vDeck –A Complex Yet Simple to Use Control Panel

A good control panel is expected to handle various complex tasks on a regular basis, however the complexity of these tasks is supposed to be handled with ease. Functionality combined with simplicity is what makes a control panel effective. Without these key attributes the control panel is simply a glorified user interface with little to no value. One control panel that embodies these characteristics perfectly is vDeck. vDeck is a versatile control panel solution that brings together the best of both worlds; simplicity and functionality.

Marketing Your Website With vDeck

As the popularity of this control panel has continued to rise, many of its users are saying that it may replace cPanel as the most popular control panel within the next 5 years. While this may or may not be true, it certainly seems that it is just as capable as cPanel.  Unlike cPanel however, vDeck focuses equally on the marketing aspect of website management, as well as the administrative aspect. Users have access to a variety of analytical traffic tools that aid in their SEO efforts. vDeck also makes it simple to install third party social bookmarking and video posting applications that increase the popularity of your website.

A Solution for All Sizes

Although its competitor cPanel is known primarily as a solution for small businesses, vDeck is different in that it can accommodate the needs of virtually any size business, including large corporations.  vDeck is also an optimal solution for a variety of  server environments, including virtual, private, dedicated and shared hosting environments. Whether you own a small retail shop, or an online empire, vDeck can accommodate your needs. In fact, it’s multi-tiered administrative interface makes it easy to control multiple domains within a singular user-friendly interface. Users can log in and out of their website’s with ease, without every exiting the vDeck control panel.

vDeck’s Expandability

The power of vDeck is literally unlimited, as it is a fully expandable and customizable control panel.  You can add third party applications that enhance the productivity of your website in a variety of ways. You can even hire a programmer to create a program that is specifically designed to meet your needs, as the software is compatible with almost every programming language. vDecks expandability make it a solution that is capable of handling a plethora of complex tasks with ease. Users can create custom cron jobs that automatically handle daily work such as uploading content, posting to site blog’s, changing themes and any other administrative task you can imagine.

Learning to Use vDeck

Learnign to use vDeck is also extremely simple, as there is a wealth of documented informaiton on the software that can be accessed directly from the control panel. On top of the provided information, users can find video tutorials online, and can chat with other vDeck users in the vDeck help forums. With all of the resources available for vDeck, the learning curve for vDeck is nearly non-existent. In fact, many users are able to use the software without ever reading a single tutorial.

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Feb 08, 2010 : Control Panels No responses yet

Minimizing Downtime During Web Hosting Moves With Plesk

Changing your web hosting provider can be quite a hassle, especially if you have to learn how to use a new control panel in the process. In fact, learning how to use the control panel, often accounts for most of the time spent during the familiarization process that you encounter with every new web host. To minimize the amount of changes and adaptations you’ll need to make, you should try to keep the transition as smooth as possible by minimizing the amount new things you’ll need to learn with you new web host. Luckily for those with the Plesk control panel , they can take their control panel with them whenever they do decide to switch web hosting providers, as there are many web hosts that offer Plesk as their default solution. If both your new and old web host offers Plesk as the primary control panel solution then you’re in luck, as you are about to learn how tom minimize your sites down time during the move using Plesk.

Switching Servers

A common problem that many webmasters have when changing servers is data loss during transfer. This happens because the TTL (Time to Live) is not instant, and therefore some of the data is lost in transition, or at the very least delayed. To prevent this you’ll need to change a few settings at least 24 hours before the relocation of your website. Login to Plesk in your current hosting account and click on Domains. Locate the domain that you’re about to move and click on the DNS settings.  Then select the SOA record. You’ll need to change the Default TTL to 15 minutes or 900 secs. Once you’ve done this click on SET to finish the process. Now any changes that take place will be final within 15 minutes of the change, thereby minimizing downtime and data loss.

Restoring Your Site’s Backup

After about a day, login into the Plesk admin of your new domain and locate the Backup Manager.   Then click on Personal FTP repository settings.  Enter the required information, and type in httpdocs in the directory for backups field. Finally click on OK to activate the change.

