WordPress for Your Business

posted on May 31, 2021

tags:

WordPress is the easiest CMS to use and is practically suitable for any website. Setting up a website has never been easier than with WordPress. It is also helpful in tracking all of your eCommerce related activities and the revenues generated. In other words, there is no better software available on the market today for blogging and publishing purposes. From business organizations to small business to even individuals, WordPress is praised as the most obvious choice. You can also use WordPress for affiliate marketing.

Beginner’s guide to affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing is a type of associate marketing program that works on the pay-for-performance rule. Your eCommerce business will depend on this rule. In this way, the advertiser who pays for the work hires or collaborates with an associate. The associate is the one who publishes the work.

You can use affiliate programs to monetize your work through this pay per click principle. Every time someone visits the affiliated website of the advertiser using your customized link to it; you will get a share as a commission from the revenue made. How much will depend on your negotiations and dealings with the company. One way is pay per lead. It works differently than the pay per click method; you get paid each time visitors are directed to the website as traffic. Another payment method is the pay per sale in which you will have to make sales to get paid.

Why should you affiliate using WordPress?

WordPress is a free CMS available in the market. In fact, you can begin using WordPress and make your account without even having to spend a single dollar. Not only that, but the plugins are free too. The benefit is that the free plugins are just as useful as the paid plugins. You can then customize your website according to your needs using the plugins. However, you still have to pay for Web hosting and domain name. But it won’t cost much. The next step is for you to customize and add features to your website that best suit your business theme and then install a proper theme to your site blog. With a little creativity and research, you can get your website running in no time. There is also another thing called search engine optimization or SEO, and you should do it properly for your site and blog to appear on top of search engine results. Good SEO will guarantee you lots of organic traffic. The best thing about WordPress is that it has a special tie-up with Google. And Google is the biggest search engine in the world. If you’re looking to build up a loyal and large number of followers, WordPress is the place where you need to be.

Where do you need to begin?

WordPress is the best blogging platform if you are a beginner in affiliate marketing. Its appearance may fool you at first. But know this: even business owners use WordPress. You should not underestimate it as a simple blogging tool. And it’s not meant for only individuals contrary to popular belief.

A blog is where you list details of the products, share your personal experiences and post customer reviews. You can also use WordPress as your business portfolio, butd you must ensure SEO has been done properly. The moment you get lots of organic non-paid traffic, it will get customers’ attention.

Make sure to select a particular niche as your audience — a real target works better with search engines.

How WordPress can help in your debt

Any business is at a vulnerable stage in its beginning days. It’s normal to have debt. And the lenders don’t always believe in your passion or vision or your belief that the business will make a turnover in the next few months or years. When they want their money back, it’s a dirty scenario. A debt settlement is where you can negotiate to pay lesser than what was promised. There are agencies that you can search for online. Go through their debt settlement reviews and compare to find the best-suited one for you.

The other best possible way is a little obvious; increase your income. You can use online affiliate marketing for that purpose. And WordPress is your best option regarding blogging. All you have to do is work on building a good set of followers, promote your blog and website and use affiliated products to promote them using your links. Always treat your customers with care, and they will gladly return the favor.

Conclusion

Always make sure you have done enough research before you decide to start your affiliate marketing through WordPress. Remember, content is the most valuable thing on your site and, as long as you’re posting good content and providing value to your customers or followers, they will keep coming back for more. WordPress is a goldmine with a lot of potential, but it will take a creative mind with a proper plan to utilize its many features for their marketing purposes. Use WordPress to increase your revenue and get rid of your debts.

IPv6 Basics

posted on May 24, 2021

tags:

Internet Protocol version 6, is a new addressing protocol designed to incorporate whole sort of requirement of future internet known to us as Internet version 2. This protocol as its predecessor IPv4, works on Network Layer (Layer-3). Along with its offering of enormous amount of logical address space, this protocol has ample of features which addresses today’s shortcoming of IPv4.

Why new IP version?

So far, IPv4 has proven itself as a robust routable addressing protocol and has served human being for decades on its best-effort-delivery mechanism. It was designed in early 80’s and did not get any major change afterward. At the time of its birth, Internet was limited only to a few Universities for their research and to Department of Defense. IPv4 is 32 bits long which offers around 4,294,967,296 (232) addresses. This address space was considered more than enough that time. Given below are major points which played key role in birth of IPv6:

  • Internet has grown exponentially and the address space allowed by IPv4 is saturating. There is a requirement of protocol which can satisfy the need of future Internet addresses which are expected to grow in an unexpected manner.

  • Using features such as NAT, has made the Internet discontiguous i.e. one part which belongs to intranet, primarily uses private IP addresses; which has to go through number of mechanism to reach the other part, the Internet, which is on public IP addresses.

  • IPv4 on its own does not provide any security feature which is vulnerable as data on Internet, which is a public domain, is never safe. Data has to be encrypted with some other security application before being sent on Internet.

  • Data prioritization in IPv4 is not up to date. Though IPv4 has few bits reserved for Type of Service or Quality of Service, but they do not provide much functionality.

  • IPv4 enabled clients can be configured manually or they need some address configuration mechanism. There exists no technique which can configure a device to have globally unique IP address.

Why not IPv5?

Till date, Internet Protocol has been recognized has IPv4 only. Version 0 to 3 were used while the protocol was itself under development and experimental process. So, we can assume lots of background activities remain active before putting a protocol into production. Similarly, protocol version 5 was used while experimenting with stream protocol for internet. It is known to us as Internet Stream Protocol which used Internet Protocol number 5 to encapsulate its datagram. Though it was never brought into public use, but it was already used.

Here is a table of IP version and their use:

IPv6 Version Table

Brief History

After IPv4’s development in early 80s, the available IPv4 address pool begun to shrink rapidly as the demand of addresses exponentially increased with Internet. Taking pre-cognizance of situation that might arise IETF, in 1994, initiated the development of an addressing protocol to replace IPv4. The progress of IPv6 can be tracked by means of RFC published:

  • 1998 – RFC 2460 – Basic Protocol

  • 2003 – RFC 2553 – Basic Socket API

  • 2003 – RFC 3315 – DHCPv6

  • 2004 – RFC 3775 – Mobile IPv6

  • 2004 – RFC 3697 – Flow Label Specification

  • 2006 – RFC 4291 – Address architecture (revision)

  • 2006 – RFC 4294 – Node requirement

June 06, 2012 some of Internet giants chose to put their Servers on IPv6. Presently they are using Dual Stack mechanism to implement IPv6 parallel with IPv4.

Features

The successor of IPv4 is not designed to be backward compatible. Trying to keep the basic functionalities of IP addressing, IPv6 is redesigned entirely. It offers the following features:

  • Larger Address Space:

    In contrast to IPv4, IPv6 uses 4 times more bits to address a device on the Internet. This much of extra bits can provide approximately 3.4×1038 different combinations of addresses. This address can accumulate the aggressive requirement of address allotment for almost everything in this world. According to an estimate, 1564 addresses can be allocated to every square meter of this earth.

  • Simplified Header:

    IPv6’s header has been simplified by moving all unnecessary information and options (which are present in IPv4 header) to the end of the IPv6 header. IPv6 header is only twice as bigger than IPv4 providing the fact the IPv6 address is four times longer.

  • End-to-end Connectivity:

    Every system now has unique IP address and can traverse through the internet without using NAT or other translating components. After IPv6 is fully implemented, every host can directly reach other host on the Internet, with some limitations involved like Firewall, Organization’s policies, etc.

  • Auto-configuration:

    IPv6 supports both stateful and stateless auto configuration mode of its host devices. This way absence of a DHCP server does not put halt on inter segment communication.

  • Faster Forwarding/Routing:

    Simplified header puts all unnecessary information at the end of the header. All information in first part of the header are adequate for a Router to take routing decision thus making routing decision as quickly as looking at the mandatory header.

  • IPSec:

    Initially it was decided for IPv6 to must have IPSec security, making it more secure than IPv4. This feature has now been made optional.

  • No Broadcast:

    Though Ethernet/Token Ring are considered as broadcast network because they support Broadcasting, IPv6 does not have any Broadcast support anymore left with it. It uses multicast to communicate with multiple hosts.

  • Anycast Support:

    This is another characteristic of IPv6. IPv6 has introduced Anycast mode of packet routing. In this mode, multiple interfaces over the Internet are assigned same Anycast IP address. Routers, while routing, sends the packet to the nearest destination.

  • Mobility:

    IPv6 was designed keeping mobility feature in mind. This feature enables hosts (such as mobile phone) to roam around in different geographical area and remain connected with same IP address. IPv6 mobility feature takes advantage of auto IP configuration and Extension headers.

  • Enhanced Priority support:

    Where IPv4 used 6 bits DSCP (Differential Service Code Point) and 2 bits ECN (Explicit Congestion Notification) to provide Quality of Service but it could only be used if the end-to-end devices support it, that is, the source and destination device and underlying network must support it.

    In IPv6, Traffic class and Flow label are used to tell underlying routers how to efficiently process the packet and route it.

  • Smooth Transition:

    Large IP address scheme in IPv6 enables to allocate devices with globally unique IP addresses. This assures that mechanism to save IP addresses such as NAT is not required. So devices can send/receive data between each other, for example VoIP and/or any streaming media can be used much efficiently.

    Other fact is, the header is less loaded so routers can make forwarding decision and forward them as quickly as they arrive.

  • Extensibility:

    One of the major advantage of IPv6 header is that it is extensible to add more information in the option part. IPv4 provides only 40-bytes for options whereas options in IPv6 can be as much as the size of IPv6 packet itself.

Addressing Modes

In computer networking, addressing mode refers to the mechanism how we address a host on the network. IPv6 offers several types of modes by which a single host can be addressed, more than one host can be addressed at once or the host at closest distance can be addressed.

Unicast

In unicast mode of addressing, an IPv6 interface (host) is uniquely identified in a network segment. The IPv6 packet contains both source and destination IP addresses. A host interface is equipped with an IP address which is unique in that network segment. A network switch or router when receives a unicast IP packet, destined to single host, sends out to one of its outgoing interface which connects to that particular host.

Multicast

The IPv6 multicast mode is same as that of IPv4. The packet destined to multiple hosts is sent on a special multicast address. All hosts interested in that multicast information, need to join that multicast group first. All interfaces which have joined the group receive the multicast packet and process it, while other hosts not interested in multicast packets ignore the multicast information.

Anycast

IPv6 has introduced a new type of addressing, which is called Anycast addressing. In this addressing mode, multiple interfaces (hosts) are assigned same Anycast IP address. When a host wishes to communicate with a host equipped with an Anycast IP address, sends a Unicast message. With the help of complex routing mechanism, that Unicast message is delivered to the host closest to the Sender, in terms of Routing cost.

Let’s take an example of TutorialPoints.com Web Servers, located in all continents. Assume that all Web Servers are assigned single IPv6 Anycast IP Address. Now when a user from Europe wants to reach TutorialsPoint.com the DNS points to the server which is physically located in Europe itself. If a user from India tries to reach Tutorialspoint.com, the DNS will then point to Web Server physically located in Asia only. Nearest or Closest terms are used in terms of Routing Cost.

In the above picture, When a client computer tries to reach a Server, the request is forwarded to the Server with lowest Routing Cost.

Address Types

Hexadecimal Number System

Before introducing IPv6 Address format, we shall look into Hexadecimal Number System. Hexadecimal is positional number system which uses radix (base) of 16. To represent the values in readable format, this system uses 0-9 symbols to represent values from zero to nine and A-F symbol to represent values from ten to fifteen. Every digit in Hexadecimal can represent values from 0 to 15.

Address Structure

An IPv6 address is made of 128 bits divided into eight 16-bits blocks. Each block is then converted into 4-digit Hexadecimal numbers separated by colon symbol.

 

For example, the below is 128 bit IPv6 address represented in binary format and divided into eight 16-bits blocks:

0010000000000001 0000000000000000 0011001000110100 1101111111100001 0000000001100011 0000000000000000 0000000000000000 1111111011111011

Each block is then converted into Hexadecimal and separated by ‘:’ symbol:

2001:0000:3238:DFE1:0063:0000:0000:FEFB

Even after converting into Hexadecimal format, IPv6 address remains long. IPv6 provides some rules to shorten the address. These rules are:

Rule:1 Discard leading Zero(es):

In Block 5, 0063, the leading two 0s can be omitted, such as (5th block):

2001:0000:3238:DFE1:63:0000:0000:FEFB

Rule:2 If two of more blocks contains consecutive zeroes, omit them all and replace with double colon sign ::, such as (6th and 7th block):

2001:0000:3238:DFE1:63::FEFB

Consecutive blocks of zeroes can be replaced only once by :: so if there are still blocks of zeroes in the address they can be shrink down to single zero, such as (2nd block):

2001:0:3238:DFE1:63::FEFB

Interface ID

IPv6 has three different type of Unicast Address scheme. The second half of the address (last 64 bits) is always used for Interface ID. MAC address of a system is composed of 48-bits and represented in Hexadecimal. MAC address is considered to be uniquely assigned worldwide. Interface ID takes advantage of this uniqueness of MAC addresses. A host can auto-configure its Interface ID by using IEEE’s Extended Unique Identifier (EUI-64) format. First, a Host divides its own MAC address into two 24-bits halves. Then 16-bit Hex value 0xFFFE is sandwiched into those two halves of MAC address, resulting in 64-bit Interface ID.

Global Unicast Address

This address type is equivalent to IPv4’s public address. Global Unicast addresses in IPv6 are globally identifiable and uniquely addressable.

Global Routing Prefix: The most significant 48-bits are designated as Global Routing Prefix which is assigned to specific Autonomous System. Three most significant bits of Global Routing Prefix is always set to 001.

