New user to cPanel: Questions on Hostnames, Nameservers, and Migrating

[pols1337]

Hi, I'm a new user to cPanel / WHM on a VPS. I'm really not familiar with all of this system administration so some of these questions may seem really dumb, but I'm great at following directions. In any case, I've gone through the initial set-up already, but I have a couple of questions about items that confuse me:

1) Hostname
I do not understand FQDN, and I don't understand what I should choose for a hostname. For example, let's say my personal website is located at happy.com and my host is located at host.com. Should I simply make up any hostname like foo.happy.com or foo.host.com?

2) Nameservers
Since I've already gone through the initial set-up, how do I later go back and edit my Nameservers? Under "DNS Functions" > "Nameserver IPs," I see nothing. See screenshot.

3) Migrating
On my old website, I don't have cPanel / WHM so I'm guessing I'll need to do a manual migration. I know how to access my files via FTP and MySQL database dumps from old website. How do I find out my FTP log-in information for new website?

I apologize if these questions seem really simplistic or stupid, but this is a lot more than what I expected and I'm trying to learn as much as I can. Thanks in advance for your help.

Joel

 

[Phincy]

Hi,

1) Hostname
The FQDN is fully qualified domain name. If you are gong to setup a hostname for your server, it should be an FQDN. For example, your main website is phincy.com, then, you can choose your hostname as host.phincy.com.

The section "Home >> Networking Setup >> Change Hostname" in the WHM allows you to change/setup your server hostname. Please note that it is the "Name" assigned to your server and should be pointing to the primary IP address in your server.

You can refer the following URL for more info.

Change Hostname

2. The primary(default)Nameservers for your server need to be setup via the section "Home >> Server Configuration >> Basic cPanel & WHM Setup" in the WHM. You can add your nameservers at the end of that page.

Basic cPanel & WHM Setup
later, if you need to change the nameservers for all your domains, change them from the same section and also in the DNS zones.

3) Migrating

In cPanel/WHM, you need create new hosting account for your website. This can be done as mentioned in the URL below. The default settings should be fine in most cases.

Create a New Account

The username and password used for the cPanel account for the domain are the FTP credentials. You can login to cPanel for the account using the following details.

http://yourserverip:2082
user : cPanel username
password : cpanel password

make sure you are uploading the website's files to the directory public_html in the home directory for the cPanel user once you access it via FTP. The public_html directory is the default docroot in cPanel/WHM system.

Regards

 

[quietFinn]

2. The primary(default)Nameservers for your server need to be setup via the section "Home >> Server Configuration >> Basic cPanel & WHM Setup" in the WHM. You can add your nameservers at the end of that page.

Basic cPanel & WHM Setup
later, if you need to change the nameservers for all your domains, change them from the same section and also in the DNS zones.

Nameservers are actually created in the registrar. If your domain is yourdomain.com, and you want to use nameservers ns1.yourdomain.com & ns2.yourdomain.com, you go to the registrar of yourdomain.com and register those name servers, and assign them the IP addresses (same as in WHM).