All of our hosting accounts come with Control Panel (cpanel).

This chapter gives a brief description of the different options available in your Control Panel.

Not all features may be available to you. Feature availability is dependent upon which hosting plan you have. If your want a feature you don't see on your Control Panel, then please e-mail to discuss upgrading your hosting plan.

If you know of a feature you don't see listed anywhere on The Great E-scape®, please e-mail and tell him about it. If he thinks it's a good idea, he can make it happen.

You may access your control panel by going to: http://www.yourdomain.com/cpanel/ or you may use http://www.yourdomain.com:2082. You will be asked to enter your username and password to gain access to your control panel.

The control panel is pretty much self-explanatory; however, a little information on the usage of each section is included below for your reference.

Agora Shopping Cart

The Agora Shopping Cart allows you to conduct business online. To install the Agora Shopping Cart, simply click on the Agora Shopping Cart icon in your Control Panel. Clicking on the icon will activate your shopping cart. Once it is activated, to administer the cart, click the administration interface icon and enter the username and password you use for accessing your cpanel and FTP. For more information on the Agora Shopping Cart, refer to the Agora Shopping Cart Web Site

AnonFTP:

This option allows you to set up anonymous FTP to allow your users to upload and download files to and from your Web site.

Backup Manager

The Backup Manager will enable you to back your Web site up to your local computer.

Bulletin Board / PHPBB2

This script and database-based bulletin board is available for you to use on your Web site. For detailed help, see our tutorial on setting up an phpBulletin Board or visit phpBB — Support

CGI Center

We have numerous customizable CGI scripts that have been pre-installed on the server for you to use with your hosting account. You may select the script you are interested in using, select the colors, style etc., and click the "Make HTML" button. You may then paste the HTML output into any of your HTML files to use that CGI program. The scripts we have available include Entropy Banner, Entropy Search, Java Countdown, Guestbooks, Bulletin Board, etc. Please check the appropriate articles in this knowledgebase.

Change Password

This changes the password for your account, please make sure you close all windows that you have open for your control panel. Note: Changing your password here only changes your FTP and Control Panel password. If you use FrontPage, this does not change your FrontPage password. This also does NOT change the email password. To change the email password, use the Mail Manager. Please refer to our guide to changing passwords.

Chat Room - Entropy and PHPMyChat

These two features allow you access to a chat server where you are supplied with the code that enables you to use those two products on your own Web site. Please consult our how-to on creating an Entropy Chat Room and our guide on setting up PhpMyChat.

Chron Jobs

You may execute some system commands on a scheduled basis. If you don't understand the previous sentence, then you probably shouldn't be doing them.

E-mail POP3 Accounts

Your e-mail control panel allows instant creation of e-mail POP3 accounts and aliases.

A POP3 E-mail account is a stand alone mailbox for incoming e-mail. For instance, all mail sent to sales@yourdomain.com will be routed to the sales POP3 e-mail account. You may then check this mail by logging on to sales@yourdomain.com using the user name and password for that account. NOTE: the username is the full e-mail address. So in the foregoing example, the user name would be sales@yourdomain.com.

An alias sends mail sent to one address to another POP3 account within your domain. For example, if an account called ernie@yourdomain.com was going to receive all mail sent to sales@yourdomain.com, you could setup sales as an alias to ernie.

Note: by default all names not configured go to the root account. So if you sent a message to test@yourdomain.com it would be sent to your main root account unless you had set it up as an alias or POP3. We have extensive information and step-by-steps on setting up E-mail POP3 Accounts in this knowledgebase, including information on forwarders and on using an ISP's Outgoing SMTP mail server.

File Manager

The File Manager is a very powerful feature. It allows you to manipulate all the files on your Web site. You are able to create, delete, and move your files. You can also upload files from your local PC to the server in File Manager. Plus, you can edit the HTML in any of your Web site files from this option. Everything you need to manage your Web site can be found in this feature.

Please see our detailed step-by-step guide to using File Manager.

"Where there is much power there are heavy penalties to be incurred. Just so you know." --Merlyn

Formmail

Formmail allows you to use a form to receive e-mail from your Web site visitors. Directions for using Formmail can be found under this option. Please check this knowledgebase for more information.

Frontpage

The MS Frontpage option allows you to install Frontpage extensions - which are necessary in order to use Frontpage with your Web site. You can also verify that they are installed, or remove them if you do not wish to use them anymore. Please search this knowledgebase for more details.

