What is CPanel?
cPanel (control Panel) is a graphical web-based control panel, designed to simplify administration of websites. cPanel handles aspects of website administration in its interface. The software is distributed by cPanel Inc. and is proprietary, it is designed for use by commercial web hosting services and requires monthly license fees.
cPanel runs on Redhat Enterprise unix, CentOS, and FreeBSD, there is also a beta version available for Windows Server 2008 which has not been released yet.
HISTORY
cPanel was originally designed as the control panel for Speed Hosting, a now defunct web hosting company. The original author of cPanel, J. Nick Koston had a stake in Speed Hosting. Web King quickly began using cPanel after their merger with Speed Hosting. After Speed Hosting and Webking merged, the new company moved their servers to Virtual Development Inc. (VDI), a now-defunct hosting facility. Following an agreement between J. Nick Koston and VDI, cPanel was only available to customers hosted directly at VDI. At the time there was little competition in the control panel market with the main choices being VDI and Alabanza. cPanel 3 was released in 1999; its main features over cpanel 2 were an automatic upgrade and the Web Host Manager.
cPanel 3 tended to be buggy and did not have a good user interface. The interface improved when Carlos Rego of WizardsHosting made what became the default theme of cPanel. Eventually due to internal problems between VDI and J. Nick Koston, cPanel split into two separate programs called cPanel and WebPanel. WebPanel was the version run by VDI. Without the lead programmer, VDI was not able to continue any work on cPanel and eventually stopped supporting it completely. J. Nick Koston kept working on cPanel while also working at BurstNET. Eventually Nick left BurstNET on good terms to focus fully on cPanel. cPanel has been updated and improved over the years. It is now a stable and reliable control panel.
FEATURES
To the client, cPanel provides front-ends for a number of common operations, including the management of PGP keys, crontab tasks, mail and FTP accounts, and mailing lists. Several add-ons exist for an additional fee, the most notable being Fantastico, a bundle of scripts which automate the installation of, but not the update of, web applications such as SMF, phpBB, Drupal, Joomla!, TikiWiki CMS/Groupware, Moodle and over 50 others.
Unlike some other web hosting control panels, cPanel manages some software packages separately from the underlying operating system, applying upgrades to Apache, PHP, MySQL, and related software packages automatically. This ensures that these packages are kept up-to-date and compatible with cPanel, but has become a cause for consternation to some, as it becomes more difficult to install newer versions of these packages.
WHM (WEB HOST MANAGER)
WebHost Manager (WHM) is a web-based tool used by server administrators and resellers to manage hosting accounts on a web server. WHM listens on ports 2086 and 2087 by default. As well as being accessible by the root admin, WHM is also accessible to users with reseller privileges. Reseller users of cPanel have a smaller set of features than the root user, generally limited by the server administrator, to features which they determine will affect their customers' accounts rather than the server as a whole. From WHM, the server administrator can perform maintenance operations such as compile Apache and upgrade RPMs installed on the system
cPanel and WebHost Manager (WHM) combine to form a fully featured web hosting control panel system. cPanel and WHM allow you to provide an interface for both your customers and your staff.
cPanel and WHM brings the most extensive update ever to the cPanel and WHM software package. With upgrades in nearly every section of the product, this version enhances the feature packed, security minded and highly stable platform for web hosting.
cPanel and WHM is the premier choice for web hosting administration automation. With tools to keep servers secure, provision customer accounts, transfer accounts from server to server, deploy applications (blogs, cms, etc), and much much more, your web hosting operation will jump to light speed with cPanel and WHM.
Read more about CPanel on Wikipedia
STABILITY
cPanel offers improved stability for your hosting operations. With a number of backend improvements along with some new features, CPanel stuff have worked extensively on ensuring and improving the stability of the product.
EASYAPACHE 3
The new Apache build and configuration system, EasyApache 3, offers unmatched stability for the compilation and configuration of Apache. EasyApache 3 not only provides a simple interface to build and configure Apache but a whole system of checks and balances to keep Apache running. During the build and configuration phases, multiple test are run against the build and configuration to ensure Apache will remain up after any changes. If the new build or configuration would take Apache down, EasyApache 3 will roll back the changes to ensure you have a working Apache build and notify us of the problem.
SERVICE MONITORING AND RESTARTS
As uptime is of the upmost importance in hosting, cPanel and WHM offer service monitoring and automatic restarts for major services on your server (Apache, MySQL, IMAP, etc). Cpanel also offers the ability to add in monitoring and restarts for custom services.
For more information, see slides 46-48 of this presentation (PDF slides).
IMPROVED ACCOUNT LEVEL ALERTS
Services such as email and the ability to upload files are often as important as the visibility of a site. cPanel has added improved features to notify administrators and account owners of disk usage, email account quota information, and other statistics. With customizable warning levels, you'll be sure that your customers do not run out of resources without a lot of warning.
BACKEND ENHANCEMENTS
Numerous backend enhancements focused on stability have taken place for cPanel. These include better storage of account data including more redundancy, better separation of configuration data from services, lower memory footprints for many cPanel processes and many other backend changes aimed at enhancing the stability of the product.
Cpanel - monitoring and restarts for custom services
SECURITY
cPanel offers greatly enhanced security through a combination of strengthened backend code, and many new utilities which allow you to provide fine grained security policies for your server. These numerous enhancements make it extremely easy to keep your servers locked down tight.
PUBLIC KEY AUTHENTICATION
Public Key Authentication allows your users to use a public and private key pair to access your server for SSH connections and Account Transfers. The use of public key authentication allows you to disable password authentication. This means that only those users that have access to a private key will be able to connect to your server, thereby enhancing your authentication security greatly.
CPHULK BRUTE FORCE PROTECTION
cPanel marks the debut for the much anticipated cPHulk Protection system. cPHulk protects your vital services by disabling authentication to those services after a brute force attack is detected. It protects: cPanel, WHM, SSH, FTP, IMAP, and POP3 from brute force authentication attacks. cPHulk will remain transparent to the attacker whose authentication attempts will feel normal, even while authentication is disabled. Thus, you can get substantial information about the attack. You can even customize authentication thresholds and lock out times!
HOST ACCESS CONTROL
The best security policy is to not offer a connection to a service. However, that is not always realistic. Understanding that same principle, you can use the new Host Access Control feature to only provide access to a specific set of IP addresses to the services on your server, or to block access from specific IP addresses. With a simple to use interface, it is easy to prevent unwanted access to the services on your server.
ENHANCED XSS PROTECTION
Substantial backend changes have been made to further protect cPanel and WHM users from cross-site scripting. Many behind the scenes functions have been added to render such nuisances harmless.
SERVER ADMINISTRATOR LOGIN
From WHM, you can provision accounts, tweak security settings, install addon software, and much much more. This interface provides access to the heart of the cPanel and WHM package and allows a Server Administrator to simply configure a few options and be on their way to hosting web sites.
RESELLER LOGIN
Resellers also get limited (configurable) access to WHM to create new domain owner accounts, backup accounts, and access to many other tools as determined by the Server Administrator.
DOMAIN OWNER LOGIN
Within cPanel, a domain owner has all the tools they need to create an impressive web presence. They can add mail accounts, access their files, use website builders, add a blog to their site, and a whole lot more. With cPanel, your web hosting clients have access to a huge variety of hosting features that can put your hosting business, and their web site, on the map!
MAIL USER LOGIN
Every person who has a mail account on a cPanel domain has access to webmail, spam filtering, message filter, and many more settings so they can get a great mail experience.
