Our cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller web hosting plans utilize Imunify360 WAF (web application firewall) in front of your websites. This protection is enabled by default and includes multiple features meant to protect your website from malware, malicious traffic, bad actors, and much more.
If an IP address is detected as potentially malicious or was found performing activity which triggers the Imunify360 WAF visitors from that IP will be shown the following message temporarily before being redirected to your website:
"Please wait while your request is being verified..."
This message indicates the Imunify360 WAF is ensuring the traffic & request are legitimate before allowing it to hit your website.
If you would like to disable this protection so this message is never shown to visitors on your website please open a ticket through https://my.hawkhost.com/submittticket.php so our helpdesk team can whitelist your domain(s) through the Imunify360 WAF.
All cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller hosting services include enterprise level email spam filtering through SpamExperts. Clients looking to enable SpamExperts on their account can refer to our KB article Enabling SpamExperts through cPanel
Once SpamExperts has been enabled on your domain there are two ways to access the SpamExperts management panel.
Accessing SpamExperts Through cPanel
- Login to cPanel for your account and once you've logged into cPanel search for the "Professional Spam Filter" interface:

- Under the Professional Spam Filter interface in cPanel click on the Login button to the right of the listed domain:

- After clicking Login you will be redirected to the SpamExperts web interface as the main/primary domain user for this account. You can use this interface to manage all SpamExperts settings, train / release emails, etc.
Creating Separate SpamExperts Users for External Access Outside cPanel
These steps assume you have already enabled SpamExperts enterprise email filtering on your account.
- Login to cPanel for your account and once you've logged into cPanel search for the "Professional Spam Filter" interface:

- Under the Professional Spam Filter interface in cPanel click on the Login button to the right of the listed domain:

- After clicking Login you will be redirected to the SpamExperts web interface as the main/primary domain user for this account.
- From the SpamExperts web interface scroll down to the bottom left side menu titled "Users & Permissions". Click "Manage Email Users":

- From the Manage Email Users interface click the "Add" button:

- Fill out the provided username, password, and status fields:

- Save your changes to create your SpamExperts user.
- You will now be able to use this new username/password you've created to login to https://se001.arandomserver.com directly without requiring going through cPanel first.
We can host any TLD that's currently supported by ICANN. We run a clustered DNS setup in several locations to allow the best connectivity / redundancy for around the world.
RAM/memory upgrades are available on all shared, cloud web hosting, and semi-dedicated hosting services. Any customer with a reseller or cloud compute package will need to contact our sales team for RAM/memory upgrades. Shared, cloud web hosting, and semi-dedicated hosting customers can add memory directly through their client area:
- Login to your client area at https://my.hawkhost.com/clientarea.php.
- Click "Services" from the menu navigation, and from the dropdown select "My Services":

- From your "My Products & Services" page there is an "Actions" menu on the middle-left side of the page. Click "View Available Addons":

- The "Product Addons" page will have an option labeled "Additional 1GB of RAM/Memory". Select your service from the provided dropdown list and click "Order Now" to proceed to checkout and complete the RAM/Memory upgrade:

By default we have ImageMagick installed on all of our servers. When it asks for the path, use /usr/bin/convert
Unfortunately Cloudflare has formally announced the deprecation of their cPanel plugin, as a result of this notice access to the Cloudflare cPanel plugin will be removed from Hawk Host’s cPanel as of June 15 2022. Cloudflare will continue to serve sites originally configured through the cPanel plugin however you will need access to your direct cloudflare.com account to continue managing and modifying your DNS zones.
To transition all your existing Cloudflare powered sites from cPanel to Cloudflare directly you can login to your account at https://dash.cloudflare.com/login. The email address and password used will be the same ones used when first enrolling through the cPanel plugin. If you do not have your credentials available the form at https://dash.cloudflare.com/login offers password reset and account recovery options.
Any issues with accessing your account or importing your sites can be resolved directly with Cloudflare support through https://support.cloudflare.com/hc/en-us. Unfortunately Hawk Host support is unable to assist with account access or import issues when transitioning to your direct Cloudflare account.
When checking the "Email Deliverability" interface in cPanel it may show a PTR/rDNS error which reads "Problems Exist (Reverse DNS)":

