How does cpanel site hosting function?
For your information, it's good to know that most of the cPanel-based web hosting offerings on the present-day web site hosting market are generated by a very inconsiderable marketing segment (when it comes to annual money flow) dubbed reseller hosting. Reseller web hosting is a sort of a small-sized marketing segment, which provides a great quantity of different web hosting brands, yet offering literally the same thing: mostly cPanel web hosting services. This is bad news for everyone. Why? Owing to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the site hosting offerings on the entire site hosting marketplace provide exactly the same thing: cPanel. There's no variety at all. Even the cPanel web space hosting prices are identical. Quite similar. Leaving for those who demand a top web hosting service virtually no other website hosting platform/site hosting Control Panel alternative. So, there is just one single fact: out of more than 200,000 web space hosting brand names around the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than 2 percent, note that one...
200,000 "website hosting firms", all cPanel-based, yet distinctly branded
The web site hosting "diversity" and the web site hosting "offers" Google shows to us boil down to merely one and the very same thing: cPanel. Under hundreds of 1000's of different site hosting brand names. Imagine you are merely a regular person who's not very well aware of (as the majority of us) with the web page development processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the different domain names and web pages . Are you ready to make your hosting decision? Is there any web space hosting option you can choose? Sure there is, nowadays there are more than 200k webspace hosting distributors in existence. Officially. Then where is the problem? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web hosting brand names worldwide will offer you strictly the same cPanel Control Panel and platform, labeled differently, with the same price tags! WOW! That's how big the assortment on the present-day website hosting market is... Full stop.
The webspace hosting LOTTERY we are all paricipating in
Simple mathematics shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is an immense strike of luck. There is a less than one in 50 chance that an event like that will occur! Less than one in 50...
The advantages and disadvantages of the cPanel web site hosting solution
Let's not be merciless with cPanel. After all, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and presumably covered most webspace hosting market requirements. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the trick if you have just a single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...
Downside Number 1: An idiotic domain name folder structure
If you have 2 or more domains, though, be very watchful not to delete completely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will call each new hosted domain name, which is not the default one: an add-on domain name). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to remove on the web server, since they all are placed into the root folder of the default domain, which is the quite popular public_html folder. Each add-on domain is a folder placed inside the folder of the default domain name. Like a sub-folder. Next time attempt not to delete the files of the add-on domain names, please. See for yourself how marvelous cPanel's domain folder system is:
public_html (here my-default-domain.com is located)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)
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 puzzled? We positively are!
Weak Side No.2: The same e-mail folder configuration
The mail folder structure on the web server is exactly the same as that of the domain names... Making the same mistake twice?!? The sysadmin guys firmly reinforce their belief in God when tackling the electronic mail folders on the email server, praying not to fuck things up too severely.
Drawback Number Three: An entire lack of domain management options
Do we have to cite the sheer lack of a contemporary domain name management tool - a place where you can: register/move/renew/park or manage domain names, edit domain names' Whois details, protect the Whois info, change/set up name servers (DNS) and Domain Name System records? cPanel does not contain such a "modern" tool at all. That's a huge shortcoming. An inexcusable one, we want to point out...
Downside Number Four: Multiple login locations (min two, maximum 3)
How about the necessity for an extra login to access the invoicing transaction, domain and technical support administration interface? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already given by the cPanel-based site hosting company. Occasionally, depending on the billing transaction platform (principally designed for cPanel solely) the cPanel web hosting supplier is using, the devoted users can end up with two extra logins (1: the invoice transaction/domain management section; 2: the trouble ticket support interface), winding up with an aggregate of 3 user login places (including cPanel).
Shortcoming Number Five: More than one hundred and twenty hosting Control Panel menus to get to know... quickly
cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ sections inside the Control Panel. It's a great idea to memorize each one of them. And you'd better learn them swiftly... That's inordinately impudent on cPanel's side.
With all due veneration, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel-based webspace hosting corporations:
As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...