Creating cPanel accounts in WHM

Last updated: 19 April 2021

In previous articles I looked at creating feature lists and hosting packages. It’s now finally time to create some cPanel accounts.

Creating accounts

You can create a new account via Account Functions » Create a New Account. Alternatively, you get to the same page if you click the Create a New Account button at the top of the Account Information » List Accounts page.

Account limits

The Account Limits box at the top of the page shows the current resource usage for your reseller account. If the resource usage is high then you probably don’t want to add another account, as it may push your account over the limit. The box also lists any custom packages you have created and an estimate of how many accounts you can create using those packages.

Domain information

Creating a new account is easy enough. Under Domain Information you only really need to enter the domain name. One thing worth noting is that the name never includes the ‘www’ subdomain. If you enter a domain like www.example.com then WHM automatically changes it to example.com. The reason is that the ‘www’ subdomain is always added as a ServerAlias for the main domain. In other words, WHM is smart enough to figure out that you probably don’t want the domain www.example.com with www.www.example.com as the alias.

Image: the domain information.

You can create a cPanel account for other subdomains, such as dev.example.com or blog.example.com. One thing to be aware of is that cPanel does again add the ‘www’ subdomain as a ServerAlias. So, in the case of dev.example.com you also get www.dev.example.com. Subdomains usually don’t have a ‘www’ subdomain, so you might want to remove the CNAME record for the ‘www’ subdomain.

The username is generated based on the domain name. You can of course change the suggested name. The name has to be unique on the server, and it can have letters and numbers only.

The email address is the contact email address for the cPanel account. This field is not required but we recommend entering an email address. The address is used if there is an issue with the account or if the account is modified.

Other options

You can select any packages you have created from the Choose a Package drop-down menu. If you run into an error then the issue is almost certainly that the package has an invalid value. For instance, you get an error if Maximum Hourly Email by Domain Relayed is set to 0 (as the account wouldn’t be allowed to sent any emails).

There are a few other email-related settings. The Enable Apache SpamAssassin setting may or may not enable SpamAssassin, depending on whether or not it is enabled on the server. SpamAssassin is disabled on most servers, as it is rather resource-hungry. A better spam filtering solution is to use an external spam filter. That way, all the anti-spam processing is done on a server dedicated to just that job.

And finally, the Mail Router Settings are a little confusing. If an email is relayed locally then the mail server doesn’t look up the recipient’s MX records to figure out where the email should be delivered to. Instead, it delivers the email locally. In specific scenarios that can cause delivery issues. If you are unsure, either select Automatically Detect Configuration or ask us what the setting should be.

Other articles

This article is part of a series about reseller hosting:

• About reseller hosting
• WHM overview for resellers
• Feature lists in WHM
• Creating packages in WHM
• Creating cPanel accounts in WHM
• Managing cPanel accounts in WHM
• Managing DNS zones in WHM
• Customising cPanel accounts