What Are The Things You Can Do With cPanel?
Whether you are a server administrator, a website owner running a simple one-page website, web agency with thousands of websites or simply an email account user, cPanel provides front-ends almost all the common operations normally associated with server management.
From adding domains, creating email accounts & databases, securing your website to installing scripts and managing resources, the control and flexibility that cPanel provides is unsurpassed.
The latest version of cPanel & WHM comes with significant usability and user experience improvements.
Here are some of cPanel latest features:
cPanel's File Manager interface gives you an easy way to upload, create, remove, and edit files without the need for FTP or other third-party applications.
The cPanel's Disk Usage interface allows you to scan your disk and get a graphical overview of your account's available space. This is very useful when it comes to managing your disk space usage.
With cPanel's FTP Connections interface, you can view current connections to your site via FTP and even terminate FTP connections to prevent unauthorized or unwanted file access.
cPanel's Backup Wizard interface offers a step-by-step guidance that you can use to easily create and store backups for your website or for the entire hosting account.
cPanel's Images interface gives you the ability to manage your images. You can view and resize images, or use this feature to convert image file types.
Web Disk or Web Dav is a protocol that helps to access your files easily on the web from your desktop.
It allows you to create a folder on your computer that connects to your hosting account directly and allows you to manage and control files on the web as easy as if they were stored on your local computer.
You can use the Web Disk feature to access to your website files as if they were a local drive on your computer.
cPanel's Git™ Version Control feature allows you to easily host Git repositories on your cPanel account. You can use Git to maintain any set of files (for example, a website files and assets, a software development project, or simple text files).
This cPanel's interface allows you to protect specific directories in your cPanel account's files. After you enable this feature for a directory, when users attempt to view that directory via a website, the system prompts them for a password before allowing them to log in.
Using this interface, you can create and manage your website File Transfer Protocol (FTP) accounts. FTP allows you to manage your website files.
Backing up your website files is an essential part of website administration. After generating your backup using the Backup Wizard, you can use this interface to download your backup files as tarballs that use the .tar.gz file extension to your computer. This will include all your cPanel account's contents (home directory, databases, email forwarders, and email filters).
Probably one of the most useful features that cPanel offers. Let's say you accidentally delete a file or a directory, you can use this interface to restore the file or directory from local backup sources. All you need to do is either enter a direct path to the file or directory or browse through files and directories to find the file that you wish to restore.
phpMyAdmin is a third-party tool that you can use to manipulate MySQL databases. Customers can choose either choose MySQL or PostgreSQL as their application database.
You can use the Remote MySQL interface to configure databases that users can access remotely. For an example, this is a feature that comes handy when you want to allow applications (for example, bulletin boards, shopping carts, or guest books) on other servers to access your databases.
You may have to contact our technical support team to add the remote hosts at the server level. If you see a hostname or IP address that you do not recognize, or remove a hostname or IP address that reappears later, do contact us.
phpPgAdmin is a third-party tool that enables you to graphically manage and manipulate PostgreSQL databases. For more information about how to use phpPgAdmin, visit the URL below:
cPanel has an intuitive MySQL Databases interface that customers can use to manage large amounts of information on their websites. Most web-based applications (for example, bulletin boards, content management systems, and online retail shops) often require database access.
With this available, you don't have to use phpMyAdmin which doesn't map databases thus causing backups and restores to not function to create databases or database users.
The PostgreSQL Databases interface to manage large amounts of information on your websites. To create your first database and user, we recommend that you use the PostgreSQL Database Wizard interface (cPanel >> Home >> Databases >> PostgreSQL Database Wizard).
When creating a PostgreSQL database, it is important to keep in mind that the maximum length of a database name is 63 characters.
Since we enable database prefixing, this length includes the database prefix and underscore character (_).
One of the often-used tools in cPanel by developers, the wizard offers a step-by-step guide that you can easily follow to setup a MySQL® database, user accounts, and user privileges.
