How does cpanel website hosting function?

For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel web site hosting offerings on the present-day webspace hosting marketplace are generated by a quite inconsiderable marketing segment (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) named hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a type of a small-size marketing segment, which provides a vast number of different web hosting trademarks, yet offering absolutely the same services: chiefly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because of the fact that at least 98% of the webspace hosting offerings on the entire webspace hosting market provide strictly the same service: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based site hosting price tags are similar. Quite similar. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service virtually no other web hosting platform/site hosting CP choice. So, there is merely a single fact: out of more than 200,000 website hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, remark that one...

Two hundred thousand "website hosting corporations", all cPanel-based, yet differently branded

The hosting "diversity" and the web page hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different website hosting brand names. Imagine you are only an average bloke who's not well aware of (as most of us) with the web page creation procedures and the web space hosting platforms, which in fact power the separate domains and online portals . Are you ready to make your web hosting pick? Is there any web site hosting option you can choose? Of course there is, nowadays there are more than two hundred thousand hosting vendors in existence. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ different web site hosting brands across the world will offer you the same cPanel webspace hosting Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how great the diversity on the current web site hosting marketplace is... Period.

The web page hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in

Simple math shows that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting firm is a gigantic stroke of luck. There is a less than 1 in fifty chance that an event like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...

The positive and negative aspects of the cPanel web hosting solution

Let's not be unfair with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was fashionable and possibly satisfied all site hosting industry preconditions. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the trick if you have only a single domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...

Downside No.1: An idiotic domain name folder structure

If you have two or more domains, though, be extremely watchful not to delete fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite simple to remove on the server, because they all are located into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain folder arrangement is:

public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)
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)
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 name)
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 disorientated? We certainly are!

Negative Aspect No.2: The same email folder setup

The e-mail folder arrangement on the web server is strictly the same as that of the domains... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chums strongly strengthen their belief in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the email server, praying not to botch things up too fatally.

Drawback No.3: A sheer deficiency of domain name management options

Do we need to mention the total lack of a modern domain manipulation interface - a place where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, change domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois details, change/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" GUI at all. That's a vast weakness. An unforgivable one, we would like to add...

Problem No.4: Numerous login places (minimum 2, maximum three)

How about the demand for an additional login to access the invoice transaction, domain name and tech support management interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based site hosting firm. Now and then, depending on the invoicing transaction platform (particularly conceived for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting vendor is using, the zealous customers can end up with 2 extra login locations (1: the invoice transaction/domain management tool; 2: the trouble ticket support user interface), ending up with a total of 3 login locations (including cPanel).

Weak Side Number 5: More than 120 web hosting Control Panel menus to pick up... fast

cPanel offers for your consideration 120+ sections inside the web site hosting CP. It's a remarkable idea to get familiar with each one of them. And you'd better learn them promptly... That's very impertinent on cPanel's side.

With all due recognition, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel site hosting providers:

As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...