Cpanel Tools Pozitivstudija, Fotolia.Com the Webmaster’S Control Panel CPANEL

cPanel Tools PozitivStudija, Fotolia.com The webmaster’s control panel CPANEL

For companies that provide hosting and email packages to clients to administer a myriad of tasks, wHm and cPanel provide a web-based graphical control panel designed to help. BY MARCEL GAGNÉ

etting up a Linux server to host a cPanel (yes, it stands for Control ministration interface that makes it pos- website is a relatively trivial mat- Panel) and WHM (the Web Host Man- sible to create accounts for both end ster. Of course, I assume that the ager) provide a web-based graphical users and resellers so that they, in turn, reader has some experience with Linux control panel designed for companies can administer their own domains via and understands the concepts of basic that provide hosting and email packages cPanel. Once an account (which can server administration. After all, you still to their clients. WHM is a top-level ad- consist of one or more domains) is cre- need to install Apache to serve up a sim- ple site. More complex sites requiring a database might demand MySQL or Post- greSQL as well. Let’s not forget the P in the LAMP stack, PHP to round out a basic server’s needed software. Adding a second site to this server re- quires that you understand something about virtual hosts, but it’s still relatively easy if you know what you are doing. But even a competent systems administrator can start feeling overworked if he or she needs to host a hundred sites, each with its own domain, a correspond- ing number of databases, and another thousand email accounts. Sure, you can still do it, but eventually, the job can daunt even the most accomplished systems administrator. That’s where cPanel comes into play (see Figure 1). Figure 1: WHM and cPanel are, at least to the hosting provider, one and the same.

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Figure 2: The WHM home screen offers up a list of commonly used Figure 3: Enter “update” in the Find box and cPanel/WHM can even functions. update cPanel/WHM. ated, administration of that account can its rocky past, both in terms of owner- get it from their ISP as an add-on to their be delegated to the account holder. In ship and of various problems with the dedicated host; I make that last distinc- that respect, WHM and cPanel are, at product. That said, the modern WHM/ tion because WHM/cPanel is also sup- least to the hosting provider, one and the cPanel package is an excellent, rock- ported in a variety of virtual system en- same, whereas cPanel is what the ac- solid package that any hosting provider vironments. count holder sees. should at least consider. Using a web browser, you can access The types of controls you can delegate The biggest downside, from my per- WHM and cPanel via pre-defined ports include the creation of additional do- spective, is that it only supports on your server. For instance, WHM is ac- mains and subdomains, email accounts, FreeBSD, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, and cessed via port 2086 using the root login: FTP accounts, and so on. Account hold- CentOS. That said, many ISPs do provide ers who have access to cPanel can keep servers running CentOS or Red Hat, and http://yourhost.dom:2086 track of their disk usage, bandwidth, and many offer cPanel and WHM as an op- resource utilization in general. They can tion. A recent addition to cPanel’s prod- Also, you can use port 2087 for a secure create email accounts, change pass- uct line is Enkompass, essentially cPanel login. Users accessing cPanel, on the words, manipulate databases, view web- for users of Microsoft Windows Server other hand, use port 2082 with whatever site logs, add FTP users, create and products. Enkompass can manage multi- username and password the administra- download site backups, and a whole lot ple servers across an Active Directory tor provided for their account. Similarly, more. Another way to look at it is this: domain. In this article, I will be focusing port 2083 allows secure access to cPanel. WHM is root. on the Linux-based WHM/cPanel offer- When you first login to WHM, you are ing [1]. presented with a number of icons repre- Mini History Lesson senting some of the more common func- cPanel’s pedigree is mixed, and it has an Getting Started tions in WHM (see Figure 2 for a close- interesting history. Part of that history Although cPanel can be licensed directly up). On the left-hand side, there’s a follows it to this day with people citing from cPanel Inc., most hosting providers rather long list of administration categories that cover server configuration, se- curity, account and reseller functions, DNS configuration, backup, remote access functions, package management, database administration, daemon control, and pretty much anything else you might need to run a domain and web hosting service on your server.

Figure 5: When creating an account, the sys- Figure 4: Plenty of functions are associated with accounts and account maintenance. tem can assist in selecting strong passwords.

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Figure 6: Each account you create may have a package of features Figure 7: Customers have access to different Webmail clients, like and limits included with it. Horde, Roundcube, and Squirrelmail.

