cPanel and WHM simplifies website and server management

The cPanel and WHM software package makes life easier for web hosts and the website owners they serve. It offers intuitive, powerful tools that perform essential tasks quickly, easily, and reliably. cPanel cPanel, our website control panel interface, is designed for website owners. It simplifies tasks such as:

• Uploading and managing web pages; • Creating email accounts; • Installing web-based applications like blogs, shopping carts, and forums; • Backing up data; • Protecting a site’s content and bandwidth from abuse; • Generating and viewing statistics about visitors; and • Reviewing error logs to locate broken links and other problems. WHM

WebHost Manager (WHM), our server control panel interface, is designed for server administrators andweb hosts. WHM makes it easy to:

• Set up and modify customer accounts; • Receive alerts if the server goes down; • Install applications and programming language modules; • Create and apply hosting plans; • Block spam; • Integrate new web technologies; and • Brand customers’ cPanel interfaces with custom logos. Have questions? Please contact our sales team.

Managing a website with cPanel

The most important part of a website owner’s job is creating, uploading, and editing web pages. In cPanel, a site owner has several options for managing content. He or she can:

• Easily upload and manage web pages in cPanel’s File Manager. • Use cPanel’s Web Disk feature to drag and drop files into the customer’s account. • Use traditional file transfer methods (including FTP, SFTP, and FTPS). • Create additional FTP accounts for employees. Site owners can install commonly used web-based applications, such as WordPress

blogs, osCommerce stores, and phpBB forums, simply by answering a few quick questions in the cPanel interface.

Backing up data is simple with cPanel’s Backup Wizard. Our software comes equipped

with an interface to help site owners manage and acquire backups for their entire account.

Virus protection makes it easy to scan files for viruses. Site owners can even prevent

other websites from inappropriately using their bandwidth, password-protect areas of a site, and set up cPanel to automatically ban a user who shares a password to a restricted area of the website.

Many SEOs prefer cPanel because of the amount of information it provides about web

traffic. Web statistics can be generated by three different statistics generators. In addition, logs of errors encountered by website visitors, bandwidth tracking, and even raw FTP access logs are available via the cPanel interface.

Professional web developers love cPanel, too. They can quickly view a server's PHP

configuration, install Ruby Gems, customize error pages and how content is served. cPanel provides comprehensive email management

Website owners can use cPanel to create

email accounts associated with a website. cPanel supports the standard mail protocols, including POP, IMAP, and SMTP, both with and without SSL encryption. To curb spam, cPanel provides powerful spam deterrents: SpamAssassin and BoxTrapper. We also offer the ability to automatically route messages to a spam folder. cPanel provides a web-based interface for checking email, so account holders can access mail at any time, from any computer with a web browser. cPanel also supports the latest email technologies to ensure messages reach the intended destination. cPanel users can set up email forwarding, which allows account holders to have an address at one domain (such as [email protected]) forward incoming messages to another (such as [email protected]). This can also be useful to businesses that need to route email to an employee’s BlackBerry® or other mobile device.

For power users, mail filtering and mailing lists are available. cPanel is easy to use

Our expert team continuously refines the

cPanel interface. The result is an intuitive product that allows website owners to maintain their sites easily without needing to contact their hosting provider.

To minimize setup time, cPanel includes a Getting Started Wizard, which walks new users through the initial configuration of an account. Users also have access to built-in video tutorials and on-screen documentation, for step-by-step instructions and other useful information.

Try it for yourself: log into our demo cPanel account.

Managing a server with WHM

With WHM, server administrators can easily control the technologies their servers employ. Using our exclusive EasyApache utility, server administrators can, with a few clicks:

• Support new web technologies (including security measures such as suPHP and suEXEC), • Change the web server software powering the sites on the server, and • Install new software modules to give web developers the tools they need for custom scripts. In the Service Configuration section of WHM, administrators can manage the

configuration for FTP, email and web services, and more.

WHM offers robust control over email. Server administrators can choose to

automatically block spam before it ever reaches the server. Administrators can also let the server automatically tap into a pool of knowledge regarding which servers are sending spam, so the mail server software knows not to accept spam from those servers.

If a server administrator finds a useful application or programming language module, he

or she can very easily install it via the WHM interface.

WHM can automatically update the server’s cPanel and WHM software package, as

well as other server software cPanel and WHM rely on. The administrator can choose to update the server frequently with the newest version available, or only use thoroughly tested versions of the software. Automatic updates can also be disabled.

WHM automatically handles the formerly mundane and repetitive task of creating the

necessary DNS entries for every new hosting account; however, administrators can customize the DNS zone templates that WHM uses. They can also set up custom shell scripts to execute before or after certain tasks are completed (for example, whenever a new account is created).

WHM enhances server reliability

Before system administrators began using WHM,

services run by a server could be down for hours or days before the administrator was notified. With WHM, if any server software fails, WHM will automatically restart that software and let the administrator know via IM, pager, email and/or SMS (phone). This allows the administrator to investigate the cause immediately, potentially averting a catastrophic server failure.

WHM will also notify the system administrator if there's a lack of available hard disk space. It offers a tool for administrators to monitor hard disk utilization so they better understand what corrective actions should be taken. Server administrators can also monitor server load via WHM, as well as review daily reports of processor utilization, pinpointing which processes are using the most processor power.

Server reliability also requires preventing the server from being compromised. WHM's Security Center allows administrators to implement powerful security measures with a click of a mouse. Our software offers a wide variety of functionality, from brute force to spam protection.

Using outdated web applications is a common cause of security weaknesses for web servers. Our cPAddons framework will notify hosting customers when their web applications are out-of- date, if they installed them via cPanel. Server administrators can also use WHM to forcefully upgrade out-of-date web applications.

WHM helps web hosts manage customer accounts

As we mentioned above, WHM allows web

hosts to:

• Create and modify new accounts, and • Create and apply hosting plans (we call them packages). Web hosts can also:

• Control which features are available to specific users, • Customize the page displayed when an account is suspended, • Email all the hosting customers on the server, • Move accounts to a different hard disk, and • Modify content within a new account when it is first provisioned on the server. By default, users do not have shell (command line) access to the server. However, server administrators can grant limited or full permissions for any account. As a web hosting company grows, it may begin to have multiple servers running cPanel and WHM. Fortunately, it’s easy to transfer accounts among WHM servers. If a company needs to migrate an account from another control panel application, WHM can handle that as well. Server administrators can also restore account backups made by new customers migrating from another web host. This allows the customer to bring the website back online far quicker than would be possible with a manual migration.

With WHM, hosts can allocate large blocks of resources to reseller accounts. Reseller accounts are hosting accounts that have access to the account management functionality of WHM. They do not have full access to the server, only the access necessary to manage multiple hosting accounts. Resellers and server administrators can completely brand the appearance of the cPanel interface for their customers. We use industry standards such as CSS to make this process easy. (To view an example of a branded cPanel interface, visit MyBrandedHost.com.)

Hosts looking for a billing automation solution should feel free to contact our friendly sales team. They can refer you to solutions that work well with our software.

WHM is extensible

While WHM provides the

functionality needed to run a web hosting company, it will also adapt to a host’s existing infrastructure needs. Feel free to discuss your needs with our sales team, so they can refer you to the APIs, hooks, and scripts available for extending the functionality of WHM and cPanel.

Developers are welcome to review our technical documentation.