WHM, or Web Host Manager, is a powerful web-based control panel that enables you to manage and oversee multiple cPanel accounts from a single interface.
In other words, WHM is a tool that allows you to create and manage multiple cPanel accounts for your clients, customers, or website users. It gives you complete control over the hosting environment, allowing you to set up email accounts, manage domains, install software, and configure various server settings.
With WHM, you can provide a white-label hosting solution to your customers and manage their hosting accounts efficiently. It's a great tool for those who want to resell hosting services and want to maintain full control over the hosting environment.
When you sign up for a reseller account at Brixly, you will receive a welcome email including some details on how to get started. This document though serves as a more extensive insight into the earlier stages of your reseller plan.
Open your web browser and enter the URL provided in your welcome email. The URL may look something like this: https://example.com:2087 or https://example.com/whm. Replace "example.com" with your domain name.
You'll see a login page where you need to enter your username and password. If you're logging in for the first time, your web host should have provided you with the login credentials. If you don't have them, contact your web host's support team to get them.
Once you've entered your login credentials, click the "Login" button to access the WHM dashboard.
The links to the control panel work in two ways. The first way is by using the hostname and the port number, like "alfa.hostns.io:2087". This method allows you to access WHM directly through the server's IP address or domain name followed by the port number.
The second way is by using the path, like "alfa.hostns.io/whm". This method allows you to access WHM through a subdirectory on your website.
Once you're logged in, you can access various tools and features to manage your hosting environment. These tools and features are organized into different sections, such as "Account Functions", "Server Configuration", "Security Center", "Email", and more.
That's it! You should now be able to log in to WHM and access the dashboard to manage your hosting accounts. Remember to keep your login credentials secure and change your password regularly to protect your hosting environment.
You will receive your login username and password within your welcome email, which is sent to your email address once you sign up for a reseller plan.
Please note that you can also log in without using the username and password for your WHM, by logging in via our client area.
To do this, you can log in to our client area at https://client.brixly.uk, navigate to ‘Services -> My Services’, selecting the reseller account.
From here, you can click ‘Login to WHM’, which will also securely log you into your WebHost Manager.
The WHM (Web Host Manager) interface is a web-based control panel that allows you to manage multiple cPanel accounts from a single location. The interface is designed to be easy to use, even for those who are not familiar with server administration.
The WHM interface is divided into several sections, each with its own set of tools and features. These sections include "Account Functions," "Server Configuration," "Security Center," "Email," "DNS," "SSL/TLS," and "Software." Each section contains a variety of tools that allow you to perform different functions, such as creating and managing hosting accounts, setting up email accounts, installing software, managing files, configuring server settings, and more.
The WHM interface also provides quick access to important information, such as server status, resource usage, and server logs. It also allows you to perform system updates, backups, and restores, as well as monitor and manage the security of your hosting environment.
Overall, the WHM interface is a comprehensive tool that enables you to manage and oversee all aspects of your hosting environment from a single, easy-to-use location. Whether you're a web hosting reseller, a web developer, or a system administrator, the WHM interface makes it easy to manage multiple cPanel accounts efficiently and effectively.
For the full documentation on WHM, please see the link below…
https://docs.cpanel.net/whm/
Please note, however, that you are using WHM as a ‘reseller’, which has restricted access to some of the features and functionality mentioned in the official documentation. Some tools and features are available to ‘root’, or administrative users only and won’t appear in your own instance of WHM.
You will see WHM has a ‘central’ dashboard, with a summarised set of options...
You will also see the main menu on the left-hand side, which gives you access to all of the functionality available within the WHM platform/interface.
It is worth familiarizing yourself with the features listed here to understand how WHM works.
We will cover some of the basic WHM terminologies here also.
In WHM, "Packages" are a feature that allows you to set predefined limits on resources for hosting accounts. When you create a new cPanel account, you can assign it a specific package, which will determine the resources that the account will be able to access.
A package can include various limits, such as disk space, bandwidth, email accounts, databases, and more. For example, you might create a package that allows an account to use up to 10 GB of disk space, 100 GB of bandwidth, and up to 5 email accounts.
