However, there are some things you need to understand before starting.

The main thing is the difference between cPanel and Web Host Manager (WHM). A good way to understand WHM is to think of it as the admin panel for your VPS, while cPanel is what allows you to control the account you made through your WHM.

Thus if you want to set up cPanel, it is done through WHM.

What You Will Need

First and foremost, you need a VPS. GreenGeeks offers multiple VPS plans designed for specific sizes. Just make sure that you pick a plan that has the proper amount of resources. If not, you can always upgrade to the next size.

Our VPS plans all come with WHM and cPanel pre-installed, which makes set up extremely easy. Thus, you don’t actually have to install cPanel on our VPS, but you will need to create a cPanel account to use it.

And secondly, you will need to make sure you have the login credentials to your VPS. These should be provided when you make an account, but if you misplaced them, you will need to contact support.

As long as you have all of this ready to go, you will have no trouble setting up cPanel on a VPS server.

Step 1: Logging In

The first step is to log into your WHM. To do so, you will need to know the IP address of your VPS. This should be provided to you when you make an account, but it can also be found on your hosting account.

Note: If you have just opened a VPS account, you will need to reverse DNS.

Once you have the IP address, start a new tab in your web browser and enter the following:[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]https://YourIPAddress:2087/[/ht_message]

If for example, your IP address was 11.111.11.111 it would look like this:[ht_message mstyle=”info” title=”” show_icon=”” id=”” class=”” style=”” ]https://11.111.11.111:2087/[/ht_message]

Upon doing so, you should recieve a secruity notification that the connection you are trying to is not secure. It is safe to ignore this warning and connect anyway.

This will take you to the WHM login screen. Enter your login information to sign in.

Step 2: Create a cPanel Account

If this is your first time logging into a new VPS, you will be asked to agree to the terms and services and a few other things like Name Servers. If you are not sure about what you are being asked to select, don’t worry, you can change anything you pick later on.

Once you are logged in to your WHM account, click on the “Create a New Account” option.

Now, you will need to enter the domain name, username, password, and email. Make sure to keep track of this information and if you cannot memorize it, write it down and store it in a safe place.

Note: If you intend to use this cPanel account for reselling, make sure you enter the customer’s information correctly.

Carefully go through the rest of the settings. How you run your server is completely up to you, so take the time to make sure the settings are what you want. When you are done, click on the “Create” button at the bottom.

The account will now be created. Once it is, click on the “Go to cPanel” button.

Congratulations, you are ready to start using cPanel to manage your domain.

cPanel Has A Lot to Offer

Setting up your cPanel Account really is just the start. As long as you plan to manage a domain, you will need to use cPanel. It has a wide array of features and will be an integral part of customizing your website, regardless of the CMS you choose.

In fact, you will need to use cPanel to install the CMS of your choice on your VPS. Just keep in mind, you will not have access to Softaculous, which means just about everything you add, will need to be done manually.

Did you experience any problems setting up your cPanel? How long did it take you to set up a cPanel account?

The post How to Install cPanel on a VPS Server appeared first on GreenGeeks.

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Databases” section, click the “MySQL Database Wizard” link or icon.

Create the MySQL Database

In the “Step 1: Create A Database” section, enter the database name in the “New Database” field. A prefix will be pre-populated (in this example it is ggexample_). The format may vary depending on your host, but the prefix is required. The database name includes the prefix and the underscore.

Click the “Next Step” button.

Create the MySQL Database User

In the “Step 2: Create Database Users” field, enter the database user name in the “Username” field. Like the database name, this must also include a prefix. The database user name includes the prefix and the underscore.

Enter a password or passphrase. Note that the system will analyze your password or passphrase and reject it with a “password strength” error if it is too short or not sufficiently complex.

Click the “Create User” button.

Add the User to the MySQL Database and Grant User Permissions

You can select individual permissions for the new database user, but for most common applications you will want to give the user all permissions. To do that, check the “ALL PRIVILEGES” box.

Scroll down and click the “Next Step” button.