Link-Local Address

Auto-configured IPv6 address is known as Link-Local address. This address always starts with FE80. First 16 bits of Link-Local address is always set to 1111 1110 1000 0000 (FE80). Next 48-bits are set to 0, thus:

Link-Local addresses are used for communication among IPv6 hosts on a link (broadcast segment) only. These addresses are not routable so a Router never forwards these addresses outside the link.

Unique-Local Address

This type of IPv6 address which is though globally unique, but it should be used in local communication. This address has second half of Interface ID and first half is divided among Prefix, Local Bit, Global ID and Subnet ID.

Prefix is always set to 1111 110. L bit, which is set to 1 if the address is locally assigned. So far the meaning of L bit to 0 is not defined. Therefore, Unique Local IPv6 address always starts with ‘FD’.

Scope of IPv6 Unicast Addresses:

The scope of Link-local address is limited to the segment. Unique Local Address are though locally global but are not routed over the Internet, limiting their scope to an organization’s boundary. Global Unicast addresses are globally unique and recognizable. They shall make the essence of Internet v2 addressing.

Special Addresses

Version 6 has slightly complex structure of IP address than that of IPv4. IPv6 has reserved few addresses and address notations for special purposes. See the table below:

Special Addresses:

  • As shown in the table above 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0/128 address does not specify to anything and is said to be an unspecified address. After simplifying, all 0s are compacted to ::/128.

  • In IPv4, address 0.0.0.0 with netmask 0.0.0.0 represents default route. The same concept is also applie to IPv6, address 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0 with netmask all 0s represents default route. After applying IPv6 simplying rule this address is compressed to ::/0.

  • Loopback addresses in IPv4 are represented by 127.0.0.1 to 127.255.255.255 series. But in IPv6, only 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1/128 address represents Loopback address. After simplying loopback address, it can be represented as ::1/128.

Reserved Multicast Address for Routing Protocols:

  • The above table shows reserved multicast addresses used by interior routing protocol.

  • All addresses are reserved in similar IPv4 fashion

Reserved Multicast Address for Routers/Node:

  • These addresses helps routers and hosts to speak to available routers and hosts on a segment without being configured with an IPv6 address. Hosts use EUI-64 based auto-configuration to self-configure an IPv6 address and then speaks to available hosts/routers on the segment by means of these addresses.

Headers

The wonder of IPv6 lies in its header. IPv6 address is 4 times larger than IPv4 but the IPv6 header is only 2 times larger than that of IPv4. IPv6 headers have one Fixed Header and zero or more Optional (Extension) Headers. All necessary information which is essential for a router is kept in Fixed Header. Extension Header contains optional information which helps routers to understand how to handle a packet/flow.

Fixed Header

IPv6 fixed header is 40 bytes long and contains the following information.

S.N.Field & Description
1

Version (4-bits): This represents the version of Internet Protocol, i.e. 0110.

2

Traffic Class (8-bits): These 8 bits are divided into two parts. Most significant 6 bits are used for Type of Service, which tells the Router what services should be provided to this packet. Least significant 2 bits are used for Explicit Congestion Notification (ECN).

3

Flow Label (20-bits): This label is used to maintain the sequential flow of the packets belonging to a communication. The source labels the sequence which helps the router to identify that this packet belongs to a specific flow of information. This field helps to avoid re-ordering of data packets. It is designed for streaming/real-time media.

4

Payload Length (16-bits): This field is used to tell the routers how much information this packet contains in its payload. Payload is composed of Extension Headers and Upper Layer data. With 16 bits, up to 65535 bytes can be indicated but if Extension Headers contain Hop-by-Hop Extension Header than payload may exceed 65535 bytes and this field is set to 0.

5

Next Header (8-bits): This field is used to indicate either the type of Extension Header, or if Extension Header is not present then it indicates the Upper Layer PDU. The values for the type of Upper Layer PDU is same as IPv4’s.

6

Hop Limit (8-bits): This field is used to stop packet to loop in the network infinitely. This is same as TTL in IPv4. The value of Hop Limit field is decremented by 1 as it passes a link (router/hop). When the field reaches 0 the packet is discarded.

7

Source Address (128-bits): This field indicates the address of originator of the packet.

8

Destination Address (128-bits): This field provides the address of intended recipient of the packet.

Extension Headers

In IPv6, the Fixed Header contains only information which is necessary and avoiding information which is either not required or is rarely used. All such information, is put between the Fixed Header and Upper layer header in the form of Extension Headers. Each Extension Header is identified by a distinct value.

When Extension Headers are used, IPv6 Fixed Header’s Next Header field points to the first Extension Header. If there is one more Extension Header, then first Extension Header’s ‘Next-Header’ field point to the second one, and so on. The last Extension Header’s ‘Next-Header’ field point to Upper Layer Header. Thus all headers from point to the next one in a linked list manner.

If the Next Header field contains value 59, it indicates that there’s no header after this header, not even Upper Layer Header.

The following Extension Headers must be supported as per RFC 2460:

The sequence of Extension Headers should be:

These headers:

  • 1. Should be processed by First and subsequent destinations.

  • 2. Should be processed by Final Destination.

Extension Headers are arranged one after another in a Linked list manner, as depicted in the diagram below:

Communication

In IPv4, a host which wants to communicate with some other host on the network, needs first to have an IP address acquired either by means of DHCP or by manual configuration. As soon as a host is equipped with some valid IP address, it is now able to speak to any host on the subnet. To communicate on layer-3, a host also must know the IP address of the other host. Communication on a link, is established by means of hardware embedded MAC Addresses. To know the MAC address of host whose IP address is known, a host sends ARP broadcast and in revert the intended host sends back its MAC address.

In IPv6, there’s no broadcast mechanism. It is not a must for an IPv6 enabled host to obtain IP address from DHCP or manually configured, but it can auto-configure its own IP. Then, how would a host communicates with others on IPv6 enabled network?

ARP has been replaced by ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol.

Neighbor Discovery Protocol

A host in IPv6 network is capable of auto-configuring itself with a unique link-local address. As soon as it is equipped with an IPv6 address, it joins a number of multicast groups. All communications related to that segment happens on those multicast addresses only. A host goes through a series of states in IPv6:

  • Neighbor Solicitation: After configuring all IPv6’s either manually, or by DHCP Server or by auto-configuration, the host sends a Neighbor Solicitation message out to FF02::1/16 multicast address for all its IPv6 addresses in order to know that no one else occupies same addresses.

  • DAD (Duplicate Address Detection): When the host does not listen from anything from the segment regarding its Neighbor Solicitation message, it assumes that no duplicate address exists on the segment.

  • Neighbor Advertisement: After assigning the addresses to its interfaces and making them up and running, the host once again sends out a Neighbor Advertisement message telling all other hosts on the segment, that it has assigned those IPv6 addresses to its interfaces.

Once a host is done with the configuration of its IPv6 addresses, it does the following things:

  • Router Solicitation: A host sends a Router Solicitation multicast packet (FF02::2/16) out on its segment to know the presence of any router on this segment. This helps the host to configure the router as its default gateway. If its default gateway router goes down, the host can shift to a new router and makes it the default gateway.

  • Router Advertisement: When a router receives a Router Solicitation message, it responses back to the host advertising its presence on that link.

  • Redirect: This may be the situation where a Router receives a Router Solicitation request but it knows that it is not the best gateway for the host. In this situation, the router sends back a Redirect message telling the host that there is a better ‘next-hop’ router available. Next-hop is where the host will send its data destined to a host which does not belong to the same segment.

Subnetting

In IPv4, addresses were created in classes. Classful IPv4 addresses clearly defines the bits used for network prefixes and the bits used for hosts on that network. To subnet in IPv4 we play with the default classful netmask which allows us to borrow hosts bit to be used as subnet bits. This results in multiple subnets but less hosts per subnet. That is, when we borrow host bit to create a subnet that costs us in lesser bit to be used for host addresses.

IPv6 addresses uses 128 bits to represent an address which includes bits to be used for subnetting. Second half of the address (least significant 64 bits) is always used for Hosts only. Therefore, there is no compromise if we subnet the network.

16 Bits of subnet is equivalent to IPv4’s Class B Network. Using these subnet bits an organization can have more 65 thousands of subnets which is by far, more than enough.

Thus routing prefix is /64 and host portion is 64 bits. We though, can further subnet the network beyond 16 bits of Subnet ID, borrowing hosts bit but it is recommended that 64 bits should always be used for hosts addresses because auto-configuration requires 64 bits.

IPv6 subnetting works on the same concept as Variable Length Subnet Masking in IPv4.

/48 prefix can be allocated to an organization providing it the benefit of having up to /64 subnet prefixes, which is 65535 sub-networks, each having 264 hosts. A /64 prefix can be assigned to a point-to-point connection where there are only two hosts (or IPv6 enabled devices) on a link.

IPv4 to IPv6

One problem in transition from IPv4 to IPv6 completely is that IPv6 is not backward compatible. This results in a situation where either a site is on IPv6 or it is not. Unlike an implementation of new technology where the newer one is backward compatible so the older system can still work with the newer without any additional changes.

To overcome this short-coming, there exist few technologies which can be used in slow and smooth transition from IPv4 to IPv6:

Dual Stack Routers

A router can be installed with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses configured on its interfaces pointing to the network of relevant IP scheme.

In above diagram, a Server which is having IPv4 as well as IPv6 address configured for it now can speak with all hosts on IPv4 network and IPv6 network with help of Dual Stack Router. Dual Stack Router, can communicate with both networks and provides a medium for hosts to access Server without changing their respective IP version.

Tunneling

In a scenario where different IP versions exist on intermediate path or transit network, tunneling provides a better solution where user’s data can pass through a non-supported IP version.

The above diagram depicts how two remote IPv4 networks can communicate via Tunnel, where the transit network was on IPv6. Vice versa is also possible where transit network is on IPv6 and remote sites which intends to communicate, are on IPv4.

NAT Protocol Translation

This is another important method of transition to IPv6 by means of a NAT-PT (Network Address Translation – Protocol Translation) enabled device. With help of NAT-PT device, actual conversion happens between IPv4 and IPv6 packets and vice versa. See the diagram below:

A host with IPv4 address sends a request to IPv6 enabled Server on Internet which does not understand IPv4 address. In this scenario, NAT-PT device can help them communicate. When IPv4 host sends a request packet to IPv6 Server, NAT-PT device/router, strips down the IPv4 packet, removes IPv4 header and adds IPv6 header and passes it through the Internet. When a response from IPv6 Server comes for IPv4 host, the router does vice versa.

Mobility

When a host is connected to one link or network, it acquires an IP address and all communication happens using that IP address on that link. As soon as, the same host changes its physical location, that is, moves into some different area / subnet / network / link, its IP address changes accordingly and all communication happening on the host using old IP address, goes down.

IPv6 mobility provides a mechanism which equips a host with an ability to roam around among different links without losing any communication/connection and its IP address.

Multiple entities are involved in this technology:

  • Mobile Node: The device which needs IPv6 mobility.

  • Home Link: This link is configured with the home subnet prefix and this is where the Mobile IPv6 device gets its Home Address.

  • Home Address: This is the address which Mobile Node acquires from Home Link. This is permanent address of Mobile Node. If the Mobile Node remains in the same Home Link, the communication among various entities happens as usual.

  • Home Agent: This is a router which acts as registrar for Mobile Nodes. Home Agent is connected to Home Link and maintains information about all Mobile Nodes, their Home Addresses and their present IP addresses.

  • Foreign Link: Any other Link which is not Mobile Node’s Home Link.

  • Care-of Address: When a Mobile Node attaches to a Foreign Link, it acquires a new IP address of that Foreign Link’s subnet. Home Agent maintains the information of both Home Address and Care-of Address. Multiple Care-of addresses can be assigned to Mobile Node, but at any instance only one Care-of Address has binding with Home Address.

  • Correspondent Node: Any IPv6 enable device which intends to have communication with Mobile Node.

Mobility Operation

When Mobile Node stays in its Home Link, all communications happen on its Home Address. As shown below:

When Mobile Node leaves its Home Link and is connected to some Foreign Link, the Mobility feature of IPv6 comes into play. After connecting to Foreign Link, Mobile Node acquires an IPv6 address from Foreign Link. This address is called Care-of Address. Mobile Node sends binding request to its Home Agent with the new Care-of Address. Home Agent binds Mobile Node’s Home Address with Care-of Address, establishing a Tunnel between both.

Whenever a Correspondent Node tries to establish connection with Mobile Node (on its Home Address), the Home Agent intercepts the packet and forwards to Mobile Node’s Care-of Address over the Tunnel which was already established.

Route Optimization

When a Correspondent Node initiate communication by sending packets to Mobile Node on Home Address, these packets are tunneled to Mobile Node by Home Agent. In Route Optimization mode, when the Mobile Node receives packet from Correspondent Node, it does not forward replies to Home Agent. Rather it sends its packet directly to Correspondent Node using Home Address as Source Address. This mode is optional and not used by default.

Routing

Routing concepts remain same in case of IPv6 but almost all routing protocol have been redefined accordingly. We have seen in Communication in IPv6 segment, how a host speaks to its gateway. Routing is a process to forward routable data choosing best route among several available routes or path to the destination. A router is a device which forwards data which is not explicitly destined to it.

There exists two forms of routing protocols

  • Distance Vector Routing Protocol: A router running distance vector protocol advertises its connected routes and learns new routes from its neighbors. The routing cost to reach a destination is calculated by means of hops between the source and destination. A Router generally relies on its neighbor for best path selection, also known as “routing-by-rumors”. RIP and BGP are Distance Vector Protocols.

  • Link-State Routing Protocol: This protocol acknowledges the state of a Link and advertises to its neighbors. Information about new links is learnt from peer routers. After all the routing information has been converged, Link-State Routing Protocol uses its own algorithm to calculate best path to all available links. OSPF and IS-IS are link state routing protocols and both uses Dijkstra’s Shortest Path First algorithm.

Routing protocols can be divided in two categories:

  • Interior Routing Protocol: Protocols in this categories are used within an Autonomous System or organization to distribute routes among all routers inside its boundary. Examples: RIP, OSPF.

