Websites: Where to Start

How website hosting works at KapsuleHost, what lives on each tab of a site, and which guide to read for the job in front of you.

Everything about a hosted site is managed from Websites in the KPanel sidebar. Click a site and you get its own menu, grouped by what you are trying to do rather than by which system does it. This page explains that structure and points at the detailed guides.

Creating a Site

You need two things: a plan with room on it, and a domain pointed at us.

Go to Websites and create the site.
Choose the application type. WordPress is the most common, and there are also plain PHP, static, Node.js, Python and Ruby options.
Pick the domain, or use the temporary address we give you until your own domain is ready.
Choose a PHP version if the type uses PHP. Newer is faster and supported for longer.

A certificate is requested automatically once DNS resolves to us, which is why a site created before the domain is pointed will show as insecure for a while. That is expected, not a fault.

Start with Creating Your First Website, then Custom Domain for a Website and SSL Certificates.

The Site Menu, Explained

Once a site exists, its menu is where everything happens. The groups are:

WordPress. Only appears on WordPress and WooCommerce sites. Holds the WordPress dashboard shortcut, Updates, Security, Caching, APM, and Payments on stores. See WordPress.

Email. Mailboxes on this site's domain, without going back to the top-level Email section. See Email.

Domain. Two tabs: DNS for the record editor, and Domains for which names this site answers on. See The Site DNS Tab and The Site Domains Tab.

Files. File Manager, Database, SFTP and SSH Keys. This is where you get at the actual content. See File Manager, SFTP Access, Adding SSH Keys and Using phpMyAdmin.

Backups. Backups and Point-in-time recovery. Backups run automatically every day and are kept for 30 days, with longer retention available as an add-on. See Taking a Backup, Restoring From a Backup and Point-in-Time Recovery.

Performance. Kapsule CDN, Analytics, Uptime and Crawlers. See Enabling the CDN, Site Analytics, Uptime Monitoring and Crawlers.

Environments. Staging and Preview: private copies of the site for testing before real visitors see a change. See Staging Environments and Preview Environments.

Advanced. PHP, Logs, Cron, Git Deploy, Deploys, Password protection, Redirects, Error pages, Activity, and on Node.js sites also Secrets, Scaling, Autoscale and Buildpack.

Settings. Site settings and Addons.

There is no top-level Backups item in the sidebar. Backups belong to a site, so they live inside the site, under the Backups group. The same is true of PHP, DNS, staging and cron.

The Five Most Common Jobs

Get a site live on my own domain. Point the nameservers, add the domain to the site, wait for the certificate. Custom Domain for a Website.

Upload my existing files. SFTP for a desktop client, File Manager for a quick edit in the browser. SFTP Access, File Manager.

Test a change safely. Copy to staging, break things there, push the good version live. Staging Environments.

Make it faster. Caching first, then the CDN, then PHP version, then the actual code. Site Caching, Website Speed, Enabling the CDN.

Find out why it broke. Logs tell you more in thirty seconds than guessing does in an hour. Error Logs, Website Not Loading.

What Is Gated by Plan

Not everything is on every plan, and it is better to know that now than to go looking for a missing button.

The CDN is the clearest case. It comes in two tiers, Kapsule CDN and Kapsule CDN+, and which one you get depends on your plan. Orbit projects and container hosting have no CDN at all, and the CDN also requires a custom domain: it cannot be turned on for a site still using a shared kapsulesites.com address. If the toggle refuses, that is why. See Enabling the CDN and Upgrading Your Plan.

Storage, bandwidth and how many sites you can run are also set by your plan. See Site Slowness and Resource Limits.

Sites, Orbit and Servers Are Different Products

It is worth knowing which one you are on, because the guides differ.

Websites is managed hosting for conventional sites and applications. Everything above applies.
Orbit builds from a Git repository and serves the result, with previews per branch and its own spending controls. See Orbit.
Cloud Servers and Dedicated Servers give you the machine itself. You get root, and you own the stack. See Cloud Servers and Dedicated Servers.

Moving an Existing Site to Kapsule

There is a migration wizard in the panel under Migrations. It handles bringing a site across from another host, and there is a separate path for bringing email across. See Migrations and Migrating From cPanel.