Subdomains can be very useful for websites. A subdomain is a domain address “under” your main domain. For example, a sub domain could be “subdomain.yoursite.com.”

How to Create Subdomain.

This tutorial will show you how to create Subdomains through Cpanel.

• Log into Cpanel.
• Click on “Subdomains.”
• Enter the desired subdomain name (i.e. subdomain.yoursite.com).
• You will see “Document Root” fill in. This is the folder on your FTP site where you can upload files to your subdomain.
• Hit “Create.”
• You’re done!

Subdomains are very useful for your website. Keep in mind that search engines tend to treat subdomains as separate sites. Your main site and your subdomain will not have the same ranking strength.

MySQL databases are used in many web applications. This tutorial will show you how to easily and quickly create your MySQL databases.

How to Create MySQL Database

• Log into Cpanel.
• Scroll down, click on “MySQL Database Wizard.”
• Enter the desired database name.
• Keep in mind, the actual database name will have your user name as a prefix to the database name: username_databasename
• Hit Next Step.
• Enter desired User Name and Password.
• Keep in mind, the actual user name will have your user name as a prefix to the database name: username_username
• Also, we recommend that you use the “Generate Password” option to increase security.
• Click “Next Step.”
• Check “All Privileges.” This will set the permissions the user will have for the database.
• Hit “Next Step.”
• You’re done!

This is one of the more complicated things the average user will need to do within Cpanel. Hopefully, this tutorial helped you get through creating MySQL databases.

This tutorial will show you how to update contact information and change your password in Cpanel.

Update Contact Information

You will want to keep your email address up to date.

• Click Update Contact Information.
• Enter your new email address.

There you go! Now on to your password.

Change Password

• Log into Cpanel.

If you ever need to change your password:

• Click on Change Password.

Enter your new password.

There you go!

This tutorial will show you how to create mail auto-responders in Cpanel. You will need to have anemail address set up in Cpanel in order for this to work.

Auto Responders

Auto-responders will send a pre-generated message to anyone who sends an email to a certain email address. You can set these up in Cpanel.

• Click on Auto Responders in Cpanel.
• Click on Add Auto Responders.
• Leave Character Set on the Default setting.
• Enter the email address you want to have the auto responder.
• Enter the name you want to appear in the auto responder message.
• Enter the subject line of the auto responder message.
• Enter the message itself.
• Click Create/Modify.

There you go! Your auto responder is now set up.

This tutorial will show you to create email forwarders through Cpanel. You will need to have an email address set up in Cpanel in order for this to work.

How to Set up Email Forwarder

Email forwarders are used to automatically forward all the email received to a certain email address to another email address.

• Log in to Cpanel.
• Click on Forwarders.
• Click on Add Forwarder
• Enter the address to Forward.
• Enter the Forward To email address.
• Click Add Forwarder.

That’s it! Your done.

This tutorial will guide you to create email accounts in the Cpanel interface. This video assumes you have access to your site’s Cpanel account.

In case you cannot see the video above, here is a quick summary:

• Log in to Cpanel.
• Click on Email Accounts.
• Enter the name of the email address (i.e. yourname@yoursite.com).
• Enter the password.
• Enter the email address quota (default is 250MB and should be good).
• Click Create.

There you go! All set up. Under “Do you wish to configure the account to work with a mail client?” you can click “Yes” and get all the pertinant information to setting up your email address with Outlook or a similar program.

Hope this tutorial helps. If you have any issues, contact the support department.

The Five Minute Guide

Service Manager

Log in to your WHM.

To remove any of these services log into WHM & go to Service Configuration > Service Manager in the left hand menu.

• Clamd: This is a virus scanning service that is very greedy with system resources. It is often safe to remove.
• Entropy Chat: Disable this.

Once these two things are disabled, it’s time to go to the next step in the guide.

Tweak Settings

Go to Server Configuration>Tweak Settings.

• Make sure default catch-all mail address is set to FAIL.
• Disable Mailmain
• Uncheck Analog Stats and Webalizer.
• Enable the “Delete Each Somain’s Access Logs After Stats Run.”

That’s it! Be sure to leave a comment on how well these worked for you. You may also be interested in our article on optimizing MySQL for dedicated server/VPS.

The day has come when you have a VPS or even your own dedicated server. The problem is that a poorly configured server can hamstring your efforts at running your website.

Poor MySQL configuration can result in larger load times and more processing time for your MySQL queries.Use this guide as a starting point to configure and optimize MySQL for your server. This guide is assuming you are using WHM/cPanel.

What You Will Need

This guide will assume that you have Root SSH access to your server.

This will involve a few commands that you may not recognize. Don’t worry! We’ve got your back.

Optimizing MySQL

Log in with Root SSH.

Once you are in there, you will type in the following:

vi /etc/my.cnf

This will open up a VI editor. In case you are not familiar with the interface, here is a quick glossary:

• Insert: By default, you have to be in “insert” mode to type anything in. Press I to activate insert mode, press ESC to leave it.
• To exit without saving, type :q! anytime.
• To exit with saving, type :wq

What we are going to do is type in some new configurations.


[mysqld]
max_connections = 300
key_buffer = 32M
myisam_sort_buffer_size = 32M
join_buffer_size = 1M
read_buffer_size = 1M
sort_buffer_size = 2M
table_cache = 4000
thread_cache_size = 286
interactive_timeout = 25
wait_timeout = 7000
connect_timeout = 10
max_allowed_packet = 16M
max_connect_errors = 10
query_cache_limit = 2M
query_cache_size = 12M
query_cache_type = 1
tmp_table_size = 16M
skip-innodb
[mysqld_safe]
open_files_limit = 8192
[mysqldump]
quick
max_allowed_packet = 16M
[myisamchk]
key_buffer = 64M
sort_buffer = 64M
read_buffer = 16M
write_buffer = 16M
[mysqlhotcopy]
interactive-timeout

That’s it! This is not a true, “One size fits all” kind of thing, but this is a great first step. Keep an eye on your server for a few days/weeks after implementing this and see where it needs improvement. For instance, often MySQL heavy websites (e-commerce sites) can have a higher value of query_cache_size (we said 12M. This can go up to 24M, 36M, or sometimes even 64M depending on your situation).

When you run your own dedicated server/VPS, you have to make sure things are set up to run efficiently. Often times your sites will start to run slowly, time out unexpectedly, and otherwise suffer from performance issues. These settings will help combat those problems.

The site is done, everyone is ready to launch, people are all but wearing party hats, but there are pages (and pages) of filler text that need to be written. Suddenly, what should have taken several weeks of drafts and proofing needs to be done tonight so the site can launch.

Some issues with this:

• You’re not sure what to write.
• You’re not sure if anyone is going to read it.
• You’re probably more concerned with finishing the website/getting it launched on time than writing content.
• People are breathing down your neck.

If your in this situation, go do the best you can. Come back and read this for next time.

How to Feel Good About Your Content

For some reason, we tend to skip over the most important part of our websites: the content. We fret over fonts, colors and placement, but we cannot be troubled to take more than five minutes to write a web page that hundreds of people will read.

The best policy for us is to write drafts of all the text, and everyone reads it and proofs it. The goal is not necessarily to have all the writing done the second the development is done, but to at least have solid drafts to use. Take some time, and write several good drafts while the project is in development.

How to Feel Good That Someone is Going To Read Your Content

Another issue with writing your not sure who is going to read the content. After all, you are going to launch the blog tomorrow. No one knows this is out there. Google won’t find your blog post for several weeks (to several months). Once search engines start displaying pages from your site, you know deep down you are a new blog and that Google will not likely be sending millions of people to your site.

So, really, why not throw out some crap and call it good?.

• You need to have as much content as possible for search engines to respect your site.
• More content = more chance someone will link to your site. Search engines like links.
• Excellence matters to your visitors. No one wants to get information from an amateur site.

Man up and write some good content for your site. If you really think no one is ever going to read it, why are you writing this stuff anyways?

How to Care About the Content

The single biggest issue facing a site launch is making/proofing the site. Everyone involved is concerned with the site, not silly things like content. It’s not uncommon to have the site completed and ready to go, and have the whole project on hold because everyone needs text. The boss is suddenly on your back, wondering how something so silly as text can be keeping your site from launching. No longer do people bother doing multiple drafts, because dangit we are in a hurry here!

It’s not that no one cares about the content. It’s just that the content was pretty low on the priority list.

• Take some initiative, and write content during the whole project. It’s so much nicer when you get to the end of the project and at least have some drafts put together.
• Don’t let people forget about content. Seperate out who is going to write what, and get them to write on it.
• Use collaborative editing. Something like Google Docs can go a long ways to eliminate frustration. With Google Docs, you can all edit the same copy of the document, so no mass emails with updated Word documents.

Keep in mind that even if you are a web developer, content is what matters on the site. If the content turns out weak, the project suffers, so it may be worth getting involved to help proof/write things.

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Seth Stacey, the Web Hosting Guy

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