Category Archives: cPanel

cPanel 106 Changes

While there aren’t any significant changes in cPanel 106, we did want to quickly highlight a few changes that you might notice or find helpful.

Customizable Favorites in WHM

The Top Tools section has been replaced with a Favorites section that you can customize to more prominently show the features that you use the most.

Server and username data added to top navigation

The username, hostname, OS, cPanel & WHM version, and load average details have returned to the top navigation bar in WHM.

Empty Junk Button in RoundCube

An Empty Junk button has been added to Roundcube. This button allows you to remove all the messages in the Junk folder at once.

Password Required to Update Contact Email Address

For security, you must now provide your password to change your cPanel contact email address.

Removed the Addon Domains, Alias Domains and Subdomains sections

These sections have been removed from the Jupiter cPanel theme. All of this functionality has long been consolidated under the Domains section / interface so this is just a removal of redundant pages.

cPanel 104 Roundcube Updates

cPanel 104 has introduced a couple of useful changes to the Roundcube webmail client. First, it now has a dark mode that is easily toggled via the icon in the lower left corner. You can see what both of these modes look like below.

You can now also train SpamAssassin directly from within the Roundcube webmail client. When selecting any email outside of the Junk folder, you have the option to select “Junk” which will move the email to your Junk folder and submit it to SpamAssassin for local spam training.

Similarly, if you select an email in your Junk folder, you’ll have the option to select “Not Junk”. This will move the email to your inbox and submit it to SpamAssassin for local ham (not spam) training.

If at any point you make a mistake, you can simply locate the email and select the opposite action.

cPanel 102: Jupiter WHM Theme & cPanel Icons

Nearly four months after its initial edge release, cPanel 102 has reached the stable release tier and we’ve been slowly deploying it across our servers. The biggest and most immediate change that you’ll notice is the new Jupiter WHM theme which has replaced the old X3 theme. After receiving several updates in earlier releases, the new theme is now functionally similar to that of the old one, just with a fresh look that matches the Jupiter cPanel theme. Here’s a quick comparison look:

Overall, we think this is a nice improvement and know that the cPanel developers are still working towards improving it further. The Jupiter cPanel theme has also been updated with icons for each item:

If you have any questions or run into any issues with the new WHM theme please let us know and we’ll be happy to lend a hand or report any issues to cPanel directly.

Warning: cPanel Phishing Emails

Please be advised that we’ve been seeing an increase in the number of cPanel phishing emails being reported to us. Phishing emails are those that look like legitimate emails but they often contain malicious links disguised as legitimate ones in an attempt to obtain login information from the recipient.

As an example, below is a redacted copy of an email that one of our clients received just a few days ago.

These emails will include your actual domain name and at first glance, will look like a legitimate cPanel disk quota notification. The anchor text of the links even correctly points to cPanel URLs on your domain. However, if you hover over those links, you can see in the bottom left corner that their target is a third party phishing website on an unrelated domain. If you were to enter your cPanel login information at that URL, attackers would then have your login information and use it for malicious purposes.

The best way to avoid getting phished is to not click on links in emails. Instead, visit cPanel or whatever service you need to by directly entering the address into your browser. Once you login, you may find that the details in the email (disk usage in this case) don’t align with reality which can be a good indicator that this was a phishing attempt. In this particular case, though, the client’s domain was actually quite full so that alone wasn’t helpful in distinguishing a difference.

If you ever have concerns about the legitimacy of any such email notifications just submit a ticket with the full headers and source of the message and we would be happy to take a look for you. It’s always best, though, to just assume the worst and not click on any of these links. Instead, just enter your desired destination directly in your browser.

New cPanel Theme: Jupiter

cPanel’s latest theme, Jupiter, is now available on all of our servers. It is the default for all newly created packages and you can edit your existing packages to use it if so desired.

Although their development path isn’t particularly clear, you’ll notice this theme closely resembles the Glass style that was recently released for the Paper Lantern theme. They are instead moving forward with this new theme, Jupiter, and will be removing Paper Lantern entirely in Spring of 2022.

While this new theme is functional, there are a couple of things you should be aware of.

  • Customization is limited. Additional capabilities will be added in future releases.
  • The CloudLinux Resource Usage section is not currently present. This should start showing up within the next few weeks as updated stable builds of their lvemanager package are published.

In addition to this cPanel theme, they are reportedly working on a version of Jupiter for WHM as well, slated for release in cPanel version 100. Below is a low resolution teaser image that they sent out showing this.

