What is Cpanel?

When you decide to set up a website one of the main ongoing expenses you will have will be your server hosting. This is needed in order to have a place where all your web pages are stored so you can access your website on-line.

Now you usually have two options when it comes to choosing which interface you'll be using to manage your server hosting account. Depending on whether you choose a Windows operating system or Linux, you'll either get Cpanel or Plesk. It used to be that if you opted for Windows you would automatically be given Plesk for your control panel interface and you'd use Cpanel with Linux but in recent times both applications have been designed to run on either operating system.

The idea behind Cpanel and Plesk is that it provides a user friendly interface that lets the user handle everything to do with the hosting account without you having to know a bit of code. The interface is basically made up of dozens of smaller programs that provide full functionality within a framework.

It's just like a car radio. You don't know how it works exactly, just that if you press this button it changes the station and if you press that button it saves the radio station to its memory.

Cpanel is by far the most popular control panel used by server hosting companies for their customers and it continues to be so. It's also fully compatible with most browsers such as Chrome, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. Now although many say that Cpanel is Child's play I would have to agree and disagree with that answer. Once you get to know cpanel it's a piece of cake just like anything else you learn but cpanel offers so much functionality it can be a little overwhelming at first.

The fact is you only need to learn so much because for the most part there are quite a few functions you will seldom if ever, use. I know I have used cpanel for many years and there are still some icons I've never even looked at for the simple fact that I've never needed to.

It doesn't matter which server hosting package you pick as the interface will usually be the same. The different categories you will find within the Cpanel include preferences, mail, files, logs, security, domains, databases, software/ services and an advanced section. So to explain the functionality further let's go over the different sections and give a brief explanation on what each icon does.

This section has a get started guide and video tutorials to help you understand the functionality of cpanel better and it also includes an icon to change your password if needed, you can change the look or even change the language if needed.

The email section allows you to set up a range of facilities to do with email which include setting up a large number of email accounts for your domain depending on what package you have. With my server hosting package I can set up an unlimited amount and you will find a lot of hosting packages that allow this, even for the most basic account.

You can also set up auto responders to collect emails, mail forwarders in case you want to have all your mail go to a specific email address, spam filters to stop rubbish hitting your inbox and mailing lists which helps you group emails together so you can send out a large number and this also saves you having to put in each email address every time.

The files section contains everything to do with handling your web pages and includes a file manager, your ftp accounts and also has a backup utility where by you can download any backup you wish including the whole site if needs be. The file manager gives you full access to all the files on your server hosting account including, a code editor, an html editor and you can also change the permissions of your databases. You can also rename files, upload and download folders and compress information where needed.

The logs section helps you keep an eye on how much bandwidth is being used and also comes with a couple of stats packages called Awstats and Webalizer which offer a plethora of data about how many visitors you are getting, on what days, and from which countries.

It also tells you which browsers they are using along with which sites they have come from and how long they stayed. You could spend a long time studying the amount of data you get but it does pay to do so because then you will know how much progress you're making and what can be improved upon. There are other stats packages you can get, both free and paid which offer even more data but these are a good start. You can also study ftp stats and analogue stats from the logs section.

The security section covers, yes you guessed it, security of your files and folders so you can add password protection to any file or folder you like. You can also block i.p's, generate ssl certificates, signing requests and keys.With GnuPG keys you can encrypt a message using a public key which needs a private key to decrypt.You can also block other sites from directly linking to your files such as the image files on your web pages which stops other websites using up your bandwidth. Leech protect gives you the power to redirect accounts to any web page when you know password protected areas have been breached.

The domains section allows you to set up sub domains where you can separate parts of your site for certain areas so your normal domain would be www.domain.com and a sub domain would be for example, www.support.domain.com. If you want to add more than one domain on a shared hosting account you can use what's called an addon domain. If you aren't using your domain at the moment you can park the domain and the domain will remain active but dormant. Lots of domain buyers often park domains and earn shared revenue from advertising schemes. You can also redirect your domain when you want the web address to point to another website.

In the database section you can add and delete databases which are commonly needed for certain types of bulletin boards, content management systems and other software applications. The phpadmin utility lets users interact with their databases and is used for maintenance operations. Be warned though that this utility shouldn't be messed with unless you know what you are doing or have detailed enough instructions to complete the task.

The software/services section includes several mini programs you can implement on your site. The number of software programs may vary depending on your server hosting plan but even the basic plans offer a good number. The CGI center contains several scripts which can be quite useful like adding a guestbook or countdown counter, so it's worth taking a look. Under site software you will find various panel addons such as a shopping cart, a bulletin board and a chat room. The most popular icon in this section however is the fantastico icon which contains a long list of software packages you can add to the site. There's also a pearl modules icon which lets you add different pearl modules to work with cpanel.

If you like using php you can configure the different settings and add php functions in the form of packages but you should leave this alone if you don't know what you're doing. You can also perform the same functions in ruby but the same rules apply. The optimize website icon allows you to compress content before it hits the visitors site which will speed up loading times.

In the advanced section the Apache handler is used to managed certain file types like cgi scripts but you can configure it to handle new file types if needed. With image tools you can change alter your images and you can change the look of your web directory by using the index manager. I have often used the error pages icon in this section to edit all the error pages to your site. Rather than having the standard error page you can add your own message, insert ads and even add an optin box.

If you want certain scripts to work at certain times of the day only or on certain dates you can use the cron jobs icon. Although the FrontPage html editor is very old now there is a facility in FrontPage extensions to add content directly from FrontPage to your site. Network tools allows you to find out the i.p address and DNS information of any website. The virus scanner is pretty much self explanatory and MIME types tells the browsers how to handle extensions which are used. You can change add new extensions if you wish in this area.

That pretty much covers all the functions you will find within a standard Cpanel account but you will need to go through each icon yourself to get a real feel for what your server hosting account can do. If you need further information on the subject there are plenty great books and low cost training guides to choose from which go a lot more in depth so you should have no trouble getting up to speed with what is one of the most important aspects of maintaining a website.