The control panel in your web hosting account is by far the most useful and necessary item you’ll work with. It takes management of your sites and blogs from what used to be a difficult, incredibly technical environment to one of a few clicks. By far the most popular of these control panels in use today in web hosting accounts is cPanel.
The cPanel control panel has developed into an incredible array of applications and tools at your fingertips. It doesn’t matter if you have a one-page website, or an ecommerce site with thousands of pages and multiple databases, cPanel helps you keep all the various aspects of your site easily within your reach.
The list of features, and things you can accomplish within your cPanel is impressive. Not only that, the learning curve is very gentle. A complete novice can get up to speed in no time. While it may well seem daunting the first time you arrive, before long you’ll find yourself navigating the back alleys of cPanel with confidence, marveling at the flexibility you have to manage your account.
Some of the basic ways that cPanel allows you to manage your sites include setting up FTP accounts and users, setting up databases, uploading your pages to the account, downloading pages and files from there, backing up your sites, using Webmail to access your site mail, choosing from several different website statistical tools, accessing server logs, monitoring bandwidth and space usage, and even building websites or pages using page building software residing in cPanel.
You have a file manager that helps you to manage all aspects of your site development, including directories, sub-domains, error pages, cron jobs and more.
There is an extensive email suite that helps you create and manage as many emails as you have space for in your account, and has the ability to forward this mail anywhere you’d like. It also has several spam filtering capabilities, to help keep your email from being hijacked.
One truly attractive feature of cPanel is the inclusion of Fantastico and its suite of web-ready tools and applications. Fantastico allows you to install powerful content management systems like Joomla, Drupal and Mambo; ecommerce shopping carts such as CubeCart, osCommerce, and ZenCart; as well as terrific blogging platforms like WordPress, b2Evolution and Nucleus, all with just a few clicks of your mouse. All the heavy lifting is done for you.
The evolution of cPanel into the unquestioned leader in today’s control panels has been steady and fast. It is frequently updated, and takes away the need for having a system administrator on call for your site management.
If you are looking for a new web hosting account, you would be wise to make sure that cPanel is included in the package of features. You won’t be sorry!
