Web Hosting asked:


What does the term cPanel signify?

In real sense, it is a web hosting control panel system installed on a dedicated server. This panel system considers two sides:

1. 1. Web Host Manager (WHM) for the web host, and

2. CPanel for the end-user.

Web Host Manager (WHM), which allocates the web host to easily administer individual hosting accounts, reseller accounts and perform basic system and control panel continuation through a safe interface. A web host does not require bearing the headache of ensuring manual set up of user’s accounts, passwords, ftp accounts or mail accounts via the command line as it is complex in comparison to all other dedicated servers.

CPanel is intended for the end-users or hosting customers and provide them facility of commanding entire things on their accounts, plus accumulating / eliminating email accounts, commanding MySQL databases, construct redirects and FTP accounts etc.

Receiving a cPanel server:

It is not compulsory that every dedicated server purchased or leased via server providers have a cPanel with it. One can find a variety of automated control panels in the market, so one should give preference to a server which comes along with a cPanel. CPanel has joint venture with leading datacenters and provide discount on cPanel license when procured along with the server. If one needs to give example of cPanel partner NOCs (Network Operating Centers) then name of BurstNet and LiquidWeb comes in priority. These NOCs may propose a server excluding a control panel if user requires that, providing cPanel license at a supposed charge of $19.95. But, till now, cPanel can be established on a Linux based dedicated server or rather on virtual private server, on nothing else.

Got the server!! What next?

Prior to publicity and getting clients for new hosting business, one should concern about few of the initializations on his/her cPanel server if datacenter is not committed to do it.

Below are the steps essential on a new server:

1. Set up nameservers

2. Protect the server by tuning security settings

3. Verify whether all server services are operating efficiently or not

4. Install add-on scripts that one would like to put forward in front of his/her clients

5. Install security scripts if one likes to boost server security

Miscellaneous to keep in mind:

Regardless of having all these tremendous features, cPanel exclude any customer billing feature for web hosts which help them to manage customer accounts and payments. Rather still one have to physically register new clients and bill existing clients via few sort of online form or email. It generally includes dealing for a Pay pal or merchant account for the purpose of acquiring payments. If one look for a sophisticated solution such as Modern bills then it would not only manage cPanel through accounts and also bill one’s clients as per requirements.

Vivek Gupta asked:


Cpanel or popularly known as hosting control panel system is the next generation web hosting system which is currently heading the list. Cpanel is a cheap hosting control panel for linux webhosts and managed dedicated servers. With its embarking into the World Wide Web, it has lent the power to accurately monitor your website. It means you can make changes according to your own liking and taste, not withstanding the requirements. It is the proven stability, easy to use feature; security and exceptional functionality which has made this hosting servicereally count its worth. Furthermore, you also get the advantage of friendly web based interface, adding up of parked domains, reading webmail, monitoring the bandwidth usage, addition of email accounts, moreover, you are also able to view your visitor statistics, and still many more to mention. The list of features is endless. In short a complete package one can ever dream off.

Herein you are in the total control of your website as you get access to your very own Cpanel with every Cpanel hosting account. Thus, it truly makes a lot of sense in managing your own website without any hassle. The core idea of this cpanel hosting is that it allows you to manage your domain through a web interface. There is also a feature whereby the transfer of the control and responsibility of managing your web site is made to you and you get to become the sole controller. It is the most advantageous web hosting serviceas you get to manage all aspects of e-mail, backup, files, CGI scripts and FTP. Not only this, cpanel hosting also allow you to take the entire backup of your website, managing cron jobs, protecting web directories, configuring http redirects and custom error pages also configure spam filters, accompanied with the viewing of disk space and allowing you to set up a shopping cart. What more, they all are available on a touch button system. It’s an enhanced servicewhich makes you control your website on your terms teemed with an array of features.

Cpanel also has an add on named as Fantastico through which you can install lot of ready to use free scripts at few clicks of your mouse.

This web-based control panel is comprehensively designed in a three-tier structure which makes web hosting quick and pretty simple. Using cpanel hosting; you will no longer need to go through hundreds of Linux-based commands just to be the admin of your server. It is loaded with every tool you need and now you can stay focused and pay more to your business instead of the server administration.

The official site of cPanel control panel is http://www.cpanel.net

Christine Anderssen asked:


Here is what you should look for in hosting plan features:

Often hosting plan features are tied into the type of control panel that is provided with the hosting service. Most people take for granted that a control panel should be part of the package, but in smaller countries outside the USA this is often a ‘luxury’ that is not part of the hosting package!

