cPanel Hosting

Whilst cPanel is very powerful & feature rich, it is very easy to use & it is perfect for beginners or non technical people. It has an easy to use interface & whilst there are many features available, if you are just starting out then you will find that you can manage your website files & emails easily with a very short learning curve.

Yes, there is a cPanel demo that you can try for yourself

Anyone can use it. Whether you are completely new to hosting or you are a dyed in the wool techie, cPanel puts you in total control of your web hosting service.

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. Pickaweb) 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

cPanel 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.

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.

Databases

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.

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, Pickaweb offers 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

Pickaweb 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.

In order to login to the cPanel platform to example.com/cpanel (replace example with your domain name)
You will be presented with a login page, there you need to enter your cPanel username and password.
We would have sent you that information via email when you signed up to the hosting service.

Setting up & managing emails is very easy. Just create your new email addresses, give them a password & you are up & running. You can then configure your emails to download to your favourite email client such as Outlook or you can access them via your mobile phone or via webmail.

You can set up auto-responders and email forwarding too.

Via Pickaweb's cPanel platform. If you are managing your website through an FTP (File Transfer Protocol) program such as Filezilla then you can manage your accounts easily via the control panel.

This allows you to upload & download files directly to your hosting space. You can also manage permissions for your files too.

You can even manage your files using cPanel’s built in File Manager.

cPanel is the control panel that the end user would use to manage their hosting account.
WHM is the control panel used for administering a cPanel server and is available on plans aimed at resellers and sysadmins. WHM is included in reseller hosting, Linux dedicated servers and VPS.

There are a number of really useful domain features which give you plenty of flexibility to set things up exactly as you want. For example, you can set up any of the following with our web hosting plans:

• Parked Domains: By setting up domain parking you can allow other domain names to re-direct to your main website. For example, if your main domain & website is located on a .com domain name, you can set up the equivalent .co.uk domain name as a parked domain name. This way, if someone forgets your exact website URL & type in the wrong one (in this case the .co.uk) then they will still be taken to your main website (i.e. the .com website in this case).
  
  
• Addon Domains: If you have multiple domain names & you want to setup multiple websites for each one, rather than purchasing a hosting plan for each one, you can set up addon domains to your main domain name & each one will be allow you to set up a website & emails for each addon domain. This can save you a lot of money if you have many domains.
  
  
• Sub Domains: Using sub domains allows you to create specific folders to be used for specific purposes & it helps you to give a logical structure to your hosting space. For example you can set up sub domains for blogs or forums.

It allows you to easily manage the set up of feature rich software which you can use on your website. For example you can set up a blog or a forum or an ecommerce shopping cart all from within the control panel.

We use a tool called Softaculous which allows even inexperienced users to quickly install amazing applications into their website.

Below is a list of some of the most popular Applications that you can install via Softaculous:

• WordPress
• Joomla
• Drupal
• OsCommerce
• Prestashop
• phpBB
• Magento

It comes with a range of useful security features built in to help ensure that you keep your website & your files safe & secure. Whether you want to password protect a directory, ban an IP address or install an SSL certificate you can manage it all from within the control panel.

It allows you to easily back-up your website files either to your local PC or to another location such as a server.

The beauty of this is that if any files become corrupt or you overwrite something in error then you also have a full backup of all your files. These can then be restored easily.

You can also schedule backups to be performed automatically using the CRON feature. This means that you won’t forget to run a backup as it is all done automatically for you.

You can set up databases, add users & manage permissions all from within cPanel. You can easily create & manage MySQL databases.

You can also use more advanced features such as allowing external web servers to access & interrogate your databases.

A CRON allows you to create and manage tasks at a pre-scheduled time or at regular intervals.

For example, if you have a billing application that needs to generate invoices on a daily basis you can create a CRON rule (a CRON job as it is known) which will run at midnight or another time that you specify each day. The CRON can be instructed to run a script instructing the database to create any invoices due on that day.

Your cPanel account will be setup instantly. Once payment has been made you will receive an email with all the information required to use the service.