Managing Your Site with cPanel
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ce you’ve set up your web hosting, you’ll be sent login details by Hostgator. These details allow you to log into your website Control Panel, or cPanel.
Within cPanel there are a huge range of tools for managing your website. Don’t be intimidated here – you’ll only need to work with a small number of the tools, and they’re all very easy to use.
The main tools you’ll be working with are:
- Email Accounts & Forwards
- Fantastico
The Wonders of Fantastico
Fantastico is the big reason we can set up a website with no technical skills whatsoever. Fantastico takes advantage of the fact that, out there in the big web world, there are a lot of really nice developers creating great web applications for free. The concept is generally called ‘Open Source’ and refers to the fact that a community forms around an application and helps to develop it, making it better.
WordPress is an example of an open source Blogging application. Moodle is an open source teaching application and Zen Cart is an open source online shop. Fantastico De Luxe lets you install many different open source applications automatically, so you can be up and running in no time, with no web development knowledge required.
Main Tutorial: Installing WordPress via cPanel and Fantastico De Luxe
Second Tutorial: Setting up Email Accounts in cPanel
Video Summary and Resources
Email Accounts or Forwards?
When creating a new email address, you can choose between an email account or an email forward. But which should you choose?
An email account sets up a stand-alone email address. Incoming emails are stored on your hosting account, and you use an email application, such as Outlook, to download messages, and send out replies. This requires an email application, though, and the knowledge to get it working.
Pros: Powerful, allows outbound email
Cons: Setup & email application required
The simpler option is an email forward. The forward simply takes any message which is sent to your new address and forwards it on to an existing address, eg. Gmail or hotmail. This by-passes any email applications and settings, and makes things much simpler.
Pros: Very simple, effective
Cons: No outbound email
The big difference is that an email account is more complicated, but it allows you to send OUT emails from that address, while a forwarder is simple, but can only receive emails.
What is WordPress?
WordPress started out as a simple blogging tool – it allowed anyone to run their own blog with no technical knowledge whatsoever. Nowadays WordPress is much more than blogging, but it has retained it’s simple roots and aims to allow anyone to run an entire website.
WordPress is Open Source, which means that it’s free to use, open to customisation and brings with it a huge community of users who develop new tools and support each other. You’ll start with a simple site now, but WordPress will grow with you, adding plugins, tools and themes, to create the perfect site for your small business.