By using packages, you can save time and ensure that all accounts have a consistent set of features and resources. Rather than setting the limits for each individual account, you can create packages and apply them to accounts as needed. This also makes it easier to manage multiple accounts at once, as you can update the limits for all accounts assigned to a package with just a few clicks.
You can create, modify, and delete packages from the "Packages" section in WHM. In this section, you can create new packages, modify existing ones, and apply them to specific accounts. You can also edit the default package, which is used for accounts that don't have a specific package assigned to them.
Overall, packages are a useful tool in WHM for managing the resources and features of your hosting accounts efficiently and effectively. They allow you to create a consistent hosting environment for your clients and ensure that all accounts have the resources they need to operate their websites or applications.
An example of a package can be similar to the following…
Basic Package:
1GB Disk Space
10GB Bandwidth
1 Email Account
1 FTP User
Unlimited Package:
Unlimited Disk Space
Unlimited Bandwidth
Unlimited Email Accounts
Unlimited FTP Users
In WHM, "Feature Lists" are a set of predefined features and permissions that you can assign to cPanel accounts. These feature lists determine which features and settings the account will be able to access and use.
For example, you might create a feature list that includes access to email accounts, databases, and file managers but restricts the account's ability to use SSH or install software. You can then assign this feature list to specific cPanel accounts, ensuring that they only have access to the features and settings that you've approved.
Using feature lists can help you ensure that your clients have access to the tools they need to manage their websites or applications, while also maintaining control over the hosting environment. Feature lists also help you save time, as you can create a set of features and settings once and then apply them to multiple accounts as needed.
In WHM, you can create, modify, and delete feature lists from the "Feature Manager" section. In this section, you can create new feature lists, modify existing ones, and apply them to specific cPanel accounts. You can also customize the default feature list, which is used for accounts that don't have a specific feature list assigned to them.
Overall, Feature Lists are a powerful tool in WHM that allows you to manage the features and settings of cPanel accounts efficiently and effectively. By using feature lists, you can provide your clients with the tools they need while ensuring that the hosting environment remains secure and under your control.
A cPanel account is a web hosting account that is managed through the cPanel control panel. cPanel is a popular web hosting control panel that provides a graphical interface to manage various aspects of a website or application.
When you sign up for a web hosting plan, you are typically provided with a cPanel account that allows you to manage your website or application files, email accounts, databases, and other features. You can access your cPanel account by logging in to the cPanel control panel using your username and password.
Once you're logged in, you can use the cPanel interface to manage various aspects of your website or application, such as uploading files, creating email accounts, configuring databases, installing software, and more. cPanel is designed to be user-friendly, even for those who are not familiar with web hosting administration.
In WHM, you can create and manage multiple cPanel accounts for your clients or customers, providing them with their own cPanel interface to manage their website or application. You can also set limits on resources and features using "Packages" and "Feature Lists," which allow you to create consistent hosting environments for your clients.
Overall, a cPanel account is a key component of a web hosting plan, providing users with a powerful set of tools and features to manage their websites or applications efficiently and effectively.
In cPanel, "quotas" are limits that are set on the amount of disk space and bandwidth that can be used by a particular hosting account. Quotas are an important feature of cPanel, as they help web hosts ensure that all accounts on a server are using resources efficiently and fairly.
Quotas are typically set in the "Package" section of WHM when you create or modify a cPanel account package. You can set quotas for both disk space and bandwidth, which will apply to all accounts that are assigned to that package. You can also set individual quotas for specific cPanel accounts if needed.
When a hosting account reaches its quota limit, certain features may be restricted or disabled. For example, if an account reaches its disk space limit, it may no longer be able to upload new files or receive new emails until files are removed or the quota is increased. Similarly, if an account reaches its bandwidth limit, the website or application may become unavailable until the next billing cycle or until the quota is increased.
In web hosting, "bandwidth" refers to the amount of data that can be transferred between a website or application and its users over a specific period of time. Bandwidth is typically measured in bytes or bits per second, kilobits, megabits or gigabits per second, or in gigabytes or terabytes per month.