After the permissions are set, you will see a success message. The success page also includes handy links to “Add another database,” and “Add another user for your MySQL database.”

Everything you need to connect an application to the database is now in place.

Managing MySQL Databases and Users

To manage your databases and users, go back to the cPanel “Databases” section and click the “MySQL Databases” link or icon.

Scroll down to the “Current Databases” section.

In the “Privileged Users” column, click the username to change permissions, or the trash can icon to revoke all privileges for the user.

In the “Actions” column, click the “Rename” link or icon to rename the database or the “Delete” link or icon to delete the database.

That’s it.

I told you cPanel made it easy to set up a new MySQL database and user, but you probably weren’t expecting it to be that easy.

What other methods do you use to create databases and users? Do you think using cPanel for the job would save you some time?

The post How to Set up a New MySQL Database and User in cPanel appeared first on GreenGeeks.

If you’ve just purchased a domain and set up your web hosting account, using the cPanel Site Publisher is a great way to get started.

In this tutorial, I’ll take you through the steps to publish a site. You’ll be up and running in a few minutes.

Using the cPanel Site Publisher

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Domains” section, click the “Site Publisher” link or icon.

The first step is to select a domain. If you only have one domain in your account, it will be preselected.

You will see a “This domain’s directory contains other files” notification if there are already files in the account.

The cPanel Site Publisher overwrites files with the same name.

Site Publisher will make backups of any files it overwrites. I’ll show you where to find those later.

When you select the domain, a new panel will open up showing a selection of templates. Click a template to select it.

If the domain already has a Site Publisher website, the current template will automatically be selected.

A customization panel will open up. Complete the fields with the information that you want to add to the page. Any field that you leave blank will not be visible on the page.

Click the “Publish” button.

If there are already files in the directory, you will see a warning above the “Publish” button. Remember, Site Publisher will make backups of any files it overwrites so that nothing is permanently lost.

The page should now be visible on your domain.

If you are making a page for a newly registered domain, you may have to wait a few hours for DNS propagation.

How to Edit a Site Publisher Page

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Domains” section, click the “Site Publisher” link or icon.

In the “Select a Domain” section, choose the domain that uses Site Publisher.

Select the highlighted template that you used previously.

Edit or add new information and click the “Publish” button.

Removing the Site Publisher Files

When you’re ready to publish a larger site, or you want to remove the page generated by Site Publisher, here’s how to do it.

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Domains” section, click the “Site Publisher” link or icon.

In the “Select a Domain” section, click the “Website Directory” path link or icon for the Site Publisher domain.

Delete the directories:

• assets
• COPYRIGHT
• images

Delete the files:

• index.html
• LICENSE.txt
• sitemap.xml

To delete the directories and files, select them, right-click and click the “Delete” link. Mac users can open this drop-down list using CMD+Click.

You may notice that cPanel Site Publisher will show the domain as using Site Publisher even after you’ve deleted the files.

That status doesn’t affect anything, but if you want to get rid of it, you have to delete one more file.

Go back to the cPanel File Manager.

Open the /site_publisher/configurations directory, and delete the .json file.

Where Are the Backups?

As you can see in the last illustration, right above the /configurations directory is the /backups directory.

To download the backup, open the /backups directory. Right-click the .tar.gz file, and click the “Download” link or icon.

If you want to archive the files in the backup, you should download it soon after creating your site. The Site Publisher backups are deleted after 30 days.

Site Publisher Makes Building a Placeholder Site Easy

As you have seen, creating a one-page placeholder site is easy with the cPanel Site Publisher. The sooner you get a site—even a single-page—up on your domain, the sooner Google can find it and begin indexing.

Do you own or manage more than one website? Do you use placeholders or “coming soon” pages on new projects?

The post How to Use the cPanel Site Publisher appeared first on GreenGeeks.

That is the default configuration for most web servers. In most cases, though, we don’t want to display the contents of a directory. Listing our files like that is a breach of privacy. But worse, it can be a security risk.

So let’s prevent it from happening on our sites. In this tutorial, I’m going to show you how to disable directory listing using cPanel.

