CPanel

[WebHost Admin]

CPanel remains the most popular webhosting administration panel for users, due to a number of important reasons.

It’s clear and speedy ability to navigate the options makes it an attractive interface for newer users to administrate their website. It has often been a preference of SME webhosting companies precisely because of this.

Also, extensive development has created a strong cross-platform solution, which makes it especially attractive for use on servers using the most common Unix/Linux operating systems on the internet.

Additionally, continued development by third-parties has seen an explosion in the number of attactive user tools.

The first stage of development was the jump from a clumsy frames-based interface, to a sleek and attractive CPanel X interface.

There have since been a number of significant “skin” options developed since to change appearance in various forms.

There has also been a big improvement with the scripts library development, none more so than the Fantastico version of CPanel, which offers an extensive library of one-click software install solutions, from bulletin boards and blogs, to link directories and ticket support packages.

Another worthy point to note about Cpanel is that it has a feature which allows the direct transfer of the content from one admin panel to be transferred to another - so if you change hosting providers, it is easy to transfer all of your data to the new data.

However, such a complex software solution comes at a price, and this is in the form of a range of known bugs and potential security exploits.

Although there are various complaints about these within the webhosting industry itself, the end-user will rarely notice any of these issues in the hands of a competent hosting company.

Outside of a shared hosting environment, CPanel also comes with WebHostingManager, which is a very simple interface for adminstrating hosting accounts under your control.

Again, simple to use and with many features, it is a generally very user-friendly system, though system admins can disable/enable a range of features according to the hosting environment, such as whether it is used for reseller hosting or dedicated hosting, for example.

The dedicated hosting form of WHM comes with the ability to autimatically check for patches and even auto-install them.

Overall, CPanel is a very flexible and feature-packed tool, easy to use, and friendly on the end-user webmaster.

[triumph]

I use Cpanel and WHM for my reseller hosting, and I am wondering how serious are the security issues mentioned. Is it something to be concerned about? I have yet to have any known hacking issues, but I want to be proactive when it comes to webhosting security.

[brian]

I think the use of third-party scripts is particularly unhelpful - so far as I understand it, CPanel doesn't automatically update with new scripts once a vulnerability is found in a third-party site. Which means if the user doesn't patch the sytem themselves, the server admin could find their job more complicated than necessary.

[monaghan]

You need to ensure things are kept up-to date, however given the levels of customisation available, it's just not possible for an installer script to auto-update reliably.

It would be nice if they could use the cPanel mailing function to notify you and the admin that an update is available, but then again the user can still install a script manually and not update it leaving you with a security hole

[-thoma-]

I love X cpanel when I use hosting. Probably one of the things I am most familiar with and has great controls and such. I always look for Cpanel in hosting.