The control panel is an essential feature found in most web hosting packages today. This type of software is an invaluable tool for the website owner who lacks server administrative skills or simply needs any easier way to manage their account.  The prevalence and demand for control panels has led to the emergence of various applications but none are as celebrated as one particular tool – cPanel.

cPanel is an out-of-the-box server administration tool that provides powerful management capabilities to web hosting companies and end-users alike.  Its features are designed to help you effectively maintain a simple website, or complex web server.  Over the years, cPanel has been greatly improved, making it an easy to use, stable and secure product that takes the pain out of dealing with the web hosting environment.  The software gives you a user-friendly, web-based interface that allows you to manage your domains, set up FTP accounts, access your webmail, analyze website statistics and more.  The feature list of cPanel is extensive, making it the complete web hosting management package.

Easy Accessible Features

The cPanel software truly defines what a control panel should be as it provides you with tremendous administrative authority.  With this easy to use tool, you can manage all the critical aspects of your account including CGI scripts, cron jobs, web directories, error pages and files through the web-based file manager.  cPanel includes a suite of email features such as the ability to create multiple email accounts and spam filtering via Spam Assassin and Box Trapper.  You can also perform online backups of your website data, monitor bandwidth usage and even launch the design tool that allows you to actually build your site from a multitude of pre-designed templates.  All of these features are neatly organized on a single page, providing you with convenient access to all the tools needed to both create and manage your website.

Add-on Functionality

cPanel is well known for its inclusion of various third-party applications, the most notable being Fantastico.  This handy little tool comes bundled with a wide variety of pre-installed, ready to be used programs that can be implemented with a few clicks of the mouse.  Fantastico gives you the power to install blogging applications such as WordPress, b2Evolution and Nucleus, e-commerce shopping carts like Cube Cart, Zen Cart and osCommerce, and content management systems that range from PHP-Nuke and Mambo to Drupal and Joomla.   With Fantastico, you can instantly enhance your web presence regardless of your experience as a server administrator.

The Most Preferred Control Panel

The cPanel control panel is a comprehensive tool designed in a three-tier structure, allowing it to simplify a number of would-be complex web hosting tasks.  No longer do administrators and webmasters have to go through hundreds of complicated Linux commands just to maintain a web server.  This is because cPanel comes jam packed with every tool you need to get it done.  When choosing this industry leading product as your control panel, you can remain focused on promoting and running your site rather than worrying about the complexities of server administration.

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1. How to Choose the Best Control Panel
2. Matching Your Control Panel with a Platform

Original: The Advantages of Using cPanel

The Apache vs IIS debate is just as old and intriguing as Linux vs. Windows.  Because these are two of the most widely used web server applications on the market, making a choice is often difficult.  If you have been struggling on which software to run on your server, the details in this article should be able to help you make a more informed decision.

Reliability and Performance

If you are worried about the reliability IIS offers vs. Apache, then your concerns are a bit outdated.  IIS 6.0 offered a process model able to reliably host applications and monitor them for health and responsiveness.  The main draw of this feature was its ability to proactively detect and recycle unhealthy applications.  IIS 7.0 took the process model one step further by creating a dynamic architecture for the Windows platform, making it a high-performance, multi-threaded server that enables secure isolation of websites by default.  With IIS, the Windows platform is agile enough to quickly respond to poor health conditions and recycle applications in a more efficient manner.

The Issue of PHP

If you are worried about IIS performance when running PHP vs Apache, then your concerns are definitely warranted.  Until recently, there where two ways to run PHP in the Windows environment: the slow way with CGI, and the unreliable way with ISAPI.  Because many PHP scripts are specifically written for Apache and Linux, running them on the Windows platform with ISAPI may cause them to crash and strip the IIS process serving the applications.  On the brighter side of things, Microsoft’s partnership with Zend has brought forth answers to many of these issues in the form of compatibility and performance fixes.  One of the most notable improvements is achieved through FastCGI, a feature that enables an IIS web server to deliver fast and reliable PHP hosting.

Ease of Use

One area in which IIS has always shined in comparison to Apache is user-friendly administrative tools.  IIS 7 keeps up the tradition by providing a new management tool that is extremely powerful yet simple and very ease to use.  Now feature-focused, the tool allows you to simply click on a web server, website or application to individually manage each element.  It supports remote administration via HTTP, making it possible to maintain the server locally or over the internet.  It also has configuration settings that make it easy to delegate administrators to specific websites and applications.  The new IIS administrative tool is completely module and built on a highly extensible framework that allows it be enhanced with ease.

IIS 7.0 is a breath of fresh air in comparison to previous Microsoft web server applications.  It offers rock-solid security along with the exceptional performance and reliability needed to run in demanding hosting environments.  In addition, it delivers some powerful management and extensibility capabilities that exceed Apache.  Both make an excellent choice, but IIS is growing more popular by the day.  Even if you already have Apache installed on your server, you can check out what IIS has to offer as it integrated into versions of Windows Vista as a desktop application.  If you are like most users, you will surely appreciate its power.

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1. Factors to Consider for Your Web Server Software

Original: Apache vs. IIS Web Server