cPanel Basics: Reseller accounts |
Article ID: 783 |
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Recently, 3Essentials brought online it's first cPanel based Linux shared hosting server. Our previous Linux shared hosting servers were based on the Plesk control panel. While we've retained Plesk as our Windows shared hosting solution, we have made the move to cPanel for our current Linux shared hosting solutions based on customer demand.
cPanel varies from Plesk in the way it manages multiple-domain accounts. Plesk was fairly straight forward, in that you had one Plesk control panel account to manage all of your domains under a single hosting plan. For example:
- if you had a 1-domain hosting plan: you had one Plesk control panel account, that was allowed to create and manage exactly one domain.
- If you had a 10-domain hosting plan, you had one Plesk control panel account, and it was allowed to create and manage 10 domains...
Note that last item, one control panel account was used to manage all 10 domains under that 10-domain hosting plan. This is not the case with the cPanel brand control panel.
cPanel takes a different approach. cPanel has two different types of control panel interfaces (websites) which facilitate two different functions for the user:
- First, there's the basic cPanel Control Panel.
- If you have a single-domain linux hosting plan, this is the only interface you will ever use. You'll log into this interface/website with the control panel username and password 3Essentials provided you in your welcome email, and you'll manage that domain there... i.e., create databases or email users on that domain.
- If you have a linux Reseller based plan, you will use the cPanel Control Panel to manage that first domain that was set up with your Reseller hosting plan. For that one domain, you'll log into this cPanel Control Panel with that original control panel username and password 3Essentials provided you, in order to manage that domain, i.e. to create databases on that domain, or email users for that domain.
- Next, there's the WebHostManager, also referred to as the WHM.
- You might also refer to this as the RESELLER interface... if you have a RESELLER account, you will be using this interface as well.
- You log into the WebHostManager not to manage domains... but instead to CREATE other cPanel Control Panel accounts, each of which would be used to manage yet another domain.
So, here's how this might look... I sign up with 3Essentials for a Linux Reseller-20 hosting plan which includes 20 domains. At the time I sign up, I specify my domain as "domain1.com". 3Essentials will set up my hosting plan and send me a Welcome Email with my control panel username and password, let's say that is:
control panel username: cp12345
control panel password: password
- I can use that control panel username "cp12345" to log into the cPanel Control Panel and from there I would be able to manage my domain called domain1.com.
- Because I have a reseller account, "cp12345" also has the ability to log into the WebHostManager (WHM)
- Within the WebHostManager,I would then be able to CREATE additional cpanel logins, one for each additional domain to be used by my customers... the people I'm reselling to. For example:
- cPanel user account cp22222 for domain2.com
- cPanel user account cp33333 for domain3.com
- cPanel user account cp44444 for domain4.com
- Each one of these new cPanel user accounts would each respectively be able to log into the cPanel Control Panel and be able to manage just their respective domains. I.e. user "cp22222" could log into the cPanel Control Panel and manage domain2.com (and only domain2.com).
- None of these cPanel user accounts would be able to log into WebHostManager, this is because those accounts (cp22222, cp33333, etc) are not enabled as RESELLER accounts... only my original control panel account (cp12345) was enabled as a RESELLER account, so only that account will have access to WebHostManager, meaning of course that only it (cp12345) would be able to create additional control panel accounts.
- Since I have a Reseller-20 plan... I'll be able to create 19 additional cPanel Control Panel user accounts... remember that the first one was already created for me, cp12345 was also a cPanel control panel account set up to manage my first domain, domain1.com.
Let's restate that one more way... in my example above, cp12345/password would have the ability to log into BOTH interfaces... both cPanel Control Panel and WebHostManager:
- when logged into cPanel Control Panel, it's just a normal cPanel control panel account, designed to manage a single domain.
- when logged into WebHostManager, it's a RESELLER account, capable of creating other cPanel control panel accounts, each designed to manage one domain via the cPanel Control Panel.
For our new cPanel custmers, you will find the and interfaces/websites are available here:
- web9 customers:
- web11 customers:
For assistance in using WebHostManager to create other control panel accounts and domains, please see this article: cPanel basics: creating additional accounts via WHM |
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