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How to work with a cPanel  

cpanel

What is a cPanel?

A cPanel is a virtual web hosting account provided by your hosting service provider. The panel itself, or dashboard, if you like, enables you to configure and manage your website, and set up your business email accounts. A premium cPanel comes complete with a wide selection of content management systems that you can easily install for free. Each content management system (CMS) has demos, examples and reviews which you can view in your cPanel, or you can visit the CMS provider’s website for more information.

cPanel web hosting accounts can cost as little as $4.00/£3.00 per month for just two websites. Working with a cPanel is not difficult. You can also find plenty of cPanel help forums and relevant video tutorials on YouTube.

Note, you are responsible for installing and managing your CMS, not the hosting provider. You should only contact them, if you are having problems with the cPanel dashboard and issues with the server.

Try namecheap.com, hostinguk.net, or a2hosting.com.

Introduction to cPanel

Code and script files

Your domain name code and script files are kept in the File Manager of your hosting provider account and should be visible on your hosting provider admin dashboard.

If you have a quality CMS, you will seldom need to amend the files, if at all. And if you do need to make any amendments, they will normally be in the HTML scripts which relate to the way the website looks and not the way it functions.

If you feel confident that you can make changes and you have some experience in web development and/or programming, I suggest you copy and paste the original file information to a Word document and save it to your computer – that way you will not lose the original settings, if you make a mistake.

Working with the File Manager

Reasons for accessing your File Manager

  • To make changes to the CSS files, e.g. the footer, theme, header, etc.
  • To add plugins or widgets
  • To upload an XML sitemap
  • To upload images that are too large to be uploaded in your CMS.
  • To upload JavaScript files, e.g. a EU cookie warning scripts, Google js. tracking code
  • To manually upload a favicon

 How to install WordPress from a cPanel

How to increase the file size upload in a cPanel

You may get a message stating that your file is too large to upload. If you are using a cPanel, click on “Service Configuration” where you should see the “PHP Configuration Editor”.

Change the “upload_max_filesize” to the file size you require.

For example, if you have an upload_max_filesize=20 MB, you can increase it to upload_max_filesize = 250 MB

Alternatively, you can change the upload_max_filesize by accessing the File Manager code files. If you are using WordPress, you will find the upload_max_filesize in the “File Uploads” section. Do not forget to save your changes.