There are a couple of different ways to turn off directory indexing using cPanel. We’ll start with configuring the indexes directly.

Disable Directory Listing in cPanel

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Advanced” section, click the “Indexes” link or icon.

You’ll see the directory structure for your website.

To enter a directory, click the folder icon.

To configure a directory—to turn indexing on or off—click the directory name.

In this tutorial, we’re going to turn indexing off for only one directory. So we’ll click the folder icon for public_html.

Once we’re in the public_html directory, we’ll click the name of the directory where we want to turn off indexing.

Select the “No Indexing” option and click the “Save” button.

The other available options:

• Default System Indexing is the default set by your hosting provider. It could be on or off.
• No Indexing disables directory listing. That’s what we’re doing in this tutorial.
• Standard Indexing allows directory listing. This makes the names of the files and directories visible to visitors.
• Fancy Indexing also allows directory listing, but a visitor can see the file names and directories as well as file descriptions.

The success message should say, “…indexes are now: Off”

Now if you go to the URL, instead of a file list you should see a 403 error.

Using cPanel File Manager to Disable Directory Listing in cPanel

Our destination here is the same as the previous method, but we’re taking a different route to get there. If you work in the cPanel File Manager a lot, you may prefer this method.

In the “Files” section of cPanel, click the “File Manager” link or icon.

You want the directory name to be in the right pane. So for our example, we click “public_html” in the left pane to get our “demo” directory listed in the right.

Click the directory name to select it, then right click. Mac users may use CMD+click to open this list.

From the drop-down menu, select “Manage Indices.”

Now we’re back at the same “Indexes” page that we saw in the first method.

Select the “No Indexing” option and click the “Save” button.

Is It Really Dangerous to Allow the Listing of Files in a Directory?

Not always.

There are situations where you may want to allow public access to a list of files. Though directory listing to expose file names and links is less commonly used than it used to be.

Modern websites will usually format downloadable file lists to match the layout of the site.

In the example here, I listed the contents of a directory that contained images. That in and of itself is not a security risk. All it allows is the downloading of the images.

Where we run into potential problems is when we allow the listing of more sensitive files.

Listing files for an application that is written in PHP or a similar language where configuration or included files might be stored in a publicly accessible directory could make your site (or even your server) vulnerable.

A WordPress configuration file, for example—the wp-config.php file—contains everything someone would need to access your database. And it’s all there in plain text. Files like those should obviously be kept from view.

But others, like include files, can contain “clues” that could lead to increased hacking vulnerability.

An Ounce of Prevention…

Best practices tell us not to store those kinds of configuration files in public directories, but it’s something that most of us are guilty of doing. I mean, WordPress does it, so how bad could it be, right?

Even if we don’t do it on purpose, there are ways we can inadvertently expose sensitive files, so turning directory indexing off everywhere there’s the potential for a problem can’t hurt.

Have you ever checked your directory indexing? Are there cases you can think of where you would purposely want to list files in a directory?

The post How to Disable Directory Listing in cPanel appeared first on GreenGeeks.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up and manage addon domains in cPanel.

Note: The ability to set up addon domains is controlled by your website host. Check with your host. Also, there may be a limit on the number of addon domains you can add to your account.

How to Setup an Addon Domain

Log into your cPanel account to begin. Once in, go to the Domains section, and click on the Domains option.

Click the “Create A New Domain” button on the top right.

Enter the addon domain’s name into the Domain text box.

You must unselect the “Share document root” checkbox. Once, you do, you will be able to enter the directory name that you want these files to exist in. Enter the appropriate information for your new domain.

To finish, click on the “Submit” button to generate the add-on domain. This may take a few moments to generate.

Where to Upload Website Files for an Addon Domain

During your addon domain creation, you needed to input the directory where you want the files to exist. This directory is where you are going to upload your website content.

So, for example, if your new domain was ggexample.org, the directory would be /ggexample.org.

All files for ggexample.org would be uploaded to /public_html/ggexample.org.

How to Remove or Delete an Addon Domain

To remove the addon domain, you just need to click on the “Delete” button in the manage section.