To simultaneously create a database and the account that will access it in cPanel, use the PostgreSQL Database Wizard interface.
We recommend using this wizard to create your first database and user.
cPanel's Site Publisher interface allows you to quickly create simple websites from a set of in-built templates. You can use this feature, for example, to ensure that visitors can find your contact information while you design a more elaborate website.
A subdomainrepresent subsections of your website that can exist as a new website without a new domain name. With this interface, you can create memorable URLs for different content areas of your site. For example, you can create a subdomain for your blog that visitors can access through blog.domain_name.com and www.domain_name.com/blog.
This is one of the first features that you probably will need to work with, after getting your new cPanel account and login.
DNS (Domain Name Service) converts human-readable domain names (for example, example.com) to computer-readable IP addresses (for example, 192.0.32.10). DNS relies on zone records that exist on your server to map domain names to IP addresses.
This interface displays your account's domains. For each domain in the list, you can add, edit, and remove A, AAAA, CNAME, SRV, MX, and TXT DNS records.
With this available, you don't have to use phpMyAdmin which doesn't map databases thus causing backups and restores to not function to create databases or database users.
Another part of cPanel's interface that you will likely use especially if you want to add more domains to your cPanel hosting account.
From here, you can create and manage multiple domains for your account.
This is the interface that you can use to create domain aliases.
Domain aliases are domains that you own, but which do not contain any content. Instead, they point to the contents of another domain or subdomain on your account.
This is useful, for example, to hold a domain that you will later sell, or to redirect traffic to another domain.
To add a domain alias, all you need to do is to access this interface, enter the domain name in the text box and click Add Domain.
Addon domains allow you to control multiple domains from a single account & cPanel has made it easier to manage your domains in a single place. Unlike with Parked domains, Addon domains are expected to be completely different websites all hosted inside the same cPanel account. An addon domain links a new domain name to a directory in your account, and then stores its files in that directory.
With this feature, you can create additional sub-accounts (for example, email addresses) for your addon domains.
A dynamic IP address changes, while a static IP address stays the same. This feature lets you manage your network devices without the need to manually update their settings any time the IP address changes.
You can use this interface to utilize a Domain Name System (DNS) hosted on the cPanel server to resolve a hostname that exists on an external network with a dynamic IP address.
Thanks to this interface, cPanel offers an easy way to add, manage, and delete email accounts for your domains..
cPanel Auto Responders interface allows you to send automated emails to anyone who sends mail to a specific email account. You may wish to use this feature if, for example, you are on vacation, are unavailable, or have a generic message that you wish to send from a support email address.
When it seems that your emails are not being received or delivered, you can use this interface to locate the problem.
You can also use this feature to trace an email's delivery route.
This interface enables you to identify problems with your mail-related DNS records for one or more of your domains. The system uses these records to verify that other servers can trust it as a sender.
How does it work?
DKIM verifies the sender and integrity of a message. It allows an email system to prove that spammers did not alter an incoming message while in transit (forgery). DKIM also verifies that the messages your domains receive come from the specified domain.
SPF attempts to deny spammers the ability to send an email while they forge your domain’s name as the sender (spoofing). SPF adds IP addresses to a list of servers that can send mail from your domains. It verifies that messages that your domains send originated from the listed server, which reduces the amount of backscatter that you receive.
Whether you work in the corporate world or not, you probably send and receive multiple emails every day. It’s a fast, convenient way to communicate with peers, colleagues, clients, friends, and family. Of course, email is an extremely popular communication tool for companies—in part because of its ability to document conversations and serve as a searchable repository of information.
In fact, studies suggest that three-fourths of an organization’s intellectual property is contained within email and messaging systems.
To ensure business continuity and information availability, it’s important to protect this data and not just send it to the trash.
cPanel's powerful, integrated email backup and archiving solution helps you pro-actively comply with the many regulatory, legal and business requirements for your data.
