What is cPanel?
cPanel is a Control panel for managing your hosting service and is included in all of our Hosting packages. The great thing is that it allows non technical people to manage all aspects of their hosting without the need for advanced technical skills. Tasks like creating and accessing email accounts, resetting passwords, and setting up mail forwarders are really easy with cPanel Hosting. You can also use cPanel for setting up domain parking where you redirect one domain name to another domain name, or create addon domains where you can host several domain names under one hosting account.
Advantages of cPanel Hosting
cPanel is extremely popular for shared hosting services and for day to day administration tasks for VPS and Dedicated Servers. Here are some of the main advantages:
- Extremely Popular and Not Exotic – cPanel is pretty much an industry standard control panel for Linux hosts.
- Scaleable – cPanel can be used for shared hosting, reseller hosting, Virtual Private Servers and Dedicated Servers.
- For Resellers, VPS and Dedicated Servers the cpanel server administration is performed via the WHM cPanel interface.
- Low Cost – cPanel licences are not expensive. If you are on a shared hosting platform then your hosting company (i.e. beamazingtoday) will pay for the licence.
- Few Licensing limitations – Unlike some hosting control panels cPanel does not have any limits of the number of sites that can be used with one licence.
- Easy to install – Once your Linux Server installation is set up you just need to run the cPanel installation script
- Secure and Easy to Maintain – Keeping cPanel up to date and secure is very straightforward.
- Intuitive and Easy to Use – cPanel has a gentle learning curve and whilst it has advanced features, beginners will find it easy to perform the main tasks like creating email accounts
- Fully Featured – cPanel allows website administrators to quickly add extra functionality to their websites using a 1 click installation software such as Softaculous. Adding a blog or eCommerce software is very straightforward.
- Portability (Easy Migration Process) – Migrating from one cPanel server to another is extremely easy. This is important if you need to transfer your hosting from one supplier to another.
- Easy to Back Up – cPanel includes a number of backup options to protect your valuable data. It also integrates seamlessly with 3rd party backup software such as r1soft/idera.
- Value Added Services – cPanel has loads of 3rd Party Applications that can be included to add value to your service offering if you are using a VPS or Dedicated Server.
- Includes Advanced Features – As well as everyday tasks like managing emails cPanel also offers plenty of advanced features such as managing DNS records, setting up databases, etc..
cPanel has a ton of features. If you are a novice user then you will probably only need to be familiar with a small selection of them. Below are some of the main features that you will need to get up and running.
Email Management
cPanel makes managing your email easy. Creating, Editing and Removing email accounts is easy with cPanel. You can amend password, set the mailbox quota and configure your mailbox with your favourite email client like Outlook. You can even configure your emails to go to your GMail account. If you want to access your emails on the go then you can easily do that using webmail from any internet connected device.
File Management and Data Bases
Panel has a comprehensive set of File Management tools. Whilst not a substitute for a professional FTP tool, it allows you to upload files, create or delete them, organize your files in folders as well as allowing you to change file permissions. Overall it gives you the basic features you’ll need to manage your files. You can also manage your backups from the cPanel File Manager, whether you want to run full or partial backups.
cPanel has a range of databases management features. cPanel is usually configured with MySQL as standard but can also use Percona – a fast, open source drop in database alternative to MySQL. You can also manage your databases using PHPmyAdmin.
1 Click Software Installation (Softaculous)
Softaculous is a fantastic tool that allows you to automatically install hundreds of software applications onto your hosting with just a couple of clicks. Whether you want to set up a WordPress Blog, a Magento eCommerce site or a PHPBB Forum, start reselling web hosting using WHMCS then Softaculous has you covered.
Domain Management
In cPanel you have a great set of tools for effectively managing your domains. For example you can set up parked domains to redirect any domains you own, or create Addon domains to keep your hosting costs down. You can also set up subdomains, redirects and manage your DNS zone settings via cPanel.
Security
When it comes to security cPanel has you covered. So whether you want to install an SSL Certificate (recommended for security and for better SEO), block IP addresses or configure ModSecurity you’re covered.
Other Software
cPanel also comes with a number of other useful software pre-installed. As well as a professional website builder there are advanced programming options such as Ruby on Rails and RubyGems.
Advanced Tools
cPanel also has a range of tools to help you manage your website more effectively. For example, you can automate repetitive tasks (e.g. creating daily invoices) using a CRON Job. Or you can set up custom error pages such as 404 pages or troubleshoot DNS issues.
Metrics
Whilst most websites will use Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools to get an overview of their website traffic, cPanel does include some useful metrics for you such as Errors, bandwidth usage and Raw Access Logs.
Speeding Up and Securing Your Website – CloudFlare for cPanel
As a proud CloudFlare partner, we offer CloudFlare for free as part of our standard web hosting services. CloudFlare is a Content Delivery Network (CDN) which is a distributed set of servers deployed across the globe. The purpose of a CDN is to provide you with high availability and high performance by storing caches of the static web pages from your site on their network of servers. This has 3 significant benefits:
- Faster loading websites – up to 2x faster
- Less bandwidth used
- Improved security – CloudFlare recognises and prevents malicious attacks
cPanel and Spam Experts Help to Prevent Spam beamazingtoday is a proud partner of leading anti-spam solution provider Spam Experts. Spam Experts works by analysing all email traffic coming into the server you are hosted on. Its powerful algorithms learn to spot spam and stop in its tracks before it even hits your inbox. The incoming spam filter will stop over 99.9% of spam from hitting your inbox. The incoming anti spam mail filter is a value added service but it is a very cost effective way to protect your inbox and reduce the frustration and potential cost of constantly dealing with spam.
Useful Resources: