Cpanel Web Hosting - Cpanel User Guide - Web Hosting With Cpanel

Cpanel Web Hosting. cPanel (control panel) is a graphical web-based management tool, designed to make administration of web sites as easy as possible. cPanel handles all aspects of website administration in an easy-to-use interface. The software, which is proprietary, runs on a number of popular RPM-based Linux distributions, such as SuSE, Fedora, Mandriva, CentOS, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and cAos, as well as FreeBSD. Preliminary support for Debian is claimed, although this version has been in "beta" state for several years, and is not supported. cPanel is commonly accessed on ports 2082 and 2083 (for a SSL version). Authentication is either via HTTP or web page login.

Resellers get access to a part of cPanel called WebHost Manager (often abbreviated WHM), which is a tool to add new users into the system, set various restrictions and monitor account usage. The root administrator has access to a more powerful version of WebHost Manager which can perform common system administration tasks.

It is designed for use by commercial web hosting services, so the company does not offer a reduced-cost personal use license; however, owners of non-profit organisations such as educational institutions and charities can request a license at no charge.

It is only available on unix-based operating systems, but versions for Solaris, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X are in development. As with the Debian port, however, these versions have remained "currently in development" for several years.

cPanel gives a great level of control over to the individual user, while still maintaining security. Although the system administrator can turn off any feature for individual clients at any time, most trust the security of the software and allow users to freely utilise the many features that are available. What follows is a list of most of these features.

SSH Access - cPanel has a built in java applet that allows direct connection to the server via SSH. This is disabled on most web hosts because it is considered a security risk. Long-term users in good standing can usually request access in this case.
Crontab - cPanel provides an easy-to-use GUI for managing this feature. See the main article for more information.
OpenPGP Support - This allows users to upload keypairs for various tasks. GnuPG is used for processing any information.
Addon CGI Scripts - Provides auto-installation for a wide variety of web applications

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