Almost all the websites on internet are built using the server-side scripting, hence, it is very much predicted for dedicated servers to have some form of database management system, either it can be a database server or a set of database libraries. MySQL is one of the world’s most popular open source Relational Database Management Systems (RDBMS). It is a most important part of the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) family. Customers opting for cheap web hosting services, will possibly expect the latest version of MySQL installed on the server. However, if you have your own server, you might want to take a look at the following choices for MySQL database.

MySQL Database Alternatives

MariaDB is a database software created by the MySQL founder, Michael Widenius (often called Monty), by bifurcating the MySQL software after the Oracle acquired Sun. MariaDB is a completely free and open source version which includes some unique features and functionality.

PostgreSQL is one of the rivals of MySQL. It is an object relational database management system (ORDBMS) providing various appealing features and high-level performance.

SQLite is a kind of relational database libraries, which doesn’t need a database server. These libraries are completely portable and simple to use, even in those situations where full database servers are not possible.

Cassandra is an open source Apache project originally designed and developed by Facebook Inc. It is also known as a NoSQL solution, that offers greater scalability and several appealing features that makes it ideal for high traffic and high content websites, which is being used by sites like Digg.

If you search you will find plenty of alternatives to MySQL database with many appealing features and functions. Though MySQL is known as one of the most popular database in the uk web hosting market, but it is surely not the only one.

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Basic CPanel Interface Features

7. MySQL Databases

Databases are widely used to save considerable amounts of data which will be used by web applications, for example blogs or perhaps message boards. One example is, in order to set up a blog, it will need a unique database as well as a corresponding database user. It can be essential to observe that the “user” in this instance is simply not actually a person, but is usually an automated component of a database which manipulates the data it has. Databases provide a way of handling considerable amounts of information easily on the internet. They are really essential to operate numerous web-based applications like bulletin boards (forums), content management systems (CMS), as well as online retail stores.

After you have set up both the database as well as the database user, you will have to put in place the right privileges, in order that the application is able to use the database user to gain access to as well as manipulate data included inside the database.

If you have to develop a good database along with the account that can gain access to it, it is advised to take advantage of the MySQL Database Wizard. On the other hand, you can create the database, add users, as well as link the database with an existing user account. You will find 4 tabs for managing databases:

The Databases tab enables you to:
Create the Database
Check the Database for Errors
Create the Database User
Repair the database – This really is beneficial whenever a database becomes damaged.
Delete the database.
Define the User’s Privileges
Check the Current Databases Table
Search Databases
Edit and Modify the User’s Privileges
Remove any User From the Database
Delete the Database
Delete the MySQL User

• The Users tab enables you to create as well as delete users.
• The Privileges tab enables you to handle users’ privileges.
• The Access Hosts tab when using MySQL database, enables you to limit the place(s) from where users may log in .

Restricting Access for Remote Hosts

By default, the database user can sign in from any host. When you know that the user will invariably sign in from the same host, it is possible to limit the access to simply permit that user to sign in only from that host. This feature is limited to MySQL users only.

8. Awstats / Webalizer Statistics

AWStats is the short for Advanced Web Statistics: Awstats is an application that generates details about the actual visitors to your site in the graphical as well as statistical views. AwStats shows details about who is actually accessing your site. The data is exhibited in graphs as well as tables, and also further separated into monthly, daily, as well as hourly averages. AWStats additionally exhibits information about your site’s visitors, which includes referrers, HTTP error codes, as well as information about your visitors, which includes their own operating systems, browsers, together with the countries of their origin.

AWStats is really a absolutely free, highly effective, as well as features-packed application which creates enhanced web, streaming, ftp or even mail server data graphically. This log analyzer functions like a CGI and will show you almost all possible details your log consists of in just a few graphical web-pages. It utilizes a partial information file in order to process sizeable log files frequently as well as quickly. It will evaluate log files from just about all major server applications such as Apache log files (NCSA combined/XLF/ELF log format or perhaps common/CLF log format), WebStar, IIS (W3C log format) and plenty of other web, proxy, mail servers, streaming servers, WAP, as well as some file transfer protocol (FTP) servers.

Webalizer

The Webalizer is actually an extremely fast and absolutely free web server log file analysis application. It creates extremely detailed, easily configurable site usage reports in the HTML format with regard to looking at with your standard web browser. Webalizer supports multiple language. It can easily support use of almost limitless log file sizes as well as partial logs are supported, enabling these logs to get rotated as often as needed, and also getting rid of the necessity to keep lots of huge monthly files on the system.

cPanel is offered with all our affordable web hosting packages running Linux.

