How does cpanel web site hosting work?
For your information, it's useful to know that most of the cPanel-based web space hosting offerings on today's web page hosting marketplace are supplied by a very insignificant business segment (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller webspace hosting is a type of a small-size business niche, which provides an immense number of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying strictly the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the hosting offers on the entire web page hosting marketplace furnish the same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting price tags are similar. Quite similar. Giving those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other webspace hosting platform/website hosting CP choice. So, there is just one fact: out of more than 200,000 web hosting brand names worldwide, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2%, mind that one...
200,000 "web site hosting corporations", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed
The web site hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to merely one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different web hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just an average fellow who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web page creation processes and the web hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domain names and web sites . Are you ready to make your hosting selection? Is there any website hosting alternative you can opt for? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than two hundred thousand website hosting service providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these more than two hundred thousand unique web space hosting brand names worldwide will give you literally the same cPanel site hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the diversity on the present site hosting marketplace is... Period.
The hosting LOTTO we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting provider is a huge stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in fifty chance that something like that will take place! Less than 1 in 50...
The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel web hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps met most web page hosting industry preconditions. To put it briefly, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weakness Number One: A stupid domain folder system
If you have two or more domain names, though, be very watchful not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to erase on the server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Examine for yourself how great cPanel's domain folder arrangement is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is placed)public_html/my-family (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-domain.com (an add-on domain name)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain name)
public_html/my-third-domain.com (an add-on domain)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain)
public_html/rebeka (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/rebeka.my-third-wife.net (a sub-domain of an add-on domain name)
Are you getting confused? We categorically are!
Weak Side Number 2: The very same mail folder structure
The mail folder arrangement on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly strengthen their belief in God when dealing with the electronic mail folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to botch things up too badly.
Predicament No.3: An entire shortage of domain manipulation menus
Do we need to mention the thorough shortage of a modern domain manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, change domains' Whois details, protect the Whois details, change/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not include such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's a huge inconvenience. An unforgivable one, we want to point out...
Negative Aspect No.4: Many user login locations (minimum two, max three)
What about the necessity for another login to avail of the invoice transaction, domain and technical support administration system? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based website hosting corporation. Sometimes, based on the invoicing tool (especially invented for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting provider is availing of, the enthusiastic clients can wind up with two extra logins (1: the billing/domain name management software; 2: the trouble ticket support system), ending up with a total of three login locations (counting cPanel).
Predicament No.5: More than 120 hosting Control Panel menus to grasp... promptly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than a hundred and twenty sections inside the website hosting CP. It's a superb idea to become familiar with each one of them. And you'd better pick them up fast... That's inordinately insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based site hosting service providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mind that one as well...