A newbie needs help getting started :(

[toxostoma]

Well, so I've finally come to the low point of having to admit that I'm a total newbie. My background is ColdFusion and Windows servers developer. So I've got a lot to learn about Linux and PHP environments.

I have an account here to basically put up pictures and a little news with a group of friends.

Anyway, I'm having a hard time doing a number of things and any help or pointers would be totally appreciated.

WHM / CPanel
First of all, I don't quite understand the WHM / CPanel. I've looked at the CPanel documentation and have visited to the demo CPanel pages, the links of which are posted in these forums.

My Cpanel doesn't look anything like the demo pages and the documentation has lots of features which I don't seem to have access to. I'm just confused as to how to do certain things when the documentation doesn't seem to match what I'm using...

Changing existing accounts...
I made a package, and then one account and gave it all my allotted storage and bandwidth... Oops. I want to make seperate accounts for different people to use. But I can't figure out how to change the storage and bandwidth for the only account. I go to edit it, but I have no fields to change these. Do I have to delete it and then make all my accounts? This would seem odd that I couldn't adjust storage/BW for existing accounts.

Getting content management system
I'm kind of confused... I've seen recommendations for PHP Nuke, Typo3 (too complicated for me at the moment), Xoops, Mambo, and phpwcms. What's reasonably easy to get setup and performs well? (Am I going to run into problems with using too much resources if I use a cms for small site)?

Sorry to have to ask... Thanks to any good samaritan who's willing to help.

[Grunfeld]

[QUOTE=toxostoma]Well, so I've finally come to the low point of having to admit that I'm a total newbie. My background is ColdFusion and Windows servers developer. So I've got a lot to learn about Linux and PHP environments.

I have an account here to basically put up pictures and a little news with a group of friends.

Anyway, I'm having a hard time doing a number of things and any help or pointers would be totally appreciated.

WHM / CPanel
My Cpanel doesn't look anything like the demo pages and the documentation has lots of features which I don't seem to have access to. I'm just confused as to how to do certain things when the documentation doesn't seem to match what I'm using...

You may have a different SKIN set as the default on your WHM for the package

Changing existing accounts...
I made a package, and then one account and gave it all my allotted storage and bandwidth... Oops.

You need to EDIT the packahe you have created mainly size and bandwidth settings.... then once you have done that you create other packages...


Cheers,

Gary

[Jonathan]

I've used php-Nuke on two different sites for few months,
and one of my customer/friends uses it for his gaming site...

Also some of the features in WHM and cPanel may not be
available, because your on a shared server-- some things
simply can't be trusted to people unless their running a dedicated for themselves.

[Frank Hagan]

Grunfeld has it right ... edit the package in WHM. Or, add some other packages that use a portion of what you have, and then use the link to "Upgrade/Downgrade An Account" in WHM to reassign a new package to the account, and you're set.

You can set the theme your Cpanel accounts receive to the "X Theme" during creation. Most of the docs and tutorials use that theme in them. Skinning is a great thing, but its also confusing.

[Frank Hagan]

I forgot to mention regarding CMS's:

I hate them all. They are either bloated beyond belief in their attempt to be all things to all people, or they have some great and then some horrible modules that really don't integrate all that well. And some of them are a nightmare to install and get running.

Of the free ones, the one that I think is the simpliest to install and configure is phpWS, available from http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/ It has coding standards, so you get less of the flakey modules.

[toxostoma]

Thanks for the replies.

I'm still confused about this whole packages / accounts thing.

Ideally, what I want to do is "allow" all of my allotted storage and bandwidth to be used anywhere on my site, but create subdomains and give certain people access only to their subdomain of the site. I'd rather wait on restricting storage and bandwidth because some people might need a little more and some a little less. I'd like to see how it goes before I assign x amount to one subdomain, y amount to another.

I'm sorry, but I just don't understand how to do this. I thought it was be totally self obvious. What is the purpose of a package vs an account?

