An increasing number of web hosting packages include cPanel as standard. CPanel enables users to maintain their website through usage of a number of key features provided on a central control panel. However, it is surprising to find that a large number of website owners hardly use cPanel, largely because they cannot fathom how to. This article will act as a tutorial for some of the basic features of this particular type of hosting control panel. Many of the icons are self-explanatory and some I will simply allow you to explore for yourself.

The cPanel for a site is located at www.YourDomainName.com/cpanel - obviously replacing the ‘YourDomainName’ text with your site name. To access the cPanel you will need a username and password, this should have been provided by your host and is usually the same as the ftp access details for your site. Once you have successfully gained access you will be presented with a screen, featuring a panel on the left containing your general account information and the rest of the screen will be filled with icons.

The ‘mail’ icon offers access to specified email accounts and allows users to create new accounts or manage the disk space allowance associated with each email account. The ‘webmail’ icon gives users access to their main email account for that site, using Horde or SquirrelMail.

The next icon we will explore is the ‘file manager’ icon. This allows users to add and/or edit files on their website. It is a very simple but slow way of managing web content and should not replace standard ftp editing software for most user, however, I am sure it is sufficient for personal or hobby pages.

The ‘backups’ icon allows users to backup their site just in case they need to move it to a new server. It is possible to download; daily, monthly, home directory, MySQL database and email backups. MySQL databases can be managed via the ‘MySQL databases’ icon.

The last of the more important icons is the ‘web/ftp stats’ icon. This allows users to monitor traffic to your site and provides demographics about the people visiting it, including which country they are from. This can be used to help you target your content towards those people visiting your site the most.