All of our servers already have proper PTR/rDNS records setup. This error message from cPanel is a known bug which has been reported to the cPanel development team. This bug will not cause any issues with email delivery and can be safely ignored.
If you have any further questions regarding this please open a ticket with our support department through your helpdesk account.
We currently run Litespeed Web Server which runs PHP as the user so files and folders should have the permissions of:
- Folders: 755 (drwxr-xr-x)
- Files: 644 (-rw-r--r--)
Even if the instructions for the software state to change the permissions of files or folders to 777 or 666 don't do it. It's a security risk and not needed in our environment.
If you accidently have changed the permissions on your account and your website no longer works please contact the support department to fix the permissions on your account.
All of our accounts come with SSH access enabled by default. If you're unable to connect, or you believe SSH is not enabled on your account, please contact our
support department and provide the error(s) you're receiving when trying to connect.
Remember, when using SSH, the hostname is your domain name or servers IP, the username and password are your cPanel credentials, and the SSH port is 22.
We fully support Zend Framework on all of our shared, cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller hosting plans. While we do not have a system wide install available for use, all users are able to upload the framework themselves and run it from within their account. All of the required modules are loaded and Zend Optimizer is installed.
We recommend installing it through Softaculous which is available in your cPanel account. If you need assistance installing it please submit a ticket to our helpdesk.
Proactive Defense is a unique Imunify360 feature that can prevent malicious activity through PHP scripts. It is available as a PHP module for Apache and LiteSpeed web servers and analyzes script activity using known patterns like obfuscated command injection, malicious code planting, sending spam, SQL injection etc. This feature is available on all shared, cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller hosting plans.
To enable Proactive Defense:
- Login to cPanel and use the search to locate the Imunify360 interface. Click the Imunify360 icon.

- From the Imunify360 interface, select the Proactive Defense option from the top menu navigation.

Using Proactive Defense:
- Proactive Defense offers three modes:
Disabled: Proactive Defense will not be used for your account.
Log only: Proactive Defense will detect/identify malicious PHP scripts, code, etc. but it will not take action, only log the events.
Kill Mode: Proactive Defense will immediately kill the PHP script performing malicious activity under your account. Kill Mode also logs events in addition to killing scripts.
- When Kill Mode is enabled, any detected malicious PHP scripts and their actions will be displayed under Detected Events. When an event is detected you will be given Action options on how to handle the Detected Event. Options include:
View file content: View the content (code) of the malicious PHP script
Move IP to the Black List: Block the IP which called the script and prevent it from completing the same request in the future
Move file to Ignore List (ignore detected rule): Allows you to exclude the file from Proactive Defense analysis for a particular rule. Useful in the case of a false-positive detection, or when debugging a detection issue.
Move file to Ignore List (ignore all rules): Allows you to exclude the file from Proactive Defense for all rules
Remove file from Ignore List: Removes the file form your Ignore List and will enable Proactive Defense detection on the file again
Additional reading/details about Proactive Defense can be found on the the Imunify360 Documentation Page
Our cloud compute packages include two options for web based control panels to aid in server management. The two panels currently available are DirectAdmin and cPanel/WHM. When your compute is first deployed your chosen control panel will come pre-installed and ready for use.
To access your cPanel/WHM panel:
WHM URL: https://1.2.3.4:2087 (Replace 1.2.3.4 with your compute IP)
Username: root
Password: Your compute root password (Refer to your "New Cloud Compute Information" email)
WHM User Guide: https://docs.cpanel.net/whm/
cPanel User Guide: https://docs.cpanel.net/cpanel/
To access your DirectAdmin panel:
DirectAdmin URL: http://1.2.3.4:2222 (Replace 1.2.3.4 with your compute IP)
Username: admin
Password: Your compute root password (Refer to your "New Cloud Compute Information" email)
DirectAdmin User guide: https://help.directadmin.com/
Our cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller plans do not provide a preview URL. To view your website(s) content on our servers before changing your nameservers/DNS you would need to use the hosts file method on your local computer.
You can find a KB article on how to modify your local system hosts file here: How to modify your computes hosts file to preview a site
To change your cPanel username you will need to
submit a ticket to our support department and they'll gladly change your username for you. There is no charge for changing your username at this time.
All shared, cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller hosting plans offer the following PHP versions:
- PHP 4.4 (EOL)
- PHP 5.1 (EOL), PHP 5.2 (EOL), PHP 5.3 (EOL), PHP 5.4, PHP 5.5 (EOL), PHP 5.6 (EOL)
- PHP 7.0 (EOL), PHP 7.1 (EOL), PHP 7.2 (EOL), PHP 7.3 (EOL), PHP 7.4
- PHP 8.0, PHP 8.1, PHP 8.2
Any PHP version with (EOL) means it has reached its end of life and is no longer receiving feature updates. Custom security patches are still applied through CloudLinux however it is strongly recommended to not run any EOL version of PHP. We recommend running PHP 7.4 or newer.
To change your accounts PHP version:
- Login to cPanel for your account.
- In the top left search bar, type "Select PHP Version":

