What is zPanel

Zpanel is one of the control panels which are easier to work with if you are a newbie who just need to host websites.

zPanel installation

ZPanel (www.zpanelcp.com) works only on a few OSes, like CentOS 6.4, Ubuntu 12.04 LTS (probably)
The linux server before zpanel installation must be plain linux, no bind, no Apache, no mysql, no proftpd, no dovecot, no postfix - plain linux install.

How to install zPanel: http://docs.zpanelcp.com/?node=7

Login to zPanel

After installation, im able to login ZPanel by entering my server IP into web browser. Login username is zadmin.

Setup a website in zPanel

1) add a domain name in: Domain Management / Domains

2) add DNS records in Home / Domain Management / DNS Manager , edit your domain
make sure that the IP there is your server IP!!! and click button Create records
that way DNS records should have been created.
ns1.yourdomain.tld
ns2.yourdomain.tld

3) Login your domain registar control panel and change your domain nameservers to become ones mentioned above. This way domain will point to your server. You may need to first register the nameservers in your domain registar control panel. How to do it? Google: yourdomainregistar register nameservers (example: godaddy register nameservers)

4) Go to Database Management / MySQL Database and create new MySQL database there. Then create new MySQL database user in Database Management / MySQL Users . The mysql user should have access rights to the mysql db we created.

5) To upload website files, use FTP or SCP protocol.

a) FTP
Go to File Management / FTP Accounts and create new FTP account for uploading files. Access type should be "Full access" probably and home directory can be "Use Domain directory". Then once created, use FTP software like FileZilla to connect your server via FTP protocol (port 21). Server hostname or IP is your server IP and username +password is the one you created/have in FTP section of your zPanel. PS: there is some reason why FTP may not work

b) SCP Example SCP software is WinSCP, maybe FileZilla. You will use protocol "SCP" during connection. As an username, use "root" and as password, use your server root password. as a server/hostname, use your server IP.
Your website folder should be /var/zpanel/hostdata/zadmin/public_html/yourdomain_tld/
files should have apache:apache permission, so i go to above mentioned directory (/var/zpanel/.....) and do: chown -R apache:apache *
after files upload.

6) if you plan to send an email out of your server, you may try to setup SPF to decrease chance your mails will be marked as SPAM