2. Web Hosting
Hostgator.com is an excellent web-
hosting company
Web Hosts “host” customer websites on
compute servers
Web Host provides customer with
24/7 uptime (ideally)
Good internet connectivity
Sufficiently fast computer hardware
Good software, configurability and services
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3. Control Panels
Web hosting companies have to strike a
delicate balance
Provide customers with significant control
and configurability
Maintain security
“Control Panels” have evolved to provide
this functionality
Secure yet easy-to-use interface that
provides good control and configurability
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4. Hostgator‟s cPanel
Hostgator uses a control panel called
cPanel
cPanel is provided by a third party
cPanel is a great control panel
It provides access and control to numerous
components on the computer server
It‟s easy to use and secure
cPanel has been around a long time and is
considered best control panel by many
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5. Accessing Hostgator‟s
cPanel
Usually access cPanel by tacking on
„/cpanel‟ to the end of your domain
Login with your Hostgator-provided
username and password
Main cPanel page provides primary
interface to all control-panel functionality
Various different panels and icons
provide access to the different cPanel
capabilities
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6. Top and Left Sidebar
Top area
Provides tools for researching and registering
additional domain names
I prefer to register all of my domains at
Namecheap.com – so I don‟t use the top area
Left Sidebar
Announcements
Offers (advertisements)
Website status and information
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7. Special Offers & Links
Special Offers
A handful of offers from companies that are
partnering with Hostgator
iPayment, Cloud Storage, etc.
Hostgator Links
Hostgator links related to your account
Billing System
Knowledge Database
Chat & Ticket System
…
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9. Mail (Email)
Create email accounts for your domains
Access your email accounts from the web
Reduce spam with Spam Assassin
Forward one email address to another
Forward all unknown email addresses at
your domain to a default email address
Create “auto-responders” that automatically
reply to certain addresses
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10. SEO and Marketing Tools
SEO = Search Engine Optimization
Increasing likelihood of your website pages
ranking well in search engines (e.g. google)
A separate “SEO Tools” account provides
services for improving SEO
Easily create sitemaps
Tell search engines what pages your site has
Link Building, SEO Tips, etc.
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11. Files Section
Perform Backups
Access files on the Hostgator server via
“File Manager”
Monitor disk-space usage
Create a “Web Disk”
Makes your top-level directory at Hostgator
look and act like a disk on your local
computer
Create and manage FTP accounts for
your domains
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12. Logs Section
Traffic and “error” logs from your web
server (apache)
Graphs of the bandwidth used by your
websites
Broken out by website & traffic type
Two popular tools for analyzing log files
webalizer
Awstats
Support for integrating Google Analytics
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13. Security & Domains
Sections
Create password protected directories
on your website
This can be done in other ways also…
Create subdomains for your domain
e.g. http://example.whatishostgator.org
Add additional domains to your account
Redirect one domain name to another
Configure DNS handling
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14. Databases Section
Databases are an important capability
provided by a web hosting company
Provides fast and efficient storage and retrieval of
information
Used by many web applications, e.g. WordPress
Hostgator uses MySQL as primary database
Panel provides various database functionality
Create users
Inspect and modify data
etc.
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16. Advanced Section
Custom apache (web server) configuration
Image manager and manipulator
Custom “error pages”
Probably want to use this or you may end up with
a standard Hostgator error page (advertisement)
Cron Jobs
Computer programs that are set up to run
periodically (e.g once a week, once a day, etc.)
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17. Conclusion
Hostgator‟s cPanel is an excellent control
panel that provides great functionality
Lots of parts – Don‟t be overwhelmed
Much of it you won‟t use often
Some of it you‟ll probably never use
Thing to remember
○ It‟s there when you need it
○ It does its job very well
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