How does cpanel web site hosting function?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that the majority of the cPanel-based hosting offerings on today's hosting marketplace are generated by a quite inconsiderable business segment (as far as annual capital flow is concerned) called reseller hosting. Reseller web space hosting is a kind of a small-size marketing niche, which furnishes a huge number of different web hosting trademarks, yet furnishing absolutely the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98% of the site hosting offerings on the entire webspace hosting marketplace furnish the same thing: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel web hosting price tags are similar. Very identical. Leaving for those who require a top web hosting service practically no other website hosting platform/web space hosting CP option. So, there is just one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand webspace hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...
200k "hosting corporations", all cPanel-based, yet uniquely branded
The website hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offerings" Google reveals to us come down to just one solution: cPanel. Under hundreds of thousands of different webspace hosting brand names. Imagine you are just a normal chap who's not very well familiar with (as the majority of us) with the web site making processes and the site hosting platforms, which actually power the various domain names and web pages . Are you prepared to make your hosting decision? Is there any web hosting variant you can pick? Of course there is, these days there are more than 200k web space hosting companies out there. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web space hosting brands in the world will offer you the same cPanel web space hosting CP and platform, labeled in a different way, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how enormous the diversity on the contemporary web hosting market is... Full stop.
The webspace hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple math demonstrates that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting supplier is a gigantic stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will take place! Less than one in fifty...
The advantages and disadvantages of the cPanel-based web space hosting solution
Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and probably covered all website hosting market preconditions. In short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Problem Number 1: A foolish domain folder configuration
If you have two or more domain names, however, be very careful not to erase fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each subsequent hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domains are very easy to erase on the server, since they all are set up into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very well known public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Observe for yourself how great cPanel's domain folder setup is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is placed)public_html/my-family (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-domain.com (an add-on domain)
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)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain)
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)
Are you growing bewildered? We doubtlessly are!
Shortcoming Number 2: The same e-mail folder system
The e-mail folder configuration on the hosting server is absolutely the same as that of the domain names... Making the very same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps firmly enhance their faith in God when handling the email folders on the electronic mail server, hoping not to screw things up too harshly.
Shortcoming Number 3: An absolute deficiency of domain management menus
Do we need to mention the utter absence of a modern domain name administration interface - a location where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domains, edit domain names' Whois information, protect the Whois information, alter/create nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not provide such a "modern" user interface at all. That's a vast inconvenience. An inexcusable one, we wish to add...
Weak Point Number 4: Multiple user login places (minimum two, max 3)
How about the need for an additional login to avail of the invoicing, domain name and technical support management tool? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel webspace hosting corporation. At times, depending on the invoicing platform (especially invented for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting firm is using, the eager clients can end up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoicing/domain management section; 2: the trouble ticket support software solution), winding up with a total of three login locations (including cPanel).
Weak Side No.5: More than one hundred and twenty webspace hosting CP areas to pick up... promptly
cPanel presents to your attention more than a hundred and twenty menus inside the web page hosting CP. It's a glorious idea to pick up each one of them. And you'd better get familiar with them fast... That's inordinately impertinent on cPanel's side.
With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based webspace hosting suppliers:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one as well...