Control Panels Explained

Pretty much all modern web hosting service will come along with some kind of desktop publishing software or content management system, and that means that you're likely to be mostly administrating your website from one of a series of control panels. These can be a little complicated for the uninitiated to understand, so we've written this simple article to help you get to grips with how to use them to their best potential.

Domain Control Panel

If you're getting your hosting and your domain through the same provider, it's likely that the two control panels will be combined - but wherever those panels are, there are a few features on the domain side that you'll need to learn how to understand and administrate. There will be various settings and options relating to your DNS and nameserver features, some locking options, the ability to tweak your privacy settings, some forwarding options and some other bits - you'll mostly not need to use them very often, but they're all important from time to time.

By tweaking your domain privacy settings, you can control what people find out when they run /whois queries on your domain name. Contact and locking options will help you deal with who owns your domain, and control whether or not it can be transferred to a new host or owner. Your forwarding, DNS and nameserver settings help you link up your domain name to your physical website, and control how that works for you.

Hosting Control Panel

There's likely to be a lot more to do on your hosting control panel, and depending on the kind of host you're using you might even use this primarily to administer pretty much everything about your website. There are a lot of options here, and some of them will vary from provider to provider - but here are a few of the basic options you can expect to find there, and how to use them.

  • This is where you will be able to deploy and tweak the template you've chosen to determine what your website ought to look like.
  • You'll also find any number of options about the way you manage the hosting for your website - which page people land on, what the links look like, how the various things that alter the look and feel of everything are going to work.
  • If you're using a blogging platform, you'll have all the usual options there as a part of these panels - making new posts, deleting posts, dealing with comments, etc.
  • Finally, you'll use your hosting control panel to upload all the pages, images, videos, audio and code you want your website to use.