  • Exterior Routing Protocol: Whereas an Exterior Routing Protocol distributes routing information between two different Autonomous Systems or organization. Examples: BGP.

Routing protocols

  • RIPng

    RIPng stands for Routing Information Protocol Next Generation. This is an Interior Routing Protocol and is a Distance Vector Protocol. RIPng has been upgraded to support IPv6.

  • OSPFv3

  • Open Shortest Path First version 3 is an Interior Routing Protocol which is modified to support IPv6. This is a Link-State Protocol and uses Djikrasta’s Shortest Path First algorithm to calculate best path to all destinations.

  • BGPv4

    BGP stands for Border Gateway Protocol. It is the only open standard Exterior Gateway Protocol available. BGP is a Distance Vector protocol which takes Autonomous System as calculation metric, instead of number of routers as Hop. BGPv4 is an upgrade of BGP to support IPv6 routing.

Protocols changed to support IPv6:

  • ICMPv6: Internet Control Message Protocol version 6 is an upgraded implementation of ICMP to accommodate IPv6 requirements. This protocol is used for diagnostic functions, error and information message, statistical purposes. ICMPv6’s Neighbor Discovery Protocol replaces ARP and helps discover neighbor and routers on the link.

  • DHCPv6: Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol version 6 is an implementation of DHCP. Though IPv6 enabled hosts do not require any DHCPv6 Server to acquire IP address as they can be auto-configured. Neither do they need DHCPv6 to locate DNS server because DNS can be discovered and configured via ICMPv6 Neighbor Discovery Protocol. Yet DHCPv6 Server can be used to provide these information.

  • DNS: There has been no new version of DNS but it is now equipped with extensions to provide support for querying IPv6 addresses. A new AAAA (quad-A) record has been added to reply IPv6 query messages. Now DNS can reply with both IP versions (4 & 6) without any change in query format.

Summary

IPv4 since 1982, has been an undisputed leader of Internet. With IPv4’s address space exhaustion IPv6 is now taking over the control of Internet, which is called Internet2.

IPv4 is widely deployed and migration to IPv6 would not be easy. So far IPv6 could penetrate IPv4’s address space by less than 1%.

The world has celebrated ‘World IPv6 Day’ on June 08, 2011 with a purpose to test IPv6 address over Internet in full. On June 06, 2012 the Internet community officially launched IPv6. This day all ISPs who were offering IPv6 were to enable it on public domain and were to keep it enable. All the device manufacturer also participated to offer IPv6 by-default enabled on devices.

This was a step towards encouraging Internet community to migrate to IPv6.

Organizations are provided plenty of ways to migrate from IPv4 to IPv6. Also organization, willing to test IPv6 before migrating completely can run both IPv4 and IPv6 simultaneously. Networks of different IP versions can communicate and user data can be tunneled to walk to the other side.

Future of IPv6

IPv6 enabled Internet version 2 will replace todays IPv4 enabled Internet. When Internet was launched with IPv4, developed countries like US and Europe took the larger space of IPv4 for deployment of Internet in their respective countries keeping future need in mind. But Internet exploded everywhere reaching and connecting every country of the world increasing the requirement of IPv4 address space. As a result, till this day US and Europe have many IPv4 address space left with them and countries like India and China are bound to address their IP space requirement by means of deployment of IPv6.

Most of the IPv6 deployment is being done outside US, Europe. India and China are moving forward to change their entire space to IPv6. China has announced a five year deployment plan named China Next Generation Internet.

After June 06, 2012 all major ISPs were shifted to IPv6 and rest of them are still moving.

IPv6 provides ample of address space and is designed to expand today’s Internet services. Feature-rich IPv6 enabled Internet version 2 may deliver more than expected.

[Image: Unicast Messaging][Image: Multicast Messaging][Image: Anycast Messaging][Image: Conversion Table][Image: EUI-64 Interface ID][Image: Global Unicast Address][Image: Link-Local Address][Image: Unique-Local Address][Image: IPv6 Unicast Address Scope][Image: IPv6 Fixed Header][Image: Extension Headers Connected Format][Image: IPv6 Subnetting][Image: Dual Stack Router][Image: Tunneling][Image: NAT - Protocol Translation][Image: Mobile Node connected to Home Link][Image: Mobile Node connected to Foreign Link]

IPv4 Basics

posted on May 24, 2021

tags:

This era is said to be the era of computers. Computers have significantly changed the way we live. A computing device when connected to other computing device(s) enables us to share data and information at lightning fast speed.

What is Network?

A Network in the world of computers is said to be a collection of interconnected hosts, via some shared media which can be wired or wireless. A computer network enables its hosts to share and exchange data and information over the media. Network can be a Local Area Network spanned across an office or Metro Area Network spanned across a city or Wide Area Network which can be spanned across cities and provinces.

A computer network can be as simple as two PCs connected together via a single copper cable or it can be grown up to the complexity where every computer in this world is connected to every other, called the Internet. A network then includes more and more components to reach its ultimate goal of data exchange. Below is a brief description of the components involved in computer network −

  • Hosts − Hosts are said to be situated at ultimate end of the network, i.e. a host is a source of information and another host will be the destination. Information flows end to end between hosts. A host can be a user’s PC, an internet Server, a database server etc.

  • Media − If wired, then it can be copper cable, fiber optic cable, and coaxial cable. If wireless, it can be free-to-air radio frequency or some special wireless band. Wireless frequencies can be used to interconnect remote sites too.

  • Hub − A hub is a multiport repeater and it is used to connect hosts in a LAN segment. Because of low throughputs hubs are now rarely used. Hub works on Layer-1 (Physical Layer) of OSI Model.

  • Switch − A Switch is a multiport bridge and is used to connect hosts in a LAN segment. Switches are much faster than Hubs and operate on wire speed. Switch works on Layer-2 (Data Link Layer), but Layer-3 (Network Layer) switches are also available.

  • Router − A router is Layer-3 (Network Layer) device which makes routing decisions for the data/information sent for some remote destination. Routers make the core of any interconnected network and the Internet.

  • Gateways − A software or combination of software and hardware put together, works for exchanging data among networks which are using different protocols for sharing data.

  • Firewall − Software or combination of software and hardware, used to protect users data from unintended recipients on the network/internet.

All components in a network ultimately serve the hosts.

Host Addressing

Communication between hosts can happen only if they can identify each other on the network. In a single collision domain (where every packet sent on the segment by one host is heard by every other host) hosts can communicate directly via MAC address.

MAC address is a factory coded 48-bits hardware address which can also uniquely identify a host. But if a host wants to communicate with a remote host, i.e. not in the same segment or logically not connected, then some means of addressing is required to identify the remote host uniquely. A logical address is given to all hosts connected to Internet and this logical address is called Internet Protocol Address.

IPv4 - OSI Model

The International Standard Organization has a well-defined model for Communication Systems known as Open System Interconnection, or the OSI Model. This layered model is a conceptualized view of how one system should communicate with the other, using various protocols defined in each layer. Further, each layer is designated to a well-defined part of communication system. For example, the Physical layer defines all the components of physical nature, i.e. wires, frequencies, pulse codes, voltage transmission etc. of a communication system.

The OSI Model has the following seven layers −

OSI Model Layers

  • Application Layer (Layer-7) − This is where the user application sits that needs to transfer data between or among hosts. For example − HTTP, file transfer application (FTP) and electronic mail etc.

  • Presentation Layer (Layer-6) − This layer helps to understand data representation in one form on a host to other host in their native representation. Data from the sender is converted to on-the-wire data (general standard format) and at the receiver’s end it is converted to the native representation of the receiver.

  • Session Layer (Layer-5) − This layer provides session management capabilities between hosts. For example, if some host needs a password verification for access and if credentials are provided then for that session password verification does not happen again. This layer can assist in synchronization, dialog control and critical operation management (e.g., an online bank transaction).

  • Transport Layer (Layer-4) − This layer provides end to end data delivery among hosts. This layer takes data from the above layer and breaks it into smaller units called Segments and then gives it to the Network layer for transmission.

  • Network Layer (Layer-3) − This layer helps to uniquely identify hosts beyond the subnets and defines the path which the packets will follow or be routed to reach the destination.

  • Data Link Layer (Layer-2) − This layer takes the raw transmission data (signal, pulses etc.) from the Physical Layer and makes Data Frames, and sends that to the upper layer and vice versa. This layer also checks any transmission errors and sorts it out accordingly.

  • Physical Layer (Layer-1) − This layer deals with hardware technology and actual communication mechanism such as signaling, voltage, cable type and length, etc.

Network Layer

The network layer is responsible for carrying data from one host to another. It provides means to allocate logical addresses to hosts, and identify them uniquely using the same. Network layer takes data units from Transport Layer and cuts them in to smaller unit called Data Packet.

Network layer defines the data path, the packets should follow to reach the destination. Routers work on this layer and provides mechanism to route data to its destination.

IPv4 - TCP/IP Model

A majority of the internet uses a protocol suite called the Internet Protocol Suite also known as the TCP/IP protocol suite. This suite is a combination of protocols which encompasses a number of different protocols for different purpose and need. Because the two major protocols in this suites are TCP (Transmission Control Protocol) and IP (Internet Protocol), this is commonly termed as TCP/IP Protocol suite. This protocol suite has its own reference model which it follows over the internet. In contrast with the OSI model, this model of protocols contains less layers.

TCP/IP Model Layers

Figure − Comparative depiction of OSI and TCP/IP Reference Models

This model is indifferent to the actual hardware implementation, i.e. the physical layer of OSI Model. This is why this model can be implemented on almost all underlying technologies. Transport and Internet layers correspond to the same peer layers. All three top layers of OSI Model are compressed together in single Application layer of TCP/IP Model.

Internet Protocol Version 4 (IPv4)

Internet Protocol is one of the major protocols in the TCP/IP protocols suite. This protocol works at the network layer of the OSI model and at the Internet layer of the TCP/IP model. Thus this protocol has the responsibility of identifying hosts based upon their logical addresses and to route data among them over the underlying network.

IP provides a mechanism to uniquely identify hosts by an IP addressing scheme. IP uses best effort delivery, i.e. it does not guarantee that packets would be delivered to the destined host, but it will do its best to reach the destination. Internet Protocol version 4 uses 32-bit logical address.

IPv4 - Packet Structure

Internet Protocol being a layer-3 protocol (OSI) takes data Segments from layer-4 (Transport) and divides it into packets. IP packet encapsulates data unit received from above layer and add to its own header information.

IP Encapsulation

The encapsulated data is referred to as IP Payload. IP header contains all the necessary information to deliver the packet at the other end.

IP Header

IP header includes many relevant information including Version Number, which, in this context, is 4. Other details are as follows −

  • Version − Version no. of Internet Protocol used (e.g. IPv4).

  • IHL − Internet Header Length; Length of entire IP header.

  • DSCP − Differentiated Services Code Point; this is Type of Service.

  • ECN − Explicit Congestion Notification; It carries information about the congestion seen in the route.

  • Total Length − Length of entire IP Packet (including IP header and IP Payload).

  • Identification − If IP packet is fragmented during the transmission, all the fragments contain same identification number. to identify original IP packet they belong to.

  • Flags − As required by the network resources, if IP Packet is too large to handle, these ‘flags’ tells if they can be fragmented or not. In this 3-bit flag, the MSB is always set to ‘0’.

  • Fragment Offset − This offset tells the exact position of the fragment in the original IP Packet.

  • Time to Live − To avoid looping in the network, every packet is sent with some TTL value set, which tells the network how many routers (hops) this packet can cross. At each hop, its value is decremented by one and when the value reaches zero, the packet is discarded.

  • Protocol − Tells the Network layer at the destination host, to which Protocol this packet belongs to, i.e. the next level Protocol. For example protocol number of ICMP is 1, TCP is 6 and UDP is 17.

  • Header Checksum − This field is used to keep checksum value of entire header which is then used to check if the packet is received error-free.

  • Source Address − 32-bit address of the Sender (or source) of the packet.

  • Destination Address − 32-bit address of the Receiver (or destination) of the packet.

  • Options − This is optional field, which is used if the value of IHL is greater than 5. These options may contain values for options such as Security, Record Route, Time Stamp, etc.

IPv4 - Addressing

IPv4 supports three different types of addressing modes. −

Unicast Addressing Mode

In this mode, data is sent only to one destined host. The Destination Address field contains 32- bit IP address of the destination host. Here the client sends data to the targeted server −

Unicast Addressing

Broadcast Addressing Mode

In this mode, the packet is addressed to all the hosts in a network segment. The Destination Address field contains a special broadcast address, i.e. 255.255.255.255. When a host sees this packet on the network, it is bound to process it. Here the client sends a packet, which is entertained by all the Servers −

Broadcast Addressing

Multicast Addressing Mode

This mode is a mix of the previous two modes, i.e. the packet sent is neither destined to a single host nor all the hosts on the segment. In this packet, the Destination Address contains a special address which starts with 224.x.x.x and can be entertained by more than one host.

Multicast Addressing

Here a server sends packets which are entertained by more than one servers. Every network has one IP address reserved for the Network Number which represents the network and one IP address reserved for the Broadcast Address, which represents all the hosts in that network.

Hierarchical Addressing Scheme

IPv4 uses hierarchical addressing scheme. An IP address, which is 32-bits in length, is divided into two or three parts as depicted −

IP Addressing

A single IP address can contain information about the network and its sub-network and ultimately the host. This scheme enables the IP Address to be hierarchical where a network can have many sub-networks which in turn can have many hosts.

Subnet Mask

The 32-bit IP address contains information about the host and its network. It is very necessary to distinguish both. For this, routers use Subnet Mask, which is as long as the size of the network address in the IP address. Subnet Mask is also 32 bits long. If the IP address in binary is ANDed with its Subnet Mask, the result yields the Network address. For example, say the IP Address is 192.168.1.152 and the Subnet Mask is 255.255.255.0 then −

IP Subnet Mask

This way the Subnet Mask helps extract the Network ID and the Host from an IP Address. It can be identified now that 192.168.1.0 is the Network number and 192.168.1.152 is the host on that network.

