Archive for the ‘ cPanel tutorials ’ Category

What is CPanel?

Tuesday, July 27th, 2010

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 Linux, 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.

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 Linux, CentOS, and FreeBSD, there is also a beta version available for Windows Server 2008 which has not been released yet.

Posted in cPanel tutorials, Web information | No Comments »

cPanel Tutorial: Files – File Permissions

Sunday, November 8th, 2009

All files on UNIX (including Linux and other UNIX variants) machines have access permissions. In this way the operating system knows how to deal with requests to access the files. There are three types of access:

Read – Denoted as r, files with read access can be displayed to the user.
Write – Denoted as w, files with write access can be modified by the user.
Execute – Denoted as x, files with execute access can be executed as programs by the user.
Access types are set for three types of user group:
User – The owner of the file.
Group – Other files which are in the same folder or group.
World – Everyone else.
The web server needs to be able to read your web pages in order to be able to display them in a browser. The following permissions need to be set in order for your web site to function properly.
All HTML files and images need to be readable by others. The value for this is 644 (readable by User, Group and World, and writable by User). It is set automatically when you upload files.
All folders need to be executable by others. The value for this is 755 (readable by User, Group and World, writable by User, executable by User, Group and World). It is set automatically when you create a folder.
All CGI files (all files in the cgi-bin folder) need to be executable by other. The value for this is 755 (readable by User, Group, and World, writable by User, executable by User, Group, and World). It is not set automatically when you upload files. You need to change file permissions manually.
It is important that none of your files or folders is writable by anyone else. Any file or folder which is writable by others can be erased by them.
To change file or folder permissions:
Step 1: Open your File Manager and navigate to the file or folder that you need to change.
Step 2: Click on the name of the file or folder.
Step 3: Click on the Change Permissions link in the top menu of the File Manager page.
Step 4: Click on as many check boxes as you require to create the right permission. The permission numbers underneath the check boxes will update automatically.
Step 5: Click on the Change Permissions button when you are ready. The new permission level is saved and the display updated to show the modified file.

All files on UNIX (including Linux and other UNIX variants) machines have access permissions. In this way the operating system knows how to deal with requests to access the files. There are three types of access:

  • Read – Denoted as r, files with read access can be displayed to the user.
  • Write – Denoted as w, files with write access can be modified by the user.
  • Execute – Denoted as x, files with execute access can be executed as programs by the user.

Access types are set for three types of user group:

  • User – The owner of the file.
  • Group – Other files which are in the same folder or group.
  • World – Everyone else.

The web server needs to be able to read your web pages in order to be able to display them in a browser. The following permissions need to be set in order for your web site to function properly.

All HTML files and images need to be readable by others. The value for this is 644 (readable by User, Group and World, and writable by User). It is set automatically when you upload files.

All folders need to be executable by others. The value for this is 755 (readable by User, Group and World, writable by User, executable by User, Group and World). It is set automatically when you create a folder.

All CGI files (all files in the cgi-bin folder) need to be executable by other. The value for this is 755 (readable by User, Group, and World, writable by User, executable by User, Group, and World). It is not set automatically when you upload files. You need to change file permissions manually.

It is important that none of your files or folders is writable by anyone else. Any file or folder which is writable by others can be erased by them.

If you wish to prevent the world / viewer / end user  form viewing your folders such as images, CSS,  set the permission to 751.

To change file or folder permissions:

Step 1: Open your File Manager and navigate to the file or folder that you need to change.

Step 2: Click on the name of the file or folder.

Step 3: Click on the Change Permissions link in the top menu of the File Manager page.

Step 4: Click on as many check boxes as you require to create the right permission. The permission numbers underneath the check boxes will update automatically.

Step 5: Click on the Change Permissions button when you are ready. The new permission level is saved and the display updated to show the modified file.

cPanel file permission

cPanel file permission


Posted in cPanel tutorials | Comments Off