How does cpanel-based web site hosting work?
For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel-based web space hosting offers on the present webspace hosting marketplace are furnished by a very insubstantial marketing niche (when it comes to annual capital flow) named reseller hosting. Reseller web space hosting is a kind of a small-scale marketing segment, which supplies a huge amount of different web hosting brands, yet offering absolutely the same services: mostly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Because at least 98 percent of the web space hosting offers on the whole site hosting market offer exactly the same service: cPanel. There's no difference at all. Even the cPanel webspace hosting price tags are similar. Very similar. Leaving for those in need of a top web hosting service practically no other site hosting platform/Control Panel choice. So, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200k site hosting brands in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than two percent! Less than 2%, mark that one...
200,000 "website hosting providers", all cPanel-based, yet diversely named
The site hosting "variety" and the site hosting "offers" Google reveals to all of us boil down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web hosting brand names. Imagine you are just a regular bloke who's not well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web site making procedures and the hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domains and online portals . Are you prepared to make your hosting choice? Is there any web site hosting variant you can opt for? Sure there is, right now there are more than two hundred thousand web site hosting companies out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than ninety eight percent of these more than two hundred thousand unique hosting brands around the world will give you precisely the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, labeled in a different way, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how immense the variety on the present-day site hosting market is... Period.
The web hosting LOTTERY we are all part of
Simple arithmetic shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting service provider is a mammoth stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a phenomenon like that will happen! Less than 1 in fifty...
The pros and cons of the cPanel web space hosting solution
Let's not be severe with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was modish and probably met most web page hosting business demands. To cut a long story short, cPanel can achieve the desired result if you have just one domain name to host. But, if you have more domain names...
Weak Point Number 1: A moronic domain name folder setup
If you have 2 or more domain names, though, be extra careful not to remove fully the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domains are quite easy to remove on the web hosting server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the quite famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to erase the files of the add-on domain names, please. Decide for yourself how fabulous 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 name)
public_html/my-second-wife (a folder part of my-default-domain.com)
public_html/my-second-wife.net (an add-on domain)
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)
Are you getting confused? We positively are!
Downside Number 2: The very same mail folder setup
The mail folder configuration on the server is strictly the same as that of the domain names... Repeating the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin chaps strongly enhance their faith in God when handling the electronic mail folders on the mail server, praying not to fuck things up too badly.
Predicament Number 3: An absolute shortage of domain name administration user interfaces
Do we have to mention the utter absence of a modern domain name management tool - a location where you can: register/relocate/renew/park or administer domains, alter domain names' Whois information, secure the Whois details, modify/set up nameservers (DNS) and DNS resource records? cPanel does not offer such a "modern" section at all. That's a mammoth drawback. An unforgettable one, we want to add...
Disadvantage No.4: Numerous login locations (min two, max 3)
What about the demand for another login to access the invoicing transaction, domain and tech support administration software? That's beside the cPanel login credentials you've been already provided by the cPanel-based web space hosting distributor. Occasionally, depending on the invoicing system (particularly tailored for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting distributor is availing of, the zealous clients can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the invoicing/domain name administration menu; 2: the trouble ticket support tool), winding up with a total of three user login locations (including cPanel).
Downside Number 5: More than one hundred and twenty Control Panel menus to get acquainted with... briskly
cPanel offers to your attention more than a hundred and twenty departments inside the hosting Control Panel. It's a fine idea to get familiar with each of them. And you'd better get familiar with them rapidly... That's very insolent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel hosting firms:
As far as we know, it's not the year 2001, is it? Remark that one as well...