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Overview of Web Hosting, cPanel and WHM

This manual contains introduction to basic concepts of web hosting, overview of cPanel and WHM and its

usage. There are 876,812,666 websites (over 876 million web sites) as per findings of current year 2016.

As the trends are changing people are using many different CMS (Content Management Systems) to build

and manage their websites. As per a research 33% percent of the total websites in the world are built on

WordPress which is a CMS. There are two sole and independent requirements for a website a unique

domain name and a web hosting space.

Domain Registration:

Domain registration is the process of registering a domain name, which identifies one or more IP

addresses with a name that is easier to remember and use in URLs to identify particular Web pages. The

person or business that registers domain name is called the domain name registrant i.e. OnlineNIC.

Web Hosting Space:

In order to publish a website online, you need a Web host. The Web host stores all the pages of your

website and makes them available to computers connected to the Internet. The domain name, such as

"nayatel.com" is actually linked to an IP address that points to a specific computer. When somebody

enters your domain name into their browser's address field, the IP address is located and Web site is

loaded from your Web host.

A web host can have anywhere from one to several thousand computers that run Web hosting software,

such as Apache, OS X Server, or Windows Server. Most websites you see on the Web are accessed from a

"shared host," which is a single computer that can host several hundred Web sites. Larger websites often

use a "dedicated host," which is a single machine that hosts only one website. Sites with extremely high

amounts of traffic, such as apple.com or microsoft.com, use several computers to host one site. After

acquiring the proper domain name and web hosting space the related

cPanel & WHM:

cPanel provides an intuitive interface to help website owners manage their sites, while WebHost Manager

(WHM) automates server management tasks for server administrators. Together, they reduce overhead

by simplifying complex tasks and allowing customers to manage their own accounts.

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cPanel simplifies tasks such as:

• Uploading and managing web pages.

• Creating email accounts.

• Installing web-based applications such as blogs, shopping carts, and forums.

• Backing up data.

• Protecting a site’s content and bandwidth.

• Generating and viewing statistics about visitors.

• Reviewing error logs to locate broken links and other problems.

WHM:

WebHost Manager (WHM), our server control panel interface, is designed for server administrators and

web hosts.

WHM makes it easy to:

• Set up and modify customer accounts.

• Receive alerts from your server.

• Install applications and programming language modules.

• Create and apply hosting plans.

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• Block spam.

• Integrate new web technologies

• Brand customers’ cPanel interfaces with custom logos

Root-Level User:

Root-level users have access to every feature in cPanel and WHM. Root-level users also have access to all

accounts on the server. Other users can be granted root level access via the Reseller Center in the WHM

interface. This is useful for allowing technical staff full access to cPanel and WHM, without having to share

a single root password.

Website Owner (cPanel User)

A website owner only has access to the cPanel interface. They can manage all aspects of their account

and domains, but do not have any access to the WHM interface. The website owner can also create FTP

sub-users and Mail sub-users, but cannot create additional cPanel hosting accounts.

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Comprehensive File Management:

Perhaps the most important part of managing a website is being able to upload and edit web content.

Website owners can upload files using FTP, FTPS, SFTP, Web Disk (our implementation of DAV), and our

built-in File Managers. Often, a website owner may hire a professional web designer to build a site. With

cPanel, a website owner can easily set up an additional FTP account for a contractor. This allows

contractors access to the website without knowing the cPanel password.

Website Editing:

File Manager has an integrated visual (WYSIWYG) HTML editor to assist novice website owners in creating

and customizing their websites. File Manager also includes a code editor that allows programmers to

quickly modify troublesome code.

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Backups:

Comprehensive file management would be incomplete without backups. cPanel comes with a wizard to

assist users with creating backups of their account. The backup interface is easily accessible. From there,

a user can easily select which areas of a site to back up or download.

Statistics and Logs:

Building a website is the first step; next, the site owner needs to make the site easy to find. cPanel

provides several tool for monitoring how visitors discover a site, and where those visitors are located.

Easy-to-read graphs let a website owner spot trends; from there, one can modify his/her site accordingly

Search engine optimization (SEO) professionals may also wish to download raw logs to insert into their

own lo interpretation programs. These logs can be viewed and downloaded via the cPanel interface or

FTP. Web developers will be glad to know that they can easily access Apache™ error logs via the cPanel

interface in real time additionally, developers can monitor the bandwidth and browsers used to access

the site. This helps website owners mark informed decisions about further website optimization.

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Comprehensive Email Management:

Email is a critical function of most contemporary websites. cPanel allows website owners to create many

email account and email forwarders. An email forwarder functions as an automatic relay from one

address to another. This can be useful if, for example, you wish to receive company email at a personal

email address If a website owner needs to create many email addresses or forwarders at once, he can put

them into a Microsoft® Excel spreadsheet or CSV file and use the Import Addresses/Forwarders feature to

create those email addresses. All email accounts that are not forwarders can be accessed via the common

mail protocols: IMAP and POP, their more secure and encrypted siblings IMAPS and POP3s, and a

webmail interface. To assist with setting up an email client, cPanel supports automatic configuration of

select clients. A website owner simply clicks on a link and opens a file, and the mail client is automatically

configured. For hosting accounts with multiple domains, domain forwarders can be handy. They forward

all email from one domain to a corresponding address on another domain. For example, setting up a

domain forwarder for example.net to example.com would result in mail addressed to user@example.net

being sent to user@example.com.

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DNS Management:

cPanel allows website owners to manage their own DNS zones. This is useful for web design experts that

need the ability to modify their DNS. For example, some remote mail hosting solutions require the

creation of a custom DNS zone for accessing their services.

Basic Troubleshooting:

The very first step is to check the name servers and DNS records of website by using utility like

“nslookup” or “dig”. Check if the domain is properly being resolved to the server’s IP. In case

name servers are not resolving kindly check the domain expiry date using website such as who.is.

Find the kind of error returned by the website. If it’s a 404 error page, it means the website is

unavailable. If it’s a 500 page, it’s a problem with your program failing to start and serve the page.

Software like Wordpress or drupal will show you on the page if the mysql database is

misconfigured.

Check if the DNS is properly configured and if there’s any potential problems. If you have a server

with a dedicated IP, try to access the server by using the IP address, by typing it in your browser

bar. One frequent cause of problems is outdated domain names, in the case where webmasters

forgot to renew it. Solution: keep a calendar with alerts 7 days before the domain expires.

Check logs in error logs section under cPanel. In most cases the errors are descriptive and

narrows down the possible issues.

In case a data base related error is being observed you are required to properly configure the

connection of data base in case of Word Press wp_config.php file is used to properly configure

the data base user and password for that user.