Must-Know Features Of The Client cPanel

cPanel is the most popular control panel for web hosts. It could possibly be the most expensive component of your server because despite running a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) stack, which is all free, cPanel is not. However, all serious hosts use it because all serious customers want it.

cPanel has a lot of power despite its organization leaving a bit to be desired. This guide is meant to touch on the most-used pieces. The Pareto principle holds true with cPanel. 80% of your time is spent in 20% of the areas.

Before we begin, one quick thing you can do for your client is change the theme. The bare-bones cPanel is quite dull:

Above is the default cPanel that you give your clients. It is very utilitarian, and many clients respect that. However, you should consider giving them something more. Go to Change Style and pick something else. If you are a reseller, chances are something a little more stylish has already been provided to you. Here is an example of a styled cPanel: 

 Fancier. Creates brand loyalty. The other was completely unbranded. The lesson: Spend the extra few clicks to have a nice cPanel for your customers.

Now, for the must-know features of cPanel in no particular order:

•  Email Accounts
  
  This section lets you create accounts, change passwords, and manage disk quotas. All very straight-forward. A notable feature that is not entirely obvious is  cPanel's email area also allows creating accounts for your sub-domains and add-on domains. I prefer a different email address for all my add-on sites to keep things better organized.  Also, the master cPanel account has direct webmail access to the other inboxes.  Providers often have several webmail interfaces. Use the Horde webmail interface for easy access to the other inboxes. Use SquirrelMail for a very simple straight-forward interface that is popularly used in colleges and Mac OS X Server.
   
• Forwarders

  

  Forward one email address to another email address. This feature is incredibly useful for creating email aliases for clients, particularly useful domain migration (via domain forwarding) or if just 1 person is in charge of webmaster@, admin@, marketing@, and so on. Like the email account sections, you can forward add-on domains and sub-domains. One particular complaint is that you cannot edit these entries. You have to delete them and recreate.

• Legacy File Manager

  

  Why did cPanel use a Down arrow icon for the Upload button on the new bloated File Manager? That, and other quirks, is why I still use the Legacy File Manager. Any quirk at all is unacceptable when managing client files. Anyway, handy must-have features of the old file manager:

  • Extracting/Showing the contents of a tarball.
  • A simple text code-editor for quick changes.
  • Permission manipulation
  • Delete/Upload/Download/Move files

  I can see why cPanel did a redesign. The presentation of the legacy file manager is really odd and takes some getting used to. For example, click the underlined name to select the directory. Click the icon to go in to the directory. Odd. Anyway, there is an area where the new File Manager really shines: Moving files

  Legacy File Manager move files feature is simply awkward and bad. If I have a lot of files to move, I will go to the new file manager and do a drag-and-drop to the directory I want. Also, the tarball extraction of the new file manager is worth using too. I can tell it the exact directory to place the contents.

• Sub domains and add-on domains

     

  Sub-domains are a really handy way of sectioning off an existing site, such as forums. example.com. Add-on domains are really handy for having a completely separate site within the same cPanel. I use each one constantly.   Some notes about these features:

  • Subdomains are mapped to subdirectories (like public_html/forums)
  • You can have a subdomain for a subdomain (like beta.forums.example.com)
  • Attaching an add-on domain will generate a subdomain and create a sub-directory for it
  • You can arrive at an add-on domain by going to the generating sub-domain. If this is undesirable, you can catch it with PHP code or .htaccess manipulation.
  • Add-on domains require having the proper name servers configured in their registrar. Also, add-on domains are often a popular premium feature for extra cost.

   

• MySQL Database Wizard

  

  If building custom web apps or installing a CMS not available in Fantastico, or you want the latest version not available in Fantastico (which can happen often), you will need to set up a database. Each CMS you set up needs a database, a database user, and a database user password. Before cPanel had the wizard, setting up a database was a rather annoying processes. Now, they have a nice wizard to help perform these steps.  The main note for here is that you should never use your cPanel username and password for a CMS. Your cPanel credentials have access to all databases generated, and CMSs often store their database credentials in plain text (though decently protected).

   

• phpMyAdmin

  

  phpMyAdmin is simply the best MySQL Database manager around. When a CMS breaks, this is the go-to location to get things back running again. You can directly edit the database tables and add new tables. You can also export/import database information for web site migration. Of note that is you cannot create databases, users, and passwords with the version installed by cPanel providers. That has been disabled, and you have to go the MySQL database section of cPanel to do that.

   

• Cron jobs

  

  Cron jobs allow your website to perform a specific task at a specific time. It is incredibly handy. Working knowledge of linux command lines is useful. However, what you can do is write your task in PHP and have the Cron job call the PHP. Here is a way you can do it:

  GET http://example.com/task.php > /dev/null

  The /dev/null suppresses the output. This prevents you from getting emails of the results. Some uses like to use wget to execute Cron jobs:

  wget -q -O /dev/null http://example.com/task.php

The sections will solve 80% of your problems, but you will need more to get through your remaining 20%. Get to know your cPanel. There are a lot of features in there.