Avoiding @ in FTP account names
Most browsers cannot handle handle FTP URLs when there is an @ in the account name. For instance, this URL works in Windows Explorer and most browsers:
ftp://foo:password@domain.com
but this one doesn't work any browser I've ever seen:
ftp://foo@bar:password@domain.com
Despite the fact that @ in the account name breaks URL functionality this way, my web host's installation of cPanel requires all user-created FTP accounts to have @ in the account name. Specifically, it will only create FTP account names that look like email account names, with the format user@domain.com.
I asked the web host if they could change the cPanel configuration to allow FTP account names without @, and they said there is nothing they can do about it -- cPanel offers no way around the requirement.
Is that true guys? If so, would you please consider changing cPanel so that FTP account names don't require @ in the future?
-TC
PS: I am very happy with cPanel overall. Thanks for the great product.
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Addon FTP accounts must use the user@example.com username. 0 -
Infopro, Thank you for the reply, but I think you are mistaken. There is no technical requirement that any FTP account name must be of the form user@example.com. What is at question here is whether or not cPanel's designers have chosen to require @ in the FTP account names their software creates, and if they have, whether or not they might consider making a different choice. -TC 0 -
I could be. :) Here's a Feature Request posted a year ago with a proper reply to it: Urgent need for a Cpanel FTP username without the @domain.com suffix! cPanel & WHM already supports the ability to have a FTP account without the domain. It requires the server be using ProFTPd, and the account having a dedicated IP address...
Short of that, you've surely noticed when attempting to add a new addon FTP account that the @ domain is there by default on the form.0 -
Thank you for pointing me to that feature request. It does shed light on this issue. I can only speculate, but it seems clear that at some point in time, someone at cPanel made a design decision that all addon FTP account names should look like user@example.com. I suspect that there is a technical requirement beyond cPanel's control that all FTP account names must be unique on an FTP server, and the @example.com suffix is cPanel's way to ensure uniqueness across the different domains using the server. Maybe the @example.com suffix was a good decision under the circumstances, or maybe not, but in either case it has bad consequences for anyone trying to use FTP URLs. CPanel would be a better product for me if I could make FTP account names without @ in them. I started this thread to find out if maybe there was a workaround my web host doesn't know about. It doesn't look like there is a workaround. Failing that, I'd just like to put the word out that at least one user cares about this particular problem, so if the engineers at cPanel get around to it, I would be grateful if they would reassess the "@ in FTP account names" requirement. (Now that I'm aware of the feature request page, I'll post this request there.) -TC 0 -
Without the @domain.tld part of the username, then a shared hosting server can only have 1 FTP account named bob. Given that a shared hosting server has two shared hosting accounts - example1.tld and example2.tld - when the owner of example1.tld decides that they want to create an extra FTP user named bob and then the owner of example2.tld decides that they want to create an extra FTP user named bob, how do you propose that this gets worked out? That's why the @domain.tld part of the username is used. bob@example1.tld becomes unique to example1.tld and bob@example2.tld becomes unique to example2.tld. 0
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