Binary Representation

The positional value method is the simplest form of converting binary from decimal value. IP address is 32 bit value which is divided into 4 octets. A binary octet contains 8 bits and the value of each bit can be determined by the position of bit value '1' in the octet.

Binary Representation

Positional value of bits is determined by 2 raised to power (position – 1), that is the value of a bit 1 at position 6 is 2^(6-1) that is 2^5 that is 32. The total value of the octet is determined by adding up the positional value of bits. The value of 11000000 is 128+64 = 192. Some examples are shown in the table below −

IP Bit Patterns

IPv4 - Address Classes

Internet Protocol hierarchy contains several classes of IP Addresses to be used efficiently in various situations as per the requirement of hosts per network. Broadly, the IPv4 Addressing system is divided into five classes of IP Addresses. All the five classes are identified by the first octet of IP Address.

Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers is responsible for assigning IP addresses.

The first octet referred here is the left most of all. The octets numbered as follows depicting dotted decimal notation of IP Address −

IP Decimal Notation

The number of networks and the number of hosts per class can be derived by this formula −

Number of networks

When calculating hosts' IP addresses, 2 IP addresses are decreased because they cannot be assigned to hosts, i.e. the first IP of a network is network number and the last IP is reserved for Broadcast IP.

Class A Address

The first bit of the first octet is always set to 0 (zero). Thus the first octet ranges from 1 – 127, i.e.

Class A Addresses

Class A addresses only include IP starting from 1.x.x.x to 126.x.x.x only. The IP range 127.x.x.x is reserved for loopback IP addresses.

The default subnet mask for Class A IP address is 255.0.0.0 which implies that Class A addressing can have 126 networks (27-2) and 16777214 hosts (224-2).

Class A IP address format is thus: 0NNNNNNN.HHHHHHHH.HHHHHHHH.HHHHHHHH

Class B Address

An IP address which belongs to class B has the first two bits in the first octet set to 10, i.e.

Class B Addresses

Class B IP Addresses range from 128.0.x.x to 191.255.x.x. The default subnet mask for Class B is 255.255.x.x.

Class B has 16384 (214) Network addresses and 65534 (216-2) Host addresses.

Class B IP address format is: 10NNNNNN.NNNNNNNN.HHHHHHHH.HHHHHHHH

Class C Address

The first octet of Class C IP address has its first 3 bits set to 110, that is −

Class C Addresses

Class C IP addresses range from 192.0.0.x to 223.255.255.x. The default subnet mask for Class C is 255.255.255.x.

Class C gives 2097152 (221) Network addresses and 254 (28-2) Host addresses.

Class C IP address format is: 110NNNNN.NNNNNNNN.NNNNNNNN.HHHHHHHH

Class D Address

Very first four bits of the first octet in Class D IP addresses are set to 1110, giving a range of −

Class D Addresses

Class D has IP address range from 224.0.0.0 to 239.255.255.255. Class D is reserved for Multicasting. In multicasting data is not destined for a particular host, that is why there is no need to extract host address from the IP address, and Class D does not have any subnet mask.

Class E Address

This IP Class is reserved for experimental purposes only for R&D or Study. IP addresses in this class ranges from 240.0.0.0 to 255.255.255.254. Like Class D, this class too is not equipped with any subnet mask.

IPv4 - Subnetting

Each IP class is equipped with its own default subnet mask which bounds that IP class to have prefixed number of Networks and prefixed number of Hosts per network. Classful IP addressing does not provide any flexibility of having less number of Hosts per Network or more Networks per IP Class.

CIDR or Classless Inter Domain Routing provides the flexibility of borrowing bits of Host part of the IP address and using them as Network in Network, called Subnet. By using subnetting, one single Class A IP address can be used to have smaller sub-networks which provides better network management capabilities.

Class A Subnets

In Class A, only the first octet is used as Network identifier and rest of three octets are used to be assigned to Hosts (i.e. 16777214 Hosts per Network). To make more subnet in Class A, bits from Host part are borrowed and the subnet mask is changed accordingly.

For example, if one MSB (Most Significant Bit) is borrowed from host bits of second octet and added to Network address, it creates two Subnets (21=2) with (223-2) 8388606 Hosts per Subnet.

The Subnet mask is changed accordingly to reflect subnetting. Given below is a list of all possible combination of Class A subnets −

Class A Subnets

In case of subnetting too, the very first and last IP address of every subnet is used for Subnet Number and Subnet Broadcast IP address respectively. Because these two IP addresses cannot be assigned to hosts, sub-netting cannot be implemented by using more than 30 bits as Network Bits, which provides less than two hosts per subnet.

Class B Subnets

By default, using Classful Networking, 14 bits are used as Network bits providing (214) 16384 Networks and (216-2) 65534 Hosts. Class B IP Addresses can be subnetted the same way as Class A addresses, by borrowing bits from Host bits. Below is given all possible combination of Class B subnetting −

Class B Subnets

Class C Subnets

Class C IP addresses are normally assigned to a very small size network because it can only have 254 hosts in a network. Given below is a list of all possible combination of subnetted Class B IP address −

Class C Subnets

IPv4 - VLSM

Internet Service Providers may face a situation where they need to allocate IP subnets of different sizes as per the requirement of customer. One customer may ask Class C subnet of 3 IP addresses and another may ask for 10 IPs. For an ISP, it is not feasible to divide the IP addresses into fixed size subnets, rather he may want to subnet the subnets in such a way which results in minimum wastage of IP addresses.

For example, an administrator have 192.168.1.0/24 network. The suffix /24 (pronounced as "slash 24") tells the number of bits used for network address. In this example, the administrator has three different departments with different number of hosts. Sales department has 100 computers, Purchase department has 50 computers, Accounts has 25 computers and Management has 5 computers. In CIDR, the subnets are of fixed size. Using the same methodology the administrator cannot fulfill all the requirements of the network.

The following procedure shows how VLSM can be used in order to allocate department-wise IP addresses as mentioned in the example.

Step - 1

Make a list of Subnets possible.

Subnet List

Step - 2

Sort the requirements of IPs in descending order (Highest to Lowest).

  • Sales 100
  • Purchase 50
  • Accounts 25
  • Management 5

Step - 3

Allocate the highest range of IPs to the highest requirement, so let's assign 192.168.1.0 /25 (255.255.255.128) to the Sales department. This IP subnet with Network number 192.168.1.0 has 126 valid Host IP addresses which satisfy the requirement of the Sales department. The subnet mask used for this subnet has 10000000 as the last octet.

Step - 4

Allocate the next highest range, so let's assign 192.168.1.128 /26 (255.255.255.192) to the Purchase department. This IP subnet with Network number 192.168.1.128 has 62 valid Host IP Addresses which can be easily assigned to all the PCs of the Purchase department. The subnet mask used has 11000000 in the last octet.

Step - 5

Allocate the next highest range, i.e. Accounts. The requirement of 25 IPs can be fulfilled with 192.168.1.192 /27 (255.255.255.224) IP subnet, which contains 30 valid host IPs. The network number of Accounts department will be 192.168.1.192. The last octet of subnet mask is 11100000.

Step - 6

Allocate the next highest range to Management. The Management department contains only 5 computers. The subnet 192.168.1.224 /29 with the Mask 255.255.255.248 has exactly 6 valid host IP addresses. So this can be assigned to Management. The last octet of the subnet mask will contain 11111000.

By using VLSM, the administrator can subnet the IP subnet in such a way that least number of IP addresses are wasted. Even after assigning IPs to every department, the administrator, in this example, is still left with plenty of IP addresses which was not possible if he has used CIDR.

IPv4 - Reserved Addresses

There are a few reserved IPv4 address spaces which cannot be used on the internet. These addresses serve special purpose and cannot be routed outside the Local Area Network.

Private IP Addresses

Every class of IP, (A, B & C) has some addresses reserved as Private IP addresses. These IPs can be used within a network, campus, company and are private to it. These addresses cannot be routed on the Internet, so packets containing these private addresses are dropped by the Routers.

Private IP Addresses

In order to communicate with the outside world, these IP addresses must have to be translated to some public IP addresses using NAT process, or Web Proxy server can be used.

The sole purpose to create a separate range of private addresses is to control assignment of already-limited IPv4 address pool. By using a private address range within LAN, the requirement of IPv4 addresses has globally decreased significantly. It has also helped delaying the IPv4 address exhaustion.

IP class, while using private address range, can be chosen as per the size and requirement of the organization. Larger organizations may choose class A private IP address range where smaller organizations may opt for class C. These IP addresses can be further sub-netted and assigned to departments within an organization.

Loopback IP Addresses

The IP address range 127.0.0.0 – 127.255.255.255 is reserved for loopback, i.e. a Host’s self-address, also known as localhost address. This loopback IP address is managed entirely by and within the operating system. Loopback addresses, enable the Server and Client processes on a single system to communicate with each other. When a process creates a packet with destination address as loopback address, the operating system loops it back to itself without having any interference of NIC.

Data sent on loopback is forwarded by the operating system to a virtual network interface within operating system. This address is mostly used for testing purposes like client-server architecture on a single machine. Other than that, if a host machine can successfully ping 127.0.0.1 or any IP from loopback range, implies that the TCP/IP software stack on the machine is successfully loaded and working.

Link-local Addresses

In case a host is not able to acquire an IP address from the DHCP server and it has not been assigned any IP address manually, the host can assign itself an IP address from a range of reserved Link-local addresses. Link local address ranges from 169.254.0.0 -- 169.254.255.255.

Assume a network segment where all systems are configured to acquire IP addresses from a DHCP server connected to the same network segment. If the DHCP server is not available, no host on the segment will be able to communicate to any other. Windows (98 or later), and Mac OS (8.0 or later) supports this functionality of self-configuration of Link-local IP address. In absence of DHCP server, every host machine randomly chooses an IP address from the above mentioned range and then checks to ascertain by means of ARP, if some other host also has not configured itself with the same IP address. Once all hosts are using link local addresses of same range, they can communicate with each other.

These IP addresses cannot help system to communicate when they do not belong to the same physical or logical segment. These IPs are also not routable.

IPv4 - Example

This chapter describes how actual communication happens on the Network using Internet Protocol version 4.

Packet Flow in Network

All the hosts in IPv4 environment are assigned unique logical IP addresses. When a host wants to send some data to another host on the network, it needs the physical (MAC) address of the destination host. To get the MAC address, the host an broadcasts ARP message and asks to give the MAC address whoever is the owner of destination IP address. All the hosts on that segment receive the ARP packet, but only the host having its IP matching with the one in the ARP message, replies with its MAC address. Once the sender receives the MAC address of the receiving station, data is sent on the physical media.

In case the IP does not belong to the local subnet, the data is sent to the destination by means of Gateway of the subnet. To understand the packet flow, we must first understand the following components −

  • MAC Address − Media Access Control Address is 48-bit factory hard coded physical address of network device which can uniquely be identified. This address is assigned by device manufacturers.

  • Address Resolution Protocol − Address Resolution Protocol is used to acquire the MAC address of a host whose IP address is known. ARP is a Broadcast packet which is received by all the host in the network segment. But only the host whose IP is mentioned in ARP responds to it providing its MAC address.

  • Proxy Server − To access the Internet, networks use a Proxy Server which has a public IP assigned. All the PCs request the Proxy Server for a Server on the Internet. The Proxy Server on behalf of the PCS sends the request to the server and when it receives a response from the Server, the Proxy Server forwards it to the client PC. This is a way to control Internet access in computer networks and it helps to implement web based policies.

  • Dynamic Host Control Protocol − DHCP is a service by which a host is assigned IP address from a pre-defined address pool. DHCP server also provides necessary information such as Gateway IP, DNS Server Address, lease assigned with the IP, etc. By using DHCP services, a network administrator can manage assignment of IP addresses at ease.

  • Domain Name System − It is very likely that a user does not know the IP address of a remote Server he wants to connect to. But he knows the name assigned to it, for example, tutorialpoints.com. When the user types the name of a remote server he wants to connect to, the localhost behind the screens sends a DNS query. Domain Name System is a method to acquire the IP address of the host whose Domain Name is known.

  • Network Address Translation − Almost all PCs in a computer network are assigned private IP addresses which are not routable on the Internet. As soon as a router receives an IP packet with a private IP address, it drops it. In order to access servers on public private address, computer networks use an address translation service, which translates between public and private addresses, called Network Address Translation. When a PC sends an IP packet out of a private network, NAT changes the private IP address with public IP address and vice versa.

We can now describe the packet flow. Assume that a user wants to access www.TutorialsPoint.com from her personal computer. She has internet connection from her ISP. The following steps will be taken by the system to help her reach the destination website.

Step 1 – Acquiring an IP Address (DHCP)

When the user’s PC boots up, it searches for a DHCP server to acquire an IP address. For the same, the PC sends a DHCPDISCOVER broadcast which is received by one or more DHCP servers on the subnet and they all respond with DHCPOFFER which includes all the necessary details such as IP, subnet, Gateway, DNS, etc. The PC sends DHCPREQUEST packet in order to request the offered IP address. Finally, the DHCP sends DHCPACK packet to tell the PC that it can keep the IP for some given amount of time that is known as IP lease.

Alternatively, a PC can be assigned an IP address manually without taking any help from DHCP server. When a PC is well configured with IP address details, it can communicate other computers all over the IP enabled network.

Step 2 – DNS Query

When a user opens a web browser and types www.tutorialpoints.com which is a domain name and a PC does not understand how to communicate with the server using domain names, then the PC sends a DNS query out on the network in order to obtain the IP address pertaining to the domain name. The pre-configured DNS server responds to the query with IP address of the domain name specified.

