Sorry to sound urgent or post in the wrong forum, but we are offically going live with our web hosting business in the morning.

I need to know exactly how in the web host manager i create a demo account for cpanel, and if it will work safely so i can let people try it out. I can't figure out where in web host manager i do this.

thanks in advance!

To get something up and running for when you go live, just do a few screen shots. It's just as affective to the many..

You first create the account as you would normally do. Then in Account Functions box there's an option to enable/disable demo mode on an account. Click it and you are on your way :)

Good luck.

One more question, i have a cblock of ips, if i'm going to put cpanel in demo mode what should i put in for the domain name if it's just going to be ip only? nothing? thanks.

I haven't tried this so it may not work, but I have a feeling that it would.
When you create the account, on the form's next to last field you will see Ip Address (only for new ip-based accounts). Choose the IP you want to dedicate to this account, then use the same IP as a domain name in the domain field.

If this doesn't work, try putting any dummy domain name then edit your httpd.conf manually to change it back to the IP.

Let me know if this works.

Originally posted by ckizer
One more question, i have a cblock of ips, if i'm going to put cpanel in demo mode what should i put in for the domain name if it's just going to be ip only? nothing? thanks.

I would just basically create an account called demo.yourdomain.com directly from WHM and don't check the IP box so that it is setup on the default box IP then just enable demo mode for it and that is it!

When you create this account called demo.yourdomain.com WHM will also create a DNS entry, if you don't want that just delete the DNS entry and create an A record for demo on you domain zone that points to the IP of the box. ;)

I'm still playing the fool, the default ip for ipless accounts is .2 however my domain name sharpwebinnovations.com is on .5 so what should go in the ip field and what so go in the domain field? Thanks for all your excellent help...

Originally posted by ckizer
I'm still playing the fool, the default ip for ipless accounts is .2 however my domain name sharpwebinnovations.com is on .5 so what should go in the ip field and what so go in the domain field? Thanks for all your excellent help...

No problem, WHM is kind of confusing sometimes. Just go to "Create a New Account" and type something like demo.sharpwebinnovations.com, leave the IP checkbox unchecked so that WHM assigns the IP of .2 to this account and that's it!

You then go to "Delete a DNS Zone" under "DNS Functions" and delete the zone called demo.sharpwebinnovations.com, then go to "Edit a DNS Zone" under "DNS Functions" and edit the zone sharpwebinnovations.com to add an A record as follows:

DEMO 14400 IN A X.X.X.2

Let me know if it worked.

Bert, I owe you a beer. Works like a charm.. hehe now if i could just get out of cpanel template hell... :-)

So according to the "rules" nothing is being harmed by letting users play around with this? like creating email accounts and such?

Originally posted by ckizer
So according to the "rules" nothing is being harmed by letting users play around with this? like creating email accounts and such?

Yes, they will be able to create pop accounts and play around with it, it will open a few security holes as well, but in general you should be OK. If you deleted the DNS zone for demo account and then added the A record for demo in your domain zone, users will not be able to send or receive email because it does not have now an MX record.

What you might want to do is block FTP access to that account. To do that just telnet to your box and delete all the entries that you find for your demo user in:
/etc/proftpd/passwd.vhosts

Restart the ftp server and you are done!

If you don't know how to do this let me know and I will show you step by step.

and if you create a new account with 0 email accounts and 0 ftp accounts? no shell and no cgi?

Originally posted by Jedito
and if you create a new account with 0 email accounts and 0 ftp accounts? no shell and no cgi?

Well, the WHM and CPanel are very, very, very BUGGY!

We have tried doing that and it will work for emails, databases, shell, cgi, etc, but it will not work for FTP, it will still allow FTP access to the user, so it is always suggested to delete the user from the /etc/proftpd/passwd.vhosts file.

Wow ckizer, you are indeed redesigning the whole panel skin. You must really hate the default one, there are hundreds of files in there to edit.

Good luck! :)

If the account created have 0 Kb of space? that don't allow to upload anything.

Originally posted by Jedito
If the account created have 0 Kb of space? that don't allow to upload anything.

I guess you are right, but like I said earlier this Cpanel has a lot of bugs and it opens A LOT of security holes. This is the reason why we modified the proftpd configuration file among other things.

Looks like you got everything going ckizer... Cpanel looks pretty good too! Although an image or two would be nice, but I'm guessing this isn't the final version.

hey, you aren't supposed to see the demo cpanel yet :) Its not quite where it should be yet, because of lots of little problems, I've got to finish this before morning though ... I will definitely ad some images eventually for now i just wanna get the look of the cpanel changed to something easy on my eyes (no offense carlos!)

With all this done, neomail can still send emails.

Nordic

Ckizer, just a suggestion why dont you put the link to the control panel at this way? http://demo:demo@demo.sharpwebinnovations.com/cpanel in that way the people don't have to write username and password.