Tips for managing your site with cPanel
If you are using shared hosting for your website, there is a good chance that you will manage your website with cPanel. For a significant number of hosting companies out there, the cPanel app is the predominant administration panel. But many people who use it don’t stop checking out the functionality it provides.
Using cPanel, you can handle domains that connect to your account, email accounts, files and databases, and many other administrative tasks. This is depending on what your provider provides and what your hosting package includes. All made it easier using one single interface.
We’ll walk through six tips in this article to navigate your site with cPanel. Which you may or may not have seen in your own hosting adventures. Experienced users may already know about these things, but newer users may not have seen these choices, particularly those who haven’t taken the time to really look at their cPanel interfaces. In fact, sometimes even experienced users can get bogged down in routine and forget some of the options available to them, so it’s worth a look!
Auto installers
Auto-installers are what the name says exactly. They provide a way to install the platforms you may need quickly and painlessly to build a new website, such as WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, PrestaShop, forum platforms, and a variety of other content management systems, frameworks, and scripts.
With one or two clicks you can have the platform you need installed on your new hosting and ready to go, instead of setting up databases manually, uploading files via FTP and running through setup processes, troubleshooting problems as you go. It’s a great feature that is sometimes overlooked, and time-saving is something even veteran site administrators can get behind!
SSL Certificates
Another app you can find in your cPanel is one that gives you the ability to install an SSL certificate for your website, like the LetsEncrypt cPanel application. If you’re not familiar with SSL certificates, and every site’s growing need to use HTTPS. You should take the time to learn about it.
Many hosts, including SitePoint’s partner, SiteGround, provide these certificates for all, or at least some, of their customers ‘ payment levels free of charge via the cPanel. Installing and renewing these certificates for all domains is automated with SiteGround. And if you’re using a CMS like WordPress, here are some tips to get an SSL certificate installed.
Securing the site with HTTPS would make it easy for all users to see that security is important to you as any modern browser can show when a site is safe and HTTPS with a green lock. Google’s and others ‘ that pressure to compel all sites to become HTTPS just makes it more urgent. And that much more of a function you can set one right from your cPanel.
Custom Error Pages
When a website user attempts to navigate to a page that isn’t there. They will get a 404-stock error, unless you create a custom error page. This can be achieved inside the application, of course, but if you don’t want to take the time. Or don’t have the experience. This is an indispensable function of cPanel. You can configure your own error pages quickly and easily so that your visitors land on a page that instead has valuable information on it.
Error Logs
In some shared environments, logs from your web server can be hard to get at. Luckily, Apache error logs can be accessed straight from cPanel. In some cases, that will allow you to see what the problem is with a broken website. If you are an administrator of the website, but not the developer who works on it, it will also provide valuable information to relay to that developer if necessary.
Backups
Another great feature of cPanel is its ability to create panel backups. You can back up all your data in one big file. Or you can choose your home directory (all your files), your MySQL databases (if you use a database on your website). Also, your email forwarders and filters (if you use your hosting company’s email address). You can download any of those things to the home directory of your webserver account. Or to a remote FTP server if you wish. If you back it up to your hosting server, of course, you can also use FTP to download those backup files later, if desired.
Restoration is a similar process, just selecting which item of the three you want to restore to back up and following the prompts. A good backup feature is never a bad thing. If you’re using a CMS like WordPress, there are plenty of backup plugins available. But sometimes it’s necessary to take manual backups. Or it’s even your only option, so it’s nice that a button from your cPanel moves this functionality here.
Cron Jobs
From the stand, cron jobs can be generated too. Cron jobs are something inexperienced users may not be too familiar with. But if they are used to using their own servers. Then have to deal with a shared hosting service without access to the command line, many developers may really be lacking. Cron jobs are a way to schedule tasks on a server. You can pick a day, date, time, and frequency for an action to occur. Usually the running of a script or other task.
Exploring cPanel
Eventually, the best thing you can do, once you have purchased a host, is simply to explore your cPanel. In their cPanels, there are literally hundreds of cPanel apps that your host might have to choose to install and enable. So there are many other features waiting to be discover and use. Both native features of cPanel, as well as add-on items, are often not well explain or market. And people rarely visit the cPanel for their website. Other than perhaps to set up a new FTP user or email account. Remember that there’s much more there to find and use!
