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A web hosting control panel is a graphical user interface, accessible online, that provides tools for managing a website and the web hosting account. Almost every hosting company has one, and some offer a choice. It’s the most visible part of a web hosting plan, and it will largely determine the quality of your experience as a web hosting customer.
When you turn on your computer, what do you expect to see? Do you want to type long commands into a black terminal screen with monochrome lettering?
Or would you rather use your mouse to navigate around a graphical interface, clicking on icons and moving windows around?
Most people would prefer visual. Its the same way with web hosting.
You can, in theory, access your web hosting account primarily with tools like SSH (secure shell — direct command line access) or FTP (File Transfer Protocol). In fact, it’s definitely a good thing to have available, and you might want to learn the ins and outs of that way of doing things. But most of the time, your life is going to be easier — and your work is going to get done faster — if you use a control panel.
Control Panel Tasks
There are a number of web administration tasks you will be doing from the Control Panel. Some of these are might be one-time events (like setting up your website), and some will be regular occurrences. Knowing what you’ll be using the Control Panel for will help you decide which one is right for you.
Account Administration — All of your account management tasks, billing profile, plan renewal, and similar items will be done from the control panel. This is particularly meaningful because it means that the software running the control panel will be handling your credit card information. If that software is not secure and up to date, it could be a problem.
Domain Management — Domain renewal, DNS editing, MX records, domain forwarding, subdomain management, and registering new domains will all be done in the control panel.
One Click Installation — If you plan to use a popular web application like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, or ZenCart, the quickest and easiest way to get it loaded onto your hosting server is to use a One-Click Installer like Simple Scripts or Fantastico. If your hosting company provides these services, they will be available from the control panel.
Email management — Setting up new email accounts, email forwarders, and email spam filters are all control panel activities.
File Management — You may want to use FTP instead of a browser-based file manager. But if not, most control panels provide one — though their ease of use varies tremendously from system to system. (Also, if you do want to use FTP, you’ll still need to set up FTP users from within the control panel.)
Backups — Most control panels include some kind of built-in backup utility, or provide access to a third party backup system.
Support — Live chat support is almost always administered through the control panel. Knowledge Base documentation and FAQs sometimes are, but are sometimes held on a separate website.
Why you should care about Control Panels
You are going to get very familiar with your web hosting company’s control panel. When you first purchase a new hosting plan, you will see the control panel more often than your new website. You will have to come back to it on a regular basis — daily, if you’re diligent — to check basic stats and server usage and make sure everything is running smoothly.
The control panel will be your primary experience of your web hosting account. You can’t see speed and performance, but you can see the control panel. How easy or hard it is to use will be a major determining factor in your overall satisfaction with your web hosting plan.
For the average user, most control panels do about the same thing. There are some advanced users out there who want a particular tool and can only get it from a particular control panel. But for most of us, any one of them will get the job done.
But not any one of them will make sense to you. Each control panel has a different interface, a different design, a different way of dealing with tasks. If you have a control panel that does everything you need, but doesn’t fit your user habits quite right, it will be a bad experience.
How to select a control panel
Most web hosting companies only offer one control panel. Some offer two or three to choose from. Once you’ve narrowed down your hosting choices to just a few based on other factors, you should see if they have different control panels. If they do, see if they offer a demo. Many web hosting companies have a sandbox control panel that you can try out.
Most Popular Web Hosting Control Panels
Other Web Hosting Control Panels
- DirectAdmin
- eXtend Control Panel
- HELM
- ISPConfig
- Kloxo
- LXAdmin
- ZPanel
- RVSkin
- vDeck
- Webmin
- WHM
- WHMCS
