A user in KeyHelp is a separate account with its own login, its own home directory and its own limits. Creating one per project, or per person who needs access, keeps sites isolated from each other: a compromised site cannot reach the files or databases of another user.
Creating a user
Only the user name and password are required; everything else can be left at its default.
- Username (max. 11 characters) — the name the user logs in with.
- Create subdomain — if ticked, a subdomain of the form username.servername is created. It works even before your own domain is registered or pointed here, which makes it useful for testing a site while the domain is still elsewhere.
- Password — set one or have it generated.
- Language — the interface language for this user.
- Email address — the contact address for the account.
- Send access data to this email address — tick to email the credentials.
The contact details block below is optional, but worth filling in once you have more than a handful of users. The administrator comment field is visible only to administrators — a good place to record what the account is for.
Account template lets you apply a prepared set of limits and permissions at once, instead of setting them each time. If you create accounts regularly, preparing a template first saves both effort and inconsistencies.
User limits
- Disk space — the total for the account. Note that this covers not only web files but also mailboxes and databases, so a site with a busy mailbox can exhaust the quota without the site itself growing.
- Mailboxes, Email addresses, Subdomains, MySQL databases, FTP users — how many of each the user may create.
Permissions
- FTP — whether the user may log in over FTP.
- PHP — whether PHP may be used for their websites.
- PERL/CGI — whether Perl and CGI scripts may run. Files with the
.fcgiextension are handled through FastCGI. - SSH — whether the user has shell access to the server. Grant this only where it is genuinely needed: it is far broader access than the panel itself.
- Can create backups — whether the backup function is available in the user's own session.
Grant the minimum the account actually needs. Permissions are easy to add later, and an account with SSH access that nobody remembers creating is exactly the kind of thing found during an incident.
Afterwards
Limits and permissions can be changed at any time by editing the user. For what administrators can do that users cannot, see Administrator and user privileges in KeyHelp.
If you are not sure which limits suit a project, describe it in a ticket and we will suggest sensible values.