Go to the domains section of cPanel and click on the “Manage” button of the addon domain.

Click on the “Remove Domain” button to delete it.

And that’s all there is to it. Be aware that deleting this domain will not delete the files. You will need to manually go to the directory and delete them.

Addon Domains are Separate Websites

It’s worth mentioning again that addon domains are different than alias domains in cPanel. An alias is an additional domain that points to your main website. So ggexample.com and the alias domain ggexample.net would lead to the same site. Longtime cPanel users may remember alias domains under their previous name, “Parked Domains.”

Do you use Addon domains to create separate websites in your cPanel account? Do you use alias domains to point multiple domains to your main site? How many alias domains do you point to one site?

The post How to Set up and Manage Addon Domains in cPanel appeared first on GreenGeeks.

The problem with generic error pages displayed by the server is they aren’t very informative. And worse, they take the visitor away from your website. In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up custom error pages using cPanel.

Why Use Custom Error Pages in cPanel

Custom error pages remedy the problems with generic server error pages. They can be more informative, and they can be styled to look just like a page of your website.

Having your site navigation available to a visitor seeing a “page not found” error gives them an option to try another link. On the other hand, a blank generic page gives the impression that the site is somehow “broken.”

It’s an invitation to leave the site, and we don’t want that.

You won’t see any fancy page styling in this tutorial, but your custom error pages can include your website CSS, creating a seamless experience to a visitor seeing the error. You should create custom error pages for all the common errors, as well as any less common errors that may apply to your specific site.

Create a Custom Error Page in cPanel

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Advanced” section, click the “Error Pages” link or icon.

If you have multiple domains in cPanel, select the domain for which you will add a custom error page.

Click one of the error code links to create a page for that specific error. We’ll create a page for one of the most common errors, “404 (Not found).”

After clicking the error code link you will be taken to a page editor, which is initially blank.

Add the page code to match your site. Include all the header information and body tags. Basically, you want to enter what would be a blank page for your site.

There will be a selection of variables available for each custom error page in the “Select Tags to Insert” section.

Since we’re creating a “file not found” page, we’ll use the “Requested URL” variable to show the broken link URL on the error page.

Place your cursor inside the tags and click a tag link to insert the variable code.

Scroll down and click the “Save” button.

When the page has been created you will see a success message.

Now if we go to the site and enter an incorrect URL, we get our custom error page.

As you can see, by default it’s a pretty plain error. Adding some explanatory text can help.

We’ll add an h1 title, a bit of text and markup around the variable tag code. Also, let’s add a line telling the visitor to try the site navigation.

That gives us a more informative error page.

Editing a Custom Error Page

Custom error pages can be edited in cPanel. Click the error code link to edit the page.

Deleting a Custom Error Page

If the custom error page is for your primary domain, the file will be in the root directory, or public_html. We’re using the cPanel file editor for this tutorial. Right-click the file name and click the “Delete” link.

Mac users will hold down CMD+Click for the option to appear.

When the file is deleted, the generic server error page will be displayed to visitors.

A Custom Error Page for Every Occasion

The server errors that a visitor will generally see are 400 and 500. There are a lot of them, but many are assigned to less frequently encountered problems. It’s worth looking at the list, though, in case your site is likely to generate one of the lesser-seen errors.

To create an error page for a less common error, click the “Show All HTTP Error Status Codes” tab.

This will display a list that you can edit depending on various situations.

Custom Error Pages are Useful

Creating a custom error page can benefit the end user as well as improve bounce rates. You could improve the visual quality of the page while adding elements of your site. This includes links to help the visitor stay and explore.

A visually appealing error page could mean the difference between losing a visitor and keeping him or her engaged.

Do you use custom error pages on your site? Do your error pages match your site or do you use a different format for errors?

The post How to Create Custom Error Pages in cPanel appeared first on GreenGeeks.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to do most of the common website file-related tasks using the cPanel File Manager. We will cover a lot of ground, so if you’re in a hurry and need to skip ahead, here are shortcuts to instructions for the cPanel File Manager functions covered in this article:

• Creating a New File
• Uploading a File
• Moving a File
• Editing a File
• Deleting a File

Locating the cPanel File Manager

Log in to cPanel.