When a user accesses a website or application, data is transferred between the user's device and the server hosting the website or application. This data transfer includes the HTML files, images, videos, audio files, and other types of content that make up the website or application. The amount of data that is transferred between the server and the user's device is counted towards the bandwidth usage for the hosting account.
Each hosting account has a specific amount of bandwidth that is allocated for use each month. This limit is set by the web host and can be increased or decreased depending on the hosting plan. When the amount of data transferred exceeds the allocated bandwidth limit, the website or application may become unavailable or slow to load, and the user may receive an error message.
Bandwidth usage can be affected by several factors, such as the number of visitors to a website or application, the size and complexity of the content being transferred, and the type of hosting plan being used. Website owners can monitor their bandwidth usage using web analytics tools or the hosting control panel, and adjust their hosting plan or upgrade their hosting account if they anticipate high traffic volumes or require more bandwidth.
In summary, bandwidth is the amount of data that can be transferred between a website or application and its users over a specific period of time, and it's an important consideration when choosing a hosting plan or managing a website or application.
A DNS (Domain Name System) zone is a specific area of a domain's DNS that contains the authoritative DNS records for that domain. In other words, a DNS zone is a collection of DNS records that map domain names to IP addresses and provide other domain-related information such as email settings, subdomains, and more.
Each domain name has at least one DNS zone, which is managed by the domain's authoritative name servers. The authoritative name servers are responsible for answering DNS queries related to the domain, and they use the DNS zone to determine how to resolve those queries.
DNS zones are typically managed using a DNS management tool, such as cPanel's "Zone Editor" or WHM's "DNS Zone Manager." These tools allow domain owners or system administrators to create, modify, and delete DNS records for a domain, including A records, CNAME records, MX records, and more.
DNS zones are an important aspect of website and application hosting, as they are used to map domain names to IP addresses and ensure that visitors can access the website or application. By managing the DNS zone, domain owners can control how their domain name is resolved, set up subdomains, and manage email settings. Domain owners can also use DNS zone management tools to troubleshoot DNS-related issues and ensure that their domain is resolving correctly.
The first step when accessing WHM should be to ensure that you have your nameservers configured correctly, which ensures the values in your domain's DNS zones are correct when creating new accounts.
To do this, go to…
WHM -> Basic WebHost Manager Setup
You will then be presented with the following screen…
At this stage, you need to make a decision as to how you would like to host the domains of the accounts within your reseller service.
The above interface sets what ‘NS’ values will be set in the DNS Zone of your domains, and therefore should match the nameservers being used at the domain registrar for the domains.
By default, you will see we select the ‘Explicitly Set the Nameservers’ option, and have already created a set of Nameservers for your domain. This option is pre-selected because the most common path our resellers choose is to create custom nameservers for their reseller hosting service.
It's important to point out, however, that setting up custom nameservers also requires some changes at the domain registrar, so requires further action on your part. A guide on creating custom nameservers can be found here…
https://support.brixly.uk/en/knowledgebase/article/how-do-i-create-custom-nameservers
If you wish to use our ‘unbranded’ nameservers instead, simply click the ‘Inherit Nameservers from root’, which will allow you to use our nameservers instead of going through the process of creating your own custom nameservers.
Once you're logged in, you'll see the WHM dashboard. From there, click on the "Add a Package" link located on the left-hand side of the dashboard.
In the "Add a Package" page, fill in the details of the package you want to create. You can set limits for disk space, bandwidth, email accounts, and more. You can also choose whether to enable or disable certain features, such as SSL, CGI, or PHP.
After filling out the details, click on the "Add" button at the bottom of the page. This will create a new package with the details you've specified.
Once you've created a new package, you can assign it to a cPanel account by going to the "Account Functions" section of WHM and clicking on "Create a New Account." In the "Create a New Account" page, you can select the package you've just created from the "Package" drop-down menu.
That's it! You should now be able to create new packages and assign them to cPanel accounts as needed. Remember to set appropriate limits for each package based on the needs of your clients or customers, and to update the packages as needed to ensure that they continue to meet the requirements of your hosting environment.
If you are on our Reseller Pro 50 plan or higher, you will have the option of ‘Unlimited’ against the quota and bandwidth.
