The Members Control Panel is where you can go to change your hosting resources, like adding a new user login, email address, websites and more.
Membership resources are grouped into hosting orders. May First members using a hosting plan can create multiple hosting orders as needed. Within any single hosting order multiple resources can be created and configured.
The control panel offers three different roles and views to different options and resources based on your level of permissions.
User accounts with member access or hosting order access will land in the Hosting Order view when they first login.
In the top left corner you will either see the name of your hosting order or, if you have more than one, a drop down allowing you to choose the hosting order to view.
From this view you'll be able to manage all of the hosting resources within this hosting order.
If your account login has member admin access, you will be able to click on the name of your organization in the top left corner to see the resources assigned to your membership as a whole:
From this view, you can access via the left sidebar:
You can return to your initial screen by clicking the "hosting order" link in the left sidebar and then clicking the "view" button next to your hosting order.
Both the member view and hosting order access view include can see the membership disk quota monitor at the top center of the control panel screen. This area offers useful infomration about disk usage across your membersip. For more details read this explanation about the disk quota monitor
From the hosting order view, you will see a list your services in the left hand sidebar.
Clicking each service provides a list of items you currently have and the option to create new ones.
Some common features to all services include:
Because the status of an item can change, there is a "Refresh" link that will always display the most recent status of any item.
Below is a brief summary of the most common services used by members.
User accounts are the building blocks of many other services. For example, if you want to create a mailbox or a SSH/SFTP (server access) record, you will first need to create a user account. The user account holds the username and password.
A mailbox allows you to both send and receive email messages via the May First servers. The mailbox also provides the storage for holding your email. Once you have a mailbox, you can start receiving email at the address your-username@mail.mayfirst.org
.
An email address allows you to choose one or more different addresses that you can use to receive email and forward that mail either to your mailbox address or to an address configured with a different service. An email address allows you to configure the email jose@example.org
to direct email to the jose@mail.mayfirst.org
mailbox account.
Learn more about how to create mailboxes and email addresses.
The web configuration allows you to add a web site to your hosting order. This section creates the space for your web site, allows you to make it an https (encrypted) site, and offers you the ability to add special configurations. But, it does not provide the web site building tools (see the Web App section below).
See our page on adding a web site to a hosting order and
how you can add a second or third web site by creating a new hosting order.
Server access allows you to indicate which of the users listed in the user accounts section should be able to copy files to your web site. When creating the account, you can also upload a public ssh key.
See our guide on providing server access to web sites.
A domain name, like example.org, is your address online. The DNS section of the control panel allows you to configure how your domain names should respond when someone on the Internet uses them. This section is setup by default when your hosting order is created.
Note: You must have an entry in the DNS section for every domain you plan to use as an email address or web site, even if the domain name is not pointing to May First servers.
For more information on setting up domain names, see our domain name guide.
Web applications can be added to your web site and provide you with an easier way to build and maintain your web site. From our control panel, you can install WordPress, Drupal or Backdrop.
See our web app help file.
You can also install applications manually by copying files via sftp.
Regardless of which method you use, you will need to add your own MySQL database and user.
The email list Service allows you to add or delete Mailman email lists. You only need to provide the name of the list and the initial owner email address. The list password and directions for using the list will be emailed to the owner email address. You can only add on email address. Later, you can configure the email list to be run by multiple people.