An Analysis Of Web Hosting Control Panels

Web hosting control panels are used by hosting companies to manage their clientele. They are necessary to manage websites, databases, email, FTP accounts, limiting bandwidth, and server resources. Lucky for webhosts, there are paid and free options available.

One of the most popular Unix web host control panels is cPanel. This control panel is a proprietary system- and licenses can run as much as $425 per year. Developers of cPanel have also created a mirror software platform that runs on Windows, so it can be used by virtually any server type. cPanel has a low learning curve, making it perfect for first-time web hosts.

Webmin is a free, open source, alternative for Unix-like systems. It has the ability to allow developers create plugins for the system, making custom installations entirely possible for specific needs. Webmin was created by a now-current employee at Google, so it has received much attention in the upstart web hosting world.

It's good to see that some web hosting panels are working in modern features into their inner core. An example would be with GNUPanel, which allows hosting managers to accept online payment processors automatically. Other packages such as cPanel may be able to do this with third party software, but it isn't built into the system. GNUPanel is based on PHP 5, so it's also a rather mainstream and easy to pick up code base. GNUPanel supports many features cPanel does, such as one-click installation of Joomla!

Another licensed alternative would be Plesk. Plesk is an alternative to cPanel, as it matches it in terms of speed, security, and features. Each year the two battle it out to improve upon their original designs, but mostly the differences occur within the interface and the licensing costs. One odd thing about cPanel is separating the WHM and administrator panel- which takes some growing accustomed to for those new to the separate systems.

A large website will quickly grow out of the shell that most web hosting panels create. A large website needs to be able to balance a load of traffic among many servers- perhaps hundreds or thousands in some rare cases. This is done through special web hosting panels such as that of InterWorx. This web hosting panel specializes in clustered servers and managing them to create a stable environment. InterWork and panels like it are only for the leaders in Internet industry, however, and common website owners don't need it.

Final Thoughts

Web host control panels are many in number. Depending on what you need, you could side with one over the rest and do better with it. Thus, it is best to use demos available by each software package to see which one will best suit the needs you had in mind.

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