What is a Hosting Control Panel?
The environment of web hosting is extremely competitive at the moment and these conditions have created an environment where firms are aggressively competing on price to offer numerous hosting plans at an attractive cost. If firms can’t compete on price they are forced to stand out in other ways. There are a number of different ways a firm can make a strong offering to consumers and these include building the site, providing a domain name at no extra charge and the overall fee. However, the major element for many consumers is the Control Panel. Therefore, the website that you have and what you want for it will play a huge role in determining which web host is best for you. The way that a web host maintains control to organize a customers site is through the software they provide and this comes in the shape of the Control Panel. Every single action and activity that is undertaken on a website is maintained through the Control Panel. These actions can include anything ranging from creating FTP accounts, operating the email server for the client or compiling statistical data. No matter what operating platform you use, be it Windows or Linux there will be a Control Panel for your specific platform or one that can cater for both.
What control panels are suitable for Windows Platform
The Windows Platform has a number of dedicated web hosting Control Panels that only work for them. Two examples of these include Helm and Hosting Accelerator. If an easy to use and customer friendly interface is required, Helm is generally held in the highest regard. A major reason that Helm stands apart from its competitors is due to the way it operates its billing information. More often than not, Control Panels do not contain information about the billing process so this is one area where Helm can be differentiated from other firms although H-Sphere also offers this advantage. In addition to this benefit, Helm is easy to operate and many users are able to interface with the system very comfortably.
Features and advantages of Helm:
* Managing your server: Helm can interact in many ways with your server and can operate with unlimited servers and domains. It is also possible for users to add or remove servers with the minimum of fuss. There are many servers that Helm has compatibility with and these include, MailEnable, SmarterMail, Merak and Imail. In addition to these servers, Helm also works with MDaemon, Mail Servers and hMailServer in addition to Serv-U FTP, Microsoft FTP, Gene6 FTP Server, MySQL Server, and Microsoft SQL Server etc. Helm is also capable of supporting ColdFusion, ASP, ASP,NET, PHP and Perl.
* Billing: They allow the hosting company to use either Helm’s own internal billing system or utilize any other 3rd party billing solution. It also enables to create the bill in any currency and provides the option of sending and viewing the invoices either in HTML format or in plain text format.
* Managing customers: An additional feature of the control panel provided via web hosting is that it allows hosting plans to be created for resellers. In addition to this, there is the ability to quantify how different resource limits are being filled with respect to transferring data, the use of domains, emails and the amount of disk-space that is on offer.
The Linux Platform and the Control Panels for it:
A client has a choice of a few web hosting control panels when it comes to the Linux platform and these include DirectAdmin, cPanel and Interworx. There is no doubt that the low cost of hosting and the convenience of its control panel are factors in people choosing DirectAdmin. Another choice for many consumers is Interworx as they provide many additional features including a simple to use interface. Yet cPanel is the most popular control panel for the Linux control panels and it has the ability to serve over ten different styles of Linux. This consumer preference is also shared by companies who provide a web hosting service and this is mainly down to the low cost of its service. There are also a number of other services provided by cPanel that are attractive to customers and these include deploy applications, customer account provisions, having the ability to transfer a number of accounts between servers and many other useful services including secure servers.
Features and advantages of cPanel:
* Statistical analysis of a website: If a user would like to know how much traffic they receive, cPanel can provide them with a full range of statistical facilities to obtain these figures. Many web host providers do not offer this facility as statistical programs take up a whole host of resources. If having statistical information is vital for your site, be sure to ask any potential web host that they provide the service.
* Managing your emails: Having the ability to create and delete email accounts is something that many website owners crave and this is offered by cPanel. One of the major benefits is the Webmail facility that can be used by clients to access their emails online. There are a number of other programs that cPanel offers within its email range, with one of the most popular being the ability to create a forwarder that will pass emails in one account to another. There is also the facility to create a basic auto-responder that will send a pre-constructed reply to the sender if they submit an email about an enquiry.
* FTP and File Manager: The cPanel offers FTP access to a website so as to upload files. It is an extremely essential feature for managing a website. Moreover, if the website owner needs the cPanel also allows to register new FTP accounts in order to enable other people to access the website. However, it is the website owner and the hosting company that have the right to restrict and specify others access to specific folders. The one who are the not that comfortable with FTP package to upload files can use the File Manager available in the cPanel. The File Manager allows the user to unzip files, upload files on the server, as well as copy and delete files.
Control panels that can be used on both the Linux and Windows platforms:
The web hosts discussed so far have only been for one platform but some hosts are able to cater for websites created on Linux and Windows. These dual application hosts include H-Sphere, Ensim and Plesk, which are probably the most common types of these control panels. They all have their own benefits and the H-Sphere is capable of offering many services that start at providing key functionalities and go all the way up to providing complete automation. There is no doubt though that Plesk is the most popular provider of both Linux and Windows control panel facilities. This is best shown by the fact that most companies that offer services for both Linux and Windows platforms choose Plesk. The interface of Plesk will be familiar to users of Windows XP but be aware that Plesk is expensive, which is due to its ability to serve both platforms.
Benefits of using Plesk:
* Having shared hosting: Plesk is able to provide an identical various-platform design that allows any user to take control of their shared hosting landscape. This facility can also be undertaken on a self-administration basis. No matter the technical level of the website owner, they will find they are able to take full control of setting up, creating and fully managing their accounts.
* Dedicated Hosting: The RPM installation and modular design of the Plesk control panel enables the Dedicated Hosting providers to satisfy the various requirements of tech savvy clients. It offers a number of unique tools such as XML-API and other 3rd party applications.
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