2022-04-18 13:56
After installing and configuring Dolibarr, you might see a notification like this regarding the conf.php file: ! Warning, your config file (htdocs/conf/conf.php) can be overwritten by t… Read More
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We write articles about web hosting. Tutorials, news and how-to articles. Some of our topics include cPanel, server administration, MySQL, SSH, WHM, FTP, Linux, Apache etc.
2022-04-17 19:00
IceHrm is a management system that allows companies to keep employee information, define roles within the organization, and many more other things. Some IceHrm features include: Automate you… Read More
2022-04-16 18:23
PEAR (PHP Extension and Application Repository) is mainly a PHP framework consisting of various packages. As of April 2022, there are 603 packages available. You can consult them on the offi… Read More
2022-03-11 15:54
DirectAdmin control panel provides two utlities for backing up and restoring RoundCube settings. The paths of the script are: Info from the backup script: Info from the restoration script: C… Read More
2022-03-11 14:19
DirectAdmin offers a script that will create an email account for a specific domain from the command line. This can be useful if you want to add many users. The script path is: Info on the s… Read More
2022-03-08 15:43
Sometimes you might want to revert WordPRess to a previous version. You can do this in two ways. By using a plugin or from the command line if you have SSH access. Downgrade WordPress versio… Read More
2022-03-08 15:07
By default, on a DirectAdmin server, you can access user accounts via http://hostname/~username and http://IP/~username. Via this way, a third party can find out the actual username of a use… Read More
2022-03-07 18:22
Lighthouse is an audit tool for your webpage. It will report many different things related to Performance, Accesibility, Best Practices and SEO. You can generate a Lighthouse report online a… Read More
2022-03-07 14:48
Ping is a utility used to check whether a host is reachable. Ping will send ICMP echo request packets to the target host. According to Wikipedia, ping is: Ping is a compu… Read More
2022-02-22 21:19
When running a Lighthouse test on your computer or online at https://pagespeed.web.dev/, you might get a message regarding the contrast of the text elements from your page: CONTRASTBackgroun… Read More
2022-02-22 15:43
Some PHP functions can be used in malicious ways. They are, of course, not malicious per se, but can be used for malicious things. DirectAdmin provides a simple way to disable such PHP funct… Read More
2022-02-21 19:28
PHP directives are PHP options that are usually configured in php.ini files. You can consult the list of PHP directives here https://www.php.net/manual/en/ini.list.php On DirectAdmin servers… Read More
2022-02-21 17:41
SuiteCRM – a very popular Customer relationship management (CRM) – allows updating in two ways. From the admin area and from the command line. In both cases, you will need the up… Read More
2022-02-02 15:50
The da-popb4smtp (POP before SMTP) is a DirectAdmin tool. It allows POP/IMAP authenticated users to send emails without requiring SMTP authentication. It scans the mail logs and adds the IPs… Read More
2022-02-02 11:00
Real-time blacklists (or real-time blocklists or real-time blackhole lists) are lists of malicious/spammer IPs. These lists are maintained by organizations like The Spamhaus Project . The EX… Read More
2022-01-27 02:42
Dovecot is a very used open-source IMAP and POP3 server. By default, the email ports are: Mail Protocol Port POP3 (Post Office Protocol) 110 IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) 143 POP3S… Read More
2022-01-26 15:32
DirectAdmin Log Viewer lets you inspect the most important log files from your server. If you prefer the GUI over the command line, you might want to add files to the DA list. The default li… Read More
2022-01-24 22:51
Most of the time, the default DNS servers present on IT devices – routers, personal computers etc – are slow when querying for records. Also, the cache is not updated frequently… Read More
2022-01-24 12:41
If you are missing the lfd and System Statistics buttons in the csf GUI, you probably don’t have the Perl packages installed on your server. This issue might happen on any of the csf s… Read More
2022-01-21 19:34
DirectAdmin offers a simple File Editor utility that you can use to quickly edit important files. You can access it in DA >> System Info & Files >> File Editor. Notice that i… Read More
2022-01-19 16:35
You may come to a situation where you want to block a user from sending emails. You don’t want to block the ability to check for emails, only the ability to sent emails. DirectAdmin th… Read More
2022-01-19 14:47
DirectAdmin allows changing the docroot of a subdomain from the user account. For the default domain, the subdomain directory will be: Changing this can be useful if you want to put the subd… Read More
2022-01-19 00:33
Private nameservers (also called custom/own/personal nameservers) are the nameservers that use your own domain name, not your host domain names. For example instead of ns11.plothost.com and… Read More
2022-01-18 14:11
There are a lot of DokuWiki templates that allow you to customize your installation as you want. The full list of the available templates can befound here https://www.dokuwiki.org/template H… Read More
2022-01-17 18:31