In the “FILES” section, click the “File Manager” link or icon.

When you log in to the File Manager, you will be in the root directory for your account. Most of the time, you’ll be working with website files, and they are located in the “public_html” directory.

If you have addon domains in your account, their home directories will be typically be listed inside the public_html directory.

Working With Hidden or “Dot” Files

By default, the cPanel File Editor does not display hidden “dot” files. So to work with files such as .htaccess, you must first configure the cPanel File Editor to display hidden files.

In the File Manager, click the “Settings” button.

In the “Preferences popup window, check “Show Hidden Files” and click the “Save” button.

Creating a New File Using the cPanel File Manager

Click the “+ File” link or icon at the top of the page.

Enter the name of the new file in the “New File Name” field in the pop-up box and click the “Create New File” button.

Uploading a File Using the cPanel File Manager

In the left side directory list, click the directory to which you would like to upload files. The directory contents will be displayed on the right side.

Click the “Upload” link or icon in the top toolbar.

A new browser tab or window will open for file upload. Drag and drop the file to be uploaded, or click the “Select File” button.

Your host may have a file size limit. If so, it will be shown on the file upload page. To upload larger files, use FTP.

If you are replacing an existing file, check the “Overwrite existing files” box. If you don’t check the box, you will get a pop-up asking if you want to overwrite the existing file.

Moving a File Using the cPanel File Manager

There are two ways to move a file using the cPanel File Manager.

The first and easiest option is dragging and dropping the file. Left click and hold on the file name on the right, and drag it to the new directory on the left.

Alternately you can use the “Move” button. You have to know the path to the location where you want to move the file to use this method.

Select the file you want to move and click the “Move” button.

Enter the path to the location where you’re moving the file and click the “Move File(s)” button.

Editing a File Using the cPanel File Manager

On the right side, select the file you want to edit.

Right-click the file name to open the menu, or click the “Edit” or “HTML Editor” link or icon in the top toolbar.

Selecting “Edit” opens the file in a window similar to a text editor.

Selecting “HTML Editor” opens the file in a visual editing window.

Before you get to the file editor, a file encoding popup will open. If your website uses English and standard characters, click the “Edit” button. If your site uses another language that does not use UTF-8 encoding, select the appropriate encoding, and click the “Edit” button.

You can prevent the popup from opening every time you edit a file by clicking the “Disable Encoding Check” button.

To save your file in the text editor, click the “Save Changes” button.

To save your file in the visual editor, click the “Save” button.

Deleting a File Using the cPanel File Manager

Right click on the name of the file you wish to delete, and click the “Delete” link.

Alternately, you can select the file and click the “Delete” link in the top toolbar.

That’s It

We have gone through most of the file moving and editing that is necessary on a day-to-day basis. I hope you find this tutorial helpful next time you need to log in and move some files around but you don’t have an FTP connection at hand.

Do you regularly use a web-based file editor? Now that you know how easy it is, do you think you may take advantage of the cPanel File Manager in the future?

The post How to Use the cPanel File Manager appeared first on GreenGeeks.

How Does a Domain Alias Work?

If we set up ggexample.org as an alias of ggexample.com, a visitor going to ggexample.org would land on the ggexample.com site. The ggexample.com domain would remain in the browser address bar. Essentially, we are pointing multiple domains to the same location.

Note that older versions of cPanel used the term, “Parked Domains” rather than “Aliases.” Functionally, they are the same thing. Only the name has changed.

Set up a Domain Alias in cPanel

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Domains” section, click on the Domains option.

Click the “Create A New Domain” button.

In the “Domain” text box, enter the domain name to add as an alias.

Make sure the “Share document root” checkbox is enabled. This will cause the domain to share the exact same content as the regular site, thus acting as an alias.

To finish up, just click on the “Submit” button and your alias will be created.

Removing the Domain Alias in cPanel

To remove the domain alias, you simply need to delete the domain we just created. To do so, enter the domain section of the cPanel, and click the “Manage” button for the domain alias.

