Getting Started with WHM – Step 2: Navigation and Initial Configuration

This is part of a multi-step guide to get started with your WHM account on Reseller Shared hosting or on a VPS service that includes cPanel/WHM.

These guides will cover initial configuration and setup to get you ready to create cPanel accounts. Below you can can find links to each other section:

Step 1: Logging in to WHM

Step 3: Creating new account packages

Step 4: Creating new cPanel accounts

In this section we will cover basic navigation and customization you may want to make on your account.

Navigating around WHM

After logging in you’ll be on the main interface used with your reseller account, The interface will look as follows:

The WHM interface consists of the following sections:

1. Top navigation bar
2. Side navigation menu
3. Support menu
4. Features

Top navigation bar

WHM’s top navigation bar remains visible as you navigate throughout the WHM interface.

• Click News to view important news and announcements from cPanel, Inc.
• Click Change Logs to view the cPanel & WHM change logs.
• Click Logout to log out of your WHM account.
• Click Load Averages to navigate to WHM’s Process Manager  interface (WHM >> Home >> System Health >> Process Manager). The numbers that follow this link represent the server’s one-minute, five-minute, and 15-minute load averages, respectively.

You may also see important server notices in this section of the interface. For example, if the most recent attempt to upgrade cPanel & WHM failed, you may see a The last attempt to update cPanel & WHM was blocked. warning, which you can click to review a list of upgrade blockers.

Side navigation menu

The side navigation menu in WHM provides quick access to all of WHM’s interfaces, and allows you to quickly search for specific features.

• To search for a feature, enter one or more keywords in the text box and click the search icon.
• To quickly navigate to a WHM interface, use the menu of available features:
• To expand or collapse all menu sections with one action, click the expandcollapse arrow icons at the top of each menu, immediately below the search text box.
• To expand or collapse a single menu section, click the arrow icon for that section.
• To access a WHM section, click that section’s name in the menu.
• To access a WHM interface, click that interface’s name in the menu.
• To hide or show the navigation menu, click the collapse icon.

Note: As a Reseller or Fully-Managed VPS user the access you have is not full root access so you may not find everything available, Mainly things locked down are areas to apply serverwide configurations or restarting services.

If there is something you need to know the state of or would like to request a change submit an eTicket.

Initial setup/configuration of your reseller account

There is a couple of things you can do to personalize the experience to your liking, We’ll go over them below:

Custom Nameservers:

If you intend on setting up your own custom nameservers for your customers to use on their domains to link up with your reseller hosting/VPS service you’ll need to set them within “Basic WebHost Manager® Setup”. This will mean any account you create will be set up by default to refer to those nameservers.

You can find a guide here on setting up your child nameservers which must be done first!

Custom cPanel branding:

The Customization area will allow you to apply your own company name/logo to cPanel accounts in your service, When one of your customers logs in they’ll see your business name/logo on the header of all pages within cPanel rather than the generic cPanel theme logo.

Next we’ll cover creating new Packages to assign your cPanel accounts a defined set of resources, Click here to go to the next part!