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26 plain-English, step-by-step guides for people who run their own sites on cPanel hosting: what to click, what to type, how to check it worked, and what to do when it does not. Written with scanner, local-news and community sites in mind, and useful for any small site.
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The ideas everything else builds on.
File and folder permissions on cPanel hosting, explained
What 644 and 755 mean, why 777 is never the answer, and how to reset a whole site's permissions in one go.
Read the guide · 4 min Basicsrobots.txt and sitemap.xml for a small site
What each file does, what it cannot do, and a working example of both that you can adapt in five minutes.
Read the guide · 4 min BasicsHTTP status codes a site owner actually meets
301, 403, 404, 500, 503, 508: what each number means, who is at fault, and the first thing to check for each.
Read the guide · 4 min BasicsDNS records for site owners: A, CNAME, MX, TXT and what TTL means
The handful of DNS records that control where your site and email go, how to edit them in cPanel, and the mistakes that take sites offline.
Read the guide · 4 minTroubleshooting
Something is broken. Find out what, and fix it.
ads.txt returns 403 Forbidden on cPanel: causes and fixes
Your ads.txt file is uploaded but ad networks report it as missing. Here is how to find what is blocking it and put it right.
Read the guide · 5 min TroubleshootingRaising PHP upload limits in cPanel, and when it will not help
Which four settings control upload size, where to change them, how to confirm the change took, and what else can block a large file.
Read the guide · 4 min TroubleshootingFinding the real error: cPanel's error logs and what the common lines mean
Where the web server and PHP write their errors, how to read a log line, and plain-English translations of the messages you will see most.
Read the guide · 5 min TroubleshootingOut of disk space or inodes: finding what is filling your account
Uploads fail, email bounces, the site throws errors. How to see what is using the space, the usual culprits, and what is safe to delete.
Read the guide · 4 minSecurity
Keep people out of what is not theirs, and recover if they get in.
AutoSSL and forcing HTTPS on cPanel without a redirect loop
Get a free certificate issued, send every visitor to the secure address, and avoid the "too many redirects" trap.
Read the guide · 4 min SecurityPassword-protect an admin folder with Directory Privacy
A two-minute way to put a login in front of a dashboard, a staging copy or any folder that is not meant for the public.
Read the guide · 3 min SecurityBlocking direct access to data folders with .htaccess
Settings files, logs and exports should never be downloadable. Four layers that keep them private, and how to test each one.
Read the guide · 4 min SecurityWordPress security basics on cPanel hosting: a ten-step checklist
Most hacked WordPress sites were not targeted. They were found by a script looking for one of a few common weaknesses. Close those and you are ahead of nearly everyone.
Read the guide · 4 min SecurityWhat to do in the first hour after a site is hacked
Contain it, keep the evidence, change every password, find how they got in, and restore cleanly. The order matters.
Read the guide · 5 minPerformance
Faster pages, and a site that stays up on a busy day.
Keeping a WordPress news site up during a traffic spike
Breaking news can send a month of visitors in an hour. The settings that decide whether shared hosting copes, in the order that matters.
Read the guide · 4 min PerformanceEmbedding a live audio feed without slowing the page
Live scanner and radio players are heavy. How to add one so the page still loads fast, works on phones and has something to read.
Read the guide · 4 min PerformanceImages that do not slow your site: size, format and lazy loading
Images are usually most of a page's weight. Five habits that cut it by half or more without making anything look worse.
Read the guide · 4 min PerformanceCore Web Vitals in plain English: LCP, INP and CLS for a small site
What Google's three page-experience numbers measure, what counts as good, and the handful of fixes that move each one.
Read the guide · 4 min PerformanceBrowser caching headers: let visitors keep your static files
A few lines in .htaccess tell browsers to reuse images, styles and scripts instead of downloading them on every page. What to set, and what never to cache.
Read the guide · 5 minReliability
Backups, moves and monitoring.
Backups on cPanel hosting, and how to test a restore
What your host's backup does and does not cover, which cPanel backups you can restore yourself, and a safe way to prove one works.
Read the guide · 4 min ReliabilityMoving a site to a new host with almost no downtime
The order of steps that keeps the site and the email working throughout: copy, test on the new server, switch DNS, then wait before cancelling.
Read the guide · 5 min ReliabilityUptime monitoring: know your site is down before your readers tell you
What to monitor, how to set up a check that catches real failures and ignores blips, and what to do when the alert arrives.
Read the guide · 5 minWorkflow
Doing routine jobs the safe way.
Build a staging copy of your site on a subdomain
Test updates, themes and fixes on a private copy first. The manual method that works on any cPanel account, step by step.
Read the guide · 4 min WorkflowCron jobs in cPanel: scheduling a script safely
Run a backup, a feed refresh or a cleanup on a timer. The settings, the command line that works, and the mistakes that get accounts suspended.
Read the guide · 4 min WorkflowRedirects done right: 301 versus 302, moved pages, and www versus non-www
When to use each kind of redirect, how to set one up in cPanel or .htaccess, and how to avoid chains, loops and lost search rankings.
Read the guide · 4 min WorkflowChanging PHP version safely with MultiPHP Manager
Why the version matters, how to switch it for one domain, what to test afterwards, and how to roll back in a minute if something breaks.
Read the guide · 4 minGetting messages from your domain delivered.
How to use these guides
Each guide covers one job from start to finish and ends with a way to test the result. Menu names follow current versions of cPanel; your host may arrange the icons differently or hide a feature on smaller plans, in which case the search box at the top of cPanel finds it by name. Before changing anything on a live site, take a backup. The backup guide shows a quick way that you can restore yourself.
The commands shown use yourdomain.com and youraccount as stand-ins. Replace them with your own domain and cPanel username. Addresses such as 203.0.113.10 are examples too.