How does cpanel-based web hosting function?
For your information, it's good to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based web space hosting offers on today's web site hosting marketplace are provided by a quite insignificant business segment (when it comes to annual cash flow) named reseller hosting. Reseller webspace hosting is a type of a small business segment, which supplies an immense amount of different web hosting brands, yet offering the very same solutions: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least 98% of the web space hosting offers on the whole webspace hosting market supply the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel-based hosting prices are identical. Very similar. Giving those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other web page hosting platform/webspace hosting CP choice. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than 200k website hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2 percent, mark that one...
200,000 "web space hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly named
The site hosting "variety" and the web hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to just one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different webspace hosting trademarked names. Assume you are merely a regular guy who's not very well aware of (as most of us) with the website creation processes and the web site hosting platforms, which actually power the respective domain names and web sites . Are you prepared to make your web hosting choice? Is there any web hosting option you can settle on? Of course there is, as of now there are more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting corporations out there. Formally. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200,000+ different web page hosting brands around the world will give you precisely the same cPanel web hosting Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with exactly the same price tags! WOW! That's how large the variety on the contemporary site hosting market is... Period.
The web space hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple mathematics demonstrates that to come across a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a colossal stroke of fortune. There is a less than 1 in 50 chance that an event like that will take place! Less than one in 50...
The positive and negative sides of the cPanel web space hosting solution
Let's not be unfair with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and probably satisfied all web space hosting market preconditions. In short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have only one single domain name to host. But, if you have more domains...
Negative Aspect Number One: A moronic domain name folder structure
If you have two or more domain names, however, be very cautious not to delete entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to delete on the hosting server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain, which is the very popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to remove the files of the add-on domain names, please. Check for yourself how terrific cPanel's domain folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)public_html/my-family (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-domain.com (an add-on domain name)
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 name)
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 disorientated? We unquestionably are!
Disadvantage No.2: The same email folder setup
The e-mail folder structure on the hosting server is exactly the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin chums strongly reinforce their faith in God when tackling the mail folders on the e-mail server, praying not to botch things up too seriously.
Weak Point Number 3: A thorough deficiency of domain management user interfaces
Do we have to cite the absolute lack of a contemporary domain manipulation GUI - a location where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or administer domain names, change domains' Whois details, shield the Whois info, change/create name servers (DNS) and DNS records? cPanel does not incorporate such a "contemporary" menu at all. That's an immense problem. An unpardonable one, we want to point out...
Inconvenience Number Four: Many user login locations (min 2, maximum 3)
How about the necessity for another login to make use of the invoicing, domain name and tech support management section? That's apart from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel webspace hosting distributor. Occasionally, based on the billing tool (particularly developed for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting company is availing of, the eager users can end up with 2 additional logins (1: the invoicing/domain name administration interface; 2: the ticket support tool), ending up with a total of 3 login locations (including cPanel).
Drawback Number Five: 120+ hosting CP areas to memorize... quickly
cPanel presents to your attention more than one hundred and twenty sections inside the Control Panel. It's a fantastic idea to become familiar with each of them. And you'd better memorize them fast... That's inordinately impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based webspace hosting corporations:
As far as we are aware of, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one too...