Guide How to Create a Website in CyberPanel: Domain, DNS, PHP Version and First Upload

**JAY**

How to Create a Website in CyberPanel: Domain, DNS, PHP Version and First Upload

Creating a website is the first real thing you do in CyberPanel. It takes a minute, but doing the steps in the right order saves you from the most common problem: a site that works on http but never gets its SSL certificate.

Watch it: Part 4 of the CyberPanel course, Create Your First Website

This is Part 4 of 10 in our free CyberPanel Full Course. The written steps below go into more detail.

We created cyber.adminslab.com on a fresh CyberPanel 3.0 server for this guide. Replace it with your own domain.

Step 1: Point the domain to your server first
Do this before you create the website. CyberPanel tries to get a free Let's Encrypt certificate the moment the site is created, and that only works if the domain already resolves to your server.

At your DNS provider (Cloudflare, your registrar, wherever the domain's DNS lives) add:

A record: name
Code:
cyber
(or
Code:
@
for the main domain), value
Code:
YOUR-SERVER-IP
.
A record for www if you want
Code:
www.yourdomain.com
to work too. We skipped it for a subdomain.
On Cloudflare, set the records to DNS only (grey cloud) while you set things up. You can switch the proxy on later.

Check it from the server or your PC:

Code:

dig +short cyber.adminslab.com

When it prints your server's IP, you're ready.

Step 2: Create the website
Go to Websites > Create Website. Fill in the form. Here is ours, ready to submit:
[Image: attachment.php?aid=559]

Select Package: the limits for this site (disk, bandwidth, number of domains, email accounts, databases). A fresh server only has Default. We made Starter and Business first; see packages, users and ACLs.
Select Owner: the CyberPanel user who manages the site. admin is fine for your own sites. For a client, create a user for them first so they only see their own sites.
Domain Name: just the domain, without
Code:
http://
or
Code:
www
.
Email: the site owner's contact address.
Select PHP Version: PHP 8.1 to 8.5 are available. PHP 8.3 is a safe choice for WordPress and most apps today. You can change it later.
Create Mail Domain: tick it if you want email addresses like
Code:
[email protected]
on this server. Leave it unticked if your mail is hosted elsewhere (Google Workspace, Microsoft 365).

The OpenLiteSpeed + Apache (Backend) option is a paid add-on; you don't need it.

Click Create Website. A progress log runs while CyberPanel creates the Linux user, the folders, the virtual host and the SSL certificate.

Step 3: Check the result
After a few seconds the site shows up under Websites > List Websites:
[Image: attachment.php?aid=560]

Look at three things:

SECURE next to the domain means the Let's Encrypt certificate was issued. If it says not secure, the DNS wasn't ready; fix DNS and use Issue SSL, see our CyberPanel SSL guide.
Active status, the PHP version and the package you picked.
Open the site in a browser. You should see CyberPanel's default placeholder page over https.

Clicking the domain opens the site's workspace, with tabs for Files, SSL & Domains, DNS, Email, Databases, Backups and Advanced settings.

Where the files live
Every website gets its own Linux user and home folder:

Code:

/home/cyber.adminslab.com/public_html   <- your website files
/home/cyber.adminslab.com/logs          <- access and error logs

On our server CyberPanel created the user

Code:

cyber2602

(the start of the domain plus a few digits). The site's files must belong to that user. If you upload files as root over SSH, fix the owner afterwards or PHP can't write to them:

Code:

chown -R cyber2602:cyber2602 /home/cyber.adminslab.com/public_html/*

Use your own user name;

Code:

ls -la /home/yourdomain.com/public_html

shows it. Don't change the owner or permissions of the

Code:

public_html

folder itself.

Step 4: Upload your site
Replace the placeholder

Code:

index.html

with your own files. Pick whatever is easiest:

File Manager in the site's Files tab: upload a zip and extract it.
FTP: create an FTP account for the site under Databases & FTP.
SFTP or rsync over SSH, then fix ownership as shown above.
For WordPress, use CyberPanel's one-click WordPress install instead of uploading by hand.

If your app needs a database, create it under Databases > Create Database and use the name, user and password in the app's config.

Common problems

Site shows the wrong page or the server's default page: DNS points somewhere else, or you're seeing a cached result. Check with
Code:
dig +short yourdomain.com
.
"Domain already exists": the domain is already a website, child domain or alias on this server. Check List Websites and the other sites' Sub/Addon Domains.
Website creation hangs or fails: usually low disk space or a stopped service. See checking CyberPanel services.
403 Forbidden after uploading: wrong file owner. Run the chown command above.
No SSL: DNS wasn't pointing to the server at creation time. Fix DNS, then issue SSL again.

Prefer the command line?

Code:

cyberpanel createWebsite

does the same job; see the CLI cheat sheet.

More CyberPanel guides

Tested on CyberPanel 3.0 (build 8, OpenLiteSpeed edition) on Ubuntu 24.04, October 2026. Menu names can change slightly between versions.

Possibly Related Threads…matched by title
Guide Switch CyberPanel to LiteSpeed Enterprise: Free Trial, Results and What Breaks JAY	Replies:0Views:7	16 minutes agoJAY
Guide How to Change a Website's Domain in CyberPanel (Files, WordPress, 301) JAY	Replies:0Views:13	1 hour agoJAY
Guide CyberPanel Website Logs: Why PHP Errors Are Missing and How to See Them (Tested) JAY	Replies:0Views:15	8 hours agoJAY
Guide CyberPanel LiteSpeed and PHP Tuning: What Each Setting Does (and a Bug) JAY	Replies:0Views:13	Today, 07:05 AMJAY
Guide CyberPanel Behind Cloudflare: Real Visitor IPs and the Setting That Allows Fake IPs JAY	Replies:0Views:102	10-26-2026, 06:48 PMJAY

Guide How to Create a Website in CyberPanel: Domain, DNS, PHP Version and First Upload

Attached Files