There are two way for upgrading DokuWiki. The one is from the DokuWiki control panel, the other one is via FTP/command line – more details on our article here How to update DokuWiki fr… Read More
2022-01-17 18:31
DokuWiki has a wide range of plugins available. You can see the list of all the plugins here https://www.dokuwiki.org/plugins A. How to install a DokuWiki plugin from the admin panel 1. Log… Read More
2022-01-15 03:12
To add a DirectAdmin server in WHMCS, you must first create a login key. Login keys allows to set specific permissions for the connection, instead of using a general password which will prov… Read More
2022-01-14 16:00
MySQLTunner is a Perl tool that you’ll assist you and tuning your MariaDB/MySQL database server. It checks many parameters of the server, verifies user passwords, checks for anonymous… Read More
2022-01-14 01:43
Open WordPress comments can lead to a lot of spam comments. Especially if the site/user is not using some kind of a CAPTCHA plugin. If you don’t pay too much attention to comments, the… Read More
2022-01-13 19:14
When dealing with a lot of DokuWiki clients/sites, it’s easier to update the installations via the command line. DokuWiki doesn’t use MySQL databases, so the update consists only… Read More
2022-01-12 22:12
It’s very easy to assign a dedicated IP to a reseller or to a user. First of all, make sure you have a free dedicated IP assigned to your server/VPS. Discuss this with your host. They… Read More
2022-01-12 12:08
DirectAdmin comes with a script that allows you to move a domain between accounts. (on cPanel this can be considered moving an addon domain to another account). The script is located at /usr… Read More
2022-01-11 16:15
An important aspect of WHMCS is communication with the clients. You want to be sure that the mail settings are configured properly. The Mail Settings consist of options for the mail provider… Read More
2022-01-11 16:13
WHMCS offers advanced settings for the configuration of the mail provider. You have the possibility to choose from a list of providers: PHP Mail (default one), SMTP, Mailgun, SendGrid and Sp… Read More
2021-12-16 17:49
Directadmin uses the tally process to update user statistics (disk space usage, bandwidth). The process runs every night. To check the exact time, use: Sometimes you might want to force the… Read More
2021-12-16 14:27
When trying to access the csf plugin for DirectAdmin or cPanel you might get a message like: This is because of a mismatch session key, caused by a change of your’s computer IP. The co… Read More
2021-10-26 16:10
Version 1.62.5 introduced the option to select an Update Channel. The options are: To select your preferred DirectAdmin update channel: 1. Log into your DA installation 2. Navigate to Suppor… Read More
2021-10-25 11:58
A. Check the PHP version from the DA GUI 1. Log into DA server 2. Navigate to Extra Features >> CustomBuild 3. Click the Edit Options tab. You will see the PHP versions that are instal… Read More
2021-10-01 14:42
DirectAdmin allows you to customize the logo on the login screen. There are two files that are used by default: To use your own logo, upload the files to: Note that the /custom/ directory in… Read More
2021-09-30 11:45
In version 1.62.8, DirectAdmin introduced the possibility to get the list of document roots via the CMD_API_DOMAIN command. The option to use with the API command is document_root_all Direct… Read More
2021-08-11 18:03
With the default settings, the DirectAdmin GUI will show details about CPU and RAM in System Info & Files >> System Information. Example: If you want to hide these details from you… Read More
2021-08-11 13:18
As a DirectAdmin user, you can disable SSL functionality for the site, but you can’t enable it again. You must contact your host/log into the server with root credentials. If you disab… Read More
2021-08-02 18:53
In DirectAdmin you can block commands server-wide or only for specific user(s). The commands that can be blocked can be found at: https://www.directadmin.com/api.html https://www.directadmin… Read More
2021-08-01 14:50
To increase the security of your DirectAdmin account, you can set up Security Questions. You can set one or more questions, choose from a predefined list of questions or enter your custom on… Read More
2021-07-28 14:06
To create DirectAdmin backups from the command line for ALL the accounts on the server, execute the command: To create a backup for a specific user – USERNAME – run the command:… Read More
2021-07-26 19:35
DirectAdmin allows resellers to send a message to new users with their account information (aka Welcome Email / New Account Information Email). The message will contain the information neede… Read More
2021-07-23 16:36
The Two-Step Authentication (2FA) system is used more and more in present days to log into sites/control panels. DirectAdmin offers the possibility to use 2FA with the assistance of the Goog… Read More
2021-07-21 19:21
In the latest versions of DirectAdmin 1.62.x you can easily restore cPanel account backups from the GUI. We will show in this article, the full process of transferring accounts from a cPanel… Read More
2021-07-20 18:45
We get this question very often. Clients asking us how to test their websites before changing the nameservers. One method is by using the hosts file. This file has no extension and is presen… Read More
2021-07-16 16:07
CSF offers the option to whitelist fully qualified domain names (FQDN). This can be useful if you want to allow connections from hostnames with IPs that change frequently. The CSF file with… Read More
