Creative Freedom has been delivering some of the best quality icon designs and web solutions for a good few years now, but, as well as doing the work, we have always been interested in imparting some healthy tips and advice for anyone wishing to delve into the world of web and icon design themselves. Today, we discuss the easiest ways to learn cPanel; pinpointing a few easy ways to boost your site and sourcing some links to some of the best guides out there.
In our blog we’ve focused on a number of ways to make your site look good, from working the minimalist aesthetic to giving your site some personality, but getting a site up and running would be so much harder without the oh-so-handy tool of cPanel. Launched way back in 1996, and using the Linux operating system, it has gone above and beyond in helping people in really simplifying the process of hosting a site.
Basically, cPanel, if you’ve not used it before, gives you an ample number of ways to not only host your site, but add features and store content. Usually coming free with your hosting package, it is very simple to get your head around and doesn’t require any great amount of technical wizardry. Once you’ve learned the basics, it really is a breeze.
Your first action is to get into cPanel, and this takes the form of five steps –
- 1. Get on to the home page of your site.
- 2. Look in the address bar (just under the top title bar), where the name of your site will be displayed. It may read just http://www.mydomain.com/, or it may include your home page name e.g. http://www.mydomain.com/index.html.
- 3. Whichever it reads, change it to http://www.mydomain.com/cpanel/. Use your own real domain name, of course, and make sure you include the / after cpanel. Then press ‘enter’ or your return key.
- 4. You then will be prompted for your site username and password. You will have been given these by your hosting provider.
- 5. If all is well, up will come the cPanel home page. Bookmark it, or add it to your ‘favourites.’
Now you’re in, you can get to grips with the layout and all that cPanel has to offer, such as the homepage, statistics, dashboard and user management section. All will come in handy, so it’s obviously a great idea to familiarise yourself with each one. What you must do (and continue to do at regular intervals) is reinforce your security by changing your password.
If you’re a genuine newbie to these kinds of tools, then don’t panic, Hosting Facts features an articulate and well laid out guide for using cPanel for first timers. Also, if you’re a first timer using cPanel in conjunction with WordPress, WP Beginner offers a concise yet simple blurb to guide you into which actions to take.
One of the best features of cPanel, and one that sometimes can get overlooked is the ability to optimise your site. Writing in Hosting Advice on the 10 essential cPanel settings, Roberto Sanchez says – “In the “Software/Services” box in cPanel, you’ll find an option for optimising the content of your website by compressing it when it is requested by site visitors. This can accelerate content download and bring smiles to visitors’ faces. In the above situation, you have the choice to compress all of the content or only specific types. Note that the “Software/Services” box is also the place to manage the installation of additional software for your website, such as applications to handle visitor inquiries or run user surveys.” For any of you out there looking for those great and easy ways to optimise your site, this feature is a God send.
With these nuggets of advice from us and others we’ve linked, you’ll be able to function with cPanel like a pro in no time.
Need a clean, intuitive user interface?
Is your software hot but your icons not?
