How to Use cPanel’s Convert Addon Domain to Account Tool

by Michael Cropper | Aug 24, 2016 | Developer | 0 comments

In the latest release of WHM comes a seriously handy tool which allows domains within one cPanel account to be migrated to their own cPanel account. In an ideal and perfect world, every domain would be contained under its own cPanel account as this allows much more granular reporting when using tools such as New Relic or command line resource usage commands such as atop. In reality though when dealing with many different web servers which have a lot of history and often non-optimal configurations, often you find that multiple domain names are contained within a single cPanel account. This is bad for a whole host of security reasons, primarily because if one website gets hacked into, it’s possible to access all of the websites under the single cPanel account which is an inherent risk. And if those websites are WordPress, if they get hacked into after then have been built badly or aren’t maintained securely then a quick install of a certain plugin allows the hacker to gain access to absolutely every file under this cPanel account. So it’s really important to structure your web servers for optimal security.

So now that’s clear, here’s how to use the Convert Addon Domain to Account tool within WHM.

Convert Addon Domain to Account within WHM

Open WHM and navigate to Home > Transfers > Convert Addon Domain to Account. This will list all Addon Domains listed within all cPanel accounts on the server. Select the one you wish to migrate to its own account and press “Convert”;

Here you will then be presented with a list of options. Make sure you check through everything and make a note of what the new settings are.

Create an account name for the new cPanel account;

Check through your settings which have been automatically selected;

What likely hasn’t been picked up by default is your database table(s) so make sure you click on the Configure option and select which databases belong to the website being transferred to its new account.

Then let it do its thing by clicking on the Start Conversion button. Depending on the size of your website will depend on how quickly, or slowly, this transfer happens. Once everything is completed you’ll see a completion message along the lines of;

Transfer Complete

It really is as simple as that to use. Once the migration is complete you’ll need to modify the password for the account via WHM;

Performance Challenges

While this is a great tool, something to mention is around performance. Performance wise for one project we were working on, the resources completely maxed out on one web server and took a total of 90 minutes to migrate a small website of around 10GB in size for files and databases. This is something to bear in mind and it’s probably best that you run these kinds of migrations at low points during the day to prevent issues impacting people using the websites in question. Below are a select of screenshots which clearly shows the performance difference at a normal point in time compared to when the process was running to put this into perspective.

Summary

All domains should be under their own cPanel account for security reasons. If you have multiple domains contained under a single cPanel account, start to get things set up properly as they should be. Recovering one hacked website is time consuming and costly enough for you as a business, recovering multiple just multiples the problem. Do not leave this until it is too late. If you are unsure how your web server infrastructure should be set up then get in touch and we can help you with getting things set up correctly.

How to Use AutoSSL on WHM and cPanel for SSL Certificates

by Michael Cropper | Aug 24, 2016 | Developer | 6 comments

For those of you using cPanel and WHM as a system, you’ll be as glad as I am to hear about the latest release of AutoSSL which enables SSL certificates to be set up across accounts much easier than ever before. In summary, it’s possible to generate and install SSL certificates for individual cPanel accounts all via the WHM interface which is super useful when managing web servers with multiple accounts and domains hosted. All of which is powered by Let’s Encrypt which traditionally would have required quite a bit of command line set up via SSH.

To get this up and running is actually relatively straight forward.

Set up Let’s Encrypt for AutoSSL via SSH

This is the only part that you need to do via SSH and it is only required once. Simply login to SSH and run the following command;

/scripts/install_lets_encrypt_autossl_provider

Let everything install and configure, all automatically.

Configure AutoSSL in WHM to Use Let’s Encrypt

Navigate to the following page within WHM, Home > SSL/TSL > Manage AutoSSL. Now update the settings to use Let’s Encrypt instead of any other providers that you may have installed as can be seen below.

Once this is set up, when you use the AutoSSL feature Let’s Encrypt will be the certificate authority which manages this.

Run AutoSSL for cPanel Accounts

Now everything is set up to run AutoSSL, it’s time to start running it. While you can simply run this for all domains, it is recommended to take a more structured approach so you can be sure that you are updating everything correctly. Particularly when migrating WordPress websites from HTTP to HTTPS, there are a lot of additional tweaks to make to ensure everything works correctly.

To run AutoSSL on a specific cPanel account, simply click on the “Check” button next to the account you want to run this for. This will run AutoSSL for all Addon Domains associated within this cPanel account. There are a few restrictions currently for what will work here, so be sure to check the official cPanel documentation.