Given the sheer number of options list of just about anything you can do These limits include things like maxi- here, there’s also a rather nice little with accounts (see Figure 4). There’s mum bandwidth, the amount of disk search bar at the top (labeled Find). Just also a second icon labeled Account Infor- space, whether the client has shell ac- enter a few letters from the function you mation, which contains reporting func- cess (SSH), the number of FTP accounts, are trying to address; for example, enter tions (list accounts, show bandwidth, the number of email accounts, the num- acc for anything that might have the etc.). ber of databases they can create, and word account as part of it. This will nar- To create an account, click on Create a more. All these things define a package, row down the list to the things that cur- New Account, then enter the appropriate and the nature of the package usually rently interest you. Type update and the information. Each account has a user has a lot to do with what you are willing various update features of the WHM will name and password associated with it; a to charge. become available. Now you might strength meter and password generator Additional settings on the account cre- choose to roll your own custom versions are included to help you generate secure ation screen concern whether you are of Apache and PHP to suit your environ- passwords (see Figure 5). handling DNS functions and mail rout- ment (look for EasyApache) or update A little farther down the account cre- ing (you could be handling email on a the system packages. Here, you can even ation screen, you’ll find options for the separate server). Once you’ve entered all update WHM and cPanel (see Figure 3). panel theme, the locale (language), the information, click Create. A number whether this is a reseller account (if this of messages go flying by as the custom- Account Functions account can create other accounts), and er’s account, cPanel implementation, The heart and raison d’être of cPanel so on. One rather interesting choice you and whatever features you are providing, and WHM are the account functions. need to make is the package you are sell- including the directory structure, are all After all, you wouldn’t be looking at ing your client (see Figure 6). To explain created. A report will follow on the something like cPanel and WHM if you this, I’ll back up to the side menu and screen, and that report will be emailed weren’t looking to resell hosting ser- tell you about packages. to you as well. vices. From the main menu, you can When you offer hosting to a client, Once an account is created, you can click the Account Functions icon to get a you invariably place limits on their site. turn over control of this account to the

Figure 8: Your new MySQL database will require a username to Figure 9: Database access privileges are granted with the click of a access it. checkbox.

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standard INSERT, UPDATE, ALTER, DROP, and so on that are familiar to any- one who works with MySQL. Permis- sions are granted by clicking on the check box that corresponds with the privilege in question (see Figure 9). To give the user all of the normal privileges, you can click the ALL PRIVILEGES check box or simply select what your ap- plication will require from this user. Click Next Step, and the user will be created for you (step 4 merely completes the task). When it comes to setting up a MySQL database quickly, it doesn’t get much easier than this. For more complex tasks associated with the database, cPanel comes with Figure 10: cPanel users may be granted access to phpMyAdmin, a comprehensive web inter- phpMyAdmin, a complete web-based in- face for working with MySQL databases. terface for working with MySQL data sets (see Figure 10). Many systems ad- account holder. Or not. That is entirely tools like WordPress, or CRM systems ministrators will already be familiar with up to you. One of the features you may like SugarCRM or vtiger CRM. Countless phpMyAdmin, which lets you do about offer your hosting clients is email, and tools make yesterday’s static sites seem everything you need to do when it setting up individual email accounts is rather boring. Almost every one of these comes to interfacing with MySQL. Im- very easy with cPanel. Once set up, dynamic sites are built on the classic port or export data, create tables, manip- users can connect to the same server but LAMP stack with a database (more often ulate data, run queries, … ; you name it. on port 2096 (or 2097 for a secure con- than not, MySQL) riding underneath. nection). Once logged in, users are pre- cPanel makes the creation and mainte- Look and Feel and a Little sented with a variety of functions and nance of databases relatively painless. Handholding different Webmail clients (see Figure 7). My favorite “quick create” tool is the This might seem rather minor, but so These include Roundcube, Horde, and MySQL Database Wizard. much of what people like about a graph- Squirrelmail. Four steps are involved in creating a ical product is how the tools are pre- Besides working with the Webmail cli- database this way. The first is to give it a sented. That usually means look and ent of their choice, users can change name. The next step is to create a user feel, or theme. cPanel comes with a vari- their password, configure a forwarding that will access this newly minted data- ety of themes (or styles), so account address, set up an auto-response mes- base (see Figure 8). Once again, you are holders can change the look and feel of sage when going on vacation, and so on. provided with a password strength meter their administrative interface (Figure 11). and a password generator. Finally, although perhaps I should Working with Databases When you click the Create User but- have started here, cPanel and WHM offer Many of today’s websites aren’t static af- ton, you’ll move on to the third step, a great deal of handholding. From com- fairs but dynamic beasts built on popu- which involves defining the permissions prehensive online documentation, to lar content management systems like granted to this user for this particular quick tips, to video tutorials, cPanel is Drupal or Joomla, blogging sites that use database. These permissions are the designed to let you learn as you use it. A great starting place is the Getting Started Wizard, which is offered as an option when you log in to cPanel for the first time. Wrapping Up … Almost Obviously, this is just a snapshot of what cPanel and WHM can do for you as a hosting provider. The scope of what cPanel and WHM covers would fill an entire book (yes, a few have been writ- ten). As a long-time systems administrator, I admit to feeling a little uncomfortable with cPanel’s point-and-click way of Figure 11: Choose a style that works for you. doing things, of the fact that it runs its

