Fantastico And cPanel Is The Best Choice
Author: Ricardo D Argence

cPanel is short for Control Panel and is a graphical user
interface or GUI that is web-based and designed to afford
webmasters and web designers easy access to many aspects of the
web hosting system. It used to be hard, if not impossible, for
most people to figure out what to do with their hosting once
they paid for it.

cPanel is an interface that allows web hosting companies to
offer a graphical interface to people seeking to set up and run
websites on a number of RPM-based Linux platforms. cPanel is
usually interfaced with the end user via ports 2082 and 2083
with authentication accomplished through surfing to a specific
web page and logging in. Because cPanel is graphically based, it
is extremely easy to use and very intuitive for novice as well
as veteran users to work with.

If you want to set up a blog, mailing list, php link directory
or basic content management system, cPanel is the way to go. By
clicking on the happy face icon used by Fantastico, a user is
taken a list of software that is grouped into various topics and
offered as an easy setup and tracking system for just about
anything the end-user might want to add to the Internet
community. As a result, a webmaster can concentrate on the
content and quality of what's offered from the website and not
the technical aspects of getting the site up and running.

With cPanel, managing your MySQL databases are a breeze to
manage, releasing hosting companies from endless help requests
from confused people. cPanel manages setup and maintenance of
email accounts using three different web interfaces for
retrieval via the web of email coming into the account. Raising
and lowering email quotas, adding and manipulating databases,
managing PGP keys, setting up crontab tasks, email and FTP tasks
and more.

Via Fantastico, several add-on scripts automate the
installation and upgrade of many of the popular applications
like SMF, WordPress, Joomla, TikiWiki and phpBB to name a few.
There are over 50 other scripts to choose from and it is
constantly updated.

There are some pros and cons to using cPanel with webhosting.
One of the biggest cons is in the ever increasing reality that
cPanel is a hackers dream. With identity theft being a prevalent
and expanding phenomenon, the ease of making sub-domains portion
and ease of using cPanel has been and continues to be exploited.


Vigilance is necessary to avoid having the account suspended
due to phishing. A hacker will set up a sub-domain called
aol.YOURDOMAIN.com or bankofamerica.YOURDOMAIN.com and point
unsuspecting victims to the sub-domain on your site via bulk
email.

After a few days, your site will disappear and you will receive
an email where the web hosting company will shut you down due to
phishing. If you receive this email, go back into cPanel and
click on the sub-domains button. It will give you the sub-domain
in question, and you can attempt to get rid of it. Get rid of
the contents via FTP and delete (or attempt to delete) it via
cPanel. If you can't get rid of it, contact your web hosting
company. They will be happy to help you. Be sure and change your
password because it's passed around like candy in a schoolyard.

What makes cPanel so easy is what makes it so easy to exploit.
Until lately, most of these scripts ran through a cPanel that
was set to either X or X2 layout. Nowadays, the scripts can run
under any layout.

That's the only con to this great piece of software. It takes
consistent monitoring; however, it is not something that happens
that often. Hacking cPanel is just something that most
webmasters need to understand. If you want to avoid it
altogether, simply set up your site with 0 sub-domains or the
exact amount of sub-domains you need for your needs. If you have
100 sub-domains with your package, ask the administrator to
reduce it to 5 until you need more. In that way, you can benefit
from the fantastic feature-rich cPanel interface and won't need
to deal with the crap that comes along with it. There is so much
positive advancements in using this interface, that the
sub-domain problem shouldn't be a deterrent to using it. It is
definitely the best system on the market.


About The Author: http://Alojate.com is the premier web hosting
company in Mexico, offering a range or services for all business
needs. http://www.alojate.com