Step 3 – ARP Request

The PC finds that the destination IP address does not belong to his own IP address range and it has to forward the request to the Gateway. The Gateway in this scenario can be a router or a Proxy Server. Though the Gateway’s IP address is known to the client machine but computers do not exchange data on IP addresses, rather they need the machine’s hardware address which is Layer-2 factory coded MAC address. To obtain the MAC address of the Gateway, the client PC broadcasts an ARP request saying "Who owns this IP address?" The Gateway in response to the ARP query sends its MAC address. Upon receiving the MAC address, the PC sends the packets to the Gateway.

An IP packet has both source and destination addresses and it connects the host with a remote host logically, whereas MAC addresses help systems on a single network segment to transfer actual data. It is important that source and destination MAC addresses change as they travel across the Internet (segment by segment) but source and destination IP addresses never change.

IPv4 - Summary

The Internet Protocol version 4 was designed to be allocated to approx. imately 4.3 billion addresses. At the beginning of Internet this was considered a much wider address space for which there was nothing to worry about.

The sudden growth in internet users and its wide spread use has exponentially increased the number of devices which needs real and unique IP to be able to communicate. Gradually, an IPS is required by almost every digital equipment which were made to ease human life, such as Mobile Phones, Cars and other electronic devices. The number of devices (other than computers/routers) expanded the demand for extra IP addresses, which were not considered earlier.

Allocation of IPv4 is globally managed by Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) under coordination with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). IANA works closely with Regional Internet Registries, which in turns are responsible for efficiently distributing IP addresses in their territories. There are five such RIRS. According to IANA reports, all the IPv4 address blocks have been allocated. To cope up with the situation, the following practices were being done −

  • Private IPs − Few blocks of IPs were declared for private use within a LAN so that the requirement for public IP addresses can be reduced.

  • NAT − Network address translation is a mechanism by which multiple PCs/hosts with private IP addresses are enabled to access using one or few public IP addresses.

  • Unused Public IPs were reclaimed by RIRs.

Internet Protocol v6 (IPv6)

IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force) has redesigned IP addresses to mitigate the drawbacks of IPv4. The new IP address is version 6 which is 128-bit address, by which every single inch of the earth can be given millions of IP addresses.

Today majority of devices running on Internet are using IPv4 and it is not possible to shift them to IPv6 in the coming days. There are mechanisms provided by IPv6, by which IPv4 and IPv6 can co-exist unless the Internet entirely shifts to IPv6 −

  • Dual IP Stack
  • Tunneling (6to4 and 4to6)
  • NAT Protocol Translation

5 Digital Marketing Tips For Higher Page Rank in Search Engines

posted on May 19, 2021

tags:

Are you a start-up business owner who’s trying to establish your brand’s online presence? Then chances are you already have your own business website and a couple of social media pages set up dedicated for your brand. However, these are not enough to drive traffic to your site. What you need is an excellent digital marketing strategy that aims to increase your Google ranking.

Having a good spot in search engines can increase site traffic, improve brand recognition, promote your goods and services, build an army of loyal customers and eventually make good revenue.

But the question is – how?

When you search the internet for this very question, you’ll get tons of results. However, not all are guaranteed to give you a better search engine ranking. To help you achieve such a goal this year, here are five things you can add to your digital marketing strategies.

Know Your Current Ranking

Before you work on improving your rank, the first thing you need to do is to know what your current search engine ranking is. Since Google makes algorithm changes often, your rank is affected whether or not your site is old or new. Thankfully, there are lots of resources available that let you monitor your rank.

For example, you’re into content marketing and are using specific keywords. There are free websites that let you type in your keyword and your URL, and they will assess your rank. You get to check your average searches every month, which page comes up first whenever someone clicks on your site on search engine results. Know your site’s health, how fast your site loads and don’t forget to track your metrics.

Focus On Improving UX

The user experience is one of the definitive factors on whether or not your SEO efforts are paying off. By focusing on user experience, your site visitors will get the impression that you have just the right goods or services they can get in the simplest way possible.
How to Improve User Experience

Make smart use of graphics. Internet users don’t just visit a website for no reason. They are here to find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. By building simple yet attractive and easy to understand visual elements, you can easily cater to their needs.

Educate Your Site Visitors

Internet users are always on the web looking for the best information to satisfy their inquiries. By educating your customers and potential clients, they’ll find the value of what you have to offer. In turn, users will stay on your landing pages, recommend your site and leave feedback thus gaining positive reviews. If you’re selling goods and services, you get to sell and make revenue.

Make Your Website Mobile-friendly

Most internet users are on their mobile phones. By optimizing your site for mobile devices, you’re giving your site visitors a user-friendly experience. This drives more traffic to your site and generates potential sales. So make sure to use responsive web design that caters to all kinds of internet users.

Speed Up Your Website

In this day and age, speed matters. If a site takes longer to load, you can’t expect happy visitors. Even a few seconds of loading time can affect your web traffic. Make sure to optimize your images and set up automated plugins that can help improve your site’s loading speed.

Build a Powerful PBN with SerpSpace Domains

A Private Blog Network works best in giving you high-quality backlinks from equally competitive sites. While PBNs are basically from old but high authoritative sites, the backlinks you can get are still in demand which makes them the perfect link building strategy. SerpSpace Domains are an excellent example of a high-quality domain.

Why You Need SerpSpace Domains

When building a PBN, you want to make sure you have consistent quality domains to achieve great results. And this is what SerpSpace Domains can offer. What can you get out of SerpSpace Domains? These sites are relevant to your brand and what you have to offer, and all sites are 100% spam-free.

How SerpSpace Domains Work

PBNs are one of the best ways to achieve quality backlinks. Backlinks make a difference when it comes to quality search results. With domains from SerpSpace being highly-authoritative you get an edge over your competitors. If you have many authoritative sites pointing towards your website, Google will process the information and mark your site as relevant and trustworthy. Since search engines are after relevant, useful and engaging content, you’ll get better search engine ranking.

Give Your Site Visitors Fresh Website Content

Users are after unique and useful content. A high-demand for daily content means you need to keep up and create as much content as you can accommodate. But, make it a point not to bombard your site visitors with useless information. Go For Fresh, Engaging, And Relevant Content. Be consistent, but don’t overdo it.

Content Marketing Tips

As content marketing continues to rule, it’s high time to check on your strategy and think of new ways to get ahead of your competitors. This is one of the most cost-effective ways to achieve the best results. One of the things you need to try this year is working with micro influencers.

Nowadays, even micro influencers have tons of power when it comes to your audience. They can guest post on your site and direct their followers to you by linking or sharing your content on their pages. You get to reach a broader audience related to your niche thus giving your online presence a boost. They will, in turn, search for your webpage and the increase in traffic will get you a better ranking in Google.

SEO Myths and the Way Out

posted on May 19, 2021

tags:

Proven strategies deliver results. At the same time, marketers looking for shortcuts or who are not willing to put in the work end up falling for myths that result in disappointments. Some of these myths cause you to engage in illegal SEO practices, resulting in penalties and eventually being banned from different platforms.

The myths are so convincing that you are likely to miss the trap. Luckily, SEO experts have debunked the myths and provided viable alternatives that will still deliver the results you need. Here are common SEO myths and how to escape their trap while still achieving the best results.

The Hummingbird Changed the Future of Keywords in Search

It is true that Google overhauled its search algorithm, altering the results you get during a search. Most marketers viewed the Hummingbird update as pushing aside the keyword at the expense of the search experience. As a result, some have ignored search engines, ending up in pages at the back of the queue.

Notice that the Hummingbird update was different from Panda or Penguin. As a result, ignoring keywords becomes an expensive mistake. The truth is that keywords are still pushing websites to the first page.

Do not ignore keywords and their place in search results. Hummingbird has, in fact, made it easier because you can now focus on a lower keyword ratio instead of spamming your articles with keywords. Understand search intentions so that your keywords can deliver the best experience by matching your content with these intentions.

Penalty for Duplicate Content

That Google will penalize you for duplicate content is one of the most common myths you will encounter about SEO. There are ranking implications whenever search spiders find duplicate content and these implications are the clearest sign that you should avoid duplicate content. But the issue does not end there.

Duplicate content is only detrimental to your ranking if you have copied. Search engine spiders crawl the web to identify who uploaded the content first. The only penalty you get is the inability to rank as high as the original owner of the content. Do not waste time chasing websites that have copied your content. Put your resources and time into creating new content that pushes your brand ahead instead of worrying about penalties that will not affect you anyway.

PPC Ads Boost Your Ranking

The fact that you have spent money on paid advertisements will not in any way determine your ranking during an organic search. The reason is simple; the algorithm for paid ads differs from those of organic searches. Consequently, your money ends where advertising ends.

Ranking during organic searches depends on other factors aside from paid ads. Factors such as keyword, the architecture of your website, user experience, and loading speed take precedence. As a result, you must work on these factors to rank highly on organic searches.

It is worth noting that user experience resulting from paid ads counts during organic ranking. Once a person clicks onto your website, his actions like commenting on pages, sharing, and clicking on other pages will boost your ranking during an organic search. It means that you have to give your website and content a multipronged approach so that organic SEO tactics complement the paid SEO efforts.

Good Uses Domain Authority in Ranking

Google used to indicate page ranking with a number between one and ten. The trend stopped in 2013, bringing an end to the much-hyped PageRank. Still, the need to know how well you are performing compared to other websites did not disappear. In fact, it grew exponentially as more businesses went online. Consequently, many ranking platforms emerged.

By 2016, Google confirmed that it was not using PageRank in its algorithms. The score given is used to determine the ‘value of a page.’ However, Google is not a party to such ranking numbers.

But does this mean that ranking is irrelevant? Not at all! You must constantly check using the available tools to see how well you are performing compared to your competition. While the numbers do not matter to Google for ranking purposes, they give you an idea of measures you need to take to boost your digital marketing results.
Longer Content Ranks Better

The myth about the length of your content is the easiest to debunk. Long or short content has no direct connection with your ranking. Content works to your advantage only when it is quality. It allows you to build links and keep readers longer on your page.

Final Word

While you might not know everything about SEO and digital marketing, it is important to verify all the information you come across. Only use proven tactics, especially avoiding the illegal ones. When your SEO strategy is above board, you will enjoy the best value for money. Don't forget that quality web hosting service provider is also an important factor for your SEO success.

Cpanel Tutorial

posted on May 18, 2021

tags:

cPanel is a Linux-based hosting management control panel. It is used to manage your website and server’s backend working system. It provides graphical user interface for most of the tasks we perform on the website’s server, for example, uploading files, creating emails, setting cron jobs, handling databases, etc.

cPanel Users

cPanel is installed on a Linux system by the server administrator. With the help of the cPanel Software Server, an Administrator can create Virtual Private Servers or it can dedicate the whole server for shared hosting environment. cPanel Shared hosting has three types of user levels.

Server Administrator − This user is the root user of a cPanel Linux Server and has all the permission over the server. Server Admin can create, modify or delete any account from the cPanel Server. The Server Admin has access to cPanel WHM (Web Host Manger), which can be understood as the backend of cPanel.

Reseller Accounts − This user is created by the server administrator and server administrator can choose which type of permissions should be given to reseller accounts. A Reseller account can further create user accounts and has access to all those accounts, which they have created. One reseller account does not have access to the user accounts that were created by another reseller accounts. They also have access to WHM with limited permissions.

User Account − These are normal user accounts, each user who subscribes for a web hosting from a company, is given this type of account. They do not have access to Web Host Manager. User account can host single or multiple websites according to their plans they have purchased from web hosting provider.

Why cPanel

cPanel is packed with many features that is not provided by other web hosting management panels. It is graphical, hence, non–technical users can also use it perfectly. cPanel is responsive to the screen size, hence can be used in mobile and tablets. It will automatically adapt the screen size of the device.

cPanel is very easy to use and configure. It automatically adjusts all the advanced setting for web hosting. A user hardly needs to go to the command line to configure any settings, as it already has all the features inbuilt.

Advantages

cPanel offers the following advantages −

  • It is very easy to host a website using cPanel.

  • It is multiannual and available in many languages.

  • It is responsive and adapts to any screen size, it can be used efficiently in mobile and Tablet too.

  • cPanel has in–built File Manager, which helps in managing your files without the hassles of an FTP.

  • cPanel has integrated webmail software, which helps in sending and receiving emails through online webmail client.

  • You can easily create a backup of your website in a few steps. This will help you to restore your backup, if your website encounters any error.

  • You can easily manage your website databases, as cPanel has integrated phpMyAdmin, which helps to directly manage databases.

Disadvantages

cPanel does not have any significant drawbacks, however here are a couple of its notable disadvantages −

  • cPanel is a commercial software and you need to pay to get this.

  • cPanel is meant for small and medium websites only. Creating a large website using cPanel is not recommended.

cPanel - Registering a Domain Name

If you have a website developed locally or you have planned to make a website, then there are two things that you will need — a Domain Name and Web Hosting. A Domain name is the address of your website, which will be used by your users to access it. For example, tutorialspoint.com or google.com these are domain names.

A domain name has two parts, TLD (Top Level Domain) and SLD (Second level domain), for example in tutorialspoint.com, tutorialspoint is second level domain of TLD .com, or you can say it’s a subdomain of .com TLD. There are many top level domains available, like .com, .net, etc. and also country specified TLD like .in, .uk, .ae, etc.

Importance of a domain

Getting a domain name of your choice can be very useful. You can use it for many reasons, for instance, you can create the identity of your brand online or you can create a personal blogging website. If you have a business, people will be able to learn about your business remotely.

Registering a Domain Name

Domain names are registered with a non–profit organization ICANN. It does not let you register your domain directly, but you will have to go with a domain registrar for this purpose. Domain name registrations involve a registration fee for a year, and you have to renew the domain every year by providing a renewal fee. Domain names cannot be purchased permanently at once, but you have to renew it every year, if you fail to renew the domain, it is automatically deleted from registry.