The Calendar Delegation interface allows you to delegate access rights for a user’s calendar to other users. This is useful for people needing to manage other people’s calendars or manage resources such as conference rooms.
cPanel's Forwarders interface allows you configure an email address to forward copies of incoming emails to another address. This is useful if, for example, you want to use one email address to check emails addressed to multiple accounts. You can also discard email or send (pipe) email to a program.
You can use this interface to set up a default address (catch-all address) that receives any mail for an invalid email address for the domain. You can also define how the default address handles incoming messages.
You should never give this out or receive emails on this address.
Using this interface, you can create and manage your website's File Transfer Protocol (FTP) accounts. FTP allows you to manage your website's files.
GnuPG encrypts messages using asymmetric key pairs individually generated by GnuPG users. Programs that use GnuPGkeys encrypt outbound messages with a public key. Only the intended recipient, who possesses the private key, can decrypt the message.
This cPanel interface allows you create, store, and manage GnuPG keys.
Greylisting defends email users against spam.
When you enable Greylisting, the mail server will temporarily reject any email from a sender that the server does not recognize. If the email is legitimate, the server that sent it will try to send the email again after a delay. After a sufficient amount of time, the server will accept the email.
You can use this interface to manage Greylisting for each domain on your account.
From this interface, you can configure how the system routes a domain's incoming mail.
For example, you can use this interface to configure the server as a backup mail exchanger, which will hold a domain's mail until the primary mail exchanger is available.
Mailing lists allow you to use a single address to send mail to multiple email addresses.
cPanel includes an interface that allows you to define a name, password, and domain name for the mailing list.
cPanel customers can use the Email Filters interface to create email filters for a specific email address. You can use this feature to avoid spam, redirect mail, or pipe messages to a program.
Spam filters identify and sort or delete unsolicited email, commonly known as spam.
SpamAssassin™, an anti-spam platform with the ability to filter, identify, classify, and block unsolicited bulk emails. In cPanel 76, Apache SpamAssassin's performance has improved that it is now 60% faster when it comes to message scanning which makes email delivery even better.
You can configure the spam filter settings for your account from this interface.
BoxTrapper filters spam from your inbox through challenge-response verification. When an account with BoxTrapper enabled receives an email, BoxTrapper automatically sends a verification email in response.
The sender must complete the verification process before the email can pass to your inbox. If the sender does not verify the email, the verification fails and BoxTrapper never clears the message for delivery. After a period of time, the system automatically deletes the spam.
You can use this BoxTrapper interface to protect your inbox from spam.
For email accounts using Webmail, or when you as the hosting account creates ab email, a certain disk quota is assigned to the account.
From this interface, you view all of your mailboxes and quickly remove old emails or large messages.
This interface displays detailed information about the 1,000 most recent visits to your website. This information helps you to learn about your audience and monitor frequent visitors so that you can adjust your website content to fit their needs. It also helps you locate and fix errors, such as missing pages or broken links.
Raw access logs are text files that contain information about your website visitors and the content on your website that they have accessed.
This cPanel feature allows you to download a zipped version of your access log.
The Webalizer is web log analysis software, which generates web pages of analysis, from access and usage logs.
As a metrics program in cPanel. it produces a variety of charts and graphs about visitors to your site.
You can use this interface to view Webalizer metrics.
The Errors interface in cPanel displays up to 300 of the most recent errors for your site.
This data can help you find broken links, missing files, and other problems.
AWStats is an open source Web analytics reporting tool, suitable for analyzing data from Internet services such as web, streaming media, mail, and FTP servers. AWStats parses and analyzes server log files, producing HTML reports.
The cPanel Awstats interface displays traffic statistics from the Advanced Web Statistics (AWStats) software, which compiles information about how users access your website.
Webalizer produces a variety of charts and graphs about visitors that used the FTP protocol to access your site.
The cPanel Webalizer FTP interface displays Webalizer metrics for FTP.
Here is an interface that displays bandwidth usage information in several sets of graphs.
Each graph contains information about bandwidth usage over a specific period of time.