Can I create a package (giving it all my alloted storage and bandwidth) and then create multiple accounts underneath it, without assigning them any storage or bandwidth restrictions and get my desired result? If I can, I haven't been able to figure out how.

[cladoch]

There are some excellent visual step-by-step flash tutorials for WHM at http://www.websitetutor.com/tutorials/60_whm/.

Dathorn does not allow overselling so you will have to give your accounts hard limits on bandwidth and space.

I would suggest starting out with the tutorial on How to create a package and then How to create an account with a package.

Hope these help...

[Frank Hagan]

Let's make sure we're talking about the same thing.

A "subdomain" is part of your regular domain, and takes the form of:

http://SubdomainName.YourDomain.com

The name of the subdomain takes the place of the "www" you usually see. Is that what you want to do?

Or, do you want to have a giant account and have people use their own domain names? There is a way to do that with only 1 large package and 1 large account, but there are limitations.

[toxostoma]

I feel like screaming I'm sorry for causing so much trouble and thank you for continuing to help me!. (That's probably because it's 2:20 AM and I just finished watching The Butterfly Effect.

I have only one domain name. There will be no others for my dathorn account. I own the domain and the dathorn account, but I've got 5 or 6 friends that are going to put the site up with me. We're going to talk about our national / international trips (to Mexico so far), post pictures, trip reports, etc. This part of the site is "shared." Meaning that we all have a part in the content because it's about all of us, as a group. I'd like this to fall under www.mydomain.com.

Each person also wants their own personal section of the site. I'd like this to be in the form of firstname.mydomain.com. (Subdomains). It seemed logical to me that I could basically say "give anything with mydomain.com (both www or subdomains) the usage of my storage and bandwidth allotment. Then down the road, if I notice that someone is using more bandwidth or more storage for their personal portion of the site, at the expense of everybody else, I could try assigning some limits. (But I really think this site aint gonna be that big. Most people have only so many friends and family ).

Idealy, I'd like to match my security to my subdomains, so that people logging in via FTP would only see their firstname.mydomain.com portion of the site and couldn't affect any one elses stuff.

Cladoch, I've looked at the tutorials. Thanks for sending them. They may prove useful in the future when I have questions. But they seemed to show how to fill out the forms or click on the links (something I can intuitively figure out) as opposed to describing what a package is for and what an account is for and when you should create one package with many accounts or many packages with single accounts, etc.

Hope this clarifies things.

[Frank Hagan]

OK, here's the steps:

1. Create a large "package" in WHM. I think you'll need to leave at least 5MB disk space for your WHM account, so make it 5MB smaller than your total. Do the same with the bandwidth allotment ... leaving 20MB or so free for WHM. You can check with Andrew for the exact amounts you need to leave free for WHM (or maybe someone can chime in here).

2. Assign the large package to your domain in WHM.

3. When needed, create subdomains in WHM for each user. You don't have to do this at first; you can create them anytime you need them. The subdomains can take exactly the form you stated. For instance, "rick.mydomain.com" could be Rick's area on your site.

Rick will have his own Cpanel and FTP rights for his area of your site, with permissions you can set. He can create subdirectories (folders), which would take the form of "rick.mydomain.com/foldername". WHM will report bandwidth and disk usage for each of the subdomains, so you can track it. He can log into his Cpanel with his browser using http://rick.mydomain.com/cpanel.

The path to Rick's subdomain on disk would be ../public_html/rick/ so you would be able to view the contents of his subdomain via FTP if you like.

(You can also log into your domain's CPanel to set up subdomains, but they do not get their own CPanel that way, and you do not get the reporting mechanism as easily.)

As far as the software to run, I'll leave recommendations to others. But I would start with making a list of the specific things you want ... a Forum, a picture gallery, news feed (blog), etc. Then find the CMS that has those main elements in a format you like, and choose that. Remember that all the other functions just get in the way if you aren't using them ... they bloat the software and make the system that much harder to maintain and run.

I personally hate the *nuke siblings, but if your audience is full of young hip people (or whatever they call "hip" people now), they may love it. I think they are the rap music of the online world.

