How to Enable Change Password for RoundCube Users on BlueHost

RoundCube is simply one of the best open source webmail application available today. Though this application has been created long back and the updates are little bit slow, RoundCube powers several webmail for several companies, including my own DesLabs. My favorite reason to choose RoundCube is that I can easily customize the user interface of the application to show my company logo and I can give several capabilities to my users without the RoundCube name.

Something that we might not like is the lack of an administration panel at the backend where we could have easily manage the features and settings for our webmail. One of such problems I faced when I wanted my webmail users should be able to change their passwords. I am using BlueHost as my web host and create and manage unlimited email accounts under several domains. By default RoundCube don't give the flexibility to allow users change their own passwords.

So here is how to allow RoundCube users to change their own passwords.

Enable Change Password Plugin for RoundCube

First thing that you will need to have is to enable plugin support for RoundCube. Plugins are not used until you add the directory name of the respective plugin to RoundCube config file.

Go to your RoundCube installation directory. Open the directory named config. You will find a file main.inc.php.
Open that file to edit and find $rcmail_config['plugins']. It should be somewhere near line no. 322. This is the variable which keeps track of enabled plugins for RoundCube.

Edit that whole line to look like this -

$rcmail_config['plugins'] = array('password');

This means that RoundCube will now use the plugin under the plugins/password directory. Now your users should be able to see a Password tab under their Settings. But this password plugin needs to be configured properly as per your web hosting provider and your users otherwise it will not work.

Configure RoundCube Password Change Plugin

Browse to plugins/password directory.
You should find a file named config.inc.php.dist. Rename it to config.inc.php.
RoundCube Password Change Plugin can be configured to use following options to change user's password:

1. cPanel
2. DirectAdmin Control Panel
3. LDAP
4. Database
5. Cyrus/SASL
6. Poppassd/Courierpassd
7. XIMSS/Communigate
8. Virtualmin
9. PAM
10. hMailServer
11. Chpasswd
12. XMail

You need to choose whichever way you want your users to change their password. This needs to be set in a variable within the config.nic.php file. Here we will go with the cPanel option which is best suit for BlueHost users.

The default cPanel driver of RoundCube doesn't work. So download the proper cPanel driver for RoundCube password change plugin here. Thanks to awesome work done by RoundCube fan Nick1472 in RoundCube forums.

Now configure your cPanel Driver.

Open config.nic.php file to edit.
Find the variable $rcmail_config['password_driver'] somewhere near line no. 7 and set it like this:

$rcmail_config['password_driver'] = 'cpanel';

Then go on setting the proper options for your cPanel driver. Find cPanel Driver options near line no. 231 and set the following configurations as per your web hosting account.

$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_host'] // the primary domain of your hosting account
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_username'] // your hosting account's cPanel username
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_password'] // cPanel password
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_port'] // default is 2096 for SSL connections and 2095 for non-SSL connections
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_ssl'] = true;
$rcmail_config['password_cpanel_theme'] = 'bluehost';

That's it! Now login to your email account on RoundCube webmail and go to Settings from the top right.

There you should find a Password tab at the last.

You and your users now can easily change their passwords directly from here.

How to enable multiple Plugins for RoundCube

If you wish to use other plugins as well while you are using the password plugin, then you can do that by just entering the directories of those plugin in the RoundCube config file.

Open main.inc.php file to edit, within the config directory.
Search for the variable $rcmail_config['plugins'] near line no. 322.
Add the directory names of the plugins you want enable for your RoundCube installation -

$rcmail_config['plugins'] = array('password', 'plugin2_directory', 'plugin3_directory');

This is how you can easily enable multiple plugins for your RoundCube open source webmail application. Yes we know this is not easy and user friendly, but as I mentioned earlier that the development of RoundCube has been slowed down.

Feel free to share your experiences while using RoundCube and if any other tricks you used to get this password changing option easily available for your webmail users.