Introduction
cPanel is the name given to the interface used to navigate the server where your website is hosted. After you buy hosting with a web hosting company, they send you login information that you use to access your account so you can upload your files, build your website etc. When you login, the first interface you are taken to is called cPanel (many hosting companies will put an option at the login page to log straight to cPanel). That is where you want to go to manage all the services of your account, including domain names, email accounts, uploading files, as well as building your website.
A Short History Of cPanel
The cPanel program was originally written by Nick Koston in the 90′s. It was written as a special hosting control and management program for a company called Speed Hosting, which later merged with another company called Web King. The versions then went through several upgrades and improvements, resulting in the latest and most stable version today, which is cPanel Version 11.
The Home Screen
After you log into cPanel, you can reach the home screen from anywhere by clicking on the ‘Home’ link at the top left corner. The home screen is the main area that gives you access to all its functions. The appearance can be custom configured to change the order in which the items appear on the screen. You can put those items you use the most on top or in any position simply by clicking and dragging. You can also hide those feature boxes that you rarely use (and unhide them also).
The Help button is very useful and context sensitive. Webhosting In other words, the contents of the help menu changes depending on where you are. If you are in ‘File Manager’, clicking on help will automatically get you help on items to do with file management, similarly for all the other features such as email accounts, FTP accounts and so on.
Preferences
By going into preferences, you can change the style of many of the features, including how the interface looks. Here you can also manage your profile, account information, passwords and so on.
Features
The features you can access from the home screen include:
Preferences
– These include general settings and a simple wizard you can use to modify the settings.
– Here you can manage your email accounts, adding or deleting accounts, adding filters, spam blocking and more.
Files
-Here you will find all the controls for such things as file uploading, backup, deletions, setting FTP accounts and so on.
Logs
– You can view the error logs generated within the different processes of your hosting account, get information on bandwidth usage and gain access to many other stats for analyzing your website.
Domains
– You can add new domains and subdomains, do domain redirection, park unused domains etc.
Databases
– This is where you can set up your MySQL databases for many uses such as WordPress blogging.
Software Services
-Here you can install software and add-ons like Joomla, Perl, WordPress etc
Other Advanced Features
-Here advanced webmasters can create things like custom error pages, add Apache handlers, manage cron jobs and so on.
As already said, you can click on the Help button from any feature page you happen to be using, and get good explanations about that particular feature.