How to Limit Bandwidth and Add Websites Using WHM

As a reseller of a web hosting plan incorporated with WHM or Web Host Manager, there are lots of times you need to modify the bandwidth allocation of your customer’s hosted accounts. Reasons for this may vary, including specific requests from your customers, you have to initiate this yourself to avoid abuse and current business needs dictate that you need to do so. With WHM, you can easily do this under the “Account Functions” tools heading from the main page.

Here are the steps to do this:

First, you need to login to WHM using your username and password. As soon as you’re logged in, from the main page, on the left panel, scroll down to the section with the heading “Account Functions” and
click on the link labeled “Limit Bandwidth Usage”.

Upon clicking that link, you will be taken to the Limit Bandwidth Usage screen. It should be noted that your customer’s limit on bandwidth cannot be exceeded. If this happens, the account will be suspended, unless it happens at the end of the month when the limit is reset or you increase the limit. Aside from this, all of your accounts have set limits, and these were set when you have created those accounts.

Second, from this point, you need to select an account that you need to set a limit for. You are given two options to begin this process. You can refer or select the domain name of the customer, or their username. Click on the name of the domain or username and it will be highlighted along with its corresponding domain or username (whatever you selected first). There is also a note below the boxes that tells you that you can only check the bandwidth limits once a day.

Third, as soon as the correct name has been highlighted, click on the “Limit” button. This will take you to the “Bandwidth Limiter” screen. This screen has the columns “User”, “Bandwidth Used” and “Bandwidth Limit”, expressed in megabytes. The “Bandwidth Limit” box can be edited, and here is where you can impose the limit in number of megabytes. As soon as you’ve typed in the figure, click on the “Change” button. From here, you are taken to another screen that will show you if the limit you’ve set is greater than the used bandwidth of the customer. You will also be reminded of the action you’ve done and if the action was completed.

Fourth, part of the process is for you to check on the actual usage of the customer. From the left panel, go to “Account Information” and click on the link labeled “View Bandwidth Usage”. This will take you to the “Bandwidth Usage” screen. Take note of the messages in bullet points at the top of the screen and here, you will see all the bandwidth usage rates of each account in WHM. Scroll down and you will see a box with four columns. The “User” column shows the customer information, while the corresponding domain is seen under the “Domain” column, and the “Xfer (Best Fit)” column shows how much is the bandwidth usage in megabytes of the user, while the “Limit(Best Fit) column shows the limit in gigabytes, and the “Usage” column is where the percentage of bandwidth used against the limit set is shown.

On this screen, you may also check on the usage for various months and show usage in a preferred measuring unit by clicking on the button that would usually say “Show Units in Megabytes”. This is located directly above the columns. It should be noted however, that this can only be shown in mega or gigabytes. Once you are done checking on behavioral usage, click on the “Main” link tab just on top of the screen. You’re done. Now, aside from this change:

Another important aspect of your business is to match the plans that you have for your customers with their needs. Again, you can do this using WHM. Follow these steps:

First, click on the “Packages” icon on the main panel of the home screen as soon as you’ve logged in. This will take you to another screen showing you more icons to click. This time, you need to click on the “Edit Packages” link. On the next screen, it will show you all the packages you’ve created when you started. Just choose the name of the package from the list by clicking it.

Second, as soon as it’s highlighted, click on the “Edit” button. Clicking this button will show you a screen where you can place all the modifications on the specific plan. The first thing that you have to check is the “Quota” on the top right of the screen. The value that you can place in there is in Megabytes. This quota is the disk space included in the plan. Others that you can change include the number of email accounts for that client, the group list for their email, their add-on domains, sub domains and parked domains. More options include maximum SQL Databases and bandwidth limit. You can also select a default cPanel theme from this screen, grant Shell and CGI access, FrontPage and more. Once you’re done typing the changes on the corresponding boxes and ticking or unticking radio buttons and checkboxes, click on the “Edit” button on the top right corner of the screen. This will take you to the “Results of your request” screen which will indicate that the modifications or changes you’ve made on the plan were successful. It should also be noted that from the editing screen, you can click on the “Reset” button beside “Edit” button if you want to erase all values and untick all boxes and radio buttons for the selected plan.

Third, if you want to delete a package, simply go back to the “Packages” screen and select the “Delete Packages” icon. Select a package that you would like to delete by clicking to highlight the name of the specific plan. Once it’s highlighted, click on the “Kill” button and this completes the deletion process.

This should not worry you in reference to customers who already have this plan. This does not have any effect on theirs. Deleting a plan means this would no longer be available to any of your future customers, unless you create another similar package or modify an existing plan to mirror the deleted plan’s features.