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Reseller Hosting : The Reseller cPanel ‘switch accounts’ menu disappears when switching to clients cPanel

Interesting Reseller account issue, see below the resolve of a Reseller customer:

Customer says:

While setting up a new cPanel Server today, I gave some space to a friend to host his domain.

And just in case his girlfriend or mates want to have their own site, I went ahead and set him up as a reseller. That way, he can monitor all of the accounts, but still give them their own cPanel separate from his.

So I set up a reseller domain, and two more domains:

  • Account 1 – his main site + reseller account
  • Account 2 – test/dummy account, to verify reseller was working
  • Account 3 – another test/dummy account, to verify reseller was working

Account 1 had the password  **privatepassword**
Account 2 had the password **privatepassword2**
Account 3 had the password **privatepassword**

Notice that the passwords for account 1 and account 3 are the same. I was simply being lazy, and setting up a dummy account that I would re-delete a few minutes later seemed like a waste of keystrokes to change it . And how typical that a moment of laziness would lead to problems!

However, when the password for the reseller matches the password for the client domain, the dropdown for ‘Switch Account’ will disappear, and cPanel will refresh directly into the client cPanel. You can’t click back to the reseller account, and you basically have to logout and re-login to get to the reseller panel. That, of course, defeats the purpose of the dropdown — convenient access to all accounts/domains.

The problem goes away when you use unique passwords.

This problem will most likely afflict VPS owners, who have undoubtedly subscribed to the VPS for their own sites. It may also affect any reseller that happens to have the same password as a client. To some degree, this really comes back to good password policy, and using strong unique passwords for everything.

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