Analog Stats is a metrics program that produces a simple summary of visitors to your site. The software also presents the data for each month in graphs to show additional categories.
It compiles traffic statistics for your domain, and organizes the data by month so that it is easy for you to manage and interpret.
You can use the Analog Stats interface to view Analog Stats metrics.
We do allow customers to select a statistics program they want to use.
This interface allows you to select metrics programs to process your log files and provide traffic analysis for your account's domains.
The SSH network protocol allows you to connect to another web server over the Internet via a command line interface (CLI). You can use this network protocol to remotely manage your server, configure CGI scripts, and perform other tasks.
Many modern operating systems, such as MacOS® and Linux distributions, include SSH. If you use Microsoft Windows® to connect to your server, you must use an SSH client, such as PuTTY, to log in to your server.
This cPanel interface provides information about how to connect to another web server via the SSH (secure shell) network protocol.
A hotlink occurs when another site embeds content from your site and uses your bandwidth to serve the files.
Using the Hotlink Protection interface, you can prevent people hot-linking to your websites
ModSecurity is an open source, cross platform web application firewall (WAF) developed by Trustwave's SpiderLabs. It has a robust event-based programming language which provides protection from a range of attacks against web applications and allows for HTTP traffic monitoring, logging and real-time analysis. With over 10,000 deployments world-wide, ModSecurity is the most widely deployed WAF in existence.
cPanel has in-built Mod_Security interface that you can use to enable or disable ModSecurity for your domains.
We highly recommend that you enable ModSecurity™ for all of your domains and only disable ModSecurity when troubleshooting ModSecurity-related problems.
Every single website on our hosting platform is hosted over SSL/TLS network.
But you can also purchase SSL certificateseasily if you want to use a private SSL certificate.
You can also view useful information about each domain's SSL certificate, for example:
- The type of certificate that secures the domain.
- When the certificate expires or expired.
- Graphical representation of all certificates for quick reference.
- Options such as View Certificateor Upgrade Certificatefor applicable domains.
- AutoSSL Domain Control Validation (DCV) error messages for applicable domains.
- The last time that AutoSSL ran for applicable domains.
This interface allows you to view, upgrade, or renew your Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates. You can also view useful information about each domain's SSL certificate, for example:
There are things that you would wan to block a malicious IP address or an IP that you deemed so.
When this need occurs, just use the IP Blocker interface to prevent access to your site from a range of IP addresses.
If you enter a fully qualified domain name, this feature will attempt to resolve it to an IP address.
If you enter IP addresses directly into the .htaccessfile, enter them in CIDR format only .
- You can enter IP addresses in any of the following formats:
- Single IP address (for example,
10.5.3.333). - Range (for example,
10.5.3.3-10.5.3.40). - Implied range (for example,
10.5.3.3-40). CIDR format (for example,
10.5.3.3/32).Implied IP address (for example,
10.). 10. as an implied IP address implies 10.*.*.*, where each * represents a positive whole number. If you enter 10., the system blocks access to any IP address that begin with 10.
- Single IP address (for example,
You can use the Leech Protection interface to set a maximum number of logins that can occur within a two-hour time limit.
After you set the maximum number of logins within a two-hour period, the system redirects or suspends users who exceed it.
This cPanel feature can help you manage users who wish to publicly post their passwords to a restricted area of your site.
Two-factor authentication (2FA) is an improved security measure that requires two forms of identification: your password and a generated security code.
With 2FA enabled, an application on your smartphone supplies a code that you must enter with your password to log in. Without your smartphone, you cannot log in.
We suggest the following apps:
- For Android™, iOS®, and Blackberry® —Google Authenticator™
- For Android and iOS —Duo Mobile
- For Windows® Phone —Authenticator
Here is an interface that you can use to manage SSL/TLS keys, certificates, and signing requests, and to enhance your website security.
They are useful for websites that regularly work with sensitive information, such as login credentials and credit card numbers. Encryption protects visitors' communications from malicious users.
