cPanel and Softaculous

Your web hosting interface will vary depending upon which company you choose. Some interfaces are graphic based where as others are primarily text link environments. Personally, I like the graphic interfaces better like cPanel. cPanel is one of the more widely used hosting interfaces, although each web hosting company usually customizes it somewhat.

The cPanel interface is divided into two main parts. The left side contains your web site usage stats and the right side contains your graphic links. The graphical interface side on the right is further subdivided by functional categories like Administration, Email, Applications, Files, Logs, Security, Domains, Databases, etc.

Softaculous is the software installer that you get with cPanel. If you want to install a content management system like WordPress or Joomla, or some other type of application, you just need to launch Softaculous and you get one click installations. So far, I like Softaculous much better than the old Fantastico option. Fantastico really messed me up in the past when I tried to delete some older installations—other data folders (that I had not selected for deletion) got wiped out!

There are other web hosting interfaces I like that are similar to cPanel and Softaculous. However, for those just starting out with their websites, I’d certainly recommend going with a hosting plan that includes cPanel