How To Find The Best cPanel Web Hosting Provider
cPanel is a simple user friendly web hosting control panel. It’s designed to help you manage your web hosting account. You can create email addresses, email forwarders, view website statistics and even upload your website. It’s the leading web hosting control panel but how do you find the best cPanel web hosting company?
How to Access cPanel
If you choose a cPanel web hosting company you’ll first need to know how to access cPanel. To access cPanel simply go to yourdomain.com/cpanel. Replace yourdomain.com with your actual domain name. cPanel runs on ports 2082 and the SSL version runs on port 2083. This is important because if you’re in an office environment or a coffee shop for example they will likely block those ports. If you’re at home then make sure the above ports are open on your router or firewall. Check your routers documentation on how to open ports if you’re having difficulty access cPanel.
Getting Started with cPanel
When you first login to cPanel a popup with load with a getting started guide. You can either go through the getting started wizard or skip it all together. When you load cPanel you’ll be presented with icons in different categories. Let’s start with the Email section, this is where you can create email address for your domain, setup forwarders, auto responders, mailing lists and configure your spam filters.
How to Upload Your Website with cPanel
I personally prefer to use an FTP program to upload my website. I use FileZilla which is a free FTP client and it’s very easy to use. If you prefer to use cPanel you can use their web-based uploading tools. First located the icon labeled File Manager. Once you’ve loaded the File Manger you’ll need to go inside the folder labeled ‘public_html’. This is the directory where you need to upload your website, it’s also referred to as your root directory. Anything you upload in this folder with be what people see when they go to your website. Make sure you upload your homepage in one of the following names: index.html, index.php, index.htm
How to Setup a Database in cPanel
Setting up a database for your website is a breeze with cPanel. First locate the MySQL Wizard icon. The first step is to choose a database name. Simply type in a name to call your database, nothing fancy here. Next you will choose a username to connect to the database and a password. I use the password generator as it helps choose a strong password and you only need to use it once when setting up your website. Lastly you will be shown options on what privileges you want to grant your database user. Check off the box that says ALL Privileges. That’s it! You’ve now created a database, database user and connected the user to the database granting it ALL Privileges. You would then input the database, user and password in your scripts configuration PHP file. For example you would enter the above credentials in the wp-config.php file if you use WordPress. Congratulations, you’ve now created your first database using cPanel!
How To Access Email with WebMail
If your web hosting company uses cPanel then you also get WebMail. WebMail is exactly that, a web-based email program so you can access your email from any computer with an Internet connection. To access WebMail go to yourdomain.com/webmail. You’ll then be prompted to enter your email address and the password for that email account. Once logged in you will see 2 or 3 webmail programs based on what programs your web host has enabled. My personal favorite is RoundCube. It looks clean and is dead simple to use. Think of webmail as being a way to manage your domains email addresses like you would use Gmail or Hotmail.
The Best cPanel Web Hosting Companies
When choosing a new web host I always check if they offer cPanel. It makes a world of a difference and makes managing your web hosting that much easier. We’ve compiled a list of the Top cPanel Hosting Companies below:
HostUpon offers cPanel on all of their shared hosting plans as well as VPS and dedicated servers. They are a Canadian web hosting company with customers around the globe. If you’re looking for a Canadian Web Host we’ve heard amazing things about HostUpon. Their support is located in Toronto and they don’t out-source anything.
BlueHost is one of the more known web hosting companies that offer cPanel. They have customized their cPanel heavily to tailor it to their customers however the main functionality of cPanel is still present. They are located in the United States and have a great reputation in the web hosting industry.
If you’re looking for Cloud Hosting with cPanel then HostHero is the winner. They offer one plan making things simple and it comes with cPanel with tons of other features. HostHero is a great company with raving reviews. Check them out if you need cPanel hosting that’s fast and simple.
JustHost offers the cheapest cPanel web hosting plans. If you’re looking for hosting with no-frills and at a cheap rate then JustHost is the right choice. They are a fairly large hosting company with customers around the world.
Whether you’re a beginner just getting your feet or an advanced web developer, cPanel just makes managing your web hosting account that much easier. It’s a great control panel and I always recommend people find the best cPanel Web Hosting company.
