How to Create a Website in ISPConfig

This guide shows you how to create a new website in the ISPConfig control panel, from opening the website form to checking that the site responds in a browser. It is written for Noiz clients managing their own hosting account through ISPConfig. In ISPConfig a website is sometimes called a web domain or a vhost, and the form you fill in is labelled Web Domain. Along the way, each of the main fields is explained so you know what it means for a shared hosting account.

Last reviewed: 27 July 2026, against ISPConfig 3.3.1p1. This guide is written for Noiz hosting and is kept current against ISPConfig. It complements, and does not replace, the official ISPConfig documentation linked below.

Official Documentation Reference

• Creating Web Sites (ISPConfig 3 Documentation): the current official documentation section on adding websites.
• The basics of setting up your first site (ISPConfig 3 Documentation): the official walkthrough of the Sites module for a first website.
• How to Add a Website in ISPConfig (HowtoForge): a detailed field-by-field guide to the same form, maintained by the ISPConfig developers' documentation site.
• ISPConfig Documentation overview: the index of all official ISPConfig documentation, including the full manual.

Prerequisites

• You can log in to the ISPConfig control panel.
• A registered domain name, for example yourdomain.com. The domain's DNS records must point to your Noiz hosting server before visitors can reach the site, but you can create the website in ISPConfig first and sort out DNS afterwards.
• A hosting plan with at least one unused website allowance. The Add new website button is always shown, so the limit only becomes visible when you click it: if your allowance is used up, ISPConfig answers with The max. number of web domains for your account is reached. instead of opening the form.

Open the Website Form

1. Log in to the ISPConfig control panel.
2. Click the Sites module in the top navigation.
3. In the left menu, under Websites, click Website. A list of any existing websites on your account appears.
4. Click the Add new website button.

The Web Domain form opens on the Domain tab. The full set of tabs is Domain, Redirect, SSL, Statistics, Backup and Options, but for a standard website you only need the Domain tab: the rest hold special configurations you can leave at their defaults. Not all of them appear on every account. The SSL and Backup tabs are shown only if your plan includes those features, and the Options tab is reserved for administrator and reseller logins, so a normal hosting login will not see it at all.

Complete the Domain Tab

The fields below are described in the order they appear on the form. Fill them in, then click Save. On a shared hosting account you may not see every field mentioned here: ISPConfig only shows options your plan includes, and fields such as the server or IP address selection are usually preset by Noiz. Anything you do not see has already been configured correctly for you.

One thing to know before you start: a website you create yourself stays yours to edit afterwards. If a website was created on your account by Noiz support instead, ISPConfig locks the Domain tab of that site to read-only for your login, and changes to it have to go through a support ticket.

Domain

In the Domain field, enter the main domain of the website without any subdomain prefix, for example yourdomain.com rather than www.yourdomain.com. The www version is handled separately by the Auto-Subdomain field below. If you want the site to live on a subdomain instead, you can enter one here, for example shop.yourdomain.com, and ISPConfig creates it as a full website with its own web space.

Harddisk Quota and Traffic Quota

• Harddisk Quota is the maximum amount of web space, in megabytes, this website may use for its files. A value of -1 means unlimited.
• Traffic Quota is the maximum amount of traffic, in megabytes per month, the website may serve. Again, -1 means unlimited.

On a shared hosting account these values are capped by your overall plan allowance, so -1 effectively means "up to my plan limit". If you ask for more than the account has left, ISPConfig refuses the save and tells you how much is still available under Max. available Harddisk Quota or Max. available Traffic Quota. If your plan allows several websites, you can use these fields to stop one site consuming space or traffic needed by another. Otherwise, leave the defaults in place.

Other checkboxes you may see

Depending on your plan, the next block of the Domain tab may show CGI, SSI, SuEXEC and Own Error-Documents. CGI lets the web server execute CGI scripts from the site's cgi-bin directory, and SSI activates Server Side Includes for .shtml files: leave both unticked unless your site genuinely uses them. SuEXEC runs CGI scripts, including PHP running as Fast-CGI or CGI, as the website's own user and group, and should stay ticked for security. On most servers suEXEC is enforced for every site, in which case the checkbox is not shown at all. Own Error-Documents lets you supply your own error pages, for example a custom 404 page, instead of the server's standard ones, and is safe to leave ticked.

Auto-Subdomain

The Auto-Subdomain field decides which subdomain, if any, is created automatically alongside the main domain:

• None: the site answers only on the exact domain, for example yourdomain.com. Visitors typing www.yourdomain.com would get an error.
• www.: the site answers on both yourdomain.com and www.yourdomain.com. This is the default and the sensible choice for most websites.
• *. (wildcard): the site answers on any subdomain that is not already assigned to another website, for example anything.yourdomain.com. Only pick this if your site software genuinely needs wildcard subdomains, such as a multisite installation. The option is only offered if your plan allows wildcard subdomains.

Select www. unless you have a reason not to. Remember that each name still needs a matching DNS record pointing at the server before it works in a browser. If www.yourdomain.com already exists on the system in its own right, as a website, subdomain or alias domain, ISPConfig will not let you claim it here as well and the save fails with There is already a subdomain with these settings.