[toxostoma]

1. Create a large "package" in WHM. I think you'll need to leave at least 5MB disk space for your WHM account, so make it 5MB smaller than your total. Do the same with the bandwidth allotment ... leaving 20MB or so free for WHM. You can check with Andrew for the exact amounts you need to leave free for WHM (or maybe someone can chime in here).

I tried this several times and varied the numbers a little.

OK, here's the steps:
2. Assign the large package to your domain in WHM.

I'm assuming I do this by creating an account that points to www.mydomain.com. I did this. (I also gave this account unlimited storage and bandwidth, so it defaults to the amount given for the package, which is like 1995 MB storage and 29980 MB bandwidth).

3. When needed, create subdomains in WHM for each user. You don't have to do this at first; you can create them anytime you need them.

I assume that to create subdomains, I make new accounts and point them to subdomain.mydomain.com. I tried this, but it's the same problem I've encountered before. I can't give unlimited storage or bandwidth since the other account (the www account) is taking the lion's share. And to give the account only one meg or so seems counterintuitive. Wouldn't that mean that that user of the account has only one meg of storage?

(You can also log into your domain's CPanel to set up subdomains, but they do not get their own CPanel that way, and you do not get the reporting mechanism as easily.)

If this is easier, I'm all for it. They are not going to need their own CPanels, so maybe this is the way to go, though I still would like to be able to tell how much space and bandwidth different areas of the site are using. How do you create subdomains in CPanel, if not through a new account? I see the list subdomains, but I don't see anywhere to add them manually.

I still feel like I don't understand the reasons for packages and accounts... Why can't I change the storage or bandwidth for an account after I create it? Instead, am I supposed to make one package for each account so that I can then change the storage or bandwidth when the time comes?

Maybe I've misunderstood your instructions above...

As far as the CSM thing goes, I'm thinking of trying Xoops, just as soon as I get this whole account thing figured out. I hear you about not having any more code sitting around on the server than's needed.

[mkraai]

I assume that to create subdomains, I make new accounts and point them to subdomain.mydomain.com. I tried this, but it's the same problem I've encountered before. I can't give unlimited storage or bandwidth since the other account (the www account) is taking the lion's share.

That is correct. Subdomains created in WHM have their own space and bandwidth. To share the space among several subdomains, you need to create them in cPanel.

I see the list subdomains, but I don't see anywhere to add them manually.

You can add subdomains from the "Manage Subdomains" page.
After you've added the subdomains, you can set up individual FTP accounts for your users under the FTP "Manage Accounts" page. Each FTP account can be limited to a specific directory. Just use the directory created for the subdomain.

[toxostoma]

Okay, I made my first giant leap in figuring this out... Thanks to mkraai, whose comment "Subdomains created in WHM have their own space and bandwidth. To share the space among several subdomains, you need to create them in cPanel" set me down the right path...

Here's what I never realized (and I feel kind of embarrassed). By choosing "list accounts" in WHM, and then clicking on the CPanel icon next to my main account, I found CPanel. Previously, I hadn't understood how they were seperated. I logged into WHM and all I saw were the icons and links there. At the top of the screen there are version numbers for WHM and CPanel, so I just figured that the screens I was seeing were a combination / hybrid of WHM and CPanel. I didn't have a clue as to how they were seperate. (My initial post in this thread alluded to this, when I talked about not seeing all the icons in CPanel that I saw in the documentation).

I imagine that I'll be able to make progress now that I've discovered CPanel! Though I feel dumb for overlooking it, I can see how this would happen to a person who's never seen or used WHM / CPanel.

Thanks everybody for the help!

[mkraai]

BTW, a package is a group of preconfigured settings, which is applied to the account.

It might help to think of your WHM account with Dathorn as a reseller account (which it is), even if you're not using it as such. If you were reselling, you could sell Package A for 9.95/month, Package B for 14.95/month and package C for 19.95/month.

Thinking of things in these terms should help clarify a lot of the wording in WHM.