Continued…

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Basic CPanel Interface Features

5. Mailing Lists

A mailing list is a set of subscribers’ names and their email addresses, and it is usually grouped defined by the mailing list creator for specific purposes. Such mailing lists make it very easy to send specific notifications or specific information to a group of subscribers at once. The purpose of a mailing list can be sending out surveys, information about upcoming products or services, an important notification to remind those members about an important upcoming event, or even sending out greetings and simple messages to a list of customers, or fans, or members who have signed in and agreed to receive emails from you. The mailing lists are also used to send mass mail out publications, newsletters, periodicals, updates, and so on to a select group of members.

In cPanel’s Mailing Lists, you can easily create, add or edit a group of subscribers’ names and their email addresses. With the mailing lists, the advantage is in avoiding the need to type each and every address separately while sending a message to the group. You should add a list name and the domain name it will be used. These lists can be deleted if they are not required or their purpose is fulfilled. But when you delete a mailing list, you will lose all the very important details about the names and email addresses contained within that mailing list. You can modify any list that has been created previously, and you can also change the passwords associated to that particular mailing list.

Mailing lists are very important business and marketing tools which help in marketing and selling your products or services to a large group of subscribers. A good and targeted mailing list can help create many advertising, marketing, and sales opportunities for any organization, and hence it is one of the chief components or features of the cPanel. Mailing lists feature is thus an exciting and a major professional tool which is made available with cPanel.

6. Mailboxes (SMTP / POP3)

The ability to create multiple e-mail accounts for your company with ease is the major hallmark of cPanel. For every website that you create on your web hosting account, you can create multiple of email accounts such as, accounts@domain.com, support@domain.com, info@domain.com, sales@domain.com, and so on. With the creation of the email accounts, you can communicate with any body, i.e., send emails to anyone. Others can reach your specific departments with the above-mentioned emails. They help organize the entire communications of the website with the outside world.

POP3, IMAP, and SMTP are Post office Protocol, Internet Message Access Protocol, and Simple Mail Transfer Protocol respectively. They have specific functions to perform. To check your emails, Webmail enables you to gain access to your e-mail through virtually any computer which has an Internet connection along with a web browser. But you should also ensure that you log out after checking out your e-mail while using any public computer to ensure that others are not able to go through your email later.
As the mailing lists, the mailboxes are extremely important tools to help you communicate with the world electronically through emails. There are lot many easy to use functions available with this important section of the cPanel which undoubtedly make cPanel the top cheap web hosting control panel.

Continued…

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3. Sub-domains

Sub-domains can be utilized by businesses which would like to assign a distinctive sub-domain to some specific section, functionality, as well as service linked to the business. For example, to the main domain domainname.com, a sub-domain can be news.domainname.com which has the news specific content, en.domainname.com which has English language content in it, fr.domainname.com which has French language content in it, newyorkoffice.domainname.com which has only content regarding the company’s New York office, forums.domainname.com which has forums on it, blog.domainname.com which has a blog built on it, and so on.

Hence a sub-domain can be viewed as a part of the larger main domain. Sub-domains are normally used to organize the entire website into specific and distinct areas within the website. These sub-domains are specific websites built within the main domain or website. It is not necessary to buy a new domain name separately as in the case of the add-on domain, and you can generate a sub-domain with any name for it.

In short, the sub-domains are URLs for various different areas or divisions within your website. Sub-domains are always relative to your affordable web hosting account’s home directory. Sub-domains can also be easily redirected through the cPanel to any other website. These sub-domains utilize your main domain name and a prefix.

For instance, if your domain name is domainname.com, then a sub-domain of your main domain can be support.domainname.com which is a section made by you to deal with your customer’s support related activities.

Every sub-domain can have its own template, and related files, for example, a forums section (for example, based on the popular phpBB application) on a sub-domain called forums.domainname.com can be created by first using the Sub-domains option under the Domains menu on the cPanel’s home page and creating the “forums” sub-domain. Then you can either redirect it to your another established forums site based on the above-mentioned phpBB application, or you can go back to the Home page of the cPanel and activate the Fantastico application. Then through Fantastico, install phpBB discussion board application using the various options like the location for the forum you want, and set the user name and password. Follow the simple installation procedure and you can have a forum section on a sub-domain on your website.

4. FTP Accounts

FTP accounts in the cPanel control panel allow you to access, upload, or download your website’s files through a protocol called FTP (File transfer Protocol). You will need a third-party FTP application to access your online files. You can set up a FTP account and log into your website via the FTP by setting up the necessary login name, password, quota, etc. first and creating the FTP account. Then using the generated FTP specific information, you can use a third-party FTP program of your choice and set up a FTP connection with your website. Through this FTP connection, you can easily upload or download (transfer) files, folders, plugins and add-ons, images, etc. to your website or modify/delete those online files and folders, change the permissions of the files and folders of your online site, etc.