If you want to register your domain name, then you will have to follow these steps −

Step 1 − Choose a perfect domain name for your website. If it’s a business website, then you may want to go with a domain name, which is the name of your business.

Step 2 − Choose a good domain registrar company having good support infrastructure. For example, GoDaddy or BigRock.

Step 3 − In the registrar’s website, check if your domain name is available for registration. If the domain you selected has been already registered by someone, then you will have to think of some other domain name. If your domain name is available to register, then you can proceed further.

Step 4 − Provide your contact information and everything that the registrar asked for. It is mandatory that you provide correct information while registering a domain name, as it will be visible to everyone if the user looks for WHOIS information.

Step 5 − You can hide your contact details by choosing to be viewed by anyone by subscribing privacy protection service. This service hides all your contact information to everyone except the registrar, this service is provided by many domain registrars at some extra cost.

Step 6 − Complete the purchase by paying the registration fees. Domain name will be registered to you.

cPanel - Getting Web Hosting

If you have already registered your domain name, the next step is to get a web hosting for your website. Web hosting is a service, which provides space for your website on internet. If you want your website to publish online, then you will have to get web hosting service.

In a web hosting service, your website is stored in high powered computers called web servers, which are connected to a high speed network and they are powered-on 24/7. While purchasing a web hosting service, you rent a space for your website on these servers.

There are basically three types of web hosting −

Shared HostingIn this type of web hosting, a single server hosts multiple websites, sometimes thousands of them. Each account on this server has certain limits on using disk space to store websites, databases and bandwidth. This is the amount of data transferred through your website. This type of hosting is cheap and suitable for small and medium websites.

Virtual Private Servers − In this type of hosting, a Linux Server is divided into several parts and each part acts as a different server, each server has some limited resources given. In this, the VPS administrator has root access to his VPS and can then host single or many websites according to his need. These type of hosting is recommended for medium and large websites. Cost of VPS is higher than Shared Hosting, but lower then Dedicated Hosting.

Dedicated Server − In this type of hosting, a whole server is rented to the user, who can host a large website on this server or can use it to host multiple websites in this server, the server admin can create multiple VPS. Cost of dedicated hosting is much higher and it requires a server admin to manage this type of hosting.

If your website is new and it is not expecting much resource usage, then you can go for shared hosting. You can purchase shared hosting for hosting one website or multiple websites according to your need. In this tutorial, we will learn about hosting a website using cPanel, hence it is recommended that you purchase the hosting that comes with cPanel.

cPanel - Setting Up Nameserver

When you have purchased your hosting, you will have to connect your domain with the hosting that you have purchased. If you have purchased the domain and hosting from the same provider, then it is liable that your Nameservers are already setup. If you have purchased your domain and hosting from different providers, then you will have to manually add new Nameservers to your domain, so that it can point your domain to the right server.

Nameservers are a part of Domain Name System. These DNS servers keep the records of which domain is connected to which IP address. Nameservers allow us to use a domain instead of IP address of the DNS server. When a visitor types the URL of your domain then the DNS server tells the browser that from which server it should load content from. In easy words, Nameservers define the current DNS provider of your domain.

When you get the email of the Login details of your web hosting server along with it, you also get the details of your Nameservers. Most hosting providers use their own DNS servers. For setting up your Nameservers, you will have to login to your domain control panel, and update your Nameservers by replacing the old one. Each domain provider has its own application to do so, you will have to refer to your domain registrar’s documentation for further details.

Domain Nameservers take time to propagate through different DNS servers around the globe, the change may reflect instantly or it may take up to 48 hours of time according to the DNS servers of hosting provider.

cPanel - Logging into cPanel Dashboard

In this chapter, we will learn to login into the cPanel Dashboard. For logging into the dashboard, you will need your login credentials. This information is sent to you, when you have signed up for cPanel hosting or you may have created during purchase of hosting.

cPanel Dashboard is accessible by two ports – 2082 for unsecured connections and 2083 for secured connection, many hosting providers support unsecured connections, but it is always recommended that you should use a secured connection only.

There are many ways to find the login screen of a cPanel. Recommended is that you may use the IP address of your cPanel, you may find the cPanel using IP address by typing the following in address bar −

https://:2083 
https:///cpanel

If you have already updated your Nameservers for your domain, then you may use your domain for directly accessing cPanel by your domain. You may find cPanel login screen using your domain by typing the following into the address bar −

https://:2083 
https:///cpanel

Once you are redirected to your login screen, you will find the login screen like shown below.

cPanel Login

You can enter the Username and Password and press the Log in button to login into the cPanel Dashboard.

cPanel - Changing Password

When you are successfully logged into a cPanel Dashboard, first and foremost, change the password of your cPanel account. This is very important, so that the security of cPanel remains intact. Nobody would want their website to be hacked.

To change your cPanel Password, follow these steps −

Step 1 − In cPanel Home, click username written over the right corner of the dashboard.

Username

Step 2 − Click Password & Security option. You will find Change Password Interface.

Password & Security

Step 3 − Write your old password and in the following fields, write your new password twice.

Old Password

Step 4 − Enable digest authentication option if you need to access your webdisk via an unencrypted connection in windows machine. This type of connection is unsecured and not recommended.

Step 5 − Click Change your password now! Button to change your current password. If successful, then cPanel will automatically log you out and you will have to login again with your new password.

cPanel - Styles

You can change cPanel’s look and feel using this interface. cPanel has two major interface styles in which you can manage your web hosting. Although these interface is very standard, but these can be modified by your server administrator or reseller account admin to change its logo and icons etc.

To modify your cPanel Style follow these steps −

Step 1 − In cPanel Home click username written over the right corner of your dashboard.

Click Username

Step 2 − Click Change Style option. You will find Change Style Interface.

Change Style Change Style Option

Step 3 − Choose any style option from the available styles, click Apply button which can be found over the top of the style to load the new style.

Apply Button

Step 4 − cPanel will automatically reload to apply the new setting and you will find a new interface according to the one you selected.

cPanel - Contact Information

In this interface of cPanel, you are allowed to change the system email address. It is the email address on which the system can notify you for important updates. You cannot use your system email address or any email address, which is connected with your domain, so that you do not lose any important update, when the system is down.

To update your contact email, follow these steps −

Step 1 − In cPanel Home, click username on the right corner of your dashboard.

Username Dashboard

Step 2 − Click on Contact Information option. You will find Contact Information Interface.

Contact Information Contact Information2

Step 3 − Enter the email address on which you want the system to contact you for important notifications.

Step 4 − You can enter a second email address on which you can receive the copy of that email sent on your primary email.

Step 5 − You can choose the options of an event on which the system should send you notification in contact preference. It is recommended that you leave every checkbox selected.

Contact Preferences

Step 6 − Click the Save button to save your contact preference.

cPanel - Home

Once you are logged into cPanel dashboard, you will see that it has so many options. In this chapter, you will find a quick brief of every option shown in the cPanel dashboard.

cPanel Dashboard

Sidebar

You can switch to your accounts’ four main areas of cPanel through this interface, which are −

  • Home − This is where you can access all the features of cPanel.

  • Statistics − Displays information about your cPanel account and also the resources it used.

  • Dashboard − Displays quick links to change styles etc. and overview of your cPanel account.

  • User manager − Here you can manage the users of your cPanel account.

Navigation Bar

On this toolbar, you will find the cPanel’s logo and a search box in which you can type any function of cPanel to access it quickly. Like your User account name and some quick links, once you click on it. The Notification Icon will show you the recent notifications about your cPanel account. Logout button will end your session (log you out) from the cPanel.

Feature List

It displays all the features and functions you have in your cPanel. You can click on any function and it will take you over to the desired functions interface.

cPanel - Statistics & Dashboard

In this chapter, we will discuss about the cPanel statistics and the dashboard along with a few examples and screenshots for better understanding.

cPanel Statistics

The statistics interface of cPanel shows quick statistics of your cPanel account. It includes several types of information shown below. To view quick statistics of your cPanel account, click on second icon statistics from sidebar at left. You will find this information in cPanel quick statistics.

Quick Statistics

General − It will show you the amount of bandwidth allotted to your account and also the amount of bandwidth, which is used by you. It will also show you the FTP accounts available in your cPanel account. It will also show the information of your Home directory and the IP address, from which you logged in last time. You can click on the Server Information to view the detailed information of your server.

Domain Info − In the next box, it will show you the information of main domain and the number of add-on domains, subdomains and aliases you have created.

Mail Info − This section will show the information about your emails. It will tell you how many email accounts, Autoresponder Forwarders and Filters you have created along with the total number of resource allotted.

Disk Space − In this section, the total disk space of your account is shown and also the amount of space used by MySQL database is shown along with total amount of space allotted to your account and MySQL database.

Database − This section shows the info of total number of databases you have created along with the total number of database you can create.

Cloud Linux

System Information − In this section, the statistics cPanel shows you the information of your system with total CPU usage, virtual and physical memory that is being used. It also displays information of the process you are running, the Input and Output uses and also it displays number of inodes, which means the number of files.

cPanel Dashboard

Through this interface you can see some brief statistics of your cPanel account plus you can change the theme of your cPanel account. To access your dashboard, you can click on the third icon ‘Dashboard’ on the left sidebar.

Dashboard

cPanel - User Manager

This is a new feature introduced in the latest edition of cPanel. Through this user manager section, you can control all the users you have in your cPanel with a single interface. This interface will show you all the user accounts, who have email accounts or FTP accounts that are associated with your domain. You can delete edit those accounts, change passwords and also you can delete them from here. This interface gives you the ability to add new user and associate them to FTP and Email account too.

To Delete an Account

To use user manager and delete user accounts, you can follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open User manager by clicking the last icon in the sidebar on the left side. Once user manager is open, you will see an interface like this −

User Manager

Step 2 − You can view all the accounts of your cPanel here, which includes your system accounts too. Account having the Inbox icon colored shows that the account has an email address. The accounts having the truck icon colored show that the account has an access to FTP account, whereas the accounts having the disk icon colored shows that the account has access to a webdisk.

Step 3 − Find the account you wish to delete and click on the delete link under the domain.

Delete Link

Step 4 − You will be asked for confirmation, click on the delete button to delete the user account.

To Edit an Account

If you wish to edit an account or to change the password of any account. Follow these steps −

Step 1 − Choose the account you wish to edit or change password of, from the user manager. Click on Edit link or Change Password link under that account. Both of these will take you to the same interface, where you can edit the account.

Change Password

Step 2 − You can specify the Full name of the user. Or else, you can provide alternate email id for that account.

Step 3 − Scroll down to see the Security Information, you can provide a new password in this interface or whether, you wish to change the password, if not leave it blank.

Security Information

Step 4 − Choose the services you want to enable for that user account from the services interface.

services.jpg

You can enable or disable email, also you can change the Quota for the email of that account. You can also enable FTP for that account, just move the switch to enable the FTP account.

Step 5 − Click Save for saving the settings for that existing user.

Add a New User

You can also add a new user and give him access to email and FTP. To create a new user, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Click ‘Add User’ Button found on the right side of the user manager interface. And you will see the same screen, which you saw on the Edit user interface.

Basic Information

Step 2 − Provide all necessary information like username and password, you can also provide full name of the user, but it is optional.

Step 3 − Choose services you want to give to that particular user. Enable the services by moving the switch to enable or disable the services.

Services1

Step 4 − Click the Create button to create the user and return to the user manager interface or click Create and Add Another to create the user and return to Add user interface to add a new user again.

cPanel - File Manager

cPanel File Manager gives you useful options to quickly manage your files within the cPanel interface. It’s easy to use and it removes the hassles of using FTP. You can create, upload, modify or remove files from this interface. It also gives the feature of moving files to Trash before permanently deleting them, from which it can be recovered later.

To open the file manager, click on File Manager in the Files section.

Files Section

It will open a new tab and once you are in File Manager, you will see a Dashboard like this.

File Manager

cPanel File Manager gives you a lot of flexibility for Navigating within your files.

You can use file manager for following tasks.

Searching for a File

To search for a file, use the search bar on top of the File Manager Dashboard. You can search within all your files, public_html or current directory, then write the file name in next input box and click go to search for a file.

Notepublic_html is folder in cPanel, all the files which are accessible from the frontend of your website are stored in this directory. Index.html or index.php found in this folder loads first, when somebody accesses your website from frontend by your URL.

File Manager Settings

To access cPanel File Manager Preferences, click setting buttons from the top of the Dashboard. You will see a Prompt as shown below.

Preferences

  • By default, cPanel File manager opens the Home Directory of your account, when opening the cPanel. But, we can override this by choosing it with Web Root, which is public_html folder of Public FTP root or with a Document root of your domain or any subdomain you create.

  • In Linux, hidden files have a single Dot (.) in front of them. The default cPanel File Manager does not display them, but you can choose to show hidden files by enabling Show Hidden Files (dotfiles) option.

  • When we open a text file, which may be HTML, PHP or Plain Text file, cPanel opens a dialog to check the character encoding of the file, to ensure maximum compatibility, when editing the file. You can disable this feature by selecting – Disable Character Encoding Verification Dialogs.

Working with File Manager

Creating a File

To create a new File, navigate to the directory, where the file needs to be created and then click New File from the Dashboard. A prompt opens and asks you the file name. Enter it accordingly with the extension of file and Path, where the file will be created. Finally, click Create New File and a new file will be created.

Creating a Folder

To create a new Folder or Directory, navigate to the directory in which you want to create the folder. Click on New Folder from the Dashboard. A Prompt will be opened to ask you name of your New Folder. Enter your desired Folder name and Click Create New Folder. Your new folder will be created.

Copying

You can copy a single file or folder or even multiple files or folders. To copy a single file or folder select what you want to copy with a single mouse click over the it and Click Copy. You will be asked the file path where you wish to copy the file or folder to, enter the Path accordingly and click Copy File(s).