Click the “Remove Domain” button.

That’s All There Is to It

As you’ve seen, Domain aliases are easy to set up. Do you point multiple domains to your website? If so, do you use domains other than the “big three” .com, .net, and .org?

The post How to Set up a Domain Alias in cPanel appeared first on GreenGeeks.

When you create a subdomain, you can use the URL https://members.ggexample.com. Both URLs lead to the same files. The subdomain gives you another URL option.

In this tutorial, I will show you how to create a subdomain in cPanel. You’ll also see how to edit a subdomain in cPanel and I will touch on when a subdomain should (and shouldn’t) be used.

What Is a Subdomain?

A subdomain is a name that is part of your primary domain. You can recognize a subdomain when there is a section of a website URL that comes before the primary domain. In the example above, the subdomain is members.ggexample.com, and the primary domain is ggexample.com.

Subdomains are typically used to designate a separate section of a website, or in some cases, a completely different website.

When you create a subdomain, an A record is added to your domain’s DNS zone. An entry is also made in a configuration file on the web server. This is so the server knows where to direct the subdomain traffic.

How to Create a Subdomain

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Domains” section, click the “Subdomains” link or icon.

In the “Subdomain” field, enter the name of your subdomain. That’s the section that precedes the main domain, e.g., members.ggexample.com.

If you have multiple domains in your cPanel account, choose the domain on which you wish to create a subdomain from “Domain” drop-down.

The “Document Root” is the root directory for the subdomain. So in our example above, the subdomain root directory would be /public_html/members.

Click the “Create” button.

When the subdomain has been created, you will see a success message.

The subdomain should be available to view in 5 to 10 minutes. Since you are making a DNS update, it may take a while for the new DNS record to propagate across the internet. Usually, propagation will complete in an hour or two.

This is why you might see a 404 page if you create a subdomain and immediately install something like WordPress. If you try to access the site a few minutes after creating the subdomain, you might receive a 404 not found error.

Just give it a bit of time before you try accessing the subdomain.

Creating a Wildcard Subdomain

A wildcard subdomain is used if you want to point any subdomain of your domain name to a specific directory in your site.

When you create a wildcard domain, any subdomain prefix typed before your domain will lead to the subdomain root directory. So pacific.ggexample.com, members.ggexample.com and asdf99qwer.ggexample.com could all lead to the same directory on the site.

To create a wildcard domain, use the same method detailed above, but enter * in the “Subdomain” field.

Depending on your host, creating a wildcard subdomain may involve manual DNS zone editing. Take a look at this cPanel article for more details.

Editing, Deleting or Redirecting a Subdomain

To Change the Root Directory for a Subdomain

Scroll down to the “Modify a Subdomain” section and click the pencil icon for the subdomain. Clicking the path link will take you to the file editor, which you don’t want.

Enter the new directory name in the “Document Root” field, and click the “Change” button.

To Delete a Subdomain

Scroll down to the “Modify a Subdomain” section and click the “Remove” link or icon.

Click the “Delete Subdomain” button.

To Redirect a Subdomain

Scroll down to the “Modify a Subdomain” section and click the “Manage Redirection” link or icon.

Enter the URL you wish to redirect the subdomain to and click the “Save” button.

To remove subdomain redirection, click the “Manage Redirection” link or icon, then click the “Disable Redirection” button.

When You Should Use a Subdomain

A subdomain is most commonly used when a website has a section that is separate from the primary site. Such as a blog, forum, control panel, member’s area and so forth.

Subdomains are also used for different regional or language versions of the same site. So, english.ggexample.com and spanish.ggexample.com, for instance. Or pacific.ggexample.com and atlantic.ggexample.com.

Often you will see subdomains used as personal areas of a broader community or social site. On ggexample.com, a user’s subdomain could be username.ggexample.com.

For most personal or smaller sites, whether or not to use a subdomain is a matter of personal preference. Since the destination is the same whether you use a subdomain or the /directory URL, it’s really just a matter of choice.