This interface allows you to update and manage your cPanel account's security questions. You can also add access IP addresses.
When you attempt to log in to your cPanel account from a verified access IP address, the system will not require you to answer the security questions.
In some business hosting accounts that have white-listed their IP addresses with out security team, this is set as a default policy and will require you to answer these security questions if you attempt to access your cPanel account from an unverified IP address.
This policy helps to keep your server secure.
The SSL/TLS Wizard interface allows you to easily purchase and install SSL certificates for domains on your account. It also lists purchased certificates that an SSL certificate provider has yet to deliver.
RubyGems is a package manager for the Ruby programming language that provides a self-contained format in which developers can distribute Ruby programs and libraries.
You must install a RubyGem before you can use it inside a Ruby program.
Use this cPanel interface to manage collections of functions that allow you to perform tasks in Ruby.
Learning to build a modern web application is daunting. Ruby on Rails, a server-side web application framework written in Ruby under the MIT License makes it much easier and more fun.
It includes everything you need to create database-backed web applications according to the Model-View-Controller (MVC) pattern and build fantastic applications.
The cPanel interface allows you to create and deploy a Ruby on Rails application from your cPanel account.
PHP PEAR packages are software components that developers write in the PHP language.
You must install a PEAR package before you can use it in a PHP program.
The cPanel PHP PEAR Packages interface allows you to search for and add PEAR packages to your website, or view all of your website available PHP packages.
Perl modules are software components in the Perl language. This interface allows you to search for and install Perl modules from the CPAN repository to your website.
You must install a Perl module before you can use it in a Perl program.
Use the Perl Modules interface to manage collections of functions that allow you to perform tasks in Perl.
cPAddon software packages add useful functions to your website. For example, cPAddons can run blogs, bulletin boards, ecommerce software, guest books, and other services.
Using this interface, you can add, manage, upgrade, and remove cPanel Addons (cPAddons).
This interface allows you to deploy Ruby applications with the Phusion Passenger®application server.
A Phusion Passenger server functions as a process manager, reverse proxy, and provides operations tools to its users.
Tweak the way Apache serves responses to enhance the performance of your website.
This cPanel interface allows you to configure your server to automatically compress specified types of content when visitors access that content.
cPanel's MultiPHP Manager interface allows you to easily manage your account's PHP configuration. In this interface, you can manage the PHP version or pool option of any virtual host.
You can use the MultiPHP Manager interface to easily manage the PHP configuration of your accounts.
From this cPanel interface, you can make your changes to the desired directives to the php.ini file for your selected domain or home directory. The system saves changes to the php.ini file, the user.ini file, and your .htaccess file.
- For security purposes, we strongly recommend that you use the cPanel-provided default values.
- The availability of directives depends on your version of PHP. If a directive does not appear in your interface, your version of PHP does not support it.
The system only writes a directive to an
.inior.htaccessfile if that file supports the directive. Yourphp.ini,.user.ini, and.htaccessfiles may not be identical. For more information about which files support which directives, read PHP's documentation.
Secure Shell (SSH) is a protocol for securely connecting to a server and cPanel comes with an in-built Terminal interface that you can use to connect to your account via the command-line.
Sometimes you may want to look up an IP address or trace the route from your computer to the computer that hosts your website.
This cPanel interface contains tools to help you retrieve network information. Can also help you verify that you have properly configured your websites' DNS.
Apache handlers control how your site’s Apache web server software manages certain file types and file extensions. Apache can handle CGI scripts and server-parsed files.
The file extensions for these files include .cgi, .pl, .plx, .ppl, .perl, and .shtml.
If you know what you are doing, you can manually add the handler and extension to configure Apache to handle a new file type with an existing handler.
When a visitor accesses a directory (rather than a page) on your web site, the browser typically displays the directory's index page.
If no index page exists, the browser displays a list of the files in that directory.
Using the cPanel Indexes interface, you can define how the server displays a specific directory's index to a visitor, or to disable index display for a directory.