- From the Select PHP Version interface use the "My Domains" select your new default PHP version:

- Select your desired PHP version and then click "Set as current":

From this interface you can also enable/disable various modules specific to your desired PHP version. You can also modify your custom php.ini settings using the "Options" menu from the top navigation. Refer to our KB article for more details on modifying PHP options or extensions
Please note for these changes to take effect on all addon domains you will need to make sure your sites are set to the "inherit" setting through the MultiPHP Manager interface in cPanel.
All cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller hosting plans allow you to create an unlimited number of FTP accounts for your service. FTP is a protocol used to transfer files between your hosting account and your local system.
FTP accounts can be created using the FTP Accounts interface in cPanel. Instructions below:
- Login to your accounts cPanel at https://yourdomain.com/cpanel or https://yourdomain.com:2083
- Once you have logged into cPanel use the search to locate the FTP Accounts interface:

- From the FTP Accounts interface in cPanel use the provided fields to create your new FTP user:
Log In: This will be your FTP username
Domain: Select the domain this user should be tied to from the provided dropdown
Password: This will be the password used to authenticate with your FTP user. The password should be unique with at least 12 alpha-numeric characters
Directory: This is the default directory under your web hosting account the FTP user will connect to where files will be uploaded
Quota: The maximum size of total files allowed to be uploaded and stored by this FTP user in their default Directory
- When all the required fields are filled out click the "Create FTP Account" button to add the new user:

- If the account is created successfully your new FTP account will appear under the FTP Accounts section:

Related Articles:
How do I connect to my account using FTP?
How do I connect to my account using SFTP?
Unfortunately the FFmpeg framework/extension is not available on our cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, or reseller web hosting plans. To utilize FFmpeg it would require using a cloud compute (https://www.hawkhost.com/cloud-compute) which is your own private server environment with full root access.
All shared, cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller plans include the ability to enable PHP extensions through cPanel using the Select PHP Version interface. To enable PHP extensions:
- Login to cPanel for your hosting account and use the search to find the "Select PHP Version" interface:

- From the Select PHP Version interface click "Extensions":

- All of the available PHP extensions for your selected PHP version will be shown. To enable an extension, click the checkbox next to the extension. You will then see a dialogue window in the top right of your screen confirming it has been enabled. The checkbox next to the extension you've enabled should also turn blue with a checkmark:

If you feel you've received an invalid DMCA / copyright complaint you do have the rights to submit a DMCA counter notice. Before submitting a counter notice please be mindful of the following:
1) For a DMCA counter notice to be valid you must be willing to state / sign under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief the reported content should not be removed.
2) Filing a DMCA counter notice could result in legal action from the complaining party if they find your counter notice to be inaccurate or invalid. It is common practice to advise with your legal counsel prior to filing a counter notice.
A valid DMCA counter notice must comprise of the following information:
1) Your signature, either physical or electronic
2) Your name, physical mailing address, and valid phone number
3) Identification and location (web URL / address) of the material involved in the DMCA / copyright complaint
4) A confirmation that you believe the counter notice is accurate and valid under penalty of perjury
5) Your consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court where you live (assuming you're in the United States), or a consent to the jurisdiction of a federal court where your content exists / where we're located
There are tools online you can find to help generate a DMCA counter notice. Again it is common practice to advise with your legal counsel prior to filing a counter notice.
Lastly please note that once a DMCA counter notice is filed any further communication involving this complaint would need to be handled between you and the complaining party directly. We will not make ourselves liable for any potential legal action as part of a counter claim. As a result we may be forced to either remove the infringing domain(s) from our network or disable access to the domain(s). Should this happen we will provide you a backup to your account or the opportunity to remove the infringing domain(s) but continue hosting other services with us.
All shared, cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller plans include SSH access. To connect to your account using SSH:
1) Download an SSH client. We recommend PuTTY for an easy and free option, but any SSH client/terminal will work.
(PuTTY Download)
2) Refer to your "New Account Information" email for your SSH IP/hostname username, and password.
3) Open up PuTTY or your alternative SSH client and enter your domain name or accounts IP into the hostname/IP field:

4) Hit enter on your keyboard or press the "Open' button from PuTTY. The SSH connection will be established to your compute. You'll be prompted with a window to accept a certificate. Hit "Yes" as it is safe to accept this certificate:

5) From there you'll be prompted with a black screen asking for a login, then password. Enter your cPanel Username as the login name and enter the cPanel password from your "New Account Information" setup email. Keep in mind when you type your password nothing will be showing up - this is normal and it is being entered:

6) Once you've typed in the username and password, hit enter(return) on your keyboard to complete the login.
If you encounter any issues, please submit a support ticket with our compute support department.
Unfortunately as of cPanel/WHM version 100 they do not support the concept of multiple cPanel users, as a result all cloud web hosting and semi-dedicated hosting plans would have a single cPanel login for the hosting service. It is not possible to create a secondary or less privileged user to provide access to a webmaster or developer. If they require cPanel access your only option is to provide your main cPanel username/password.
Providing a webmaster or developer access to your cPanel hosting account does not give them access to your account's client area/billing portal (https://my.hawkhost.com). The credentials to access your client area/billing portal are different than your cPanel credentials. If desired you can add your webmaster or developer as a user to your client area/billing portal per our guide at How to Add an Authorized User to your Account.
If your webmaster or developer requires access to your account to upload, download, or modify files one alternative option is to provide them an FTP Account. An FTP Account will allow the developer or webmaster to upload, download, or modify files in any given directory (you control their access) so they can work on your site's files without requiring full cPanel access. Please refer to our guide at How to Create FTP Accounts for instructions on how to create an FTP account specifically for your webmaster or developer.
Due to a recent change in policies and standards, multiple websites (including Paypal) are now requiring vendors and e-commerce sites use an SSL certificate signed with the SHA256 algorithm (also referred to as SHA2) and will no longer accept SSL certs signed using SHA1. As a result of this you may need to have your SSL certificate re-issued using the SHA256 algorithm.
To complete this, you'll first need to generate a new key/CSR pair through cPanel (make sure you use a 4,096bit private key). It's important that your new key/CSR match the exact same domain name you used for the original certificate: https://support.hawkhost.com/index.php?/Knowledgebase/Article/View/123/0/how-do-i-generate-a-csr--certificate-signing-request
Once your new key/CSR are generated, please open a ticket at https://support.hawkhost.com asking to have your SSL certificate re-issued. Be sure to include your new CSR in that ticket as our support team will need it to complete the re-issue.
Your certificate will then be re-issued using SHA256 (SHA2), at which point we'll also install your new certificate for you.
We offer a free memcached instance on all shared, semi-dedicated, and reseller hosting plans. You can enable memcached in cPanel under the "Server Application Manager" interface. To access this:
- Login to cPanel for your account using https://yourdomain.com:2083 (replace yourdomain.com with your accounts primary domain name)
- Once you've logged in to cPanel use the search tool to look for 'Server Application Manager' or 'memcached'. Both terms will bring you to the right interface:

- Click the 'Server Application Manager' icon
- On the 'Server Application Manager' configuration page you will see a few options listed, including memcached. Next to the memcached line click "Enable" under the "Actions" menu:

- It can take up to 5 minutes for your memcached instance to be started. You will need to refresh the page until the status changes to "Online":

- Your accounts memcached instance socket will be displayed once the application starts:

