CPanel is an award-winning control panel that is very popular among the web development commnuity including webmasters and small business owners alike. The control panel can be used on the Unix operating system as well as Linux which differs from Unix only in that it is open-source. With its user-friendly interface, CPanel makes the whole task of managing a website a breeze. It is the control panel of choice by a great majority of web hosting companies.

The competitor to CPanel is vDeck, which is also used by many companies, however it is not as widespread as CPanel. Either of these control panels can be purchased by a web hosting provider and then the cost is recovered by including it in the web hosting plans sold to many customers. The latest version of CPanel is CPanel®11 which is a great improvement over its predecessor CPanel®10. It offers a host of management features to the end-user via simple menus such as Databases, Preferences, Mail, Files, Logs, Security, Domains, Software/Services, Advanced, and SEO Tools.

The MySQL Databases option included within the Database menu can be used to create new MySQL databases and delete existing ones. New users can be created as well as existing users can be added to a database. There is also the MySQL Database Wizard which makes the above mentioned process even easy. The phpMyAdmin is again a very handy tool that can be used not only to view the structure of the databases residing on your server but also to backup and restore one or more databases. Furthermore, the Remote MySQL option allows you to add a list of external domain names that you want to be able to access your MySQL databases.

The Preferences menu includes the Getting Started Wizard, Video Tutorials, a Change Password option, along with a few other useful options. The Mail menu allows you to create new email accounts on your server or delete existing ones using the Email Accounts option. You can also view the emails in any of your email accounts using the Webmail option, which allows you to access email using a variety of Webmail interfaces such as Horde, SquirrelMail, RoundCube etc. Plus you can also configure an email client installed on your PC such as Microsoft Outlook using the Configure Mail Client option. The Mail menu also includes Spam Assassin, a state-of-the-art technology for protecting your email accounts from spammers. Autoresponders can be used to reply to any incoming emails, plus there is a multitude of other options available within the Mail menu.

The Files menu enables you to manage the files stored on your web server without using an external FTP client such as CuteFTP Pro etc. There is also the Backup Wizard that you can use to backup some or all of your website files. You can create additional FTP accounts using the FTP Accounts option, plus you can also setup Anonymous FTP for your coworkers. The Logs menu is also very detailed and allows you to view the statistics for your site using a variety of options. Using the Security menu, you can secure the folders on your server by means of the Password Protect Directories option. Plus there is also the Hotlink Protection option that can help you save the precious bandwidth allocated to your site by your web host.

The Domains menu can be used to add subdomains to your site which can be very useful in your search engine optimization endeavours. If your web hosting provider supports the hosting of more than one domain name on a single hosting account, you can use the provided Addon Domains option to setup new domains on your account. There is also the Redirects option which can be used to redirect old URLs on your site to new ones. The Software/Services menu may have a variety of modules depending on the hosting company. Usually, the Fantastico De Luxe is included by all web hosts that can be used to install forums, polls, contact forms etc on your site. To conclude with, CPanel is an excellent control panel with plenty of functionality, which is the reason why it has become so popular.