One of the biggest rising stars in the industry’s “best web hosting company” category is WebHostingHub.com. We’ve been talking up the company for a while now. With its smart, reliable hosting services, its Premium Website Builder (which makes web publishing a breeze) and its affordable pricing plans that start at $3.95 – really, what’s not to love?

Another feature we also love is Web Hosting Hub’s easy-to-use control panel – cPanel, one of the industry’s most popular choices for easy, intuitive website management.

With cPanel, you can enjoy:

Hassle free e-mail management.
cPanel makes it easy to manage all of your email accounts all from one place. Create new email addresses, set-up email forwarding and more. Choose between three web-mail – SquirrelMail, Horde or RoundCube. Each service is designed to work just like Gmail.

Single click software installs.
From blogging tools such as WordPress to e-commerce shopping carts, content management systems (CMS) and video galleries, Fantastico™ automates the installation of some of your favorite website software, making it easy to add functionality to your website.

Smart, informative web statistics.
Using cPanel’s website traffic stats, you can track useful statistics with easy-to-read analysis of the visitors coming to your website. See who’s visiting, track errors, access bandwidth reports, and more.

Easy file management.
cPanel’s file management system has all of the necessary tools you need to manage your sites, and it allows you to back up and organize files, manage FTP accounts and monitor disk space usage – all with just a few clicks of your mouse.

Simple domain management.
cPanel makes domain management quick and simple. Add sub domains, add-on domains, parked domains and create web page redirects to other pages with the click of a button.

Advanced features.
From database management tools to PERL scripts and security features, cPanel also supports a wide variety of advanced features to manage and maintain your website.

But don’t just take our word for it. Check it out for yourself. Visit Web Hosting Hub for a demo of cPanel and take the industry’s most popular control panel for a spin yourself. Other top web hosting companies offering cPanel include InMotion Hosting, JustHost JustHost and BlueHost.

Web Hosting Tutorial Series

Video #4: What is a control panel?

This video tutorial will teach you about the control panel, an essential part of any web hosting account.

In terms of web hosting, the control panel is a web-based interface provided by your hosting company that allows you to manage a variety of hosted services in one spot. A control panel allows you to configure email accounts, upload files to your website, access server logs, manage databases, analyze web traffic, add new functionality, and more. It is an essential part of any web hosting account. Without it – even just a basic control panel – you wouldn’t be able to get very much done.

You do not necessarily need to know computer programming to effectively navigate your way around a control panel. It is a browser-based, point-and-click interface. Three of the most widely used web hosting control panels in the industry today are cPanel, Parallels Plesk, and DirectAdmin. They are popular because they are easy-to-use, intuitive, and offer a wide variety of robust services.

Some control panels only run on Linux, some are meant for Windows, and some will work with both types of operating system. One important thing to keep in mind – just because your computer at home is running Windows doesn’t mean you need to find a
Windows hosting account. You only need a Windows account if your website requires features that only work on Windows. Otherwise, a Linux account will work just as well, and with very few differences.

What’s the difference? Most versions of Linux are free, whereas you can’t install Windows on a computer unless you pay for a license. Because of this, Windows hosting accounts generally cost a bit more. Many of the companies in our top 10 web hosting list provide linux-based control panels like cPanel, this helps make them very affordable.

Up Next:

The key units for measuring website space and usage: megabytes (MB) and gigabytes (GB).