If you have any issues starting memcached or configuring your site/software to utilize the socket please
contact our support team.
HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) informs all user agents that they should only communicate with the web server using HTTPS. This can be used to prevent some attacks that downgrade connections from HTTPS to HTTP. All our servers support the ability to enable HSTS on either your entire account or just an individual domain. You can do this by adding the following to your domains .htaccess file:
Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000" Header always set Strict-Transport-Security "max-age=31536000"
This header tells the client that interactions with the configured sites should always use HTTPS for one year (31536000 seconds).
We do not place a limit to the number of visitors or amount of traffic your site can handle. The amount of visitors / web traffic your site can support depends on how efficient your site is, if it's properly optimized, and the type of site you're running.
For example, a website that is purely static / HTML with no PHP or database requirements could handle potentially millions of visitors per day. This is because static content served via HTML takes essentially no resources to process and as a result you'd most likely never hit any hosting account resource limits (CPU, disk I/O, PHP processes, etc).
A website that relies heavily on PHP / MySQL which isn't optimized may only be able to handle a few thousand visitors per day. This is because a site which serves content dynamically and relies on using PHP to access a database to serve each request will have more overhead and require more resources for each visitor. This can be avoided by properly optimizing the site, including utilizing caching, tweaking your database queries, and following other best practices for the type of site you're running.
Most bottlenecks for high traffic sites in shared hosting come from the application / website itself and not from a lack of server resources. If you find your site slow or underperforming you can contact our support team and we'll be happy to investigate what may be causing your performance issues.
Softaculous offers a quick and easy way to clone your existing software installation(s) into a staging environment. Please refer to our blog post at https://blog.hawkhost.com/2018/10/30/creating-a-wordpress-staging-environment-through-softaculous/ for a guide on how to complete this.
Editing your local systems hosts file allows you to manually point a website to a specific IP instead of relying on public DNS resolution. The hosts file is located in the following locations depending on your system:
- Windows 10 – “C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts”
- Linux – “/etc/hosts”
- Mac OS X – “/private/etc/hosts”
Editing your host file on Windows:
- Click the Windows button and type notepad to bring up the notepad utility.
- Right click on notepad and click Run as Administrator
- You’ll be asked “Do you want to allow this app to make changes to your device?”. Choose Yes.
- In your notepad click File and then Open
- Navigate to C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts or click the address bar at the top and paste in the path and choose Enter. If you don’t see the hosts file in the C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts directory then select All files from the File name: drop-down list, then click on the hosts file.
- Once you're viewing the host file add the entries one per line as needed. The correct format to use is:
1.2.3.4 hawkhost.com
- In the above example replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP address you want to point your site to and replace hawkhost.com with the domain name you're working with.
- Once you have added your hosts entries save the hosts file. Your domain(s) will now be manually pointed to the IPs listed in the host file.
Editing your host file on Mac:
- Open the Terminal app by using either the Spotlight search or by navigating to Applications=>Utilities=>click Terminal
- In the Terminal you just opened type the following command: sudo nano /private/etc/hosts
- Type in your user password when prompted
- Edit the hosts file using the following format:
1.2.3.4 hawkhost.com
- In the above example replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP address you want to point your site to and replace hawkhost.com with the domain name you're working with.
- Save your changes by pressing control-o on your keyboard then return to accept the filename. Exit the editor by pressing control-x. This takes you back to the terminal screen.
