What the Heck Is Web Host Manager (WHM) & What Can You Do With It?
This article is a part of HostGator’s Web Pros Series. In this collection, we function articles from our workforce of consultants right here at HostGator. Our Product Managers, Linux Administrators, Marketers, and Tech Support engineers share their greatest ideas for getting essentially the most out of your web site.
If you’ve been constructing web sites for some time, you’ve most likely heard of WHM, even in the event you’re not utilizing it but.
But like plenty of our clients who’ve internet design and reseller companies, it’s possible you’ll surprise what WHM can do for you. The brief reply is “a lot.”
The longer reply is the remainder of this submit—learn on for solutions to your WHM questions.
What precisely is WHM?
WHM stands for Web Host Manager. It’s a dashboard program that helps internet hosting resellers and internet designers handle a number of websites for various clients safely and simply. It’s accessible to our reseller, VPS and devoted internet hosting plan clients.
Is WHM the identical factor as cPanel?
WHM is much like cPanel—they’re produced by the identical firm—however WHM is a stage up from cPanel, since you use WHM to arrange and handle cPanels. Then you may allocate bandwidth, disk utilization, e-mail quantity and different assets for all of the web sites you handle for your self and to your purchasers.
Unlike a shared internet hosting setup, you may create a separate cPanel for all of your domains and allocate assets nonetheless you want, inside your plan’s limits.
Why not have all of your domains on one cPanel, the way in which shared internet hosting customers do?
In a phrase (OK, two phrases): web site safety.
When you separate every area into its personal cPanel, you’re mainly placing these domains on their very own little islands (umbrellas and sunscreen not included). Now, if one in all your domains will get contaminated with malware, your different domains are safely tucked away on their very own little isles. But in case your domains have been all on the identical cPanel, with the entire file construction in a single place, there could be more alternative for the malware to unfold to your different domains.
There’s one other safety function you should use in the event you or your purchasers have a number of eCommerce web sites. Ecommerce websites want a devoted IP deal with to adjust to PCI DSS (the worldwide card cost safety commonplace), however you may solely have one devoted IP deal with on every cPanel.
With WHM, you may simply arrange separate cPanels for these devoted IP addresses, and that’s more cost effective than shopping for separate shared internet hosting plans for each ecommerce website in your steady.
Finally, more safety. If you’re creating web sites for a number of customers, a reseller account with WHM entry permits you to give your clients entry to their website’s particular person cPanel alone, with out additionally giving them incidental entry to each area in your account.
What different cool stuff are you able to do with WHM?
So a lot, however we’ll begin with two issues for now.
- You can model your cPanels along with your firm’s emblem, so your clients see it once they entry their cPanel.
- You can arrange personal nameservers that function your organization’s URL, so that you get a branding alternative there, too.
OK, so how do I get began with WHM?
There’s so much occurring in WHM and studying your manner round can take some time.
For one factor, WHM offers you entry to many more features than cPanel. And as a result of you are able to do so many issues with WHM, it pays to know the way to do them appropriately, so your websites—and your clients’ websites—hold working the way in which you need them to.
Start by attending to know the WHM fundamentals. Read articles, search for tutorials on WHM duties you need to do, and perhaps try cPanel University’s free WHM administrator programs. Even these of us who’ve been working with WHM for a very long time are nonetheless studying new issues about what it might do.
Things to bear in mind while you begin with WHM
You know the way you’re used to logging into cPanel and seeing all of your domains? Well, don’t freak out while you log in to your new WHM account for the primary time and don’t see your domains. They nonetheless exist! But with WHM, you must create the cPanels for them earlier than you may see and handle them. Like we stated, a stage up.
And needless to say WHM doesn’t routinely allocate your assets amongst your web sites. It’s as much as you to parcel out disk utilization, bandwidth, and more so that you don’t oversell your reseller quota or depart an internet site wanting the assets it must work proper.
How can you progress from shared internet hosting to a reseller plan with WHM entry?
Let’s say you’ve received 20 domains in your shared internet hosting plan that you just’re accessing via a single cPanel, however you’d like every area to have its personal cPanel. You can arrange a migration with tophostingproviders-reviewsupport so you will get all these domains moved and separated out.
- First, you’ll want to decide on your new internet hosting plan. For folks with a lot of domains, we usually suggest reseller or devoted internet hosting, relying on the variety of domains you could have and your finances. (VPS is a superb developer sandbox software, but it surely doesn’t provide the reminiscence and assets for operating a lot of memory-intensive web sites.)
- Second, contact tophostingproviders-reviewsupport to request your migration. If you need all of your websites on the identical cPanel, you’re all set. If you need your domains on separate cPanels in your new internet hosting plan, request that particularly and tell us which of your domains you need to be the first area. Your major area is the one you’ll signal into—making it your major area doesn’t have an effect on how your different domains are hosted or displayed.
- Third, in the event you’re on a devoted internet hosting plan, you’ll have to create personal title servers to your domains. You don’t have to do that you probably have a reseller account, however you may in the event you’d just like the branding that comes with it. Pro tip: you probably have a reseller account and also you level all of your domains to your personal nameserver, you solely should make one change to level all of them to the brand new server in the event you ever improve to devoted internet hosting, as a substitute of getting to undergo and alter them for each single area.
Ready to get the safety, website administration and branding advantages of WHM? Pick your PRO internet hosting plan from tophostingproviders-reviewnow.