How does cpanel web site hosting function?
For your info, it's useful to be aware that most of the cPanel site hosting offers on today's web hosting market are furnished by a very unsubstantial business segment (as far as yearly cash flow is concerned) called hosting reseller. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-sized business niche, which provides a great quantity of different web hosting brand names, yet supplying exactly the same solutions: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Owing to the fact that at least 98% of the web hosting offerings on the whole website hosting market supply the same solution: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel site hosting price tags are identical. Very identical. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other site hosting platform/site hosting CP choice. Thus, there is merely one single fact: out of more than two hundred thousand site hosting trademarks around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...
200k "web hosting distributors", all cPanel-based, yet diversely dubbed
The site hosting "diversity" and the web page hosting "offers" Google presents to us come down to just one and the same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of thousands of different webspace hosting trademarked names. Assume you are simply a normal bloke who's not very familiar with (as most of us) with the site making procedures and the web page hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and web pages . Are you ready to make your hosting pick? Is there any website hosting alternative you can settle on? Sure there is, at present there are more than two hundred thousand site hosting service providers in existence. Formally. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98 percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique hosting brands in the world will offer you exactly the same cPanel web page hosting Control Panel and platform, branded differently, with strictly the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on the present site hosting market is... Full stop.
The web hosting LOTTO we are all paricipating in
Simple arithmetic shows that to choose a non-cPanel based web hosting company is a great stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that something like that will happen! Less than 1 in 50...
The pros and cons of the cPanel-based web hosting solution
Let's not be fierce with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modern and presumably covered most web site hosting industry demands. In brief, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have only a single domain to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Problem Number One: A stupid domain name folder structure
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extremely watchful not to remove completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will refer to each subsequent hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are quite easy to erase on the web server, because they all are created into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder located inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. Verify for yourself how great cPanel's domain folder arrangement 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 name)
public_html/my-third-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-third-wife.net (an add-on domain name)
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 name)
Are you becoming perplexed? We categorically are!
Weakness Number Two: The same email folder setup
The mail folder structure on the hosting server is precisely the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the very same error twice?!? The sysadmin blokes strongly increase their faith in God when tackling the e-mail folders on the email server, hoping not to fuck things up too badly.
Negative Aspect Number Three: A total lack of domain management tools
Do we have to cite the utter absence of a contemporary domain name manipulation interface - a location where you can: register/transfer/renew/park or administer domains, edit domain names' Whois info, protect the Whois information, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not supply such a "modern" section at all. That's a huge disadvantage. An inexcusable one, we wish to point out...
Inconvenience Number 4: Multiple user login places (min two, max 3)
What about the demand for an additional login to use the invoice transaction, domain name and technical support management GUI? That's aside from the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based site hosting provider. Sometimes, depending on the billing tool (especially meant for cPanel exclusively) the cPanel web hosting corporation is utilizing, the devoted users can wind up with 2 extra logins (1: the invoicing/domain name administration section; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), winding up with an aggregate of 3 login places (including cPanel).
Negative Side Number Five: More than 120 webspace hosting Control Panel menus to pick up... fast
cPanel offers to your attention 120+ sections inside the web space hosting Control Panel. It's a remarkable idea to grasp each of them. And you'd better get acquainted with them fast... That's way too insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web site hosting vendors:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Note that one too...