2021-07-14 15:58
In a previous article, we detailed How to protect WordPress from XML-RPC attacks. The article was written for website owners. We received questions on how to use this method to protect all t… Read More
2021-07-12 19:41
SitePad will assist you in creating a professional website with just a few clicks. To create your first SitePad site: 1. Log into your control panel (cPanel, DirectAdmin etc.) 2. Look for th… Read More
2021-07-11 17:12
DirectAdmin has an option that allows admins to receive email notifications when an account is created. This can be useful if you want to keep track of accounts creation. Some companies have… Read More
2021-07-09 16:41
What is SitePad Website Builder? SitePad is a website builder developed by the same company that owns Softaculous. It has an easy-to-use graphical interface with many features and with more… Read More
2021-07-09 14:01
What is Zend OPcache? Zend OPcache, developed by Zend.com, is an Apache module designed to accelerate web sites speed. It uses caching and optimization techniques. The caching is archived by… Read More
2021-06-15 12:56
DirectAdmin version 1.62.0 released a few days ago, on the 9th of June, 2021, added the possibility to select the specific domains when creating backups. The backup process remains the same… Read More
2021-06-08 15:57
cPanel uses userdata files to keep information about addon domains, parked domains, IPs, PHP versions used by accounts etc. If you came to the conclusion that the cPanel userdata files are c… Read More
2021-06-08 11:46
A. If you didn’t change the initial DA password If you forgot the password from the DirectAdmin installation and you didn’t change it, you can recover it from this file: The file… Read More
2021-05-23 10:43
SuiteCRM is a powerful content management system script and PlotHost offers full support for it. To check our SuiteCRM web hosting offers please visit https://www.plothost.com/suitecrm-hosti… Read More
2021-05-23 06:54
It’s very easy to rename a domain name in the DirectAdmin control panel. DA will take care of everything. Notice that the database names will not be changed during this operation. Anyw… Read More
2021-05-20 21:04
1. Locate the wp-config.php file and extract database name WP keeps the MySQL connection details in the wp-config.php file. We want to extract the DB_NAME and table_prefix values that will h… Read More
2021-05-20 21:03
We see many situations when users forget their WordPress passwords and are not able to recover them. So we will show in this article how you can reset the WP password for a specific user. We… Read More
2021-05-19 20:48
What is mod_expires? Mod_expires is an Apache module that will instruct web browsers how to control the cache. With the mod_expires values you will tell web browsers how long to keep images… Read More
2021-05-19 12:47
The list of loaded modules can be obtained easily if you have SSH access to the server. We will use the httpd command with the -M option. -M will output a list of loaded Static and Shared Mo… Read More
2021-05-17 19:36
There was a time when dedicated IPs were needed for SSLs. Now it’s not the case anymore. One IP can host many sites, each one with its own SSL certificate. Anyway, it can be other reas… Read More
2021-05-17 16:26
China is blocking many sites from around the world with its program called The Great Firewall. What is the Great Firewall? According to Wikipedia.org The Great Firewall is the comb… Read More
2021-05-15 06:15
DirectAdmin offers a neat ability – to change the password for an FTP account or email account without having to log into the DA account. There are two URLs to access the interface &nd&hell…Read More
2021-05-13 17:01
If you don’t have a GUI interface for your database server – like phpMySQL for example – you can create MySQL/MariaDB users and databases from the command line. 1. Authenti… Read More
2021-05-11 22:26
The default upload size value for the DirectAdmin File Manager is 10MB, which is a very small value. You will get an error message when trying to upload a larger file: Fortunately, we can in… Read More
2021-05-11 13:40
By default, the mailbox quota for new accounts is 50MB. You can change this value at the time of creating the account or later. There is no maximum value – you can choose “Unlimi… Read More
2021-05-04 18:27
What is Google DNS? A free, global DNS resolution service that you can use as an alternative to your current DNS provider. Google DNS Google offers two IPv4 nameservers and two IPv6 nameserv… Read More
2021-05-04 11:06
License update notifications are sent when DirectAdmin system downloads the license from the DA server. DA version 1.62.0 (scheduled for release in May 2021) offers the possibility to disabl… Read More
2021-04-30 00:34
The Server Status module is built by default in Apache and can be enabled in the /etc/httpd.conf file by adding the lines: You can add some rules to allow access to the status page from one… Read More
2021-04-29 19:23
On many web servers, directory listing is disabled by default. The idea is that if you don’t have an index file in a directory a 403 HTTP Forbidden Access error will be return. The cli… Read More
2021-04-28 20:45
SSH access can enabled on disabled from the package options. Anyway, you can also enable SSH access for a single user for example. SSH access can imply security risks. Also check with the us… Read More
2021-04-28 13:01
