Congratulations on your new ALCHosting Networks reseller hosting account. You should have received a Welcome Email containing your account-specific instructions. This page exists to provide further information and answer any initial questions you may have about your new hosting account. First thing is ensuring your domain is properly configured to load content from your ALCHosting Networks server. This is done by ensuring the nameservers are pointed correctly.

Nameservers

If you purchased a new domain with your account, then your domain will automatically be configured to point to your hosting account and you will not need to worry about this step. If your new hosting account is for a domain you previously registered with another web host or domain registrar, you will need to log in the account where the domain is currently registered and update the nameservers to your new ALCHosting Networks ones.

Once you log in, you will need to locate where in the account the DNS/nameservers are managed. Nameservers are usually found in pairs, look exactly like website URLs, and often begin with the letters "ns."

Once you have located your nameservers, remove any existing ones and replace them with:
ns1.directdns.com
ns2.directdns.com

Be sure there are no other nameservers set, and then save your new settings. Often this change can be reflected within a few hours, but can take up to 48 hours for propagation to complete. Once this is done, your website and email for your domain will all be managed from your ALCHosting Networks server.

Your resold customers will use the same nameservers for any domains hosted with you.

Logging In to WHM (Billing)

From within your Billing account, you can always login to WHM

1. To login to billing go to: https://my.alchosting.net/login, and then enter the username or email and password you used at signup. You can also click Forgot? to reset this password.
2. Once logged in, click on your hosting package under Your Active Products/Services.
3.  Click Login to WHM to be immediately logged into WHM, or click Change Hosting Password to change your WHM password. 
   

   NOTE: You will need to change WHM password to login using a link outside of this billing account.

4. Also please check your email address for Reseller Hosting Account Setup Guide for your Server Hostname and Hosting Account/cPanel Username. 

   NOTE: Take note of this hostname, username, and the password you set above if you need to login to WHM via a direct link.

Logging In to WHM (Direct Link)

To login to cPanel before DNS is pointed, go to:

https://SERVERHOSTNAME/whm

or

https://SERVERHOSTNAME:2087

To login to WHM after your domain is pointed to our nameservers go to:

https://domainname.com/whm

or

https://domainname.com:2087

When prompted for a username and password, you would provide the username and password you just gathered above.

Email

It is very easy to create new emails accounts under your domain from within your cPanel, the same procedure can be used by your resold clients to create their own emails account as well.

Once logged into cPanel, click on "Email Accounts" within the "EMAIL" section. On this page, towards the right-hand side click on "+CREATE" and in the "Username" field enter whatever you would like to use for your new email address. Note that the domain is populated on the right, you do not need to enter it, only what you wants before the @ symbol. In the "Password" field you will either choose a your own password or generate a secure one to use. You will need this password both to login to webmail or to configure an email client, such as Outlook or Mac Mail, so be sure to save it somewhere safe in the meantime.

You can then allocate the amount of space you want to this email account. Keep in mind that email storage does count towards your total account storage. Once you click "+CREATE" your new email account is ready for use. You can immediately log into webmail and send/receive emails.

Webmail & Email Clients

You have two options for managing how you choose to send and receive your email. You can log directly into the server, which is webmail, or you can use a third-party email client such as Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail, etc.

To access webmail, it it first necessary for your domain to be properly pointed and resolving to your ALCHosting Networks server. Once it is, browse to:
https://domain.com/webmail

Alternately, you could browse to:
https://domain.com:2096

Note that in both cases "domain.com" will need to be replaced with your actual domain name. This will remain true for the email client examples provided below as well. You can also log into your cPanel and click the "Webmail" icon to access your email directly on the server.

You may use any email client that you prefer, connecting via POP3 or IMAP, as the configuration details are all essentially the same. This is true for desktop as well as mobile device clients. You will need to provide some or all of the following information, depending on which email program you use.

Incoming Mail Server / Outgoing Mail Server / Hostname: mail.domain.com

Hostname: mail.domain.com

Username: full email address, including @domain.com

Password: the password you used when you created the email account within cPanel

When given the choice, always select the incoming/outgoing server option that uses SSL.

Incoming port: 993

Outgoing port: 465

Creating resold accounts

New cPanel accounts are created within WHM. You can access your WHM at:

http://domain.com/whm
or
http://domain.com:2087

The first step to creating a new cPanel account is to first create what is called a "package." A package is a set of parameters or specifications that you decide upon in order to define the limitations of the hosting packages you will offer your customers. For example if you intend to offer two hosting plans, a Big and a Small for example, then you will need to create two packages. You will then assign new cPanel accounts to one package or the other. You can create as many packages as you like in order to structure your hosting offerings in any way you choose.

In order to create a package and assign it to a domain that has been added to your account:

1. Log in to WHM
2. Type in Add a Package in the top left search field and click the resulting link
3. Set the values you want for the plan you are creating, be sure to include the Package Name. For a basic WordPress or similar type of website:
   • Disk Quota: 1000 - 5000
   • Monthly Bandwidth: 5000 - 10000
4. Once you have set these values, click the Add button at the bottom
5. The package now exists, to assign it to a domain and complete the account creation, click the logo in the upper left corner to return to the WHM home
6. Type Upgrade/Downgrade an Account in the search field and click the resulting link
7. Select the domain name and click the Modify button.
8. Select the name of the new package you created and click the Upgrade/Downgrade button

You will repeat steps 5 through 8 for any additional domains that you wish to assign to the same package. You can now create a new cPanel for any domain which has been assigned to a package.

To create a new cPanel account

1. Log in to WHM
2. Type Create a New Account in the top left search field and click the resulting link
3. Enter the requested "Domain Information" including username, password, and admin email for the account, which will be used in the event of password reset requests
4. Select one of your packages from the drop down menu
5. Scroll to the bottom and click "Create"

Note that there are additional parameters which can be configured by advanced users. However, at this point you have successfully created a new cPanel tht can now be logged into to manage account level activities.

If you experience any issue with the initial set up of your account, please reach out to our support staff for assistance.