As you may have heard at cPanel Conference or read on our blog, access is everything, so we are focused on bringing a unified experience for End Users and cPanel Account Owners alike.
Unified Logins
One of the most commonly requested features we receive is to unify End User logins. It can be confusing for an End User to remember and manage separate usernames and passwords for email, FTP, and Web Disk. In the past, cPanel maintained different specifications on permissible username formats for each of these services, making it complicated to give a single End User access to several services without confusion. Well, we have a solution.
Starting in v54, we are introducing a new username standard which will solve the confusion: all usernames for services will follow a typical email address format. By implementing a common username format, cPanel Account Owners can now give an End User the same username and password for email, FTP, and Web Disk, thus reducing confusion and management difficulty.
User Manager
In order to facilitate the management of End Users and the Services they have access to, we are introducing a single interface where you can quickly create, search, filter, and manage User Accounts. This streamlined and slick interface provides several improvements over the existing interfaces including:
- A single page User creation screen which can create an email, FTP, and Web Disk account at the same time
- A simple way to configure and maintain email, FTP, and Web Disk settings for a User in a single page
- A simple way to link separate email, FTP, and Web Disk accounts that share the same username so your End Users can start taking advantage of a Unified Login immediately
- Password reset for all of a User’s services in single step
The User Manager List View
The User Manager Creation Screen
Backwards Compatibility
The new system will fully support accounts created in prior versions of cPanel, allowing them all to be managed within the new User Manager application as well as the existing management screens for email, FTP, and Web Disk. Users created within the new User Manager application will also be maintainable using the existing management screens.
Care has been taken to ensure that existing APIs are preserved, while adding support for a unified user concept. This feature has been designed to be minimally invasive to current processes and non-disruptive to existing End Users, by maintaining existing functionality and providing a new and innovative approach to User Management.
Where Does This Take Us?
You may be wondering where this feature is leading. Another of the most commonly requested features is to allow for Sub-Users in cPanel. Today, there is a single login for a cPanel account. This often results in many cPanel Account Owners giving their cPanel username and password to Web Designers, administrative assistants, and other persons who are tasked with specific functions in cPanel.
We are looking to the future and building a robust User Model, which will allow for granting of access to specific cPanel feature sets in addition to the common email, FTP, and Web Disk services.
