Administering a web hosting service was once a complex process for all parties involved. Businesses had layers of software to deal with, from the server operating systems to website plugins or user interfaces. The process has become much less daunting for businesses, however, and the emergence of hosting packages built around cPanel is a large part of the reason why.

Professionals in conversation on a popular industry forum say cPanel is the world’s most popular web hosting control panel, and it is often referred to as such. cPanel is often compared to Plesk, which is very popular among businesses running on Windows Server, but most companies use Linux distributions, for which cPanel is the most popular option by far.

cPanel is a control panel with a graphical user interface for web hosting. It is designed to be easy for website owners to use, and offers a broad range of automation tools to simplify various processes. The combination of cPanel’s automation capabilities with dedicated server hosting from a service provider focused on customer success enables many small and medium-sized businesses to run their website and email without hiring a dedicated system engineer.

Automation capabilities

One of the advantages of using the dominant hosting control on the market is that developers have built numerous third-party tools that work with it to make things easier for end-users. There are several that are typically recommended for every cPanel hosting customer, as well as many others that specifically benefit certain types of sites.

ConfigServer is a software suite which protects the server from many different kinds of attack, at different layers, including the application layer, which other tools often leave exposed. Security tools included in ConfigServer monitor the server for incoming exploits, outgoing spam, and login failures, protect cPanel servers against root compromise, web script vulnerability exploitation, and IP spoofing. It also performs several important checks, and applies updates and patches.

cPanel also sends notifications and reports on its own for a variety of events, including account settings changes, an approaching limit, such as disk space, and a range of failures and errors. Administrators or engineers must perform tasks based on some of those notifications, but for a properly configured cPanel server, the majority will likely need simply to be logged, with the corresponding action also performed automatically by cPanel or add-on software.

Critical but monotonous tasks such as creating backups and restoring files or folders from them, updating the operating system and other software, and SSL installation can all be automated through cPanel, reducing the workload that would formerly have fallen to the System Engineer.

In addition to its automation capabilities, cPanel provides tools for simplified app installation, and as the leading control panel, it provides the widest range of third-party apps to expand site functionality. cPanel also provides site advanced web statistics through its Awstats interface and information about visitors through its Metrics menu.

The evolution of server administration

The role of System Engineer within the IT department has been, and sometimes still is a demanding role. When all company IT functions were all run out of a server room in the office, maintaining the hardware, along with the full software stack from server and platform to applications was usually a full-time job, requiring expertise in several different technology areas.

Keeping the many kinds of software on the server up to date is necessary to maintain performance and security, and monitoring and reports are necessary to keep ahead of problems and ensure stability. Both sets of tasks are as repetitive and time consuming as they are necessary, however, without automation.

Beyond automating most of the necessary, but repetitive tasks associated with server maintenance, cPanel provides a simple interface, email functions, and domain management, as well as add-ons for website building, client billing and more.

Running cPanel on a dedicated server automates, eliminates, or shifts responsibility for many of the tasks traditionally performed by Website Administrator or System Engineers to the hosting service provider. Any hardware issues are handled by the service provider’s expert professionals, along with any issues with cPanel itself.

The setup and configuration of all of these tools may seem a bit intimidating for a non-IT professional, but as an official cPanel partner, Multacom can configure cPanel, along with any necessary add-on software like ConfigServer.

Taking care of the complexity of web hosting

Making web hosting management easy is just one of the reasons so many businesses choose to run their servers with cPanel. For new and smaller organizations, however, this is often the most important reason. An organization that effectively outsources its network hardware and server control panel maintenance to a hosting service provider by choosing a dedicated server package, and leverages the automation and ease-of-use of cPanel to handle day-to-day functions, can run an IT environment that meets all its needs without hiring specialized full-time staff just to look after it.

Use any of the contact methods below to find out how to make web hosting easy for your company with cPanel today.