The Office of the Chief Information Officer

cPanel Web Hosting Service

On Campus IP or VPN required for Login

In order to log in to the cPanel service, you need to be on the campus network or use the Tunnel All option with the campus VPN for remote network access

cPanel gives you several ways to create and manage websites through a web interface:

You can choose an established content management system (CMS) like WordPress, Drupal, Omeka, and others
You can create your own custom site using HTML, CSS, jQuery, Python, Ruby, PHP, and other web-related languages

Creating and hosting your website at web.illinois.edu offers a great deal of flexibility with less complexity than managing an entire web server. You will also have access to tools that make maintenance tasks like scheduled backups and software updates simple.

Logging in and Creating Accounts

You must have an illinois.edu email address to create a cPanel account. You may create a separate account for each website you wish to host. Once an account is created, users with a email address ending in @gmail.com can be added as collaborators. All users can get started by clicking "Login."

Illinois users can then choose the "Campus Login" button to log in with their campus credentials. After logging in, you will see a list of your cPanel accounts (if any) and a form to create a new account.
Enternal Users can choose the "External Contributors" button to log in with their @gmail.com identity. After logging in, you will see a list of your cPanel accounts (if any). There will not be an option to create an account.

Not sure whether cPanel is the right fit for your site?

Check out the cPanel Features menu for the highlights.
Check out our Web Hosting Finder for more web hosting alternatives.
Or contact us for a consultation.

Softaculous allows users to install common software packages like WordPress and Drupal by filling in some form fields and clicking a button. Some other great features include:

Automated backups
One click restore
Update notifications
Automatic updates for some packages

Available Databases

MySQL and PostgreSQL database are available to support your website. In many cases your databases are created and managed automatically by Softaculous. You can also create databases and database users yourself using the MySQL/PostgreSQL Databases or MySQL/PostgreSQL Database Wizard features.

Database Access and Management

CPanel provides the phpMyAdmin and phpPgAdmin tools to work directly with your database. You can also access your database using the command line via SSH or the Terminal feature.

Database hosting alternatives

Databases in cPanel are available only to support your hosted websites or applications. They are not available for general use, and are not accessible remotely. If you need a general purpose database, check out Techservices Database Hosting or AWS Relational Database Service.

You can easily add co-owners to your cPanel site. While the primary owner must always have an @illinois.edu email address, you can also add users with @gmail.com addresses as collaborators. After creating your cPanel account and logging into it, click the Access Management feature on your dashboard to get started.

You can develop websites and apps on cPanel hosting using the following languages:

PHP
Perl
Python
NodeJS
Ruby

You can select from several supported versions of each language.

All websites will initially be assigned an address of thedomainyoupicked.web.illinois.edu. If you would like a custom domain like myproject.mydepartment.illinois.edu or myprofessionalidentity.org, you can work with your unit IT or external domain registrar to point the domain to web.illinois.edu, then let us know that you would like the domain associated with your account. Visit cPanel, How to get a custom domain in the knowledgebase for complete instructions..

Advanced Domain Needs

What about if you need more than one domain? In most cases, separate websites should be hosted in separate cPanel accounts (you can create as many as you need!). In some cases, it might make sense to host related sites in the same cPanel account. For example, you may wish to host your dev site in the same account as your production site to make use of cloning and staging features available in Softaculous. Feel free to set up your own subdomains or reach out to cpanel-support@illinois.edu if you need assistance with this features.

You may access your cPanel account's command line using an SSH client installed on your local machine or using the Terminal feature from your cPanel dashboard. Instructions for using SSH with Cpanel can be found in the knowledgebase.

Every website should be made available as a secure site using SSL. CPanel makes this easy with AutoSSL. When your account is created, cPanel will automatically provision and install an SSL certificate with an expiration of 90 days. When the certificate nears its expiration date, cPanel will automatically renew it. SSL certificates provisioned in this way can be used with the default web.illinois.edu domain or with custom domains and addon domains.

If you do not wish to use the AutoSSL feature, you may install a certificate you have requested from the Illinois Certificate Manager using the SSL/TLS feature from your cPanel dashboard.

Another feature cPanel provides is the option to easily force all traffic to the secure version of your website. You can find this option within the Domains feature from your cPanel dashboard.

cPanel provides a web-based file manager to work with the files in your account. You can upload and download individual files or you can use the built in zip/unzip features to upload or download whole folders.

Several of cPanel's most popular features are listed in the menu to the left, designed to make managing your own website easier without compromising flexibility.

Documentation for cPanel is located in the knowledgebase.