Functions performed by control panels

Control panels such as Plesk perform a variety of tasks in web hosting, helping the web hosting companies, and their customers, manage their affairs better and more securely. Web hosting has come to depend on popular control panels to perform many of their administrative tasks. Users and website owners also have become accustomed to specific control panels for managing their tasks. Apart from managing administrative tasks control panels are also very useful in providing valuable information that individual website owners need for ensuring the efficacy of their websites. A few of the more important tasks handled by control panels in web hosting are discussed below. 

Web log analysis

Most web hosting has a commercial purpose, and needs to generate profits for the website owner. This is possible only through a highly targeted traffic that flows into the web-hosting site, and gets converted into hard-core business. It is very important for the website to get plenty of traffic on a continuous basis, and also for this traffic to be a highly targeted one. Web hosting will not be profitable if the right kind of traffic does not come into the website. The website is, therefore, not interested in any traffic coming in, but only relevant ones. This calls for continuous monitoring and analysis of the traffic that flows into the site. Such monitoring and analysis will have to be done on an almost continuous basis. Web log analysis helps the web hosting site owner to do such monitoring and analysis continuously and effortlessly.

Web log analysis software uses techniques that enable it to collect information about visitors such as who visited the site, when each visitor visited the site, and how they visited the site. This analysis is then converted into useful reports that give insightful information about the traffic into the site. Some of the reports generated include the number of visitors, new visitors, the pages visited, the entry and exit pages for each visit, most visited pages, country or domain of the visitor, and so on.

File Management

In the context of web hosting, file management includes, but is not limited to, file transfers. File transfers are very essential for the operation of a website under a shared web hosting system. The sites designed and built by individual users of the web hosting service are contained in various files such as HTTP or script files. These need to be uploaded into their respective domains. Moreover, the website design and features undergo frequent changes in a dynamic situation. This means that the website owners need to maintain and access these files on a regular basis. The users would also like to organize these files within their domains on the server, and hence need not only access to them, but also some means of organizing them. The file management system in a control panel typically provides all this functionality to enable users to easily maintain their files and modify, delete or upload and download them.

Email account configuration and management

Emails are an integral part of web hosting. Customers of web hosting systems are allotted a number of free email boxes that can in turn be allotted to individual users by individual domain owners. The email accounts under a particular domain are managed by the domain or website owner or a person authorized by him or her. This calls for continuous interaction with the system to create new users, delete users that have gone out, and change the users. In addition individual users will need to manage their own email accounts. These users, for example, may need to change their passwords from time to time. They will also send and receive emails, and organize and delete them. All of this calls for individual rights to be granted. The total management of all these users at various levels, monitoring the rights granted to them, and ensuring that the users stay within their rights can be a major task. This task is facilitated by control panels.

In addition to the above, there are several other functions that a control panel does in facilitating successful web hosting. These include bandwidth analysis, server logs, and management of databases, which are also critical to successful web hosting.