You can configure the spam filter settings for your account from this interface.
MIME types (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions (MIME) type) relay information to the browser about how to handle file extensions.
MIME types can allow visitors’ browsers to handle new technologies as they become available.
For example, on most servers, the text/html MIME type equates to the .htm, , and .shtml extensions, which causes the browser to interpret those files as HTML files.
You use the MIME Types interface to configure how cPanel relays information to the browser about how to handle specific file extensions.
ClamAV® Virus Scanneris an open source antivirus engine for detecting trojans, viruses, malware & other malicious threats.
Error pages inform visitors about problems when they attempt to access your site. Each problem has its own HTTP status codes(for example, 404) and error page.
Each of web server automatically provides basic error pages, but the Error Pages interface allows you to define custom error pages for any HTTP status code.
Cron is one of the most useful utility that you can find in any Unix-like operating system.
Cron is generally used for running scheduled backups, monitoring disk space, deleting files (for example log files) at predefined times or intervals and a lot more.
For example, you could set a cron job to delete temporary files every week to free up disk space.
These scheduled commands or tasks are known as “Cron Jobs”.
You can use the Cron Jobs interface to automate certain commands or scripts on your site to run at a specific time.
You can use the API Shell interface to run cPanel API functions within the cPanel interface.
It goes without saying that you really need to know what you are doing to make sure that you don't mess your system before using this feature.
API functions changes or may delete data on your server which can cause your server to fail.
Read the documentation for a function call thoroughly before you use it in the API Shell interface, a script, or through any other method.
You can use this cPanel interface to change the location of your system alert notifications on the screen.
cPanel comes with some great looking UI.
Using this interface, you can choose a theme in order to customize the cPanel interface's appearance.
When you set a style as the default style, the system does not automatically apply that style to your account. Make sure that you click on "Apply " to apply that style for your account.
One of cPanel & WHM goals is to make the product one that gives great experience for users worldwide.
cPanel support a total of 29 languages.
- Arabic
- Chinese (Simplified)
- Chinese (Traditional)
- Czech
- Danish
- Dutch (Netherlands)
- Filipino
- Finnish
- French (France)
- German (Germany)
- Greek
- Hebrew
- Hungarian
- Indonesian
- Italian (Italy)
- Japanese
- Korean
- Malay (Malaysia)
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portuguese (Brazil)
- Romanian
- Russian
- Spanish (Spain)
- Swedish
- Thai
- Turkish
- Ukrainian
- Vietnamese
You can choose to use/view the cPanel interface in any of these languages.
When you change the interface's language, the system sets a cookie in your browser that expires after one year. You must perform this step each time that you log in to webmail from a new browser, whenever you delete cookies, and after the cookie expires.
The User Manager interface allows you to manage your cPanel subaccounts.
Subaccounts use the same login and password information for email, FTP, and Web Disk services. The system synchronizes the password of each of the Subaccount's allowed services.
This interface also allows you to merge email, FTP, and Web Disk accounts into a single Subaccount or link existing service accounts to Subaccounts.
Use the Contact Information interface to set your contact information and configure your notification preferences.
This interface includes a setting that notifies you when someone logs in to your account, something useful if you suspect that someone else has your account password.
- cPanel strongly recommend that you do not use an email address that your cPanel account owns. You may fail to receive messages when the server encounters problems. For example, if your mailbox exceeds its quota, you will not receive any new email, including notices.
- To use the Reset Passwordfeature, you must set your contact email address.
- For more information about Pushbullet™ access tokens, visit the Pushbullet website.
A strong password helps you to secure your cPanel account.
Use the Password & Security interface to change your cPanel account's password, and to manage your External Authentication accounts.
The cPanel WordPress Manager interface allows you to manage new or existing WordPress® installations on your cPanel account.
You can use this interface to view your WordPress database name and user, and view and change each installation's automatic updates configuration.
In addition, you can view each installation's basic WordPress configuration and change the WordPress administrator users' passwords.