To copy multiple files or folders, single click on the desired files or folders by holding down the ctrl key to select multiple files or folder and then click on copy. Enter the desired location and Click to Copy File(s) button to copy multiple files.

Moving

You can move a single file or folder or multiple ones. To move a single file or folder, select the one that you want to move with a single mouse click over it and Click on Move. You will be asked the file path where you wish to move the file or folder to, enter the Path accordingly and click on Move File(s).

To move multiple files or folders, single click on the desired files or folders by holding down the ctrl key to select multiple files or folder and then click on move. Enter the desired location and Click to Move File(s) button to move multiple files.

Uploading a File

To upload a file from the cPanel File Manager Interface, navigate to the directory in which you wish to upload and then, click Upload. You will find the interface shown below.

File Upload

You can Drag and Drop the file to upload or you can select the file from Select File button. If you want the File Manager to automatically overwrite the files with same name, you can select – Overwrite existing files checkbox.

Downloading a File

To download a file from the cPanel File Manager, you can select the single file or multiple files with single click on file name, and click over Download to download the files.

Deleting a File or Folder

To delete Single or Multiple file or folder just select the files with single mouse click and click on Delete button. You will get a prompt for sending the files into Trash, if you want to permanently delete the files then select Skip the Trash checkbox. If the check box is not selected, files are moved to Trash Folder from where you can recover them later.

Renaming a File or Folder

To rename a File or Folder, select the file or folder with a single mouse click and Click on rename. You will get a prompt to enter new file or folder name. Enter file or folder name accordingly and click on Rename File button to save. You can also double click on Name of any File or Folder to rename the file.

Text Editor

To edit any text file with simple text editor, select the file and click on Edit button. You will get a prompt with Encoding check if enabled, then click on Edit in prompt to edit the file. Text editor will open in a new tab, where you can edit the file. You can also switch to Code editor from here. When you have finished editing, click Save to save the File.

Code Editor

Code editor makes it easy to edit those files, which contains code in them. It differentiates color between codes, which makes it easy to edit those files.

Extracting a File

To extract a File which are compressed, select the file you wish to extract and click on Extract Button. You will get a prompt to enter the path where you wish to extract the files, if you enter a path which is not existing, cPanel File Manager will create the directory and extract the file in it.

Note − cPanel File Manager can only extract files which are in Zip, GZip and BZip2 type of compression.

Compressing a File or Folder

To compress a folder or a single or multiple files, select the files and click on Compress. You will get a prompt, select the compression method where you can choose from Zip, Gzip or Bzip2. It will ask you to enter the file name, enter file name accordingly and click Compress File(s). After compression, the result will be shown to you.

Viewing a File

This option helps you to view the content of known file types within cPanel Interface. Select the file you wish to view and click on View. It will open a new tab and the content of file will be shown to you.

cPanel - File Permissions

All files and directories in Linux Operating System has access permissions. This feature gives the ability to the user for setting up different access levels for each user and also Operating system gets the ability to deal with different request for accessing the file. This feature makes system more secure to potential security threats. There are three types of access permissions −

  • Read − It is denoted by ‘r’ and number 4, it gives ability to the user for reading the file only.

  • Write − It is denoted by ‘w’ and number 2, it gives ability to the user for writing into the file only.

  • Execute − It is denoted by ‘x’ and number 1, it gives ability to user for executing the file only.

Access permissions can be given in groups too, for example, if we want to give a file to read and write permission only, we can assign ‘rw–‘ to that file or in numerical form, we can assign number 6 – as 4 for read and 2 for write equals to 6.

These access permissions are given to three types of users −

  • User − It is owner of the file.

  • Group − It is the group of users in which Owner lies.

  • World − It is referred to everyone else.

We give access permissions according to file types in cPanel. By default, cPanel File Manager gives 6-4-4 permissions to the users – 6 to the User, 4 to the Group and 4 to the World. Most of the time we do not need to change the file permissions unless needed.

You can change the file permissions in cPanel environment by using the following steps −

Step 1 − Go to File Manager from cPanel Home.

Step 2 − Navigate to the File or Folder you wish to change permissions to and select the file or folder by a single click of the mouse.

Step 3 − Click on Permissions link from the Top menu of File Manager and you will get a Prompt as shown below.

Change Permissions

Step 4 − Choose permissions according to your need and Click on Change Permissions to save the new access permissions of the file.

cPanel - Images

With this feature of cPanel, you can manage and modify your Images directly through its Interface. The image must be uploaded into your account to use this feature. To access cPanel Images, click Images Link found on your files section.

Files

This feature includes the following tools −

cPanel Images

Thumbnailer Converter

Thumbnailer creates small images or Thumbnails of the original image. This is done by using these images wherever required as it could save more bandwidth. For example, when we need to display a preview of the photo, which will then be opened into a new tab, when the user clicks preview image. We can use a small image here, rather than forcefully scaling the image to display in a small size.

To use Thumbnailer converter, we can open the application by clicking on the Thumbnailer link from images section. We will get a similar dashboard as shown below.

Thumbnailer

Step 1 − Navigate to the desired directory from which you wish to create Thumbnails, to navigate within directories use folder icon on left hand side.

Step 2 − Select folder from which you wish to create thumbnails, by clicking on the name of folder displayed in middle.

Note − Thumbnailer is a bulk thumbnails creator tool, single image cannot be used in these tools.

Step 3 − In Scale Percent, text inputs enter the percentage by which you wish to shrink the image. Select Keep aspect ratio to maintain original proportion of the Image.

Images Thumbnailer

Step 4 − Finally click on Thumbnail Images to create thumbnails.

The system will automatically create a subfolder, Thumbnails into selected folder and all files in that folder will be converted and saved there with a prefix tn_. For example, if you have an image abc.png, then it will be saved into tn_abc.png.

cPanel - Image Scaler

Image Scaler is a very useful tool to scale an Image to increase or decrease its dimensions, or we can say to resize an Image. To scale an image, we need to follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open Image Scaler by clicking Scaler from Images section.

Step 2 − Navigate to the directories by clicking on folder icon on the left hand side, same way as done above.

Step 3 − Select the File which you want to resize by clicking on the Name of File.

Note − Image Scaler is a single image tool, and can be used with a single image at a Time.

Step 4 − Enter either new dimensions in Pixels or Enter Percentage by which you want to increase or decrease the Image. You can select, Keep Aspect Ratio, so that the Image ratio is not disturbed, and also you can retain the old copy of the file as Image Scalar replaces old Image to the new one.

Images Scaler

Step 5 − Finally Click Scale Image.

cPanel - Image Converter

Image converter can be used for converting image format of any image. It can convert from one supported type to any other supported type. To use Image converter, open the interface by clicking Converter link from Images section.

Step 1 − Navigate to the directories by clicking on folder icon on the left hand side, as we did above.

Step 2 − Select the File or Folder which you want to resize by clicking on the Name of File or Folder.

Note − Image Converter can be used with a single file or folder.

Step 3 − Select new file type from the prompt as shown below, which can be −

  • Portable Network Graphics (.PNG)
  • JPEG (.JPG)
  • GIF (.GIF)
  • Bitmap (.BMP)

Converter

Step 4 − Finally Click on Convert to convert the file type.

cPanel - Directory Privacy

This feature of cPanel allows us to protect certain directories with a username and password. If a directory is protected by this, then if somebody from the front end of your website tries to access the file, they will be prompted to provide a username and password, if username of password does not match, then the user will not be able to see the content of that directory.

To configure a password for a directory, use the following steps −

Step 1 − Open Directory Privacy Configuration by clicking Directory Privacy in the Files Section.

Directory Privacy

Step 2 − Navigate within your directories to find the directory you want to protect. Use icon on the left hand side to open a directory.

Privacy

Step 3 − Select the directory you want to protect by clicking on the name of the folder, you will get same configuration as shown below.

Directory Privacy1

Step 4 − Select Password protect for this directory checkbox and enter a Label which you wish to display in the frontend, click Save to protect this directory.

Step 5 − To give access to users, you will need to create users. Enter username and password to create a new user, who will have access to this directory from the frontend.

Step 6 − Click Save to give access to this user. You can also create more than one user here.

If you now try to access your password protected directory, you will get a prompt like this −

Authentication

You can now enter the username and password to access this directory.

cPanel - Disk Usage

cPanel Disk Usage is a very efficient way to monitor your accounts available and use disk spaces. This feature scans your disk to provide you a graphical overview of the Disk usage. It displays disk space used by directories, but it does not show how much space is consumed by an individual file. It also displays information of disk quota used by MySQL Databases, hidden directories and Emails.

It helps in management of disk quota, because once you know which directory has the largest files, you can navigate to that directory using file manager and delete unnecessary files.

To access this feature, click Disk Usage link from Files section of cPanel.

Disk Usage

cPanel Disk Manger has mainly two tables. The first table gives you information about disk space used by subdirectories of home directory and space used by other features like MySQL, Mailing Lists. Please refer to screenshot below.

Disk Usage1

The Second Table displays a directory structure, which has all the subdirectories including hidden ones, to open a directory to view space used by that sub-directory, you can click on the arrow shown in front of the name of the directory. Clicking on the name of directory will take you to the File Manager. In this table, you can see which subdirectory has the largest files in them, it is very helpful when there are lots of directories in your account.

Sort Directories

cPanel - FTP

File Transfer Protocol (FTP) allows you to manage your files with third party applications like FileZilla, CoreFTP, etc. Using a FTP file manager to upload files is a great practice when the number of files or size of the files is large. FTP accounts configures users who can upload, download or modify your files through FTP. Each FTP user has his own username and home directory, only that certain directory the user will have access to.

To create an FTP account, please follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open FTP accounts feature by clicking FTP accounts found under Files Section.

FTP Accounts

Once FTP accounts feature is opened, you will see the following screen.

Add FTP Accounts

Step 2 − Enter Log in name for your new user, it will be the user’s username, also provide a strong password for this user.

Step 3 − Enter Directory for your new user, you may also leave it with pre-filled directory name according to your user.

Step 4 − Provide FTP storage quota, you may provide unlimited quota or use some value in Megabytes.

Step 5 − Click on Create FTP Account and Your FTP account will be created.

Configure FTP Client

To configure your FTP client, you can download any pre-built configuration file by clicking Configure FTP Account.

FTP

You can download FTP Configuration files for FileZilla or CoreFTP, which are windows software or Cyberduck for Mac.

Special FTP Accounts

These FTP accounts are pre-built with hosting account and cannot be deleted, these are used for administrative purposes.

Special FTP

One of the Special FTP account is your Administrative FTP account, whose username will be same as your accounts username. This FTP account’s home directory is your cPanel accounts root directory. You can access all the files of your account with this FTP account. Its password will be the same as your cPanel account password.

cPanel - FTP Sessions

The cPanel FTP Session interface shows current users, which are logged in to website through FTP. This interface is helpful and it helps you to terminate unwanted connections with one click.

To access this feature, click FTP Sessions link from the Files section of cPanel.

FTP Sessions

It will open an interface in which it will show the current users who are logged into your site. If no user has logged in, it will display the message that no users have logged in.

FTP Connetions

Here it will show the following information −



Example
User Displays username of logged in user liptanxy
Logged in Form Displays IP address or hostname of user’s system 106.215.178.204
Login Time Displays Login Time of User Thu Jan 21 13:50:03 2016
Status Displays Sessions status IDLE
Process ID System’s FTP Session Process ID 203299
Actions Terminate the connection Disconnect

Terminate a FTP Connection

If you think that any user is not doing any activity and is in IDLE mode for a long time, or if you think a user is uploading a very large file, or doing something malicious, you can terminate the connection by clicking the disconnect button from Actions. You will see the following prompt.

Disconnect FTP Connetions

Click on Disconnect “User”, and user’s FTP connection will be terminated instantly.

cPanel - Backup

This feature of cPanel is very useful for your website. We can use backup feature for transferring our website to the new host. If we are making a change in the website files or database, we can create a backup of website. So that, if in future anything wrongs happens to the website while editing, we can always restore to as it was before. If any problem occurs with the hosting provider, you will always have a copy of the website.

cPanel Backup creates a zipped copy of your entire website or a part of your website. There are two types of Backup in your cPanel Backups.

Full Backup

Full Backup creates a zipped copy of your entire website and cPanel account. It includes all the files you own or you have access to. It also includes all the databases, email accounts, email lists, subdomain, etc.

Full Backups cannot be restored through cPanel interface. It is only used when you are transferring your current host to the new host. You need to upload this zipped backup into your home directory and ask your hosting provider to restore it.

To download your full website backup, please follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Backup by clicking Backup from the Files section in cPanel Home.

Backup

At the top, you will find Full Backup as shown below −

Full Backup

Step 2 − Click on the Big Blue button on which “Download a Full Website Backup” is written and you will be taken to this screen.

Website Backup

Step 3 − Select Backup destination, leave it as home directory. This will create a backup in your home directory, from where you can download it later. Enter the email address, where you want to receive a notification, when full backup of your website is ready to be downloaded. As full website backup takes time to generate.

Step 4 − Click Generate Backup and you will see a success message of Backup in Progress.

To download the Full Website Backup, you can always come back to this page after you receive your email notification and you will see a screen similar to the one shown below.

Backup1

Download your backup by clicking over the backup link.

Partial Backups

Partial backup is created and can be downloaded instantly. Through Partial Backup, you can download your Home Directory, Databases, Email Forwarders and Email Filters separately. You can restore the downloaded backups any time by uploading them to cPanel using the same interface.

To use this feature, open your Backup section using the same method used above in Step 1, scroll down and you will see a similar interface shown here, interface will vary according to your domain and data.

Partial Backup

You can click Home Directory button to download your home directory backup. To restore your home directory, you can upload the same file in the right hand side interface on which Restore a Home Directory Backup is written.

You can do the same with Databases, Email Forwarders and Email Filters.

cPanel - Backup Wizard

You can use cPanel Backup Wizard to Backup and Restore your cPanel website step by step. cPanel Backup wizard is created for non–advanced users to simplify the backup and restore process.

