5 Essential cPanel Settings for Beginners

If you are planning to start a web project, you must think about purchasing good web hosting, or even a dedicated server. Among numerous offers in the market you will find many hosting packages including cPanel. So, what is cPanel, actually? This is an incredibly important tool allowing you to manage your hosting efficiently and fast. Basically, cPanel works as a web page, from which you can administer your virtual resources.

Key Features of cPanel

If you purchase cPanel Hosting, you’ll get a lot of important features. They will help you not only to create a website from scratch, but also to administer it like a pro. And it doesn’t matter, how large your website is. With cPanel you can efficiently manage databases, use FTP and file managers, and repair possible malfunctions. Also, you will get great security tools including spam filters, hotlink protection, leek protection, etc.

Another important feature of cPanel is information about your websites. You can get extensive statistics for many issues including bandwidth, raw logs, analog, etc. This enables you not only to check the efficiency of your website, but also plan the development of your project. Also, much stats available at cPanel are important for successful SEO promotion.

5 Tips on How to Set cPanel

So, suppose you have purchased good cPanel hosting. What should you do now? Your first tasks are to make cPanel run securely and efficiently. That’s why we have composed a list of 5 cPanel settings you surely have to know and use before starting a web project.

1. Be Familiar with Server Basics

First of all, we advise you to check server environment at cPanel. You can see the basic server info on the left sidebar cPanel start page. So, here are some things you have to keep in mind, as you may need them in future: IP address; application versions (PHP, MySQL, Apache, Perl and cPanel itself); server OS; server hardware; kernel version; hosting features (bandwidth, disk space, etc).

Also, you can get pretty much important info from the Stats > Service Status page. Here you will find information not only about your hosting package, but about the whole server. This is very good for understanding the overall image of possible server functioning. All-in-all, if the disk and swap usage of your server are below 80% and 10% respectively, your project is safe, and the number of possible malfunctions is quite low.

2. Check PHP settings

By default, your home directory is /home/username, so all your files have to be run with correspondent permissions. Note that the most important directory you should run with correct permission is public_html. Why you need the permissions? First of all, to get familiar with how PHP is handled at your server.

So, create a phpinfo page in public_html directory, and open it at a regular browser window. There you will find some important info about your PHP application. Pay attention to Server API line. If it says CGI or FastCGI, it’s most probable that PHP on your server is handled by suPHP. This is the default application for cPanel servers.

Also, it’s possible that Server API value is Apache 2.0 Handler. This application processes PHP using Apache, so it doesn’t require strict file permission. The information about PHP handler will be very useful for you in future, in order to omit internal server errors. Also, we advise you to delete the phpinfo page after you get the data you need.

3. Improve Server Security

If you really take care of good server functioning, we advise you to take additional safety measures. CPanel allows you to increase the protection of your domain, cPanel account and website itself. For instance, you could start from spam. Though newly born web projects are not spammed for quite a while, we advise you to outstrip the problem by enabling the Spam Assassin (Mail > Spam Assassin).

Also, to protect yourself from spam and hacker attacks better, you can choose to discard all unrouted mails (Mail > Default Address). To make your hosting even more secure against hacker attacks, disable MS Frontpage (Advanced > Frontpage Extensions). Due to many weaknesses in its structure, Microsoft now stopped working with Frontpage extension on Unix platform.

Finally, enable hotlink protection that will exclude the possibility of bandwidth loss (Security > Hotlink Protection). This will allow only your sites to use static content images including .jpg, .png, .gif and .bmp.

4. Choose a Good Password

Of course, if we speak about cPanel security, one of the musts is choosing a strong pass. You have probably heard a lot about safe passwords. We won’t take really much time of yours, and just remind you several important points:

• Make it at least 8 symbols long;
• Avoid birth dates and combinations including only numbers;
• Combine symbols, numbers, and letters (both smalls and capitals);
• Never ever let your browser remember the password;
• Change it frequently.

5. Monitoring and Backup E-Mail

To finish cPanel security settings, add a backup email at Preferences > Update Contact Info. First, this will be your emergency measure for the cases of primary email capture. Also, in case you have some other problems with your general email, the secondary address can be used to get cPanel notifications. Also, we advise you to use for this an email hosted by a provider that’s different from the primary email host.

Finally, we advise to use several monitoring services that will check if your website is up and running on regular basis. For instance, you can try www.mon.itor.us, www.site24x7.com/, or www.host-tracker.com. Many web host companies offer you similar service for free, but it’s always good to have several independent monitors in store. With these services your website will always work perfectly well.

To sum it all up, we want to say that these are only a few tips that can help you manage basic cPanel settings. For more fine presets, check web for more info, or hire a specialized web master, who could help you improve the website a lot.