Web Hosting Rating

A Look Under The Hood: What’s in Your Control Panel?

When it comes to evaluating web hosting providers, the control panel is one feature you definitely want to keep your eye on.  After all, this is where you will spend the majority of your time as webmaster.  From the control panel you can add domains, create email accounts, view your website statistics and upload files.  In most cases, you can even access the tool that allows you to actually build your site.  The control panel is essentially the centralized desk for your web hosting account.  You can open up one drawer of databases and then store your documents in the filing cabinet directly from a centralized interface.  When considering the time you will invest in this software, the program you choose becomes even more important.

What are Your Options?

The most popular control panels today are third-party applications.  The industry leading cPanel and SWsoft’s Plesk are two programs you will find offered in most web hosting packages.  The web host plays a vital role in the selection process as they pretty much dictate the control panel you will be using.  The good thing is you don’t have to worry about any complex server installations and configuring, as the software comes integrated into your account.  After purchasing a web hosting subscription, the provider supplies you with a user name and password so that you may login and access your control panel.

What users enjoy most about cPanel is its user-friendliness and ease of use.  Next comes all the great features.  With cPanel you get a variety of web-based mail solutions and help to keep spam out of your inbox, thanks to applications such as BoxTrapper and Spam Assassin.  You can also view your monthly bandwidth and disk storage usage, upload files with FTP, block IP addresses, set up cron jobs and much more.  One of cPanel’s greatest features is Fantastico, a built-in third-party application that allows you to install several add-on programs.  In a few easy clicks you can incorporate programs such as WordPress, B2Evolution, Cube Cart and the popular Joomla CMS.  As a beginner, cPanel is one control panel you can’t go wrong with.

Plesk is designed to simplify the process of website administration.  This control panel is ideal for business owners as it comes with a nice selection of themes and even allows you to brand the software with your own custom designs.  Aside from the basics, Plesk offers a single-sign on feature that lets you manage all of your applications with a single set of login credentials.  Also included is an easy to use site builder and Communigate Pro support, an add-on designed for administering real-time internet communications such as instant messaging and VoIP calls.  Plesk comes integrated with its own e-commerce solution in MIVA Merchant, a module that provides all the tools needed to create an online store.

Keep Your Options Open

Although cPanel and Plesk are major players on the control panel market, there are other options out there as well.  You will find that an increasing number of web hosting companies are now offering their own proprietary control panels, created in-house by their developers.  The key is finding one able to suit your personal needs in terms of power, features and ease of use.

cPanel Tutorial: Setting up Spam Assassin

Spam has become as common as the internet itself.  This annoying epidemic has resulted in the development of various tools to combat the issue from both the client and server side.  In this tutorial we will discuss the powerful Spam Assassin spam filter and how it can be set up in cPanel.

Description

Spam Assassin is one of the most efficient spam-fighting tools on the market, available with almost any hosting plan offering cPanel.  By default, this utility is disabled in your control panel but enabling it is fairly simple.

Enabling and Configuration

After logging into your control panel, you will notice “Spam Assassin” on the interface underneath the “Mail” tab.  When clicking the tab you will be taken to the main configuration page and presented with an array of options.  To start protecting your inbox right way, simply click “Enable Spam Assassin”.  This will activate the utility and filter spam on the default settings.

Spam Assassin’s default filter is set to level 5, a decent setting for the average end-user.  By setting the number higher, fewer messages will be tagged as spam, thus resulting in less false positives.  This number can always be adjusted in accordance to your level of false positives.  You can also make configurations to delete spam mail as soon it arrives.  This is useful in regard to easy management but you also stand the chance of losing legitimate emails.  Because of this, learning to properly adjust the level of your filter is critical.

Your Spam Box

After first enabling Spam Assassin, all suspected spam emails in your Spam Box will be tagged with “SPAM” in front of the subject field.  Of course, an exception would be if you have enabled the auto-spam delete function.  This setting gives you the ability to configure your mail client to filter out messages based on certain tags.  The Spam Box acts as your quarantine folder, performing on the server and preventing the messages from reaching the inbox on your desktop.  The Spam Box automatically creates an isolation folder as soon as a spam message is detected.

The major benefits of activating the Spam Box is avoiding all the unsolicited emails in the form of advertisements, viruses, scams and other potential threats.  It also allows you to access your webmail account on the server to find out if any legitimate messages were mistakenly tagged.  The disadvantage of this filtering method relates to inconvenience as you will have to login to your cPanel account on a regular basis to manage the Spam Box.  If not, the messages stored on the server will consume precious storage space.

Advanced Settings

Spam Assassin includes extra features that allow you to filter messages based on various criteria.  Configurations can be made to block out or allow mail based on a specific email address or an entire domain.  For instance, if you are constantly missing emails from a friend or company, you could add that name to a “Whitelist”, instructing Spam Assassin to allow the message to pass.  This method works the same way with a Blacklist which allows you to automatically block messages from a website that has been harassing you with spam.