To find out the DirectAdmin version from the command line, use: For our test server, the result is: To find out the DirectAdmin version in the GUI: Log into DirectAdmin Navigate to System In… Read More
2021-04-26 15:50
Moving accounts between resellers is a very easy task in DA. Everything is done from the DA graphical user interface. How to move users between resellers: Log into DA as admin user Navigate… Read More
2021-04-26 15:08
As of April 2021, there is no way of renaming a username from the DirectAdmin GUI. There is a DA script that you can use. Notice: We recommend taking a backup first. For this go to DA >&g&hell…Read More
2021-04-20 14:37
As of April 2021, there is no way to assign reseller abilities to a user from the DA GUI. You must use instead shell commands. How to convert a user account to a reseller account: Log into y… Read More
2021-04-20 14:36
As of April 2021, there is no way to convert a reseller account to a user account from the DA GUI. You must use instead shell commands. How to convert a reseller account to a user account: 1… Read More
2021-04-19 18:22
We get this question many times in the tickets. Most of the time, you will want to change file permissions to limit access to it. By default, on most web servers, the public directories have… Read More
2021-04-19 12:08
The possibility to access sites via IP/~USERNAME is enabled by default in DirectAdmin. If you want to disable this feature use: On our test server, the process is: Notice that after the chan… Read More
2021-04-15 22:09
As for the domains, the DirectAdmin GUI offers you the possibility to change the PHP version for a particular subdomain. How to change PHP version for a subdomain: 1. Log into your DA accoun… Read More
2021-04-15 11:01
You can change the default port used by DirectAdmin via the directadmin.conf file by using the port=xxxx directive. This is a nice feature, as other control panels like cPanel do not offer t… Read More
2021-04-12 19:59
If the component you are tying to install is not 100% compatible with the current version of OSSN (Open Source Social Network, you will get in many cases a 500 HTTP error. Notice that this w… Read More
2021-04-12 11:47
Moving the OSSN (Open Source Social Network) installation to another server or location is an easy task. We will show in this article how to accomplish this task. How to move the OSSN instal… Read More
2021-04-09 00:10
Many times, web hosting owners are asking if a specific PHP extension is installed on the server or not. You can check easily with a simple PHP script. We will mainly use the get_loaded_exte… Read More
2021-04-08 12:42
You might have some scripts that require specific PHP versions. DirectAdmin offers the possibility to install multiple PHP versions and select which version to run for individual sites. To c… Read More
2021-04-06 22:39
Imagick is disabled by default on DirectAdmin, but you can install it easily from CustomBuild by setting the value: The commands to install imgick on a DirectAdmin server are: If you have mu… Read More
2021-04-06 19:48
One-time login URLs function allows you to generate an URL that will login the user automatically. By default, the URL is valid for 3 days. You can change this interval and other options via… Read More
2021-04-05 18:55
You might receive this message on a DirectAdmin server: What does it mean? It means that the domain name is not resolving to the server. Causes can be: the domain name has been moved to anot… Read More
2021-04-05 12:23
The default root directory for the main domain of your account in cPanel is and there is no way to change it from the cPanel GUI. You can change it only if you have root access to the server… Read More
2021-03-16 20:27
On May 3, 2021 PayPal will update the list of IPs for their Instant Payments Notification (IPN) service. Here is the list of new and old IPs: You should add the new IPs to your firewall/allo… Read More
2021-03-16 19:53
Checking/monitoring your server IP(s) against RBL(Real-time Blackhole List) lists is always a good thing to do. You can go on sites like spamcop.net, abuseat.org etc and check for your IP or… Read More
2021-02-24 15:57
The DirectAdmin interface will assist you in configuring external mail services like Google Suite, Microsoft 365 and Zoho Mail. It has templates for these three services. To change the local… Read More
2021-02-24 13:51
ModSecurity is a tool that will filter malicious web server requests. DirectAdmin offers a graphical user interface where you can see the blocked requests for your sites or you can disable r… Read More
2021-02-23 15:46
Different statistics about your sites are available in DirectAdmin. This information is not very detailed. If you are looking for more detailed information, ask your host to check the server… Read More
2021-02-23 15:03
DirectAdmin offers the possibility to set easily vacation messages. Vacation messages are in fact autoresponders that will be active for a predetermined period of time. To add a vacation mes… Read More
2021-02-23 00:53
In DirectAdmin it’s very easy to install a free Let’s Encrypt certificate. This can be achieved through the graphical interface. The SSL certificate is valid for 60 days and it w… Read More
2021-02-22 21:52
DirectAdmin has a nice script that will install free Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates for all the domains on the server that do not have a valid one. The commands to download, set the ne… Read More
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