When looking for web hosting, one of the first things we come across is cPanel (control panel). But what exactly is this cPanel and what does it offer?
cPanel is a powerful client control panel that affords you a lot of control over your website. It offers fully automated point-and-click hosting platform. You can manage your web hosting account using a web interface and not a console. You will be able to set up your website via cPanel and accomplish tasks much faster even if you are a novice.
There are a million things that can be done through cPanel, such as managing a sub domain name to adding an email address. cPanel has conquered the market and every webmaster vouches by it. It as it makes life easier by replacing tedious tasks by web interfaces and offering multiple levels of security, flexibility and ease of use.
The Most Important Features of cPanel:
Email: You will be able to do several different tasks with email, including creating email accounts, forwarding mails, removing mail accounts etc. Setting up auto responder emails is a breeze. You can manage multiple websites creating individual emails for each website, which is what every professional webmaster does. For example, if your website is alreadyhosting.com, you can create an email – “support@alreadyhosting.com”.
The web-based interface of cPanel allows you to check mail from any web browser and any computer. The best part is that all your websites and email accounts can be managed from a single screen.
Email forwarding can be set up, and this allows users to have an address at one domain and forward incoming mails to another domain. cPanel offers mailing lists and a spam filtering system that detects spam in emails.
Domains: With cPanel hosting, you can add and manage sub domains, add-on domains and parked domains. The domain management interface is simple and easy to use, and comes equipped with the option to set up redirects among the domains owned by the user. Even new users find it easy to learn and manage multiple domain types.
Databases: You no longer need to fear about the creation of databases. With cPanel, it takes just a few simple steps to create a database and a user for the database. You don’t have to be an expert with databases to set privileges and modify access restrictions for MySQL and MSSQL.
Website backups: Every website needs a backup in case of a problem. You will need to ensure you back up all the files and databases that your website is composed of, if you want the website to be exactly the way it has been after restoration. With cPanel, data backups are a child’s play. The interface helps webmasters manage and get backups for their entire account.
Fantastico: The advantage with using cPanel is that it often comes with Fantastico, which is a program that makes installing discussion forums or blogs extremely easy. It is even used by professionals who set up blogs or websites for others.
Security: cPanel’s virus protection helps you can scan files for viruses easily. Webmasters can protect their website content and bandwidth from abuse, by not allowing other websites from using their bandwidth or gaining access to the restricted areas of their website. cPanel also provides IP deny, SSL Manager and hotlink protection.
Languages: One of the attractions of cPanel includes the ability to use it in different languages. Many webmasters with websites in other languages like Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Japanese, French and a host of other languages favor cPanel because of this facility.
Traffic Stats: Once a website is created, the next step is search engine optimization. For webmasters, assessing the results of optimization begin with monitoring the website traffic and retrieving maximum information pertaining to the traffic. cPanel fulfils this need by providing a variety of traffic stats. It also creates error logs of problems faced by the visitors, tracks bandwidth usage etc.
Most web hosting companies offer cPanel as a standard. It is great even for hosting resellers as it comes with several levels of administrative access; including reseller level, server-root level and end user level access. This and a whole lot more make cPanel the most popular control panel of choice today, used by both professional and amateur webmasters.
