Anyone who is hosting their website via a Linux server will be able to use cPanel – a control panel that is completely web-based. With the cPanel, users can handle their website through a graphically-infused interface that allows for the creation of installing scripts, creating e-mail accounts, viewing statistics and making blogs. Here are further details about the main features of the cPanel.

Website Statistics

The cPanel software used to monitor a website’s statistics is called AWstats, which shows the amount of hits and visits received per day, per week and per year. This software also lets the website owner know where their traffic comes from in terms of geographical location, search engines, browsers and external links. Keywords visitors use to find your site and individual pages are also shown.

Managing E-Mail

With the cPanel, users can can make and manage individual e-mail addresses. Along with e-mail managing capabilities, there are also other features such as a spam filter, webmail manager, auto responder, e-mail forwarders and e-mail domain forwarders. Everything a website owner needs to manage their e-mail is included.

Managing Files

Users are also able to transfer websites and create backups by utilizing FTP, or File Transfer Protocol. The cPanel showcases a backup wizard one can use to download their website and backup files, e-mail accounts and databases, which can be instantly zipped to the user’s computer; files can be restored with a mouse click. The file manager can transfer all the files of a website to the host’s sever. This process happens within the browser, allowing files that have been uploaded to immediately appear on the Internet.

MySQL Databases

Databases are essential for installing certain software – Joomla scripts, WordPress and others. The phpMyAdmin is a wonderful tool that allows users to manage their databases, fields, tables, indexes, relations, permissions and users.

Installing Software

Fantastico lets users easily install all types of software used for forums, blogs, e-commerce shopping carts, content management systems, mailing lists, image galleries, surveys, polls, scripts and site builders. However, not all web hosting packages include every feature listed above so it is recommended to ask your website host what is being made available to you.

Managing Domains

Many domain managing tasks can be taken care of via cPanel. Users can park domains, which means multiple domains can be registered to the same person or business. When doing this, either domain will take a visitor to the same website. Subdomains allow for the creation of another website within the subdirectory of a single website. Web pages can also be redirected to other pages; this comes in handy for those with a long URL on a web page as they can redirect said page to another URL that is shorter and easier to remember.

Security Measures

The password protection feature limits the access to a certain folder on a website by allowing the site owner to create a username/password combination. This restricts access to only those who know the correct login information.