When You Should Not Use a Subdomain

While using a subdomain is a matter of personal preference, there are a couple of things to consider before creating a subdomain. One is maintenance. If you use subdomains and find it necessary to move your site to a new host, your move will involve additional configuration tasks.

Perhaps more importantly, subdomains affect how search engines see your site. To Google, a subdomain is a separate website. Traffic to blog.ggexample.com is seen as separate from the traffic to ggexample.com.

If you are building a brand, that can be a problem. This article goes into more detail on the subject.

Now that you are armed with more information about creating and using subdomains, are you more or less likely to create a subdomain for your website? If you currently use subdomains, do you have any concerns about the way search engines see your site?

The post How to Create a Subdomain in cPanel appeared first on GreenGeeks.

A cron job is scheduled to run at specific times or dates. The “job” is usually a script that performs some sort of updating task. Expiring or deleting user accounts, sending out automated email, updating tables or other data visualization from a database are just some examples.

Many website updates and maintenance tasks can be automated with cron jobs.

The format for a cron job can seem a little complicated the first time you go through it, but we’ll break it down into easily understandable parts. Cron jobs are a powerful tool, and they can save you a lot of time and trouble.

In this tutorial, I’ll show you how to set up cron jobs in cPanel.

Let’s get started.

Finding the Cron Job Controls in cPanel

Log in to cPanel.

In the “Advanced” section, click the “Cron Jobs” link or icon.

The first thing you may notice is a big warning box telling you that “You need to have a good knowledge of Linux commands before you can use cron jobs effectively.”

It’s true that a good knowledge of many things will help you use them more effectively. It’s also possible to be quite effective with just a bit of knowledge and the ability to copy examples.

Once you see how a cron job is configured, you’ll be able to translate that knowledge to a number of different uses.

Before You Set up a Cron Job

The “Cron Email” section is where you enter an email address so the system can send notifications when your cron jobs run. It’s not necessary to set up an email.

The email notices can be a handy indicator that something is wrong. For example, “Why haven’t I received a cron email in the past week?”. But if you have a lot of cron jobs or a single job that runs often, the emails can become a bit of an annoyance.

If you want to receive an email when your cron job runs, enter your email address in the “Email” field, and click the “Update Email” button.

Note that in some cases the default address for your domain may be automatically set to receive cron job notices (see the image below). If you do not want to receive notices, click the “Update Email” button while leaving the “Email” field empty.

How to Set up a Cron Job in cPanel

Scroll down to the “Add New Cron Job” section. Before configuring the individual time and date elements, check the “Common Settings” drop-down. Many times, you’ll find what you need there, and you can select the common setting to populate the time and date fields.

If the timing you need isn’t covered by a selection in the “Common Settings” drop-down, move down to the “Minute,” “Hour,” “Day,” “Month,” and “Weekday” settings.

You’ll see that each of these entries also have a “Common Settings” drop-down. Choose the appropriate settings.

NOTE: It is not necessary to enter a value into every field.

The “Job” Part of the Cron Job

The last field in the “Add New Cron Job” section is “Command.” This is where you enter the path to the file containing the server command that will run at the times you just specified.

Enter the path and click the “Add New Cron Job” button.

If you want to execute a php script, the command consists of two parts: the path to php for your account, followed by the path to the file you want to execute.

When your cron job has been set up, you will see a success message.

To Edit or Delete a Cron Job

Scroll down to the “Current Cron Jobs” section.

Click the “Edit” or “Delete” link. “Edit” will bring up the cron job settings. Make any necessary changes and click the “Edit Line” button.

“Delete” will open a delete dialog. Click the “Delete” button.

That’s All There Is to It

As you’ve seen, setting up cron jobs in cPanel is pretty straightforward. If you find them useful, you will no doubt think of other applications for cron jobs.

It’s important to remember though, that the script your cron job triggers can run commands on the server. So the same cautions that you would take when working on the command line should be taken when triggering a script with a cron job.

Have you ever set up cron jobs using cPanel? Can you think of any manual update or maintenance tasks you perform that could be done for you by a cron job?

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