If you are on our Reseller Entry plan, you will be required to enter a ‘limit’ into both the ‘Quota’ and the ‘Bandwidth’ fields - this is a technical requirement of the cPanel software, however, you can set these limits to a ‘high value’ such as 99999999.
Once you have created your packages, you will be able to edit your existing packages by going to WHM -> Edit a Package
You can also delete the package from WHM -> Delete a Package if a package is no longer required or is obsolete.
To list your cPanel accounts, you can navigate to WHM -> List Accounts
From here, the first thing you will notice is that a cPanel account exists for the main domain name of your reseller account.
The main cPanel account is mandatory and cannot be removed. This is because the WHM access is essentially a ‘cPanel Account’, with escalated privileges.
The domain listed here also doesn’t have to correlate directly with your hosting company or brand so don’t worry if this account listed is incorrect.
You will see the fields available in this interface, which are as follows…
Domain
The ‘main’ domain name of the cPanel account
cPanel
The orange ‘cP’ logo is a ‘one-click’ link to access the cPanel account directly
IP Address
This is the IP address of the cPanel account. If you are using external DNS, such as Cloudflare you would use the iP address mentioned in this field for DNS records.
Username
This is the username of the cPanel account, which would be used to login to the cPanel account directly
Contact Email
This is the email address which would be used for notifications and alerts within the cPanel account
Setup Date
The date the cPanel account was created
Partition
This can be ignored, however, the partition is the ‘location’ of where the files belonging to the account are on the server
Quota
The allocated amount of disk space to the account
Disk Used
This is the amount of disk space being used by the account. Please note that changes to this field are not updated immediately, and can take several hours to update.
Package
This is the ‘Package’ being used.
To get started, navigate to WHM -> Create a New Account
Account Limits
Within this section of the ‘Create an Account’ screen, you will see the number of accounts remaining in your reseller plan with us. If you are nearing your limit, please contact our sales team to discuss an upgrade.
If you see 1/50, the interface is telling you that you have used ‘1’ of a limit of ‘50’ accounts, so you therefore have 49 remaining.
Domain Information
Within this section, you will need to enter the ‘main’ domain of the cPanel account you wish to create, a username, password and email address.
Please ensure you make a note of the entered username / password, as those details can then be provided to your clients directly so that they can access the cPanel account, without granting them access to your WHM (do not share access to your WHM with others, especially clients!)
Our platform requires a high strength of the password, to prevent hacking or malicious attempts to access the account.
Package
Select the ‘Package’ you wish to use for this cPanel account, as created in the previous steps.
You must create a package, before attempting to create a cPanel account.
Settings
CGI Access - This isn’t often used, as CGI is a dying technology. Feel free to leave it enabled, however, or disable it if preferred.
Locale - This option allows you to select which language the clients cPanel should be set to.
Enable Apache SpamAssassin - SpamAssassin is a fantastic tool that works in line with MagicSPAM, to improve the accuracy of your inbound SPAM filtering. We recommend this remains enabled.
Enable ‘SPAM Box’ - When this option is enabled, messages flagged as ‘SPAM’, will be routed to a separate folder within your mailbox called ‘SPAM’ or ‘Junk’. Disabling this option ensures the SPAM messages show in your main inbox, but are flagged in the subject line as ‘SPAM’.
Mail Routing Settings
It's important that this flag is set correctly, to ensure mail delivery works as expected.
The simplest way to know which option to select is based on whether or not the cPanel account will be used for email, or whether the client will use external mail services instead.
If they intend on using the cPanel server for mail, then select ‘Local Mail Exchanger’. If they intend to use the cPanel account for their website, but their email accounts will be hosted externally on something similar to Google Mail, or Office 365 then set this option to ‘Remote Mail Exchanger’
DNS Settings
Enable DKIM on this account - it is recommended to leave this option enabled.
Enable SPF on this account - it is recommended to leave this option enabled.
Use the nameservers specified at the Domains Registrar - checking this option will check the registrar set nameservers for the domain, and will set the NS values to match within the DNS zone. It's typical that this option remains unselected, with the nameservers being confirmed to match those set in the WHM -> Basic WebHost Manager Setup screen discussed earlier.
Click create!
