Understanding Stanford Domains’s accounts and passwords

One aspect of domains.stanford.edu that users may find a bit complicated at first is understanding the different accounts (and associated passwords) that you can manage as part of your participation in the project. This article outlines the types of accounts that you are likely to have, what they are for, and how you go about resetting passwords on each of them.

Your SUNetID Account

Before you can even sign-up on domains.stanford.edu, you must have an SUNetID account. This account is used by you initially for only one purpose: signing up for your domain and hosting. In addition, at some point in the future (usually upon graduating or leaving Stanford), you may need to login to this account again in order to transfer your domain so that you take over ownership of it.

Your cPanel Account

When you first sign-up for your domain and hosting, a cPanel account will be generated that provides you with access to your slice of the domains.stanford.edu Web server. Your cPanel account is automatically associated with your SUNetID account. Therefore, your SUNetID account credentials will grant you access to your cPanel account.

Your Application Administrator Accounts

Every time you install a new application in cPanel, an Administrator Account for that application will be created. You will likely use these accounts very often — every time you need to login to your application to manage the associated Web site, you will use this account.

For example, if you install WordPress to manage your Web site, every time you need to add content to WordPress, change your theme, approve comments, etc. you will use this account to login.

Usually, you will be given the opportunity to choose the userid and password for that account. We recommend choosing something that you are likely to remember but that is strong and secure.

Upon installation, you will likely receive an email confirming the application userid/password combination you chose. It will also have information about how to access the login page for that application. You may wish to make sure you don’t delete this message.

Depending on the application you’re working with, managing and resetting the password for this account will vary. If you’ve used Installatron (in cPanel) to install the application, however, you can always review the account credentials:

• Login to cPanel through https://domains.stanford.edu.
• Click the Installatron icon in the Software/Services section.
• Find the application you installed under My Applications.
• Click the Edit button (this looks like a blue wrench).
• Scroll down to find the Administrator Username and Password.