How can I build a WordPress website using the server URL of my account?

The server URL for the primary domain name of an account looks something like this :

http://servername.com/~cpanel_username/

here :
servername.com denotes the hostname of the server on which your account is located.

cpanel_username denotes the cPanel name of your account.

You are allowed to check your account’s server name/cPanel user from your

User Area -> My Accounts -> Information & Settings page.

In case, at present you don’t have WordPress installed on your account, then you can easily install one by using cPanel -> Softaculous.

After doing that, you need to change the siteurl and home options in the WordPress database. Also, it allows you to make changes in phpMyAdmin, available in cPanel.

Then in phpMyAdmin, select your WordPress database, and then the wp_options table. Remember that the wp_database prefix may be different for your database than the one you chose during the WordPress installation.

Find options siteurl and home and change their values to the server URL for your account.

In case if you are not sure about exactly which database is related to your WordPress installation then you can find its name inside the wp-config.php file which is located inside the WordPress root/installation folder.

To open the File Manager in cPanel, search for the following line :

define('DB_NAME', 'database_name');

Finally, you need to update the WordPress RewriteRules inside the website’s .htaccess file, so that they will match the new URL. Following are the default rules :

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]

# END WordPress

and you have to change them to :

# BEGIN WordPress

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /~cpanel_username/
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /~cpanel_username/index.php [L]

# END WordPress

here, cpanel_username denotes your cPanel username.

Using File Manager in cPanel, you can make these changes in .htaccess.

Now, in case you have a WordPress Multisite then you will need to update a few more values in the database and configuration file to make the website work with the temporary URL.