Using cPanel for one IP and site

So you only have 1 IP address?

First, I would tell you that your VPS provider is apparently pretty crappy because you really need 2 IP addressees minimum to be able to effectively run DNS or to have any e-commerce use for your server, etc

Second, if you are trying to access the server by IP address and only have a shared IP address then you are in trouble anyway as far as accessing your site by IP address and E-commerce is pretty much out of the question.

You could have your site displayed under the IP but it would require manual modifications to your Apache configuration at the system level and it does not sound to me from your post that it would be wise trying to instruct you to do that as I gather you may not be in a sound technical position to do that. However for reference, the first virtualhost section from the top down in your httpd.conf is the one displayed by IP and that is usually the Cpanel default page which could be changed but not recommended for a lot of reasons though I would be perfectly glad to help you do that if you are really dead set on doing that.

However ....

It is much simpler on you and all around to just simply add another IP and that could be used for your secondary DNS, your SSL certificate IP, and your site be accessible directly by IP without custom modifications so it works far better all around.

 

If you have 2 IPs then the first is going to be your "shared" IP address and is meant to be used for sites accessible by DOMAIN NAME only and are not really meant to be accessed by IP address.

The second IP on your server will be a DEDICATED IP and the site that you place on that IP address will be directly accessible by IP number automatically straight from the start.

If you setup your site on the shared IP but really do in fact have 2 IPs for your server then you got 2 options available to you that would not require having to go in and manually edit a lot of things:

A) Change the "shared" IP address over to the other IP address

B) Change the IP for the web site to the other IP address

Either of these should take care of your issue

(Note, changing IPs on a site can make the site appear down to you for a day or so until the DNS and route caching get updated in your computer)

Forget about mod_userdir (~username stuff) ....

The location you just named is the location of the DEFAULT PAGE that Cpanel shows when there is no hostname provided. It is only configured to run plain HTML files and with good reason and not really meant to place any real web site there. It is shown by default because it is the first virtualhost encountered reading down from the top of the httpd.conf configuration file for Apache (/usr/local/apache/conf/httpd.conf) which is is how Apache chooses a web site to display when no domain name is provided.

Not a problem

I do not follow or understand what you are thinking by that statement ...

What do you mean by "installing the server from scratch"?

Why in the world would you "install the server" again?