Finding out whether your hosting server provider offer a control panel to manage your website is the first essential feature that you should look for. It is unacceptable to sign up for a hosting package if there is no control panel!

Common control panels for Linux hosting are (my recommendation is to go for Linux hosting and not Windows hosting):

Helm

Plesk

Cpanel

DirectAdmin

All these control panels have their supporters and detractors.

I have to honestly say that my preference is CPanel. Cpanel offers a lot of functionality and a user friendly interface.

The following features are available with CPanel hosting:

~ Email management ~

Under email management you can create and delete all your email accounts. You also have access to a Webmail facility so that you can read your email online (as opposed to linking to your email account with Microsoft Outlook or Outlook Express). You can also set up forwarders to forward one email account to another. You also have access to set up simple autoresponders to send an automated reply back if anyone sends an enquiry email to a specific email address.

~ Website statistics ~

Although most hosting providers do provide statistics facilities, it is worthwhile to make sure that they do. Some hosting providers think that the statistics programs consume too many resources on a shared environment and some of them therefore remove the facility. But statistics and the ability to analyze your traffic is essential when you set up a website, so make sure that you select a hosting provider that do provide you access to a web stats package. My personal favourite is AWStats. You can read an article on the different types of statistics programs as well as how to interpret your statistics here : http://www.tm4y.co.za/internet-marketing-tips/website-statistics.html

~ FTP ~

You should have FTP access to your website in order to upload files. This is absolutely essential if you want to manage your website. Cpanel also allows you to register new FTP accounts to give other people access to your website. You can restrict their access to specific folders on your website and specify if they should have read and/or write access.

~ File manager ~

If you are not comfortable with using an FTP package to upload your files, you can always use the file manager available in CPanel. The file manager enables you to upload files, unzip files on the server and to copy and delete files.

~ Backups ~

This allows you to make a backup of the files on your server, as well as to backup your MySQL database if you have one. This is very useful and should be done regularly. You cannot depend on the backups ran by the hosting service provider, since the service provider itself might just close its doors unexpectedly and you might not have access to your site - not to talk of your backups!

~ Subdomains and Add On Domains ~

You can add sub domains and even Add On domains (depending on whether your hosting provider allows for this)

~ Redirects ~

This is useful to temporarily or permanently redirect pages to another website or ther website pages. Be careful though with using temporary redirects, this might cause problems with the search engines.

~ Protect directories ~

You can set up password protected directories on your website

~ Pre-installed scripts ~

The Fantastico installer is one of the best features of the Cpanel control panel! This installer helps you to quickly and easily install lots of Open Source (in other words, free to use) tools and utilities, such as shopping carts, forums, project management tools, WIKIS and much more.

The CPanel control panel allows web hosting companies to make a lot of web hosting plan features available to clients who can then easily manage these features themselves.

Ricardo D Argence asked:


cPanel is short for Control Panel and is a graphical user interface or GUI that is web-based and designed to afford webmasters and web designers easy access to many aspects of the web hosting system.

It used to be hard, if not impossible, for most people to figure out what to do with their hosting once they paid for it.

cPanel is an interface that allows web hosting companies to offer a graphical interface to people seeking to set up and run websites on a number of RPM-based Linux platforms.

cPanel is usually interfaced with the end user via ports 2082 and 2083 with authentication accomplished through surfing to a specific web page and logging in. Because cPanel is graphically based, it is extremely easy to use and very intuitive for novice as well as veteran users to work with.

If you want to set up a blog, mailing list, php link directory or basic content management system, cPanel is the way to go.

By clicking on the happy face icon used by Fantastico, a user is taken a list of software that is grouped into various topics and offered as an easy setup and tracking system for just about anything the end-user might want to add to the Internet community.

As a result, a webmaster can concentrate on the content and quality of what’s offered from the website and not the technical aspects of getting the site up and running.

With cPanel, managing your MySQL databases are a breeze to manage, releasing hosting companies from endless help requests from confused people. cPanel manages setup and maintenance of email accounts using three different web interfaces for retrieval via the web of email coming into the account.

Raising and lowering email quotas, adding and manipulating databases, managing PGP keys, setting up crontab tasks, email and FTP tasks and more.

Via Fantastico, several add-on scripts automate the installation and upgrade of many of the popular applications like SMF, WordPress, Joomla, TikiWiki and phpBB to name a few. There are over 50 other scripts to choose from and it is constantly updated.