Now go back to the main backup manager module, and click on backup. Create a backup name, then click on Personal FTP repository. Click on Domain configuration and content then select Backup. Depending on the size of your website, the backup process should finish within 5 minutes for a small website, to one day for a tremendously large website. The connection speed will also cause time variations as well.  Once the back up is made, you may easily download it through the backup module.

Finalizing the Process

Now you’ll need to contact the new host’s support company and let them know that you need to restore the backup of your old website. Give them the name of the directory, in this case httpdocs. You can also ask them for assistance in restoring your domain using the backup file, and they should be able to walk you through the rest of the process with ease. Once you’ve contacted the hosting company, there re literally 2-3 steps left until you have your entire site running exactly the same as it was prior to the web hosting move.

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Jan 28, 2010 : cPanel Tutorials No responses yet

DirectAdmin: A Simpler Solution?

DirectAdmin has gained a lot of popularity in the recent years due to it’s simplicity. In fact, many users say it is the easiest control panel to use, especially when compared to even more popular solutions such as Plesk and cPanel. Although it is not as feature-packed as cPanel, it contains all of the basic functions needed to run your website and maintain your server. Even with the few features that it lacks, it is seen as one of the best solutions for novice webmasters because of it’s exceptionally simple navigational interface. Most people that use DirectAdmin have VPS hosting (Virtual Private Server). With VPS hosting the webmaster has access to a server that has capabilities that are similar to a dedicated server, yet it is still shared with other webmasters. Therefore VPS hosting is often viewed as a middle ground between dedicated and shared hosting. Many people use a combination of VPS hosting and DirectAdmin because it gives them the best of both world’s – dedicated and shared hosting.

Key Features

DirectAdmin is renowned as one of the simplest control panels to use, however this simplicity does not sacrifice it’s functionality. Aside from easy navigation, it also offers stability, speed and efficiency. DirectAdmin’s reliability stems from it’s ability to automatically recover from errors that cause system crashes. Perhaps most impressive is that even with all of these benefits, DirectAdmin is still half the price of cPanel and other similar control panels!

DirectAdmin also supports in-depth user administration. The webmaster has the ability to setup and administrate the accounts of new administrators/users and even has the rights to delegate server space to resellers. DirectAdmin administrators can even setup multiple packages for resellers that follow a predesignated set of rules. Webmasters can also control IP addresses by using the IP menu that is included in the control panel.

Reselling Benefits

DirectAdmin also serves many benefits to the reseller as well.  Resellers have the power to create, modify or delete accounts.  Similar to a website administrator, the reseller can select from predefined hosting packages and distribute them to clients.  They can also view the resource usages of their clients to monitor bandwidth and storage.  DirectAdmin allows resellers to interact with clients via a built-in support ticket system.  It also includes a feature that enables the creation of personalized name servers for the benefit of end-users.

Account Creation in DirectAdmin

Domain owners can also use the administrative interface of DirectAdmin to set up and manage multiple POP3 email accounts. You can also set up FTP accounts and access a DNS menu that provides complete control. Domain owners can also view website statistics through DirectAdmin, to improve their traffic techniques. You’ll also have access to tools that enhance your site designing abilities and an easy backup utility that let’s you backup your entire site with a few clicks.

In the end, DirectAdmin is a worthy opponent to cPanel and Plesk, in fact it is a superior solution for those using the VPS hosting environment.

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Jan 26, 2010 : Control Panels No responses yet

How to Setup a Cron Job in cPanel

Setting up a cron job will allow you to run certain commands at scheduled times.  For example, you could set a cron job to create a backup of your website every week, or you could set a cron job to delete certain file types every week to save disk space. Cron jobs are useful for webmasters who have a busy schedule and would like to have daily tasks carried out automatically. There are many commands available online for cron jobs, and finding a cron job command list for your control panel should be your first step in deciding what kind of cron jobs would suit your needs.

