How does cpanel-based web site hosting operate?

For your info, it's good to know that most of the cPanel web page hosting offerings on the present-day webspace hosting marketplace are supplied by a quite insignificant marketing segment (when it comes to yearly money flow) called hosting reseller. Reseller web space hosting is a type of a small business niche, which furnishes an enormous amount of different web hosting brand names, yet providing precisely the same services: mainly cPanel web hosting solutions. This is bad news for everybody. Why? Due to the fact that at least ninety eight percent of the web page hosting offers on the entire website hosting market supply exactly the same service: cPanel. There's no diversity at all. Even the cPanel site hosting prices are alike. Very similar. Leaving for those who need a top web hosting service virtually no other webspace hosting platform/Control Panel choice. Thus, there is simply one fact: out of more than two hundred thousand website hosting trademarks in the world, the non-cPanel based ones are less than 2 percent! Less than two percent, mind that one...

Two hundred thousand "site hosting corporations", all cPanel-based, yet diversely labeled

The website hosting "variety" and the website hosting "offers" Google reveals to us come down to merely one and the very same solution: cPanel. Under 100's of 1000's of different web site hosting trademarked names. Imagine you are just an ordinary chap who's not very familiar with (as the majority of us) with the site development processes and the web hosting platforms, which actually power the individual domain names and websites . Are you ready to make your hosting choice? Is there any website hosting variant you can settle on? Of course there is, now there are more than two hundred thousand hosting corporations out there. Officially. Then where is the difficulty? Here's where: more than 98% of these 200k+ different web hosting brands all over the world will give you exactly the same cPanel site hosting CP and platform, labeled in a different way, with absolutely the same price tags! WOW! That's how vast the variety on the current web site hosting marketplace is... Full stop.

The web site hosting LOTTO we are all part of

Simple math shows that to run into a non-cPanel based web hosting vendor is a colossal stroke of fortune. There is a less than one in 50 chance that a thing like that will occur! Less than 1 in fifty...

The strong and weak points of the cPanel-based site hosting solution

Let's not be pitiless with cPanel. At least, in the years 2001-2004 cPanel was trendy and perhaps fulfilled most web page hosting business demands. To cut a long story short, cPanel can do the job for you if you have just one single domain to host. But, if you have more domains...

Weak Side No.1: A moronic domain name folder arrangement

If you have two or more domain names, however, be extra watchful not to remove entirely the add-on ones (that's how cPanel will dub each new hosted domain, which is not the default one: an add-on domain). The files of the add-on domain names are very simple to erase on the web server, since they all are located into the root folder of the default domain name, which is the very famous public_html folder. Each add-on domain name is a folder situated inside the folder of the default domain. Like a sub-folder. Next time try not to delete the files of the add-on domains, please. Verify for yourself how fabulous cPanel's domain folder arrangement is:

public_html (here my-default-domain.com is situated)
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)
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 name)

Are you growing confused? We definitely are!

Problem Number Two: The very same email folder setup

The e-mail folder arrangement on the server is absolutely the same as that of the domains... Repeating the same error twice?!? The sysadmin guys strongly increase their faith in God when coping with the e-mail folders on the email server, praying not to fuck things up too harshly.

Negative Sign No.3: A sheer shortage of domain name management GUIs

Do we need to refer to the entire lack of a contemporary domain name management menu - a place where you can: register/migrate/renew/park or manage domain names, change domains' Whois details, shield the Whois details, alter/set up nameservers (DNS) and Domain Name System resource records? cPanel does not contain such a "contemporary" interface at all. That's a gigantic shortcoming. An unforgivable one, we would like to point out...

Downside Number Four: Multiple login places (minimum two, maximum three)

What about the demand for an extra login to make use of the billing transaction, domain name and technical support administration platform? That's aside from the cPanel user account login credentials you've been already supplied by the cPanel-based webspace hosting distributor. Occasionally, depending on the invoice transaction tool (especially intended for cPanel only) the cPanel web hosting vendor is using, the avid users can end up with 2 additional login places (1: the billing transaction/domain administration platform; 2: the ticket support section), winding up with a total of three login locations (counting cPanel).

Weak Point No.5: More than a hundred and twenty web hosting CP sections to grasp... briskly

cPanel presents for your consideration 120+ areas inside the webspace hosting CP. It's a fabulous idea to learn each of them. And you'd better memorize them fast... That's inordinately impudent on cPanel's side.

With all due appreciation, we have a rhetorical question for all cPanel web site hosting vendors:

As far as we are informed, it's not the year 2001, is it? Mark that one too...