How does cpanel website hosting operate?
For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel-based hosting offers on the contemporary hosting marketplace are provided by a quite unsubstantial marketing segment (when it comes to annual money flow) called reseller hosting. Reseller site hosting is a kind of a small-size marketing niche, which supplies a great quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet offering strictly the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the web page hosting offers on the whole webspace hosting market supply one and the very same thing: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel-based web site hosting prices are identical. Very much alike. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other web space hosting platform/Control Panel option. So, there is simply one single fact: out of more than 200k web space hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mark that one...
200,000 "web site hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly branded
The web hosting "variety" and the hosting "offers" Google shows to all of us come down to merely one and the same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different hosting brand names. Imagine you are just an average fellow who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the site development processes and the hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domain names and web pages . Are you prepared to make your web hosting selection? Is there any web page hosting alternative you can select? Of course there is, today there are more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting corporations out there. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these 200,000+ unique web hosting brands around the world will give you the very same cPanel CP and platform, branded in a different way, with literally the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the variety on the contemporary web hosting marketplace is... Period.
The hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in
Simple math reveals that to pick a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a mammoth stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will occur! Less than one in 50...
The pluses and minuses of the cPanel-based webspace hosting solution
Let's not be relentless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and perhaps fulfilled all web hosting market requirements. In brief, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weakness Number 1: A dumb domain name folder setup
If you have 2 or more domains, however, be extra cautious not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each next hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to delete on the server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous 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 excellent cPanel's domain folder structure 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)
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 name)
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 bewildered? We positively are!
Negative Sign No.2: The same email folder structure
The mail folder configuration on the hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin blokes strongly strengthen their faith in God when managing the email folders on the mail server, praying not to fuck things up too fatally.
Weak Point No.3: A complete lack of domain manipulation GUIs
Do we have to cite the sheer lack of a contemporary domain administration interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domains' Whois info, shield the Whois details, alter/set up name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not supply such a "contemporary" GUI at all. That's a considerable shortcoming. An unjustifiable one, we would like to point out...
Weak Side Number Four: Numerous user login places (minimum 2, max 3)
How about the need for an extra login to use the billing transaction, domain name and tech support management system? That's aside from the cPanel account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel web space hosting corporation. Sometimes, on the basis of the invoicing transaction platform (principally made for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting supplier is using, the enthusiastic clients can end up with 2 extra login locations (1: the billing/domain name administration tool; 2: the ticket support menu), ending up with a total of 3 user login places (counting cPanel).
Negative Aspect No.5: 120+ web hosting Control Panel departments to get acquainted with... briskly
cPanel presents for your consideration more than 120 areas inside the web hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to get to know each of them. And you'd better become familiar with them fast... That's inordinately impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel website hosting providers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...