A new look to WHM would certainly be welcome but we’ll have to wait and see for sure what their plans are. In the meantime, check out the cPanel theme and let us know what you think!

cPanel 96: New Glass Style & Updated DNS Zone Manager

With cPanel version 96 now installed on all of our servers, we wanted to take a quick moment and highlight a couple of the included changes.

New Glass Style for Paper Lantern

A new style, named Glass, has been added to the Paper Lantern theme. This is basically just a more lightweight, minimalistic version of the existing Basic style. Upon first look you might even wonder why none of the icons loaded but rest assured that is intentional.

While cPanel has tried to force this as the default for all new cPanel accounts, we’ve instead reverted back to the Basic style to avoid any confusion. You can easily change styles at any time via the “Change Style” link in cPanel. If you would like to set a default style at the WHM reseller level you can do that as well via Customization -> Customize Style in WHM.

DNS Zone Manager

A couple of very important improvements were made to WHM’s recent addition, the DNS Zone Manager. It now has the ability to manage multiple records at the same time and the ability to change a record’s type. The lack of these two capabilities had really limited the usefulness of this functionality up until now.

With the DNS Zone Manager now being more functional, the legacy “Edit DNS Zone” functionality has been removed entirely in cPanel 96. The Edit MX Entry interface has also been removed and replaced with an Email Routing Configuration page that replicates the same Email Routing functionality that is available within cPanel.

While not groundbreaking by any means, these changes may alter your workflow a little bit. If you have any questions about the new interfaces or require any other assistance please don’t hesitate to reach out to us.

Cloning Scripts With Softaculous

The ability to clone scripts within Softaculous is a valuable and often overlooked feature. It can quickly and easily provide a safe place for you to test updates or create an up-to-date development environment.

To start the cloning process, you’ll want to go to the All Installations section of Softaculous. For each installation you’ll then see the clone option.

Upon selecting clone, you’ll be prompted to configure where you would like to clone the installation to. We highly recommend creating a separate subdomain for this that is outside of the current site’s document root. This helps to avoid any cross contamination between the two sites, particularly as it relates to custom .htaccess settings. Continue reading

More Than Just Webmail

An often overlooked feature of cPanel is the webmail interface, which offers far more than just a place to view your email. It is a very powerful tool that allows email users to fully manage their own email accounts. The interface was recently updated in cPanel 84 and includes a few new features as well.

From within webmail you can view device configuration information, setup filters or forwarders, change your password, configure spam filtering, manage disk usage and even track delivery of emails.

This can be a tremendous time saving tool for both you and your clients because it empowers email users to manage their own account. Simply send them to /webmail on their domain and they can login with their own email address and password.

Node.js Now Available!

We’re very pleased to announce that Node.js applications can now be deployed on all of our servers. This functionality is available within cPanel via the “Setup Node.js App” link that can be found under the software section. Upon selecting the “Create Application” button you’ll see the screen below.

When creating an application you have the following options available to you:

  • Node.js Version – We currently offer the latest LTS (12.x) and prior LTS (10.x) versions. More can be added as needed though currently we plan to stick with the LTS releases (even version numbers). The desired version can be changed for any application at any time.
  • Application Mode – Simply select Development or Production based on your needs.
  • Application Root – This defines the file system path for the application, relative to the cPanel account’s home directory. If the cPanel user was “node” then entering “app” in this field would create the application at /home/node/app.
  • Application URL – This configures the URL to be used with the application. If left blank, it will configure the root (sub)domain to load the application.
  • Application Startup File – This defines your application startup file and will default to app.js if left blank.

You can also choose to define a passenger log file and setup custom environment variables if desired. Once you’ve created the application, you can visit the URL you configured for the application and see a basic test page like the one below.

Now that you have created an application, you can continue to manage it via cPanel. This includes restarting it, changing the Node.js version, switching between Development and Production, etc.

We know that many of you have been looking forward to this functionality and we’re eager to hear your feedback. Please let us know what you think here or via a ticket!

PHP 7.3 Now Available!

PHP 7.3 was released early this month and is now available on all of our servers! As with prior versions, you can easily change the PHP version per cPanel account via the “Select PHP Version” option in cPanel.

PHP 7.3.0 comes with numerous improvements and new features such as:

The migration guide is available in the PHP Manual. Please consult it for the detailed list of new features and backward incompatible changes. For 3rd party applications, it’s best to confirm that they support PHP 7.3 before making the switch. However, if you run into any issues you can quickly and easily revert back to your prior version.