In the cPanel’s FTP Accounts section, you can create new FTP accounts, perform various other actions like change passwords, change the quota, delete any existing FTP account, or configure the FTP client. Cheap web hosting makes your life so easy, that an unskilled person can even build a website with the inbuilt feature Softaculous and/or upload it via the FTP.

To be continued…

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Basic CPanel Interface Features

The basic but very important cPanel features are:

1. Add-on (Add-on) Domains
2. Parked Domains
3. Sub-domains
4. FTP Accounts
5. Mailing Lists
6. Mailboxes (SMTP / POP3)
7. MySQL Databases
8. Awstats / Webalizer Statistics
9. Advanced Guestbook
10. Agora Shopping Cart
11. CS-Cart Shopping Cart
12. Autoresponder Manager
13. Backup Manager
14. Bandwidth Stats
15. Email Filtering Manager
16. Ability to Change MX
17. Support System Submission
18. Disk Usage Viewer
19. Email Domain Forwarding
20. Email Scripts (cgiemail, formmail)
21. Custom Error Pages
22. Softaculous
23. File Manager
24. Ftp Account Manager
25. Mime Types Manager
26. Install Perl Modules
27. Install PHP Pear Modules
28. Install Ruby Modules
29. PhpMyAdmin
30. Redirect Manager
31. SpamAssassin Spam Box
32. B2Evolution, WordPress Blog
33. YaBB, phpBB Bulletin Boards
34. E107, Geeklog, Mambo CMS
35. Nucleus, PostNuke, Xoops
36. Soholaunch, phpWiki, Drupal
37. OSCommerce shopping cart
38. Coppermine Photo Gallery
39. Advanced Guestbook
40. Additional features

1. Add-on or Add-On Domains

An add-on domain allows any visitors to reach a sub-domain of your site by typing the add-on domain’s URL into a browser’s URL address field. This indicated that as a web master, you can host many more domains from your single affordable web hosting account, provided the same is allowed by your hosting provider. Add-on Domains and Sub-domains are relative to your account’s home directory.  Add-on domains are fully functional domains that are added to your main domain. The add-on domain is a domain name which points to its own folder within the public_html folder present in your hosting account. The add-on domain creates a subdirectory (folder) which can be used for a new website within your main website hosting folder.

Although the add-on domain is a new website, it does not have its own cPanel control panel separately. The add-on domain can be beneficial in the sense that it does not require you to have a separate web hosting account and while some web hosts limit you to only one main domain, you can have many add-on domains and use each of those add-on domains to host different websites on them. Thu you can have plenty of new websites on your single web hosting account. These add-on domains share all the resources like disk-space, memory, bandwidth, and other resources like cPanel control panel and so on which are allocated to the main web hosting account.

The add-on domain can have its own automatically created FTP manager, web stats, etc. add-on domains are used to host a new website by attaching a new domain name that you have purchased. The main advantage of using an add-on domain is to save expenses on buying a new web hosting account which are required to host any new domain name which you will be buying for creating new niche websites. With the add-on domain, you can buy as many domains and create new websites for using them without needing to buy separate web hosting accounts for each of those domains.

2. Parked Domains

A parked domain is a domain name that points to your main Web site on your account. Parked Domain paths are relative to your hosting account’s home directory. Domain names must be registered with a valid domain registrar before they can be parked. furthermore, they will not be functional unless they are configured to point to your DNS servers. With a Parked domain, a temporary Web page is displays when visitors visit that parked domain name. A webmaster may park a domain name to indicate that he or she has reserved that domain name until a new website is created and used with it. The webmaster may use a parked domain temporarily until a new web hosting account is purchased, may be on a server in another country or even to use the domain name on a different web server like the dedicated server or to find a new hosting provider. a new domain name can be parked so that it can be sold later to a third party.

Redirection purpose: A parked domain name can be used to point to a different domain name, for example, if you already have a domain called DomainName.com and then purchase another domain called DomainName.net, then you can assign this new domain as a parked domain and point it to another domain like the domainName.com. When someone types DomainName.net on his web browser’s Address field (where the web page address is entered to load a web page) the DomainName.com will be loaded instead of DomainName.net. Therefore, Parked domains function as pointing devices. The cPanel provides you with easy method through which you can redirect the parked domain to another website.

A domain is usually parked until the website that will take the name of this new domain is still not created. Once the website is ready to be launched, the parked domain can now be used as an add-on domain and a WordPress copy, for example, can be installed on it to create the platform for the new website with the domain web hosting package. The files necessary for the new website such as theme files, plugins, image files, and so on can then be uploaded to the new website using the FTP application or through the cPanel also.

Continued…

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