Your first website

Create a website in ZoPanel, point its DNS, get a free Let's Encrypt certificate, upload files with the File Manager or SFTP, and install WordPress.

Updated Oct 7, 2026 · 4 min read

This page walks through hosting one website from start to finish. You need a hosting account to own the website; if you have not created one yet, see the Quick start.

1. Point the domain to the server

Do this first: Let's Encrypt can only issue a certificate once the domain resolves to your server.

At your DNS provider, create these records (replace the IP with your server's):

Add AAAA records too if the server has IPv6. DNS changes can take from a few minutes to a few hours to reach everyone. You can check from your computer:

dig +short example.com

If you host DNS on ZoPanel itself (the DNS server component), create the zone under DNS and set your nameservers at the registrar instead.

2. Create the website

1. Go to Websites and click New website.

2. Owner: choose the hosting account. (Customers signed in to their own account skip this.)

3. Domain: enter the domain without http://, for example example.com.

4. Keep Also serve www.example.com checked if you want both addresses to work.

5. Website type:

   Type	Use it for
   WordPress	Installs WordPress automatically
   PHP	Any PHP application
   Laravel	PHP with the document root at /public
   HTML	Static HTML files
   Node / Proxy	A Node.js, Python or Go app listening on 127.0.0.1 at a port you choose
   Git deploy	Next.js, Node, Python, Go, Laravel and more, built from a repository

6. PHP version: choose one of the installed versions.

7. Keep Free SSL (Let's Encrypt) on.

8. Click Create website.

The website's files live in the account's home directory:

/home/USERNAME/domains/example.com/public_html

Until you upload your own files, visitors see a placeholder page.

3. Get the SSL certificate

With Free SSL (Let's Encrypt) on and DNS already pointing to the server, the certificate is issued when the website is created.

If DNS was not ready yet, you do not need to do anything: ZoPanel checks every hour and requests the certificate as soon as the domain resolves to the server. To issue it right away:

1. Open the website and go to the SSL tab.
2. Click Issue certificate.
3. Turn on Redirect HTTP to HTTPS so every visitor uses the secure address.

Certificates renew automatically 30 days before they expire. If you have a certificate from another provider, paste it under Custom certificate in the same tab.

4. Upload your files

With the File Manager

1. Go to File Manager (or open it from the website).
2. Open domains/example.com/public_html.
3. Drag and drop files onto the page, or click Upload.
4. To upload a whole site quickly, upload a .zip or .tar.gz archive, then select it and click Extract.

The File Manager also edits files, changes permissions (Permissions (chmod)), compresses and renames.

With SFTP

SFTP is available when the account's package has SFTP turned on. Use any SFTP client (FileZilla, WinSCP, Cyberduck or sftp):

The connection is restricted (chrooted) to the account's home directory; upload into domains/example.com/public_html. The FTP / SFTP page shows the connection details. Changing the panel password under My account does not change the SFTP password.

To sign in with a key instead of a password, add your public key under My account → SFTP & SSH keys (signed in as the account). For classic FTP, install the FTP server component and create FTP accounts restricted to one folder.

5. Install WordPress

When you create the website

Choose WordPress as the website type and fill in WordPress settings: Site title, Admin email, Admin username and Admin password. ZoPanel creates a database and installs WordPress with wp-cli. The progress is shown as a task.

On an existing website

1. Open the website's Overview tab.
2. Under Applications, click Install WordPress.
3. Enter the details and click Install. A database is created and WordPress is installed with wp-cli.

After installation

The website's WordPress tab lets you sign in to wp-admin without a password (Log in to WordPress), update core, plugins and themes, apply security hardening, and create a staging copy.

For speed, turn on the Page cache in the PHP & config tab. Logged-in users, admin pages, carts and POST requests always bypass it. On our test servers, page cache raised capacity from 100 to 250 WordPress sites on a 4 GB VPS.

6. Check that it works

• Visit https://example.com: the padlock should show a valid certificate.
• The Logs tab shows the access and error logs if something fails.
• The Analytics tab shows visitors and requests, computed from the web server logs.

Troubleshooting