Control Panels for Web Hosting
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by: MattHedges
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Of all the competitive industries today, the web hosting service is one of the most keenly fought and consumers have witnessed web hosting firms engage in a battle to win customers. This has led many to provide a variety of different hosting plans at a pleasant price in order to stand out from their peers. Another way that companies can differentiate themselves is by the performance they offer. There are many different aspects that a web host can offer and these can include offering to build a site for their customer or giving them a domain name free of charge. These issues and the price itself can sway a customers decision but the most important factor is the control panel. This means it is imperative for a web host to offer the correct service for a customers website needs. This service ensures that a web hosting firm is able to observe every aspect of a website and it does so through the software that makes up the control panel. Whether it is to open FTP accounts, provide an email server or offer statistical analysis of what is occurring on the website, the control panel enables it all. There are a number of control panels available and what one is right for you depend on many things, including what platform you operate on. There are control panels that only work on Windows, some which work on Linux and others that work on both.
The Windows Platform and the Control Panels for it.
The Windows Platform has a number of dedicated web hosting Control Panels that only work for them. Two examples of these include Helm and Hosting Accelerator. If an easy to use and customer friendly interface is required, Helm is generally held in the highest regard. A major reason that Helm stands apart from its competitors is due to the way it operates its billing information. More often than not, Control Panels do not contain information about the billing process so this is one area where Helm can be differentiated from other firms although H-Sphere also offers this advantage. In addition to this benefit, Helm is easy to operate and many users are able to interface with the system very comfortably.
Benefits of using Helm:
* Managing your server: Helm can interact in many ways with your server and can operate with unlimited servers and domains. It is also possible for users to add or remove servers with the minimum of fuss. There are many servers that Helm has compatibility with and these include, MailEnable, SmarterMail, Merak and Imail. In addition to these servers, Helm also works with MDaemon, Mail Servers and hMailServer in addition to Serv-U FTP, Microsoft FTP, Gene6 FTP Server, MySQL Server, and Microsoft SQL Server etc. Helm is also capable of supporting ColdFusion, ASP, ASP,NET, PHP and Perl.
* Billing: They allow the hosting company to use either Helm's own internal billing system or utilize any other 3rd party billing solution. It also enables to create the bill in any currency and provides the option of sending and viewing the invoices either in HTML format or in plain text format.
* Managing customers: An additional feature of the control panel provided via web hosting is that it allows hosting plans to be created for resellers. In addition to this, there is the ability to quantify how different resource limits are being filled with respect to transferring data, the use of domains, emails and the amount of disk-space that is on offer.
What control panels are suitable for Linux Platform:
There are some web hosting control panels that only operate on the Linux platform and these would include DirectAdmin, cPanel and Interworks. Many people like the services offered by DirectAdmin as they are availale for a low cost and is an extremely easy and convenient control panel to use. Similarly, many people choose Interworx as they find it a simple interface and it too offers a variety of additional features. However, these control panels cannot match the popularity of the cPanel service, which is by far the most coveted Linux based control panel. The cPanel service serves in excess of ten styles of Linux. One of the reasons why many of the companies who provide a web hosting facility like cPanel is due to the low cost of its hosting. There are also other benefits of this brand of software package which provides a great number of other services. These services include deploy applications, provide the ability for customer accounts, offer an account transferring service between servers, provides a secure server and many other key features.
Features and advantages of cPanel:
* Website statistics: The cPanel provides statistics facilities that enable a website owner to analyze the total amount of traffic. Most of the web hosting providers believe that the statistics programs consume a lot of resources on a shared environment and hence tend to eliminate this facility. Thereby it is always better to check whether the web hosting company is actually providing the web stats package.
* Managing the email process: Many website owners are keen to have the power to generate or destroy email accounts and the cPanel control panel allows this facility. There is also a facility based in Webmail which offers every client the opportunity to access their emails online. There are further facilities offered by cPanel with regards to email, one of which is the ability to instruct a forwarder to move an email account to another. There is also the ability to generate auto-responders that will provide an automated response to customers.
* FTP and File Manager: The cPanel offers FTP access to a website so as to upload files. It is an extremely essential feature for managing a website. Moreover, if the website owner needs the cPanel also allows to register new FTP accounts in order to enable other people to access the website. However, it is the website owner and the hosting company that have the right to restrict and specify others access to specific folders. The one who are the not that comfortable with FTP package to upload files can use the File Manager available in the cPanel. The File Manager allows the user to unzip files, upload files on the server, as well as copy and delete files.
What control panels are suitable for the Linux and Windows Platform
There are certain web hosting control panels, which work for both Linux and Window based websites. The Ensim, H-Sphere and Plesk are the most common examples of such control panels. The H-Sphere offers several features that range from key functionalities to complete automation. However, it is the Plesk which is the most popular control panel for Linux and Windows platforms. Most of the web hosting companies that serve both Linux and Windows hosting customers opt for Plesk. Its interface looks quite like the Windows XP and is an expensive option as it serves both the platforms.
Features and advantages of Plesk:
* Shared Hosting: The Plesk offer a self administrating and identical multi-platform design that enables to perfectly manage the shared hosting environment. Even the non technical people can conveniently setup, create, and manage accounts.
* The ability to have dedicated hosting: A good number of technically proficient clients would like to undertake their own dedicated hosting and Plesk and its control panel facilitates this by means of its RPM installation and its modular design. There are a whole host of tools on offer to the client and these include XML-API and other unique 3rd party applications.
About the Author
Republished with permission from http://www.webhostingmadness.com, a provider of web hosting company reviews, comparisons and detailed articles about the web hosting industry.
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