Deleting a website user and all of its data

Overview

A website 'user' is also referred to as the username assigned to a domain. This is the username you use to log into the server via FTP or SSH in order to update your site. Every website has a user assigned to it, and you can change the user at any time.

If you have changed the user of your site, or have deleted your website in the panel, you can also delete the user from the server to ensure that all of the user's data along with any former website data is also deleted.

Before you delete a user

It's highly recommended that you first back up all user data and then make sure there are no websites assigned to a user that you wish to delete.

Backing up all data

To back up any data under the user, log into your server via FTP:

After you log in, download to your home computer any files and folders you wish to save.

Making sure no websites are assigned to the user

No websites can be assigned to a user that you wish to delete. You can confirm this on the Hosted Domains page. The username is displayed to the right of the domain under the Web Hosting column:

website username

You should not see the username you're about to delete anywhere on this page. If you do, you must first change the user that is assigned to any remaining domains. See the following article for more details on how to make a change these changes to a user:

Deleting a user

After you back up all of the website data and ensure no domain names are assigned to the user, you can now proceed with deleting the user from the server.

The following steps permanently remove the user's data from the server. It is not possible to retrieve any of this data after you delete it from the panel. Please be sure you've backed up all the user's data before proceeding further.

  1. Navigate to FTP Users & Files page.

    manage users kebab button

  2. Click the 'vertical 3 dots' button to the right of your user.

    Popout menu

  3. From the popout menu, click the Delete User link.

    You may see the following warning when deleting your user:

    Delete user error message

    This means a domain is still assigned to the user. Go back to the Hosted Domains page and change the username assigned to any domain with this user. See the following article for more information:

    If no domains are assigned to the user, the following message appears:
    Delete user confirmation message
  4. Click the Confirm User Deletion button to permanently remove it from the server.
    Once the user is successfully deleted, the following message appears:
    Delete user success message

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Article last updated PST.

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