Web Hosting servers can be either windows or Linux and deciding which one to use depends on the type of website you want to host and the programming language used in website coding.
This article will be looking at the more commonly used and affordable cPanel control panel which comes mostly on Linux servers. The cPanel control panel is packed with important features too numerous to discuss in a short article as this. But we’ll look at just a few which are must use by any webmaster or business owner who is interested in the perfect running of his website.
Autoresponder:This is a very important feature provided free on cPanel control panels. Interestingly a good percentage of website owners do not even use this function. This is a function that allows you to place a custom message on your server for clients who write in your absence. You are able to send an immediate reply to website visitors without necessarily being there and online. Rather than spend $49 every month on auto responder services like, Getresponse, Autobot, Chimp Mail etc., you can save that monthly expenses and keep your cost down as you’ll need all that money for your website exposure which is the area you should spend money on.
File Manager: The file manager allows you to upload, download or edit files on your server. If you do not have FTP software, you can still upload your newly designed or updated website using your file manager. You only need to click on ‘browse’ and upload the file just the same way you attach a file to your regular email. Moreover, there is free FTP software like Filezilla is out there for you. But if you find it difficult to understand how it works, your cPanel File manager will come very handy.
AWSTATS: This is a feature I use on a daily base. There are other website stats analysers like ‘SITEMETER’, ‘BRAVENET’ just to mention a few. If you have used any of these services before, you would have noticed that these people require you to copy and paste a code into your html which means linking back to their website indirectly. What is wrong with that is, first it gives your website a nonprofessional outlook, and secondly slows down your website a bit as the code always have to load from their end each time someone visits your website. Awstats is provided free on cPanel and comes with no obligations. It keeps record of the number of visitors to your website, hourly, daily, monthly and yearly. It also tells you from where each person comes from and how long they spent on your website and from where they exited.
You are even able to compare the number of visitors who landed on your website from the search engines, which search engine is bringing in more visitors and so on. This gives you an idea of which search engine you should concentrate on during your SEO.
Email Accounts: By now I believe you already know it is not professional using free email accounts from yahoo, Gmail, Hotmail etc. For your business. Most cPanel servers come with three webmail clients; Horde mail, Cube Mail and Squirrel mail and all you need to do is choose. Start using an email account that gives your business some respect like you@yourcompany.com.
Fantastico: For many people, Fantastico is the most interesting feature of cPanel. The pre-installed scripts that allows you to take advantage of so many content management systems like SMF, Joomla, wordpress, xoops, os commerce, php nuke, zen cart, cube cart etc. With fantastico, installation of these scripts are made easy and you do not need to know PHP or MYSQL as installation is only by a click of the mouse-you should check it out. cPanel web hosting affords you the chance to get everything in one package, rather than spend extra for services needed in your web business as seen in other server configurations.
