Your cPanel hosting is active. This guide covers your access details, the panel tools and the first operations you need to put your website and email addresses online.
What your hosting includes
Starter Hosting, Pro Hosting and Enterprise Hosting all run on cPanel inside an isolated CloudLinux environment. Each plan includes a free SSL certificate, professional email addresses and daily backups. The Starter plan hosts one website, the Pro plan several websites with 50 GB of storage, and the Enterprise plan adds WHM access to administer several hosting accounts.
Getting your access details
Sign in to your client area at my.openvista.ma, open Services and then My services, and click the cPanel access button of your hosting plan. The username and password were sent when you ordered; they can be reset from the client area. Bookmark the panel address so you can find it again quickly.
Finding the tools you need in cPanel
cPanel groups features in sections. The tools used most often during the first weeks are:
- File Manager: upload and edit the files of your website.
- Domains: manage the main domain, additional domains and subdomains.
- MySQL Databases: create the databases and users a CMS needs.
- Email Accounts: create professional mailboxes.
- SSL/TLS Status: check the certificate and its renewal.
- Backup: generate a full copy before an important change.
Uploading your first files
The public_html folder is the document root of your website: your files must go there. In File Manager, open public_html and use Upload to send an archive or a page. An index.html or index.php file becomes the home page. Keep the existing .htaccess file: it holds rewrite and redirect rules. Folders are set to 755 and files to 644.
Creating a MySQL database
In MySQL Databases, create a database, then a user, and grant that user all privileges. cPanel automatically adds your account prefix to both names: write them down exactly as displayed, together with the password, before installing WordPress or another application. Day-to-day management then happens in phpMyAdmin.
Creating your email addresses
In Email Accounts, choose the domain, enter the local part of the address, a strong password and a quota, then confirm. The mailbox is configured in an email client over IMAP and SMTP, or opened directly in the webmail provided by cPanel. Repeat for each address before setting up the mail clients.