Editing your host file on Linux:
- From your command line terminal type the following command: sudo nano /etc/hosts
- When prompted enter your password to allow your user the ability to modify/save the hosts file
- Edit the hosts file using the following format:
1.2.3.4 hawkhost.com
- In the above example replace 1.2.3.4 with the IP address you want to point your site to and replace hawkhost.com with the domain name you're working with.
- Save your changes by pressing control-x on your keyboard then y to save the changes and return to complete the save. You will be dropped back to your command line terminal.
CAA is a type of DNS record that allows site owners to specify which Certificate Authorities (CAs) are allowed to issue certificates containing their domain names. Some third party DNS providers do not have CAA records properly configured and as a result the Let's Encrypt validation/lookup will fail and your SSL certificate will not be installed.
You can read more about Let's Encrypt and CAA here: https://letsencrypt.org/docs/caa/
Unfortunately this is not an issue we can fix for you since you're using third party DNS services. You will need to speak with your DNS providers support team to setup proper CAA records on your domain so the Let's Encrypt installation can complete.
When you change your nameservers to ours after signing up for a shared hosting account, there needs to be time for DNS propagation. While you may see the site as down, it's just that your ISP hasn't update their DNS yet. That can take anywhere from 2-24 hours, so you'll have to give it time.
To verify the site is working you can either test from a different network / ISP, or use the temporary hostname and URL provided to you in your welcome email.
While all of our hosting plans include SSH access we do not allow port forwarding or SSH tunneling on our shared, reseller, or semi-dedicated hosting plans. Our VPS packages do allow you to setup SSH tunneling or port forwarding.
The SetEnv directive is not supported by LiteSpeed Web Server at this time however you can set environmental by using the following:
RewriteRule .* - [E:myenv=myvalue]
We utilize the Litespeed web server which when utilizing https has the capability of using HTTP/2 or SPDY depending on the browser capabilities. Both protocols do not utilize the keep alive header as they have more efficient means of making connections and as a result no longer need to keep connections alive.
If you suspect your website or IP have been blocked behind a firewall and you can no longer access your site, there are a few things you should try:
- Try to access your site through a proxy or from another ISP. It might be a temporary routing or network issue.
- Have a friend, colleague or associate try to access the site as well.
- Perform a traceroute from you to your site and see where the connection dies. This may help show where the issue is
If you've taken all of these steps and still feel your site is blocked, you should contact our support department through our
help desk and we will assist you in resolving this.
If you're unable to reach your site, there are a number of steps you can take to determine if the site is offline:
- Try to visit your site through a proxy (A quick Google search should find a suitable one) to determine if it's a routing issue specific to your ISP / network
- Try to visit the site in another browser or clear your local cache
- Have a friend, colleague, or associate (on a different network) try to visit the site. Compare their results to yours
- Visit our status website at http://www.hawkhoststatus.com -- Every issue, maintenance window, or service impacting problem we have is posted here.
If you've exhausted the above steps and still believe your site is offline as the result of an issue on our server, please submit a ticket at https://support.hawkhost.com
The "Optimize Website" feature that is commonly available on other cPanel based hosts is not available through our services as our webserver (Litespeed) automatically compresses/gzips content when possible. As a result it is not necessary to specifically enable that feature which is why the "Optimize Website" icon is not available in cPanel.
You can confirm gzip compression is enabled on your sites by viewing your request headers or ask our team through a support ticket to provide that information.
You can download PuTTy here: http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/download.html
Weebly is a free drag&drop site builder we offer with our shared, cloud web hosting, and semi-dedicated hosting plans. If you have added Weebly and are unable to publish you may see the following error:

