cPanel in Practice

Reading the error log before you open a ticket

Most tickets that begin "my site is broken" are answered by a line already sitting in that account's error log. Reading...

Scheduling cron across many sites without stacking them

Every content management system suggests running its scheduled tasks at midnight. Follow that advice on thirty sites... Video walkthrough

Disk and inode usage: the limit nobody watches

Disk space is the limit everyone watches. Inodes are the limit that actually stops sites, and almost nobody looks at... 2 video walkthroughs

Which database belongs to which site, and why it matters

On an account holding several sites, the database list is where the network gets confusing. Names are prefixed with the... Video walkthrough

Email routing when every site has its own address

Mail is where a carefully separated network most often gives itself away, because a message carries the sending... 2 video walkthroughs

What your backups actually cover, and what they do not

Automatic backups run on every account here. That is not the same as your network being protected, and the gap between...

htaccess on LiteSpeed: what carries over from an Apache host

Your existing rewrite rules keep working when you arrive here, which is the main reason moving from an Apache host does...

Staging a change without touching the live site

Testing on the live site is the most expensive habit on a hosting network, because a mistake is multiplied by however...

Moving files without an FTP client and when you still want one

When you run one site, an FTP client is fine. When you run thirty, the client becomes the bottleneck: a saved profile... 2 video walkthroughs

Retiring a URL without losing the traffic it still gets

Pages get retired. A service page is folded into another, a campaign landing page stops being relevant, a whole section... Video walkthrough

What the server stats tell you that analytics does not

Analytics tells you about visitors who ran your JavaScript. The server stats tell you about every request that arrived... Video walkthrough

Running one site on an older PHP than the rest

Somewhere in an estate of sites there is always one that cannot move yet. An old plugin, a theme nobody maintains, a... Video walkthrough

Shell access by key instead of by password

Shell access on a network of accounts is where password habits go wrong. One password gets reused across accounts... Video walkthrough

Deploying from Git when the site is one of many

Deploying by dragging files works until the day you cannot remember which version is live on which site. On a network... Video walkthrough

Letting someone in without handing over the account

A designer needs to upload a theme. A writer needs a mailbox on one domain. A contractor needs to read files in one... Video walkthrough

Reaching a database from outside the server

Databases stay closed to the outside by default. Every site on your estate talks to its own database over a local... Video walkthrough

One address that reaches the whole team

Some addresses should reach more than one person. Enquiries that two people answer, alerts a small team should all see... Video walkthrough