There are some pros and cons to using cPanel with webhosting. One of the biggest cons is in the ever increasing reality that cPanel is a hackers dream.

With identity theft being a prevalent and expanding phenomenon, the ease of making sub-domains portion and ease of using cPanel has been and continues to be exploited.

Vigilance is necessary to avoid having the account suspended due to phishing. A hacker will set up a sub-domain called aol.YOURDOMAIN.com or bankofamerica.YOURDOMAIN.com and point unsuspecting victims to the sub-domain on your site via bulk email.

After a few days, your site will disappear and you will receive an email where the web hosting company will shut you down due to phishing. If you receive this email, go back into cPanel and click on the sub-domains button.

It will give you the sub-domain in question, and you can attempt to get rid of it. Get rid of the contents via FTP and delete (or attempt to delete) it via cPanel. If you can’t get rid of it, contact your web hosting company. They will be happy to help you. Be sure and change your password because it’s passed around like candy in a schoolyard.

What makes cPanel so easy is what makes it so easy to exploit. Until lately, most of these scripts ran through a cPanel that was set to either X or X2 layout. Nowadays, the scripts can run under any layout.

That’s the only con to this great piece of software. It takes consistent monitoring; however, it is not something that happens that often. Hacking cPanel is just something that most webmasters need to understand. If you want to avoid it altogether, simply set up your site with 0 sub-domains or the exact amount of sub-domains you need for your needs.

If you have 100 sub-domains with your package, ask the administrator to reduce it to 5 until you need more. In that way, you can benefit from the fantastic feature-rich cPanel interface and won’t need to deal with the crap that comes along with it.

There is so much positive advancements in using this interface, that the sub-domain problem shouldn’t be a deterrent to using it. It is definitely the best system on the market.

Ricardo D Argence asked:


What exactly is Cpanel anyway? It is short for “Control Panel”. It is a interface used by website owners to maintain and keep their websites up-to-date.

Cpanel was created to offer an easy to use solution for website owners to cut out the middle man, or in this case, the webmaster. Most hosting companies provide Cpanel as an default option with their hosting plans.

This is often the deciding factor for most people seeking a new hosting company. If a hosting company does not provide Cpanel web interfaces, then that are not with “the program” so to speak.

Cpanel is a great way to manage your website or websites from one main interface. From the control panel main interface in your hosting account login page, you have access to many account specific modules such as email accounts, visitor stats, subdomains, domain parking, cron jobs, and more.

Most basic user friendly modules are positioned closer to the top of the accounts page. Almost anyone at any stage of Internet and computer usage abilities can use Cpanel. This is the way to programmers of Cpanel wanted it to be.

It was designed to be a user friendly interface so more average website owners could get a feel as to how the websites run and work.

As mentioned above, it is very easy to use. It was design to accommodate most ages and educational groups of computer users. To make it even more easier on the website owners, Cpanel includes a package called Fantastico.

Fantastico makes it easier for website owners to install programs such as Wordpress, Moodle, phpBB, mambo, and Joomla with one click. If website owners would try to install these programs alone, it would take hours to install them all.

But with Fantastico it takes little or no time at all. Fantastico allows owners to create blogs, discussion boards, and CMS sites right from the control panel.

The Cpanel also offers databases and database management from the main screen. This is a time saver for those who are not experts in creating databases.

The control panel makes it all the more so easier to accomplish the task of maintaining the website, from an inexperienced standpoint. The benefits outweigh any negative issues with Cpanel.

Besides ease of use, Cpanel offers freedom and gives the website owner a new appreciation and respect for the website as a whole. The Cpanel program is good for users of all levels of experience.

When choosing a hosting provider, make sure the company has Cpanel as a part of its hosting packing and see for yourself how good Cpanel is.

The only con to this great piece of software is that it takes consistent monitoring; however, it is not something that happens that often.

Hacking cPanel is just something that most webmasters need to understand. If you want to avoid it altogether, simply set up your site with “0″ sub-domains or the exact amount of sub-domains you need for your needs.

If you have 100 sub-domains with your package, ask the administrator to reduce it to 5 until you need more. In that way, you can benefit from the fantastic feature-rich cPanel interface and won’t need to deal with the crap that comes along with it.

There is so much positive advancements in using this interface, that the sub-domain problem shouldn’t be a deterrent to using it. It is definitely the best system on the market.