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Creating a hosting account

One page creates the customer, their first website and their panel login together. You reach it from Accounts → Create account. Everything that is not in the first two blocks has a sensible default and starts folded away, so you can go stra

Written for: Reseller, Administrator

One page creates the customer, their first website and their panel login together. You reach it from Accounts → Create account. Everything that is not in the first two blocks has a sensible default and starts folded away, so you can go straight to the button without opening anything.

What you fill in

FieldWhat it is
DomainThe first website of this account.
Account nameThe name on the server. We suggest one from the domain; the moment you type your own, the suggestion stops following it.
Email addressWhat the customer signs in to the panel with, and where the welcome message goes.
Password for the panelWe make one by default. Choose your own and a field appears with a generator and a strength bar beside it.

Which password is this exactly?

This is the customer's panel login — what they sign in with to manage their own hosting. It is not the same thing as FTP or SSH: those get their own logins with their own passwords, on the account's Access screen.

If you let us make one, you see it once, in the block that appears on the account afterwards. After that it is nowhere — not in a log, not in a task and not in the audit trail. Reload that page before you have copied it and it is gone.

Deviating from the package, and saving that as a package

Under the package sits a disclosure with every number that package carries. Each field is empty with the package's own value as its placeholder: empty means "whatever the package says", not "nothing". Fill one in with a different number and that field is marked DEVIATING and becomes an exception on this account.

That has one consequence worth knowing: a later change to the package skips an account that holds an exception. This is deliberate — otherwise a package change would quietly undo the arrangement you made with this customer.

If you expect to use the same deviation again, switch on "Save these deviations as a new package" and give it a name. A package is created with the same owner and group as the one you are deviating from, and the account simply sits on it — no exception, and so included in the next package change.

What is switched on immediately

Four switches, all on by default:

  • create the DNS zone for the domain;
  • enable mail for the domain;
  • request SSL as soon as the domain points here;
  • mail the sign-in details.

If the domain does not point at us yet, switch SSL off: a request for a name that resolves elsewhere fails, and you can ask for it later from the account's SSL screen.

The welcome message

The customer gets their username, the domain, the panel address and a one-time link to choose a password. There is never a password in that mail: mail is not encrypted in transit and stays in a mailbox for years. The link is valid for seven days and can be used once.

Did it not arrive? Look in the queue:

corecp-panel mail queue --to customer@example.com
ID                                    TO                      KIND             STATUS  TRIES
9f4b2c7e-1a8d-4306-b5c4-e9f2a7d1b6c8  customer@example.com    account.welcome  sent    1

Afterwards

You land on the account, with a block that says what was made and what was not. A part that did not succeed — the website, say, because the name already existed — is listed with the reason; the account itself is simply there, and you finish the rest from the account screen.

Two buttons sit beside it:

  • Open the panel as this customer — you continue in their session, with a bar at the top saying whose name you are working under. Everything you do is recorded under both names. See Seeing what a customer sees.
  • Create another account — back to this form.

See also

  • Seeing what a customer sees
  • Giving somebody access
  • Usage and limits