, while 100 indicates a very strong password. A green password strength meter implies that the password is strong enough. It is advisable to use the Password Generator to generate and assign a strong password.

Email: The contact email address for the new account. This could be either the email address of your WHM admin or the user responsible to manage this specific cPanel account.

2. Resource Allocation

The Package section allows you to assign a package to the account you are creating. A package is essentially a configuration set that defines the feature limits of the account that it is assigned to. It determines how much disk space, bandwidth, etc. are allocated for the account. The WHM Packages section provides the required interfaces to create multiple packages with different configuration and feature set as per your need.

WHM even allows you to instead allocate resources and enable features manually, and save the same as a new package.

WHM also allows you to create multiple features lists and assign one of the them to each created package.

3. Additional Features

The package selected determines which of the above features are enabled or disabled. Check or uncheck the available features to enable or disable them. The Shell Access option may not be available if your WHM is on a shared reseller server. You can also specify the cPanel language here depending upon the language that the concerned cPanel user is more conversant with.

4. Reseller Settings

The option to assign reseller privileges to the created account may be available only if you have purchased a VPS or dedicated server.

5. Mail Routing Settings

The mail routing settings allow you to specify how to route mails for the account being created. Select any one of the following settings:

• Automatically Detect Configuration: If this is selected the server will auto detect the applicable mail routing based on the attached domain's DNS records.
• Local Mail Exchanger: This setting indicates that the email accounts for the domain are also hosted in the same server.
• Backup Mail Exchanger: This setting indicates that the primary mail server is elsewhere and this server is only used as a backup mail server when the primary mail server is down.
• Remote Mail Exchanger: This setting indicates that mails are hosted on an external server and this server does not accept mails locally for this domain.

6. DNS Settings

The DNS Settings section allows you to enable the new account’s DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF). You can also configure which nameservers to be used to resolve the attached domain to this server. When you enable DKIM & SPF for the account, the associated DNS records are auto created in the domain's DNS zone managed by the host server. However, if you are using an external DNS server to manage the DNS records for this domain, you will need to copy the DKIM and SPF zone records (by looking up the DNS zone records locally) on the external DNS server.

Enable DKIM on the created account: DKIM allows the account to associate it's domain name with email messages that it sends. The system will attach a digital signature to the header. A recipient’s mail transfer agent will verify the signature through DNS. This allows a recipient mail server to confirm that the message came from the account’s listed domain and hence is a genuine mail and not spoofed. It also helps reduce the chances that mail filters will mark the account’s message as spam.

Enable SPF on the created account: SPF allows a recipient mail server to verify the domain name in the From field of a message. This reduces the chance that a mail recipient’s spam filters will mark a message as spam. The system uses the following record by default:

Use the nameservers specified at the Domain’s Registrar (Ignore locally specified nameservers): Enabling this allows a different server to host the nameservers for this account. Keep it unchecked.

Nameservers: This section displays the nameservers to be used for this account. Assign these nameservers to your domain name from your domain management control panel. This will make the domain point to the created hosting server. Allow for 4 hrs to 4 days for the nameservers to propagate.

After above settings are done, click at CREATE button to create the new hosting account. After the account is created, you will see a confirmation message that displays the account’s settings. You only need to copy the below part and paste it in a text file and save it for future reference.

You will need the above username and password to access your account's cPanel and also connect to your hosting space via FTP. To access your cPanel, after the nameservers have propagated, visit url - https://mywebsite.com/cpanel

To know how to connect via FTP, check this blog post.

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