Managing your web hosting with the Control Panel

The Control Panel allows you to manage almost all aspect of your web hosting: general hosting settings, PHP version, redirects, backup, etc. You can also manage your MySQL database(s), database users, cron (scheduled) jobs, ftp access and some other aspects of your web hosting. You access the domain (or site) configuration options by clicking on the Sites icon after logging into your Control Panel at https://mailbox.grinserbox.com:8080.

This FAQ will guide you through the most import hosting related configuration options:

• Domain configuration
• Database configuration
• FTP accounts
• Cron Jobs

Domain configuration

You will see an overview of your existing domains configured for hosting in the main window, and the different configuration options in the left sidebar. We will probably have set up one domain for you when you contracted hosting with us. This is the one you see in the overview table, which has the following columns:

• ID: the internal ID used by the Control Panel to identify the domain or hosting space
• Active: Yes if the hosting is active, meaning your website is available from the outside world. No if hosting has been deactivated.
• Server: This shows the name of the server that hosts your domain.
• Domain: the domain

Clicking on the domain allows you to edit it:

On the Domain tab, you can configure the following options:

• Pv4-Address: leave empty
• IPv6-Address: leave empty
• Domain: the domain name for this hosting space. Enter only one domain. The domain needs to already be registered and DNS records need to point to the right server.
• Document Root: the root of your hosting space, this is for information purposes only. The webroot is in a folder web below the document root.
• Harddisk Quota: leave as is
• Traffic Quota: leave as is
• Own Error-Documents: you want to leave this enabled, so that you can find error logs in the logs folder under your document root.
• Auto-Subdomain: Select none, www, or * (meaning any). This only makes sense if the respective DNS records for the subdomains exist. If you want your website to be accessible via www.domain.tld, you need to select www.
• PHP: how is PHP being executed (if at all)? You should probably leave the default configured here.
• PHP Version: here you can select one of the available PHP versions used for your hosting. “Default” is the PHP version provided by default for the Debian version installed on the hosting server. For some servers this is 5.6.x (servers running Debian Jessie), for others 7.0.x (servers running Debian Stretch).
• Active: this box needs to be ticked for your hosting space to be active.

Click “Save” to save your changes.

On the Redirect tab, you can configure some redirect options.

 The following options can be set:

• Redirect Type: Select “No redirect” if you do not want to redirect anything, and one of the other types if you do want to redirect.
• Redirect Path: Enter a path here if at the redirect target domain you want to redirect to a specific directory.
• SEO Redirect: Here you can select if your website should always be accessible via www.domain.tld or domain.tld, and force a redirect. If you have auto-subdomain www enabled in your hosting, you might want to use this. It is not recommended for your site to be available under www.domain.tld and domain.tld – forcing a redirect is good practice.
• If we have SSL enabled on this domain for you, you will also see a tick box allowing you to force redirect from http to https.

Click “Save” to save your changes.

On the Statistics tab, you can configure access to statistics. These are simple statistics tools.

You need to set a password for access to the statistics. Statistics will be available under example.net/stats, and you will be asked for the username and the password you configure here.

Under Webstatistics program you can select either  AWStats. Both are installed on our servers.

Finally, on the Backup tab you can configure your backup settings, download backups or restore your site from an existing backup.

The following options are available:

• Backup interval: we suggest to select “Daily”, to ensure we have a daily (nightly) backup of your website. Any databases linked to the domain will automatically be included in the backup.
• Number of backup copies: how many backup copies should be kept. We suggest to only keep one backup copy, especially for large websites.
• Excluded Directories: You can exclude certain directories from the backup, such as cache directories. Note: directories start from your document root, so the webroot is web.

In the table below you will see a listing of existing backups, with the option to download, delete, or restore from backup.

Click “Save” to save your changes.

Databases

For most content management systems, you will need a database. We provide MySQL or MariaDB, depending on the server hosting your website (Debian Jessie servers will have MySQL-5.5.x and Debian Stretch server MariaDB-10.1.x).

To create a database, you should first create a database user:

To access a database, you need to configure at least one database user.

• Database user: enter a username here. The username is automatically prefixed with your client ID (here c75)
• Database Password: enter a password or generate one

Click on “Save” to finish.

After you created at least one database user, you can move on to create a database.

• Server: by default, the server of your hosting space should be selected. If you have several domains hosted with us on different servers, make sure you select the server corresponding to the domain you want to use the database for.
• Site: Select one of your domains here – this will show the server it is hosted on
• Type: the only option available is MySQL (MariaDB shows as MySQL)
• Database name: Enter a name for your database. The name will be prefixed with your client ID (here c75)
• Database quota: leave as is, unless you want to limit the database in size
• Database user: Select from the database users you created previously. This user is being granted all permissions for all database operations on this database
• Read-only database user: you can specify an additional readonly database user here.
• Database charset: leave at default or select from one of the character sets provided
• Remote Access: do you want to allow remote access to this database? This can be a security risk
• Remote Access IPs (separate by , and leave blank for any): If you allow remote access, you should limit it to a set of IP addresses to limit the risk
• Active: tick the box to activate the database.

Click on “Save” when you are finished.