How to Prevent cPanel Users from Creating Certain Domains

Overview

cPanel & WHM allows you to deny cPanel users the ability to create certain domains or use certain top-level domains (TLDs). This feature is useful, for example, to deny cPanel users the ability to park a well-known domain (such as google.com) on top of a domain.

For more information about the domains that cPanel users can create, read our Aliases and Addon Domains documentation.

Add to the list of user-denied domains

To add to the list of domains that cPanel & WHM does not allow users to create, perform the following steps:

  1. From the command line, run the following command to view the default list of domains that cPanel & WHM does not allow users to create. 

    cat /usr/local/cpanel/etc/commondomains
    • If the file contains a large number of entries, run the grep 'example.com' /usr/local/cpanel/etc/commondomains command to determine whether the example.com domain exists in the list.
      Warning:
      Do not edit this file directly. System updates overwrite any changes to this file. Instead, follow the next step to create a new file.

  2. With a text editor, add the domains and TLDs that you do not want to allow users to create to the /var/cpanel/commondomains file.

    • Add each domain or TLD on a separate line, and do not prepend or append a dot to the domains. For example: 

      1
2
3
4
5

      a.com
b.com
c.com
.cat
.ninja

    • Only add domain names and TLDs to this file (for example, example.com). When you list a domain name, cPanel & WHM will automatically prevent the creation of subdomains for that domain or domains under a TLD. For example, if you list the example.com domain, users also cannot create the sub.example.com domain.

  3. In the Domains section of WHM’s Tweak Settings interface (WHM >> Home >> Server Configuration >> Tweak Settings), set the Prevent cPanel users from creating specific domains setting to On.