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Figure 12: ISPConfig is a popular alternative to the commercial Figure 13: Webmin, the system administrator’s Swiss Army knife, is a cPanel/WHM offering. control center for systems administration. own scripts and does things its own way, There’s also an argument that doing this work on pretty much any Unix-based whether I like it or not. In fact, I didn’t stuff manually is how you really learn it. system and, of course, pretty much any even want to look at cPanel at first be- The GUIs and CHUIs out there make Linux distribution. Webmin is part of cause I assumed I could do it better. Al- things simpler (sometimes), but you every major distribution’s repository, so though that might still be true, there tend to stand some distance from what it’s relatively easy to find and well worth comes a point when you realize that you is really happening on your system. checking out. can only manage so many things with- On that note, check out my list of Webmin’s many features are organized out a little help. cPanel is a mature, cPanel-like tools in Table 1. according to various categories, running solid, and respectable helper for the Some are better than others, and some down the left-hand sidebar. Each cate- overworked (and, of course, underpaid) are better maintained. However, as far as gory controls a variety of systems, each systems administrator charged with the I know, all are currently maintained handled by a module. In fact, all of Web- responsibilities of managing hosting ac- (even OpenPanel, which is the oldest min’s functions are modular, which counts. I highly recommend it. without significant change, is still in de- means it’s possible to upgrade Webmin velopment). ISPConfig (see Figure 12) is as a whole or just a single module. Also, Open Source Alternatives probably the most popular. additional modules can be downloaded Although I’ve given a lot of coverage On the surface, they all share similari- and added to Webmin. here to WHM and cPanel, I would never- ties with each other and with cPanel, al- WHM/cPanel certainly ranks among theless like to tell you about a few open though each one handles things differ- the most popular control panels for host- source alternatives to WHM/cPanel. ently under the hood. I have tried sev- ing providers, and many ISPs make I’ll list a few in a moment, but be eral of these tools, but it’s hard to say cPanel available as an option, but there aware that almost all of them expect you which I think is “the best.” The most im- are always alternatives. These alterna- to work “their way.” In other words, you portant deciding factor might well be tives include both paid for, commercial need to set up email their way or config- one of personal taste. packages, and free (as in speech and ure things their way (in that respect, I can’t really leave this discussion beer) open sources offerings. they are no different from WHM and without mentioning Webmin (see Figure In the end, you have to find something cPanel). Although that might be what 13). Unlike WHM/cPanel and the others that works for you and, perhaps as im- you want, many systems administrators I’ve told you about here, Webmin is portantly, works with you. n like their configuration files organized a more of a system administrator’s control certain way or want to name things a center than a hosting panel. Webmin is INFO particular way, or use conventions that really a kind of Swiss-Army-knife-style, [1] cPanel and WHM: http://cpanel. net mean something to them specifically. do-it-all administrative interface that will

Table 1: cPanel-Like Tools Marcel’s just this guy, you know? He’s Tool Website also an award-winning columnist, book author, public speaker, radio and GNUPanel http://gnupanel. org/ television personality, and a well- Easy Hosting Control Panel (EHCP) http://www. ehcp. net/ known voice in the Linux and open ISPConfig http://www. ispconfig. org/ source universe. He’s also a published science fiction author and editor and ispCPOmega http://isp‑control. net/ a private pilot and was once a Top 40 GPLHost http://www. gplhost. com/ software‑dtc. html AUTHOR THE disc jockey. He folds a mean origami OpenPanel http://www. openpanel. com/ T-Rex.