cPanel is the most popular way for both web server staff and webmasters to accomplish technical chores regarding websites.
That’s because it’s easy for non-technical website owners to understand and use.

It’s a software program that displays a screen of icons that you can double click on to accomplish different things. This is a big improvement on the old-fashioned alternative — prompt line commands such as Microsoft DOS and UNIX use. These days, most computer users including webmasters have no experience or even knowledge of this.

cPanel is combined with another proprietary software program called WebHostManager (WHM), and they must be used together. WHM displays a control panel for server administrators and resellers. To keep things simple, I’ll refer just to cPanel.

FOR WEBSITE OWNERS

Let’s say you have a website which is being hosted by a company which uses cPanel. You want to create a subdomain. You use cPanel. Or you want to enable Microsoft FrontPage extensions. You use cPanel. Or you want to read your email online. You use cPanel.

cPanel displays the Domain Owner Control Panel. This is the main screen which website owners who have their websites (domains) hosted by commercial website host companies. This screen displays the things it does as small icons, so it’s easy to use and understand, once you know what the icons mean.

They also have access to the Webmail Access Panel which is where you can use one of three different email programs (Neomail, Squirrel Mail, and Horde) to read your email. No downloading. Just read your email from any computer accessing the Internet.

You get cPanel by signing up to with a website hosting company that provides this program as a service to its customers. Most such companies will make that clear on their websites, because it is a sales benefit to potential customers. If you´re interested in a web hosting company that doesn’t say whether or not they provide cPanel, ask them.

One of the most useful features of cPanel is that it allows you to easily access your website´s statistics. You can track how many people visit your site and see your raw log file to see what words they put into a search engine to find. That´s important information that allows you to further optimize your site for search engines.

These features are: Webalizer Web Stats, Analog Stats, Latest Visitors, Bandwidth, Error Log, Raw Log File, and Raw Log Manager.

You can also use cPanel to easily to:

Create subdomains and see statistics on those subdomains - A good way to organize your site. If you want to devote a separate section of your pet site to dogs, it´s simpler to create a http://dogs.pets.com subdomain instead of: http://www.pets.com/dogs/ having statistics on each domain will tell you whether or not dogs.pets.com is getting more visitors than cats.pets.com.

Enable Microsoft FrontPage extensions - You must do this if you´re using Microsoft FrontPage and plan to use that program to upload your websites.

Set up or change password protection - Make sure that nobody else can send files to your site, or to control other people you let have access to the site.

Set up password protected directories on your site - Maybe you´re selling an e-book or software program you don’t want people to download for free. Or you’re selling monthly memberships to access important information your site. This benefit allows you to make certain areas of your site inaccessible to anybody who hasn’t paid for the password.

Create custom error pages - Instead of the boring and insulting standard 404 error pages — give people who are trying to access a page on your site a welcome message and a link to the home page or another page you´d like them to visit.

Deny website access to browsers from certain IP addresses - Plagued by hackers and spammers or flamers you want to ban from your discussion board? This service allows you to block site access to anyone from their IP addresses.

Create page redirects - Send people from one page directly to another.

Manage parked domains - This allows you to have visitors to one domain sent to another one. Say your website is domain1.com. You might own domain1.net and domain1.org and have people who type in those urls sent to domain1.com.

See how much space you have used - Most web hosting accounts allow you only a set amount of disk space.

Set up cron tasks — these are generally routine website maintenance tasks that you should do every once in a while. You can use cPanel to schedule these to be done automatically. Such jobs could include deleting temporary files to save disk space and to back up your site or your database.

Back up your website. Obviously a good idea!

Monitor your usage of bandwidth - see how much bandwidth your account has remaining for the rest of the month.

Set up autoresponders - This automatically sends an email to anybody who emails you. Say you´re going to be out of town for a week. You can send a short email telling them not to expect an answer to their question for another week.

Set email forwarding - You set up a separate email account for each of your website domains to take care of business for that particular site because it looks more professional and reassuring to visitors and customers. However, it´s inconvenient to go in and out of many different email accounts just to check on your mail. With this service, you can have all your emails sent to one central account.

Best cPanel Based Web Hosting Company

There are dozens of cPanel based web hosting companies in the world. But which one should you choose? I suggest HostGator Web Hosting. It’s much more reliable than any other web hosting company. And what’s more you can Sign Up for HostGator just 1 Cent or $0.01 for the first month. Even they refund your $0.01 if you are not satisfied with their service.

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