What is cPanel? A Beginner’s Guide to cPanel

Hosting in India is available as different types of platforms. They differ in performance, stability and scalability they offer. They’re also available at different price points, which is a clear mark of distinction about them. But there’s one thing that all these platforms share in common, a control panel. Regardless of the type of website hosting, every hosting account comes with a bundled control panel.

Even Shared Hosting, one of the most basic and affordable hosting solutions, offers a feature-packed control panel. Linux web hosting in India comes with a cPanel, a powerful control panel. Even the most basic Linux hosting plan offers cPanel. It enables you to manage your website more efficiently by automating certain tedious tasks and making overall site management much easier. 

So then, does having a cPanel make any difference to web admins?

Let’s start our beginner’s guide to cPanel.

What is cPanel?

Simply put, cPanel is an interface that sits between a user and the hosting server and offers powerful site management controls laid out in a clear and concise GUI (Graphical User Interface). cPanel is a robust, Linux-based control panel that provides users with a feature-packed dashboard. It is also among the most popular and most widely used control panels in the world of hosting.

What all is possible with cPanel

cPanel allows you to accomplish a host of tasks which make website management less tedious. Here are some of them:

• Optimise various settings
• Connect domain names with hosting
• Install Content Management Systems (CMS)
• Set up email accounts
• Check bandwidth usage and other statistics
• Take website backups
• Upload files to the server
• Set up and configure security
• Create and manage databases
• Install additional apps and software

The cPanel interface

The cPanel features a clear Graphical User Interface that makes navigating around it easy. Though its look may change with different themes, the basic layout remains the same.

1. Navigation Bar

The navigation bar sits at the top right corner of the window. It contains a search field, user preferences, notification bell and the logout button. The search field enables you to find the important settings and options of cPanel. You can change your password, contact information, language and reset page settings within the user preferences. The notification bell leads to the notification area, which shows you all the essential updates. The logout button logs you out.

2. Search Bar

There’s one more search bar available at the top of the page. This one has the same functionality as the one in the navigation bar but filters the results according to categories.

3. Side Bar

The sidebar sits to the left of the page and offers you access to some important areas of the control panel such as Statistics, User Management and Dashboard. ‘Statistics’ shows you a range of important numbers such as email accounts, domain names and FTP accounts. ‘User Management’ lets you add or delete users and also set permissions for them. ‘Dashboard’ is the place where you will find some of your most-used links such as bandwidth and disk space usage.

These are only a few of the features that cPanel offers. cPanel is a powerful, feature-packed and easy to use control panel that puts you in control.

You can check out the following video that highlights the benefits of cPanel for VPS Hosting –