Thursday, October 18th, 2007
Cpanel, one of the leading providers of control panels for Linux and FreeBSD web hosting servers has announced that it would be releasing a beta version of a new Cpanel Server Suite that would be its first Microsoft Windows Server® 2008-based product line.
A Slashbot job advert seems to suggest that Cpanel is recruiting Windows application developers for this new venture.
Cpanel has been working on this Windows version for some time now. The only difference this time is that they are re-staffing and commiting more time and resources to it. Cpanel is expecting to release the beta version of the product on December 15th 2007 and have the production release available by March 30th 2008.
A press release by Microsoft quotes cPanel CEO J. Nick Koston as saying:
“Microsoft has shown a strong commitment to the hosting industry over the past several years. cPanel’s Windows development team feels that IIS7 offers a robust, high-performance Web server with increased security that the industry will quickly adopt. Microsoft Server 2008 and IIS7 with its modern architecture and support for legacy products was the natural starting point for our expanded product offering.”
Posted in Platforms, Hosting News, Control Panels, Windows | No Comments »
Tuesday, October 9th, 2007
I have had the opportunity to use Cpanel 11 from September, and my ranking of the Linux/Apache hosting control panel is quite high. I had to wait this long on the advice of my server management company, to upgrade to the most stable version of Cpanel 11.
The first and most striking impression is the new looks. The entire user interface of Cpanel has been overhauled and its now much more visually-appealing. The icons that link to the main controls have also been re-arranged into more relevant groups and same goes with a new Notice panel that displays on the top left corner of the Cpanel first screen. The Notice panel displays vital warnings about the hosting account in red, and also carries News from the web host or server administrator.
Some controls hitherto placed a few clicks into the panel have been brought to the homepage making such controls more accessible. Even better, cPanel shortcuts have been introduced. These links can be added to your desktop or your browser’s bookmarks toolbar. They are an easy way to access your cPanel.
What makes the several panels better is that they can actually be moved to suit the preference of the user. All a user has to do is drag-and-drop. The overall theme of Cpanel can be changed as well. Thats not new, but whats new are the several other more visually-appealing themes that have been added.
For a new Cpanel user, there are free Video Tutorials that would guide them through all the basics of using Cpanel 11. Similar videos have been made available before now by other companies, for a fee. Not to forget the “Getting Started Wizard”, a 7-page basic guide that takes new Cpanel users through the rudiments of setting-up their new hosting account.
The Cpanel interface loads faster as well. In some cases, processes are carried-out using AJAX thus the entire page needs not be re-loaded, to complete a process. Some back-end processes now run faster as well. Example? SpamAssasin. It now requires less server resources.
These are a few amongst the several CPanel improvements that make an upgrade a must. What has been your experience with using Cpanel 11? Share your thoughts here and now.
Posted in Control Panels, Linux, Blogroll | No Comments »