This error can be caused by a number of different issues. Common problems include:
- You do not have an active web hosting plan through us: While the Weebly site builder is free, it requires you to have an active shared or semi-dedicated hosting service with us. Otherwise, there would be no service to host the Weebly site. You can sign up for a hosting plan through our website
- Your Weebly domain name is not registered: In addition to requiring an active hosting plan the domain name you're trying to use must be registered. Purchasing a hosting plan and adding Weebly does not include a domain registration. You can register your domain name through our website
- Your website is not pointed to our nameservers/DNS: If your domain name is registered and you also have a web hosting plan through us, but publishing is not working, check to make sure your nameservers/DNS for the domain are pointed to your account. You can find your accounts nameservers in your "New Account Information" email or through your client area under "My Services". If instead you are using third party nameservers you can find your sites shared IP for your DNS A record through cPanel in the "Server Information" interface.
- Your FTP publishing credentials are invalid: This can happen if your FTP user is missing, or if your password is not correct. You can confirm if an FTP user was properly created by logging in to cPanel and visiting the "FTP Accounts" interface. You should see a user with a similar name:

Unfortunately if the issue is related to FTP credentials you would need to contact us to resolve the issue. To do so please email [email protected] or open a ticket through your client area.
Despite the wording implying connections to your site, the idea behind the concurrent connections is actually the amount of active processes on your account. These processes can be cronjobs, PHP processes, Perl processes, etc. A single user should rarely if ever consume all 20 connections, so this metric is mostly informational.
Since we run multiple nameservers, please consult your "New Account Information" email for this information. You may also contact our support team at https://support.hawkhost.com to determine what your nameservers are.
An inode represents each file stored from your account. Every email, website page, image, etc. is one inode and that reflects the total number of files you can store on your hosting service. Our inode limits for each service are:
- Shared and cloud web hosting: 500,000 inodes, applies to both the primary and professional plans.
- Semi-dedicated hosting: 1,000,000 inodes, applies to both the nestling and talon plans.
- Reseller hosting: Each cPanel account owned by your reseller has a limit of 500,000 inodes. Applies to all reseller plans.
- Cloud computes: No set inode limit.
Since we run multiple DNS clusters for shared hosting and semi-dedicated accounts, the nameservers for your account will depend on what server you are setup on. Reference your "New Account Information" email for what your nameservers are. You can also find your nameservers under your specific service details page through https://my.hawkhost.com/clientarea.php under 'My Services'.
All reseller customers should reference their "New Account Information" email for their nameserver information. Custom nameservers can be setup through WHM and you can find your IPs in
this KB article
Litespeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP) is a caching plugin created and maintained by the developers of the Litespeed web server we use on all shared, cloud web hosting, semi-dedicated, and reseller hosting plans. The Litespeed Cache for WordPress (LSCWP) plugin has been found to drastically improve your sites performance and responsiveness while reducing the CPU, disk IO, and PHP process requirements for handling high levels of traffic. You can find benchmarks for the plugin here: LSCWP Benchmarks
In an effort to improve customer experience and site performance we will periodically automatically scan and install this caching plugin on customer WordPress sites. The plugin is fully supported with all configurations so it will not cause any interruption to service or conflict with existing plugins. Once installed and enabled you should see a significant improvement in overall performance for your WordPress sites.
If you wish to manually install the plugin for new sites, or disable caching and prevent future automatic installations, please refer to this KB article: Enable, disable, or flag WordPress installations with LSCWP
We currently allow 25 concurrent MySQL connections at any given time. This limit is only applied to our shared hosting plans and not cloud compute customers.
Each MySQL connection usually lasts a fraction of a second so this limit is generally enough to host a busy forum without ever reaching the 25 connection limit.
The correct path to use for PHP cron jobs or other scripts which require the PHP path is:
/usr/local/bin/php
There is no limit. The only limit is the amount of space allotted to your cPanel account.
The path to mysql is
/usr/bin/mysql
The path to mysqldump is /usr/bin/mysqldump
Once you've purchased a Globalsign AlphaSSL certificate, you will receive an email with a link to issue the certificate. Follow these steps to configure the SSL certificate:
- Once you've clicked the AlphaSSL configuration link in your email, it will take you to a web page to issue your SSL certificate.
- On the 'Web Server Type' field, select 'cPanel/WHM'
- Copy and paste the CSR which you've generated within cPanel or WHM.
- Fill out the rest of the fields accordingly for the organization, company or site the SSL certificate is being issued for.
Once this is completed your SSL certificate will be issued and you will then be able to install it through the 'SSL/TLS Manager' in cPanel.
You can find server and network status on our status page at http://www.hawkhoststatus.com/ -- any maintenance windows, service interruptions, or network/server issues will be posted on this page. Updates on existing issues will also be provided on the status page.
If you're experiencing site issues and don't see an issue/event listed on our status page, please submit a ticket at https://support.hawkhost.com and let us know.
All of our shared, reseller, and semi-dedicated hosting plans utilize the AutoSSL feature with Let's Encrypt. As a result of this all domain names hosted from your account will automatically have a Let's Encrypt SSL certificate installed on them.
Please note that your installed certificates will not be displayed under the 'Let's Encrypt' interface in cPanel. You need to use the 'SSL/TLS Manager' to view your installed SSL certificates.
To view all the SSL certificates installed on your account:
- Login to cPanel for your hosting plan
- Use the search to locate the 'SSL/TLS Manager' interface
- Click 'SSL/TLS Manager' to be taken to the SSL manager
- Once you're in the 'SSL/TLS Manager' interface click 'Manage SSL Sites'
- Under the 'Manage SSL Sites' section you will see all your accounts SSL certificates, including those issued through Let's Encrypt with AutoSSL.
If you've published your Weebly pages and they're showing up as blank it most likely means your PHP version is incompatible. Our Weebly site builder requires your account use PHP version 5.6 or newer. You will be unable to run PHP versions older than 5.6 if your site is published using Weebly.
Please refer to this KB article for detailed instructions on how to change your accounts PHP Version through cPanel. For quick reference you can change your PHP Version in cPanel by:
- Login to cPanel for your account.
- Use the search tool and locate the "Select PHP Version" interface.

- Use the provided dropdown to change your PHP version to at least PHP 5.6 and save your changes:

Now that you're running at least PHP 5.6 your Weebly pages should be loading properly. If you continue to experience issues please submit a ticket to our support department.
Newly created databases can take up to 20 minutes to appear in phpMyAdmin after you create them through cPanel. After approximately 20 minutes you will be able to view and manage your databases through phpMyAdmin.
The existing SSH key in your clouds authorized_keys file is our internal key. This key is used for multiple purposes, including the immediate upgrade/downgrade abilities of the cloud services, assigning additional IPs, upgrading/downgrading other system resources, and when requested for logging into your server to provide support for an issue. It is safe to remove this key if you choose but please note that by doing so some features we offer as part of the cloud plans may not function properly.