The Utopia Net Dedicated Server Control Panel is a custom built WHM/cPanel environment designed with multiple levels of administration including admin, reseller, end user, and email-based interfaces. These multiple levels provide security, ease of use, and flexibility for everyone from the server administrator to the email account user.
cPanel, our website control panel interface, is designed for website owners. It simplifies tasks such as the ones below:
- Uploading and managing web pages;
- Creating email accounts;
- Installing web-based applications like blogs, shopping carts, and forums;
- Backing up data;
- Protecting a site’s content and bandwidth from abuse;
- Generating and viewing statistics about visitors; and
- Reviewing error logs to locate broken links and other problems.
WebHost Manager (WHM), our server control panel interface, is designed for server administrators and web hosts. WHM makes it easy to:
- Set up and modify customer accounts;
- Receive alerts if the server goes down;
- Install applications and programming language modules;
- Create and apply hosting plans;
- Block spam;
- Integrate new web technologies; and
- Brand customers’ cPanel interfaces with custom logos.
Managing a website with cPanel
The most important part of a website owner’s job is creating, uploading, and editing web pages. In cPanel, a site owner has several options for managing content. He or she can:
- Easily upload and manage web pages in cPanel’s File Manager.
- Use cPanel’s Web Disk feature to drag and drop files into the customer’s account.
- Use traditional file transfer methods (including FTP, SFTP, and FTPS).
- Create additional FTP accounts for employees.
cPanel provides comprehensive Email management
Website owners can use cPanel to create email accounts associated with a website. cPanel supports the standard mail protocols, including POP, IMAP, and SMTP, both with and without SSL encryption.
To curb spam, cPanel provides powerful spam deterrents: SpamAssassin and BoxTrapper. We also offer the ability to automatically route messages to a spam folder.
cPanel provides a web-based interface for checking email, so account holders can access mail at any time, from any computer with a web browser. cPanel also supports the latest email technologies to ensure messages reach the intended destination.
cPanel users can set up email forwarding, which allows account holders to have an address at one domain (such as webmaster@cpanelexample.com) forward incoming messages to another (such as your-name@example.com). This can also be useful to businesses that need to route email to an employee’s BlackBerry® or other mobile device.
For power users, mail filtering and mailing lists are available.
Managing a server with WHM
With WHM, server administrators can easily control the technologies their servers employ. Using our exclusive EasyApache utility, server administrators can, with a few clicks:
- Support new web technologies (including security measures such as suPHP and suEXEC),
- Change the web server software powering the sites on the server, and
- Install new software modules to give web developers the tools they need for custom scripts.
WHM enhances server reliability
Before system administrators began using WHM, services run by a server could be down for hours or days before the administrator was notified. With WHM, if any server software fails, WHM will automatically restart that software and let the administrator know via IM, pager, email and/or SMS (phone). This allows the administrator to investigate the cause immediately, potentially averting a catastrophic server failure.
WHM will also notify the system administrator if there’s a lack of available hard disk space. It offers a tool for administrators to monitor hard disk utilization so they better understand what corrective actions should be taken. Server administrators can also monitor server load via WHM, as well as review daily reports of processor utilization, pinpointing which processes are using the most processor power.
Server reliability also requires preventing the server from being compromised. WHM’s Security Center allows administrators to implement powerful security measures with a click of a mouse. Our software offers a wide variety of functionality, from brute force to spam protection.
Using outdated web applications is a common cause of security weaknesses for web servers. Our cPAddons framework will notify hosting customers when their web applications are out-of-date, if they installed them via cPanel. Server administrators can also use WHM to forcefully upgrade out-of-date web applications.
WHM helps server administrators manage accounts
As we mentioned above, WHM allows web hosts to:
- Create and modify new accounts, and
- Create and apply hosting plans (we call them packages).
Web hosts can also:
- Control which features are available to specific users,
- Customize the page displayed when an account is suspended,
- Email all the hosting customers on the server,
- Move accounts to a different hard disk, and
- Modify content within a new account when it is first provisioned on the server.
By default, users do not have shell (command line) access to the server. However, server administrators can grant limited or full permissions for any account.
As a web hosting company grows, it may begin to have multiple servers running cPanel and WHM. Fortunately, it’s easy to transfer accounts among WHM servers. If a company needs to migrate an account from another control panel application, WHM can handle that as well. Server administrators can also restore account backups made by new customers migrating from another web host. This allows the customer to bring the website back online far quicker than would be possible with a manual migration.
