CPanel Basics

You can create hosting on a lot of different services (like Amazon EC2), but most of you will use a basic hosting service and CPanel. What is CPanel? cPanel is a web based hosting control panel provided by many hosting providers to website owners allowing them to manage their websites from a web based interface.

Most hosts you will encounter will use CPanel. Here is a very simple guide to cPanel for Beginners – https://www.hostinger.com/tutorials/what-is-cpanel

CPanel in Bluehost
CPanel in GoDaddy

CPanel Best Practices

It may be tempting to edit your web site directly in the File Manager in CPanel, but this is probably not the best idea. There are a couple of options to help here (1) edit on local machine and ftp to host – you can configure this is CPanel, (2) use a tool like Github to manage versions of your site.

The bottom line is you are editing files and placing them on a server. On that server they are http (or https) accessible. You have the responsibility of managing versions of those files and ensuring the integrity of the published material. That is a topic in and of itself. CPanel is a tool that simplifies much of the process of using the server – and it is also something every IT student should be familiar with.