SSH Now Setup

Now access the HTTPS version of your website and everything should be set up and working. As mentioned previously, there will likely be other items to clean up to ensure the green padlock shows in your browser bar. From an AutoSSL standpoint, everything is complete. Simple.

Check within the individual cPanel account you have just updated and you should see that the certificate has been installed on the domains that are listed. This is super useful and saves a lot of time manually generating and implementing SSL certificates.

Caveats

If this doesn’t work for some reason then check the error logs for AutoSSL within WHM. This will provide you a lot of information about what has gone wrong. Particularly if you are using cloud based CDNs or firewalls such as Sucuri, then you’ll need to disable this to get AutoSSL working correctly. Be sure to check your .htaccess files too as sometimes you may have restrictions in here which only allows traffic to the website from the cloud based CDNs or firewalls such as Sucuri.

As with everything, make sure you know what you are doing before playing around with these types of things and make sure you fully understand your technical stack and setup. Just because this works for us, does not mean that this will be as seamless for you. Get in touch should you have any support requirements for getting this set up on your websites and web servers.

How to Migrate a WordPress Website from HTTP to HTTPS

by Michael Cropper | Aug 23, 2016 | Developer | 0 comments

When you’re building a website from scratch implementing HTTPS is actually relatively straight forward in comparison to migrating a current website from HTTP to HTTPS. When migrating a WordPress website from HTTP to HTTPS there are multiple aspects you need to take into consideration to implement this successfully which are outlined below.

Get an SSL Certificate

This goes without saying, but I’m going to say it anyway. Make sure you have an SSL certificate installed on your domain. There are many options available including the free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt. Details outlined for how to get that set up on the linked post.

Update WordPress Address and Site Address in General Settings

Firstly you need to update the settings within Settings > General Settings to update the WordPress Address and Site Address from HTTP to HTTPS as can be seen below.

From HTTP

To HTTPS

This will tell WordPress to use HTTPS throughout the site.

Update Your wp-config.php File for SSL

Add the following line of code to your wp-config.php file which is often needed to ensure SSL works correctly;

if (isset($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO']) && $_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] == 'https'){ 
$_SERVER['HTTPS'] = 'on'; 
} 

This is required for when your website is behind a load balancer or reverse proxy. Full details about this can be found in the WordPress Codex.

Fix Mixed Content Warnings

Now you’ve successfully set up SSL on your WordPress website, although when you browse the website you may notice that you don’t get the nice green padlock showing in the browser bar. Instead you’ll see lots of mixed content warnings which causes the green padlock not to show;

The reason this is happening is because some of the assets in use on your page such as images, JavaScript files or CSS files are being loaded over HTTP when the page is HTTPS, meaning that the browser cannot be certain that nothing has been intercepted in transit and edited. Browse the Google Chrome Developer Tools window and you will see notices that look like the following;

This is not quite the desired impact that you had in mind when implementing SSL. Now, assuming that you have a well build website, tidying everything up should actually be relatively straight forward. If your website has been built badly then it’s likely going to be a lot more challenging to fix. For example if URLs have been hardcoded in any of your plugins or themes that are in use.

Update All Assets to Use HTTPS instead of HTTP

So now you need to run through the database and get everything updated. Thankfully there is a handy plugin which can automate a large amount of this work which is the Search and Replace plugin. Once this is installed go to Tools > Search & Replace > Replace Domain URL tab and enter in your details within here;

Then you will be able to download a .sql file which has been created for you now the Search and Replace has been completed. From here, login to your web server’s control panel, navigate to phpMyAdmin if you have this installed and upload the SQL file you have just downloaded. Make sure you are uploading this to the correct database if you have multiple databases in use. And as always, make sure you take a backup before you do anything in case you break anything by mistake.

SSL Now Fully Working

Now you have completed all the steps involved with migrating a WordPress website from HTTP to HTTPS and cleaned up all of the mixed content warnings. So when you browse your website now, you should see a nice green padlock when you browse the website. Make sure to have a browse around your website in case anything has been missed. So many WordPress websites have been built badly so you may need to do some additional cleaning up in various places.

301 Redirect HTTP Traffic to HTTPS

This is just good practice to do so that you are forcing the use of HTTPS on your website. Add the following code to your .htaccess file;

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{SERVER_PORT} 80 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://www.example.com/$1 [R,L]