Getting started: from signup to a live site

This is the walk from “order placed” to “site live,” in order, with nothing skipped. Most of the first hour is automatic; the parts that need you are short.

One thing before we start: if you’re moving an existing site from another host, don’t do any of this by hand. Migration is free and done by us — email migrations@candorhost.com or open a ticket, and we’ll reply within one business day to schedule the move. Once a migration is underway it gets priority attention until it’s done. Details in Migrations. The rest of this guide is for setting up a site yourself.

1. What happens after checkout

When you order, you pick a plan and enter the domain your site will run on. Provisioning is automatic: your hosting account — the isolated container with the exact resource guarantees published on the platform page — is created the moment your order activates, and the service shows up in your portal ready to use.

2. Log in and open your hosting

1. Log in at my.candorhost.com.
2. Open your hosting service. You’ll land on the Overview tab — your domain, plan, and status at the top, live usage bars (disk space, bandwidth, email accounts) below, plus a billing summary.
3. The quick-action buttons up top — Open control panel, phpMyAdmin, WordPress — cover the most common jumps. Everything else is a tab:

Tab	What it does	Guide
Usage & Resources	Live usage against your plan’s limits	Plan limits
Email Accounts	Create and manage mailboxes on your domain	Email
Domains	Map extra domains, subdomains, and aliases	DNS
DNS Records	Full zone editor for your domain	DNS
FTP Accounts	Create FTP/SFTP upload logins	Files
Databases	MySQL databases, users, one-click phpMyAdmin	Databases
Backups	Automatic snapshots, on-demand backups, restores	Backups
WordPress	One-click wp-admin login and core updates	WordPress
PHP Version	Switch between PHP 7.4 and 8.4 (8.3 is the default)	PHP versions
Cron Jobs	Scheduled tasks	Cron jobs
Change Password	Your control-panel login	—

3. Point your domain at us

Your site can’t be reached on your domain until the domain resolves to us. Wherever it’s registered — with us, or anywhere else — you have two honest options:

• Let us run your DNS. At your registrar, set the domain’s nameservers to ours — ns1.candorhost.com and ns2.candorhost.com. From then on you manage records in the DNS Records tab, a full zone editor (A, AAAA, CNAME, TXT, MX, SRV, NS, CAA, SPF). The NS records at the root of your zone show a lock icon — those are the system records that keep your domain delegated to us, so you can’t accidentally delete them. Record changes you make in the tab take effect within a few minutes; a nameserver change at your registrar can take a few hours to propagate, which is normal and not something either of us can hurry.
• Keep DNS where it is. You don’t have to move it — hosting and DNS are separate decisions. Open a ticket and we’ll hand you the exact records to add at your current DNS provider.

Adding a second domain, subdomain, or alias later happens in the Domains tab. One caveat printed right on that form, worth repeating: for a brand-new domain, make sure its DNS points at us first; subdomains of a domain we already serve work automatically.

4. SSL: nothing to do

Free Let’s Encrypt certificates are issued and renewed automatically for every site and domain alias, and HTTPS is enforced — plain-http requests redirect. There is no button to press and no upsell to decline. If you visit your site right after a DNS change and see a certificate warning, that’s the one dependency: the certificate can only be issued once your domain actually resolves to us. Give DNS a little time and check again.

5. Get your files up

The FTP Accounts tab creates upload logins. The connection details shown there:

• Host: your own domain
• Port: SFTP on port 22 (recommended) or plain FTP on port 21
• Username: the full account name, including the @yourdomain part
• Home directory: optional — leave it blank for the website root, or scope an account to a subfolder like public_html/uploads

Every plan also includes SSH access. Uploading, SSH, and where files live are covered properly in FTP, SSH, and files.

6. WordPress, databases, email

• WordPress: if your site runs WordPress, the WordPress tab detects the install and gives you one-click secure login to wp-admin (no password juggling), the running version, plugin and user counts, and a one-click core update. Starting a new WordPress site from scratch is covered in the WordPress guide.
• Databases: the Databases tab creates MySQL databases and users — names are automatically prefixed with your account name — and opens a phpMyAdmin session in one click. See Databases.
• Email: mailboxes on your domain are included on every plan and created in the Email Accounts tab. See Email.

7. Check that it’s live

Visit https://yourdomain in a browser — ideally a private window, so a cached page doesn’t fool you. On the Overview tab, the status pill next to your domain should read Active. Automatic backups start without you doing anything; the Backups tab will show snapshots as they accumulate, and you can take an on-demand backup any time.

Our own monitoring runs around the clock — every customer-facing service is checked every 60 seconds, publicly, at status.candorhost.com. If your site isn’t responding and the status page looks clean, open a ticket: a site-down ticket gets a first response within 1 hour during business hours (Monday–Friday, 9am–6pm ET), and everything else gets a first response within one business day. The full support table is in Candid Support.

That’s the whole first hour. If any step didn’t match what you saw on screen, tell us — we’d rather fix the doc than have you guess.