SSL and Let's Encrypt SSL

• SSL enables HTTPS for the website.
• Let's Encrypt SSL requests and renews a free, trusted SSL certificate automatically. Ticking it ticks SSL for you, and unticking SSL clears it again, so the two always move together.

Tick Let's Encrypt SSL to give the site a working HTTPS address with no manual certificate work. While it is enabled the certificate is managed end to end by Let's Encrypt. The separate SSL tab, which exists for pasting in a certificate you bought elsewhere, stays visible but does nothing: it displays a notice that everything on it applies to non-Let's Encrypt certificates only, and that you must untick Let's Encrypt SSL first if you want to switch to your own certificate.

One important caveat: the check only succeeds if the domain, and every name attached to the site including the auto-subdomain and any alias or subdomains, already resolves to the hosting server from the public internet. A redirect on the site can also break the check. If DNS is not pointing at the server yet, create the website without these boxes ticked, wait for DNS to be in place, then edit the site and tick them. On a brand-new site ISPConfig always saves the website first and enables the certificate on a second pass a moment later, so give it a little longer than an ordinary save.

PHP and PHP Version

The PHP drop-down controls whether, and how, the web server runs PHP scripts for this site. The exact list of modes shown depends on how the server is configured and on what your plan allows:

• Disabled: the site serves only static files such as HTML, CSS and images. Choose this if the site will never run PHP code.
• PHP-FPM: the mode to pick for almost every site. Scripts run under the website's own user account, several PHP versions can be offered side by side, processes are spawned and recycled adaptively, and it is generally faster than the CGI-based modes.
• Fast-CGI: also runs scripts as the website's user and also supports multiple PHP versions. It is a sound choice, and on a busy Apache site it performs comparably to PHP-FPM.
• CGI: runs scripts as the website's user but starts a fresh process per request, so it uses more memory and is the slowest of the three.

Unless you have a specific reason to do otherwise, select PHP-FPM. Note that in PHP-FPM, Fast-CGI and CGI modes, php.ini values cannot be changed from a PHP script, a vhost file or an .htaccess file. If your site needs a custom PHP setting such as a larger upload limit, open a support ticket rather than trying to set it from the site itself.

When you select PHP-FPM or Fast-CGI, the PHP Version drop-down appears; the other modes use the server's default PHP version. Choose the newest version that your website software supports; newer PHP versions are faster and receive security fixes for longer. You can change this setting at any time on a site you created yourself, so if a site misbehaves after a version change, you can switch back while you update the site's code.

Active

Leave the Active checkbox ticked so the website is enabled as soon as it is created. Unticking it later takes the site offline without deleting any files, which can be useful during maintenance.

Save and Verify the Website

1. Click Save. You return to the Websites list, where the new site now appears.
2. Look for the status box above the list reading The following changes are not yet populated to all servers: followed by Create new website: 1. It means ISPConfig has recorded your site but has not finished writing the web server configuration yet. ISPConfig's own advice is that storing updates can take up to one minute. A small counter also appears in the panel header while anything is pending; clicking it lists the same outstanding changes. The site is ready once both clear.
3. Once DNS for the domain points at the server, open http://yourdomain.com in a browser. A brand-new site shows the default ISPConfig welcome page, which confirms the web server is answering for your domain.

To replace the welcome page with your own site, upload your files to the website's web directory using an FTP user or file manager access for this site. The welcome page is a file called standard_index.html, placed there by ISPConfig along with a starter favicon.ico and robots.txt. It sits last in the web server's index order, so as soon as a real index.html or index.php exists, your own page is served instead. Deleting standard_index.html is tidy housekeeping rather than a required step.

Troubleshooting

• Clicking Add new website shows "The max. number of web domains for your account is reached.": your plan's website allowance is used up. Open a support ticket to check or increase your allowance.
• Saving fails with "There is already a website or sub / aliasdomain with this domain name.": the domain is already configured as a website, alias domain or subdomain somewhere on the system. Check your own site list first; if you do not see it there, contact support.
• The site is not reachable straight after saving: wait a minute for the pending changes box on the Websites list to clear, then try again. If the domain still does not load, its DNS records probably do not point at the hosting server yet. DNS changes can take up to 24 hours to take effect worldwide.
• The Let's Encrypt SSL checkbox switches itself off after saving: the certificate check failed, almost always because the domain or its www name does not yet resolve to the server. Note that SSL is cleared along with it if it was not already enabled before, so expect to find both boxes unticked. Fix the DNS records, then edit the website and tick Let's Encrypt SSL again.
• The browser shows the ISPConfig welcome page instead of my site: the website exists but no index.html or index.php of your own is present in the web directory yet, so the server falls through to the standard_index.html placeholder. Upload your site to the web directory. If you have uploaded it into a subdirectory by mistake, move the files up a level.
• The Domain tab fields are greyed out and cannot be edited: that website was created for you by Noiz rather than by you, so ISPConfig treats its settings as read-only for your login. Open a support ticket with the change you need.

If you get stuck at any point, open a support ticket with the Noiz support team and include the domain name you are trying to create, the exact error message or symptom, and a note of which field or step the problem occurred on.