You may think you have no need for a cron job, but once you’ve reviewed the list of available commands, you may reconsider this decision. Each command tells the control panel to do a certain task, and the prevalence of each command execution can be adjusted within the cron job manager. Users can choose to execute the command as little as once a month, or as often as once a day.

Whatever the reason, this tutorial will help you set up a cron job. In this tutorial we will discuss how to setup a cron job using the standard cron manager module in cPanel. There is a more advanced cron manager that can be used, but we will save that for another tutorial. Novice users should find this tutorial very helpful.

Setting a Cron Job in Standard Mode

1. First you’ll need to access the Cron Jobs Menu in cPanel. To do this, click on the Cron jobs icon found on the main screen of the cPanel interface.

2. Then select Standard to access the Standard Cron Manager, and type in the email address that you would like the cron output to be sent to in the corresponding field.

3. Now type in the command code that you would like the cron job to run in the blank bar next to where it says Command to run. Make sure the command you enter is a valid command. If you are unsure about what kind of commands can be entered, try searching online for cPanel cron job commands.

4. Choose how often you would like the command to be executed by checking an option in all of the boxes.

5. To finish setting up the cron job, select Save Crontab to save your changes.

How to Delete the Cron Job

When you no longer need the cron job, you can delete it to prevent the task from being executed regularly. Follow the steps below to delete the cron job in standard mode.

1. Once again you’ll need to access the Cron Jobs Menu, then select the cron job icon found on the main cPanel interface.

2. Then select Standard to open the Standard Cron Manager.

3. Finally, to delete the cron job, Click the Delete button located next to the cron job you would like to delete.

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Dec 30, 2009 : cPanel Tutorials No responses yet

4 Most Influential Control Panels

A good control panel can greatly increase the productivity of your online business. Control panels give webmasters control over all of the administrative functions that are crucial in every day server management. Without an easy-to-use, yet effective control panel, every webmaster would need a degree in internet technology just to manage their server effectively! Of course nay control panel would be better than not having one at all, however if you are serious about your online business, then you’ll want the very best. Below are 4 control panels that simply cannot be ignored.

cPanel

The first name that comes to mind when someone says “control panel” is cPanel.  Cpanel is by far the  most widely used control panel around. The simplicity of cpanel, combined with it’s abundance of expandable features make it an award winning software that has all but cornered it’s market. The greatest benefit involved with cPanel often arises from the popularity of the control panel itself. Since there are so many fellow cPanel users, there is a plethora of user tutorials available online, including video tutorials. There are also community forums full of expert cPanel users willing to help the novice user learn their way around the software. With all of the information available regarding cPanel, it is easy to resolve any issues of confusion which may arise during the learning process.

Plesk

Next on the list of consideration is Plesk. In fact, there are a few areas that Plesk excels in when compared to cPanel, such as clustering support. If you use cloud or clustered hosting, then Plesk would definitely be a more suitable option for you. Plesk also includes a more comprehensive site builder than cPanel.  Of course, with these added benefits comes a slightly steeper learning curve. If you are a novice webmaster then Plesk may not be your best option, however if you are somewhat familiar with internet technology then you shouldn’t have a problem learning the ins and outs of Plesk within a few short hours.

DirectAdmin

DirectAdmin is probably the simplest control panel to master, and it also uses the least amount of resources on your computer. It may have less features than the two control panels listed above, but since the developers have time to focus solely on a few features, it consequentially has less bugs and is more stable than cPanel.  DirectAdmin is generally used by hosts on a budget, because of it’s low cost and stability.

Hsphere

At one point Hsphere was at the top of the control panel market, offering features that were exclusive to the software. However, as time passed the other control panels caught up and have long since surpassed Hsphere in both functionality and user-friendliness. In fact, Hsphere is the most difficult control panel to use. In fact the only reason why it made the list is because of the contributions it made towards the control panel market early on.  Even though Hsphere is a very capable control panel, it should not be used by novice users, and even moderately advanced webmasters will experience somewhat of a learning curve with this software.

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Dec 28, 2009 : Control Panels No responses yet