Every new SakuraHost hosting account starts with a default placeholder page — you'll see "This domain is parked with SakuraHost" when you visit your domain for the first time. That's expected: your hosting is active and ready, you just haven't published your own website yet. This guide covers the two ways to do that in cPanel.
Where your website lives: cPanel serves your site from a folder called
public_html. Whatever you put directly inside that folder is what visitors see at your domain — your homepage must be named index.html or index.php.
1. Log in to cPanel
Go to the SakuraHost Client Area, open your hosting service, and click Login to cPanel. You can also log in directly at
https://yourdomain.co.tz:2083 (or ask support for your direct cPanel link).
2. Option A: Upload with File Manager (recommended)
This is the easiest option if your website is a simple HTML site, a small number of files, or a single ZIP export from a website builder.
In cPanel, search for File Manager (top search box) and open it.
Double-click into the public_html folder. This is your website's home — not a subfolder inside it.
If you see a default
index.html file already there (the SakuraHost parked page), delete it or rename it — otherwise your uploaded homepage won't be used until it's gone.
Click Upload in the toolbar. Drag your website files in, or select them from your computer. If your whole site is bundled as a single
.zip, upload that instead of hundreds of individual files — it's faster and less likely to fail partway through.
If you uploaded a ZIP file: go back to File Manager, right-click the
.zip file, and choose Extract. Make sure the files land directly inside public_html, not inside an extra subfolder created by the zip.
The most common mistake: uploading your site into a subfolder like
public_html/mywebsite/ instead of directly into public_html/. If that happens, your site will load at yourdomain.co.tz/mywebsite/ instead of at your domain itself. If your extracted ZIP created an extra folder, move its contents up one level into public_html directly.
3. Option B: Upload with FTP/SFTP
Better for larger sites, or if you prefer using a desktop FTP client such as FileZilla.
In cPanel, open FTP Accounts to see your FTP username, or create a dedicated FTP account for this upload. Your FTP host is your domain name, or the server hostname support gives you.
Open your FTP client and connect using:
- Host — your domain (or server hostname)
- Username / Password — your cPanel or FTP account credentials
- Port — 21 (FTP) or 22 (SFTP, recommended — encrypted)
Navigate to the public_html folder on the remote (server) side, then drag your website files across from your computer on the local side.
Host: yourdomain.co.tz
Port: 22 (SFTP)
Username: your cPanel username
Remote directory: /public_html
4. Verify it's live
Visit your domain in a browser. If your site loads, you're done. If you still see the "This domain is parked with SakuraHost" page:
Checklist:
- Is your homepage file actually named
index.htmlorindex.php? Any other filename won't load automatically. - Is it directly inside
public_html? Not one level up, not inside a subfolder. - Did the old placeholder
index.htmlget removed or overwritten? If both files exist, check which one File Manager actually kept. - Did a ZIP extract into an extra nested folder? Move its contents up into
public_htmldirectly.
Need help? Contact SakuraHost Support and include your domain and cPanel username — we can check your
public_html folder directly on the server.