FTP Manager

FTP accounts allow you to manage access to your Web space. The creation of an FTP account will allow others to whom you grant permission to log in to a subdirectory from your main account without gaining access to your main accounts. Sessions show any users that are currently logged onto your domain.

IP Deny Manager

You may use this feature to block access to your Web site from anyone using the IP which you specify.

Java Clock & CGI Clock

These and other CGI Scripts are available in the CGI Center. Check the knowledgebase for more information.

Java Counter

Counters allows you to keep track of the number of visitors your Web site receives. This and other CGI Scripts are available in the CGI Center. Search this knowledgebase for more information.

Mailman List Manager

This options allows you to install this mailing list program. After it has been installed, you need to create and maintain your mailing lists with the Mailman List Manager. You can also remove the mailing list program after it has been installed if you do not wish to use it. Check this knowledgebase for more detailed information.

MIME Types

A MIME type is basically what tells the Web server that a .html document is a Web page, and that a .gif doc is a gif image etc. If you would like to configure a custom MIME type such as making .pictures a gif image file, you would enter it here.

MIME Types allow you to set certain programs to be used for specific extensions. For example, all files that end in .ram would be set to use Real Player on the user's PC. Most hosting clients do not need to use this feature. Also, note that you cannot use this feature if you have Frontpage Extensions installed. You would need to use Frontpage itself to perform this function.

MySQL Databases

MySQL is a database engine that you can use with your Web site. This feature of the Control Panel will allow you to create a new MySQL database and manage it. You will be able to add/edit/delete tables, fields, and values. You can also run queries on the database.

Please refer to MySQL's Web Site for complete tutorials and troubleshooting solutions and documentation. This is an excellent resource.

You may also wish to review other articles offered in this knowledgebase for instructions on how to setup a MySQL database.

Merlyn will also provide technical support and/or design and set up of MySQL Databases for you. Our fee is $30.00/hour with an hour minimum. Please e-mail

Network Tools

The network tools allows you to perform a traceroute from our server to your local PC. You may also trace from your Web site on our server to any other location on the Internet. A traceroute shows the path that information travels over the Internet to go from one location to another. If you are experiencing slowness or problems when connecting to your Web site, you can use this to see a snapshot of where the problem is occurring. (Hint: It won't be our server.)

Protected Directories

Using this option allows you to password-protect any directory you own. This will prevent visitors to your Web site from viewing the contents of a directory unless they have permission. The number of users you may set up in that fashion is unlimited.

Note that you cannot use this feature if you have Frontpage Extensions installed. You would need to use Frontpage itself to perform this function.

Redirect URL

Redirect URL allows you to set up a redirection so that Web visitor that types in one URL will automatically be sent to another URL. Note that you cannot use this feature if you have Frontpage Extensions installed. You would need to use Frontpage itself to perform this function. Please search this knowledgebase for more detailed information.

Search Engine

This script will allow you to install and manage an Entropy Search Engine on your site. This Search Engine will allow your Web site visitors to perform searches on your Web site. This and other CGI Scripts are available in the CGI Center.

Scripts Library

This feature allows you to use many valuable previously installed third-party scripts.

Statistics

Servers keep track of absolutely everything. Your Web /FTP Statistics will provide you with access to several programs that will analyze your access logs and show you an enormous amount of information about your Web site traffic.

Please review related articles in this knowledgebase for the details. As you will discover, there is such a thing as too much information.

Subdomain Manager

Subdomains are a way of creating separate accounts within your master account, which are accessed as separate URLs. A Subdomain is a domain name that is based on your current domain name. For example, a Subdomain of yourdomain.com would be inspiration.yourdomain.com. This feature is useful if you want to divide up your site into different sections. The document root for your subdomain will be the subdirectory that has the same name as your subdomain prefix. For example: http://testing.somedomain.com is the same as http://somedomain.com/testing. Please, be careful when uploading your files to your subdomains.

Web Mail

Web mail allows you to check your email through a web GUI “Graphical User Interface” Many people prefer using this to setting up a mail client because it’s simple to use and very easy and quick to setup. Our servers offer the use of Horde Mail and Squirrel Mail. Squirrel is the more popular, but setup for either one is simple and intuitive.

Here is a link to Squirrel Mail Help Manual.

Here is a link to Horde Mail Help Manual.

WordPress Blog

WordPress is Open Source. Open Source means you need to spend a lot of time and effort on it to get it to work the way you envisioned or else you will need to exercise your ability to be happy with whatever it does.

You have access to this script in the Scripts Library on your Control Panel. Please search this knowledgebase for more information on this. Also, please visit the WordPress Web site,

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