To use cPanel Backup Wizard, open this interface by clicking the Backup Wizard link, which can be found under the Files section of the cPanel Home.

cPanel Backup

Once you are inside your Backup Wizard you can Create Backups or Restore Backups through the similar Interface shown below −

Backup Wizard

To use this Backup Wizard, there are 3 important steps −

If you need to download backup of your website

Step 1 − Select Backup.

Step 2 − Select Full or Partial backup, as stated in the previous chapter. We cannot restore Full Backup, same applies here too. If you wish to download Partial Backup, you can click on any one from the Home Directory, MySQL Databases or Email Forwards & Filters. Partial Backup downloaded from Backup Wizards can be restored through the Backup Wizard only.

Steps

Step 3 − Download your backup according to your choice.

If you need to restore your website form the backup you downloaded, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Select Restore from Backup Wizard Interface.

Step 2 − Select Restore Type from Home Directory, MySQL Databases or Email Forwarders & Filters.

Select Restore

Step 3 − Upload your backup file to and click on Restore Button to restore your backup.

Final Step

cPanel - MySQL Databases

MySQL is the most popular Open Source SQL Database management system. To manage a huge volume of data efficiently, we store the data in tables, a group of many tables can be created in a single database. This interface allows you to create and manage the existing MySQL databases.

If you are creating a PHP based application or any application that uses a database, then you will need to create a database and a database user to access this database. To use WordPress, Drupal, Joomla or any other CMS, you will need to create a MySQL database before installing these CMS.

To create a new MySQL database, you need to open MySQL interface by clicking MySQL Databases link, which can be found in the Databases section of cPanel Home.

Databases

Create a New Database

When MySQL Databases interface will open, first thing you will see is Create New Database Section as shown below.

MySQL Databases

To create a database, simply enter the name of the database you wish to create and then click Create Database Button. You will now get a success message that the database is added.

MySQL Databases1

Note − cPanel will automatically add a prefix to your database name you enter. So that there is no ambiguity in databases as in shared hosting environment. There are many users and there cannot be same name for two databases, thus your database name become Prefix_dbName. When connecting the database with web application you will need to use Full Name of database.

Add a Database User

To use your newly created database in your application, you will need to create a user and grant it all the privileges to modify the data in Database.

To create a Database User, scroll down to the end in Interface of MySQL databases. There you will see MySQL users, under it there will be Add New User, as shown below.

Add New User

Step 1 − Enter a username according to your choice and choose a strong password. Click Create User to create a new user. You will get a success message “You have successfully created a MySQL user.

Note − Full username of your database user includes prefix and the username you provided.

As we have created a database user, now we will need to add the user to access the database.

Step 2 − Scroll down to find “Add User to Database”.

Add User

Step 3 − Select the User and database you wish to associate together. Click Add button and you will see the following screen.

Manage User

To provide all the privileges to the user, select ALL PRIVILEGES checkbox and all the checkboxes will automatically get selected. Click Make Changes to save the changes.

Modifying a Database

The data stored in MySQL may get corrupted over time. There are many reasons for which this might happen. While using the Database in web application, if we see any database related error, we need to repair the database to repair the corrupt data. But before we repair our database, we will need to find the table on which our data is corrupted by checking the database for errors.

There are two operations we can perform to troubleshoot database related errors. To perform these actions, we need to scroll to Modify Database Options in MySQL Database Interface, screenshot for Modifying Database is shown below.

Modify Database

Check a Database

With this feature of cPanel Database, you can find which table in the Database is corrupted.

To check a database, we need to perform the following steps.

Step 1 − Select the database you want to check, from the dropdown menu of Check Database, as shown above.

Step 2 − Click the Check Database button.

Step 3 − cPanel will now run an automated script to find the corrupt table in the Database. If any corrupt table is found, it will display the name of the Table, otherwise it will display a success message.

Repair a Database

This database tool helps in automatically repairing of corrupt data or table from the database.

To use this tool, we need to perform the following steps −

Repair Database

Step 1 − Select the database having corrupt data from the dropdown menu.

Step 2 − Click Repair Database button.

Step 3 − cPanel will now run an automatic script to repair the corrupt data or table from the database, if it succeeds, it will give you a success message. If it fails to repair the database, it will show you an error with the table name on which the error occurred.

cPanel - MySQL Database Wizard

MySQL Database Wizard is a step by step process to create a MySQL database and user and finally adding the user to access the database.

To use this interface, we will need to open MySQL Database Wizard, which can be found in the database section of cPanel Home, as shown below.

MySQL Database Wizard

Step 1 − Create a New Database by providing a Database Name in the text input, once filled, click Next Step.

Database Wizard

Step 2 − Create Database user by providing a username and Password. Click Create User when done.

Create Database Wizard

Step 3 − Add user to the database by granting all the privileges to the user for accessing and modifying the data. Select ALL PRIVILEGES checkbox and click Next Step, when done.

Add User Database

Step 4 − You will get a success message if everything works fine.

To modify the database created using MySQL Database Wizard, you can always use MySQL Databases interface.

cPanel - phpMyAdmin

The phpMyAdmin is a third-party tool to manage tables and data inside a database. It is graphical user interface to manage MySQL databases. You can manually create Tables, Import and Export data or edit the values of a row through it.

To access phpMyAdmin, click on the phpMyAdmin link, which can be found under the databases section of cPanel Home.

phpMyAdmin Link

You will see a dashboard similar to this.

phpMyAdmin

On the left hand pane, there is a list of databases, which can be expended to see the table in each database. On the right hand pane, there is general information of Database server.

Execute an SQL Query

To execute an SQL Query on a database, we will need to perform the following steps −

Step 1 − Select the database from left pane by clicking over the name of the database. Once the database is selected, it will show you the structure of the database.

Step 2 − Click on SQL from top bar to open SQL editor.

SQL Editor

Step 3 − Write your query into the SQL editor. You can also enter multiple queries, separated by semicolon (;).

Multiple Queries

Step 4 − Click Go button to execute the query. If the query is executed successfully, you will get a success message.

cPanel - Remote MySQL

This feature of cPanel allows remote servers or web application to access a database hosted on your account. If a server or web application tries to access the database on your account, which is not provided access to, then cPanel will not allow this host to access your database. But, if you have an application, whom you wish to grant access to your databases, you can add their host names or IP address here.

To access this interface, click on Remote MySQL link found in your Database Section of your cPanel.

MySQL Link

Add Access Host

To Add Access Host, which can access your databases when needed. You will have to enter Host Name in text input. You can enter hostnames in three types.

Add Access Host

  • You can use Domain Name, E.g. www.tutorialspoint.com
  • You can use IP address, E.g. 184.168.144.133
  • You can use wildcard %, E.g. %.tutorialspoint.com or 184.164.144.%

Click on Add Host to add an access host.

Remove Access Host

To deny access to a web application having access to the databases, click the Delete link from the list of Access host.

Remove Access Host

cPanel - Subdomains

Subdomain is a domain, which is a part of a primary domain and exists in the same server. We can also say it is a second website, which resides under the main domain, however it may or may not have any relation with the root website. we can run a new website under this subdomain.

For Example − The blog.tutorialspoint.com is a subdomain for the root domain tutorialspoint.com and blog.tutorialpoint.com can also be accessed by tutorialpoint.com/blog.

To Create a Subdomain

Step 1 − Click Subdomains, which can be found under Domains section.

Domains Section

Step 2 − Enter the Subdomain text you want to create. Select the root Domain for your subdomain and the Document Root will be automatically filled according to your Subdomain. You may leave it as it is or you may change it according to your need. Click Create button to create your Subdomain.

Subdomain

If your subdomain is created successfully, then you will see a Success message like the one shown below.

Success Message

Managing Redirection

If you want your subdomain to point to another domain rather than loading content from your own server, you can do so by clicking Manage Redirection as shown below.

Manage Redirection

You will be taken to the screen, where you can manage redirection for your subdomain. Enter the new URL, where you want to redirect your subdomain to. Click save and your redirection will be saved successfully. If you want to disable the redirection later on, you may click Disable Redirection.

Disable Redirection

cPanel - Aliases

This feature of cPanel allows your website to load from another domain. When a user enters the Alias Domain or Parked Domain to access the website, the cPanel automatically redirects them to your main domain and load the main website.

For Example, consider your main domain is www.mymaindomain.com and you have also bought www.myanotherdomain.com and www.mymaindomain.in, and you want to display your same website to these other domains, you have also bought. There is no need to purchase separate hosting for these domains and copy the website to these domains. You can use cPanel Aliases to point these domains to your main domain.

Create an Alias

To create an alias, you will need to follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Aliases by clicking on the Aliases link found in Domains Section of cPanel Home.

Aliases Link

Step 2 − In the Aliases section, you will see Create New Alias, fill your domain in the text box.

Create Aliases

Step 3 − Press Add Domain button to add an alias, if successful you will see a success message.

Note − 1. Domain must be registered already. 2. Domain’s Nameservers must be configure to point at your cPanel account.

Remove Aliases

To remove alias created before, you need to follow these steps −

Step 1 − Navigate to Remove Aliases Section, which can be found under Remove Aliases.

Remove Aliases

Step 2 − Click on the Remove link from Actions corresponding to the Domain you want to remove and you will see the following remove prompt.

Remove Prompt

Step 3 − Click on Remove Alias Button, if successful you will see a success message.

cPanel - Addon Domain

Addon Domains are addition domains hosted in your account, stored in subfolders. System treats these domains as a subdomain to your system. If you want to run a whole different website under the same hosting plan, you can use this feature of cPanel. It is the best option to run multiple websites on a single cPanel account. For example, you have a hosting for blogging website, and you want a different website for your CV, you will not need to purchase a different hosting account, but you can use the same hosting for your CV website.

To use this feature, you will need to click Addon Domains link under your Domains section from cPanel Home.

Domains

In Addon Domains interface, you can do the following tasks.

Create an Addon Domain

To create an Addon Domain, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Find Create an Addon Domain section in Addon Domains, as shown below.

Addon Domains

Step 2 − Fill your domain name in New Domain Name textbox.

Step 3 − Subdomains and Document Root will be automatically filled. Then you can leave the setting as it is or you can change them according to your need.

Step 4 − You can create an FTP account, which will be associated with the Addon Domain. To create an FTP account, select the checkbox on which Create an FTP account associated with this domain is written.

FTP Account

Step 5 − Enter FTP Username and Password to create an FTP account.

Step 6 − Click on the button “Add Domain”, if no error occurs, you will get a success message.

Add Domains

Remove an Addon Domain

To remove an Addon Domain, Scroll down to “Modify Addon Domain” Section and press remove link from Actions corresponding to the Addon Domain.

Modify Addon

cPanel - Redirect

The redirect interface allows you to send all the visitors or traffic of a Domain or a particular webpage to a new domain. For example, if you moved your website to a new domain and you want to redirect all your visitors to new website, you need to setup redirect. There are two types of redirects available −

Permanent (301) Redirect

This one redirects your visitors to a new website and updates your visitor’s bookmarks. This also directs search engines to your new website. This redirect is permeant and means that page has moved. So, the Search Engine and other crawlers update their data according to the new link. Popularity and SEO of link remains same as the old link had.

Temporary (302) Redirect

This one redirects your visitors to a new website, but does not update your visitor’s bookmark. Search Engines still index your original website. This redirect is temporary and search engine thinks that the new link is going to get removed, hence it does not have same popularity like the old link.

Create a Redirect

To create a redirect, please follow these steps −

Step 1 − Click on Redirects found in Domains section of cPanel Home.

cPanel Domains Section

Step 2 − Choose your redirect type from the Dropdown Menu, Permanent or Temporary Redirect.

Redirects

Step 3 − Choose the Domain Name you want to redirect from the Dropdown menu of lists of domain.

Step 4 − In the next textbox, enter the path of page or path of folder you want to redirect.

Step 5 − Enter full URL of the page your domain will be redirected to, in Redirect to textbox. You will also need to specify the protocol as well, http:// or https://.

Step 6 − Select www. redirection, it determines that if you want your domain to be redirected with www or not. Explanations of options given below.

  • Only redirect with www. − This redirect will be done only if user has entered www. in URL.

  • Redirect with or without www. − This redirect will always be done, does not depends on whether user has entered www. in URL or not.

  • Do not redirect www. − This redirect will not work, if the user has entered www. in URL.

Choose your option accordingly, recommended is that you use Redirect with or without www.

Step 7 − Select Wild Card Redirection checkbox, if you want to redirect all files and folders in sub folder to the same file or folder in new domain. For example, with wildcard redirection www.example.com/pic.jpg will redirect to www.new–example.com/pic.jpg. Without wildcard redirection www.example.com/pic.jpg will redirect to Select the checkbox accordingly.

Step 8 − Click on Add button to save the settings.

cPanel - Simple Zone Editor

DNS (Domain Name System) is a very essential part of Internet System. It simply maps a FQDN (Full Qualified Domain Name), which is in human readable form. For example, www.tutorialspoint.com to IP address, which are used by computer machine, e.g. 117.18.237.191. For this process, DNS uses zone files that are stored in servers, which contains resource records to map a domain name to an IP address.

In this Simple Zone Editor, we can add two types of records −

Add an A Record

The A types of resource records are Host Name records. They contain the IP address of a specific host, and maps the Domain Name with 32-bit IP address.

To add an A type record, perform the following steps −

A Type Reord

Step 1 − Open the Editor by clicking Simple Zone Editor found in Domains Section of cPanel Home.

Step 2 − Find Add an A Record in the Simple Zone Editor interface.

Simple Zone

Step 3 − Enter Name in Name textbox and IP address in Address textbox.

Step 4 − Press Add an A Record. If successful, you will get a success message.

Note‘A’ records are essential for accessing your website. They allow DNS servers to locate your website and its services. Without an ‘A’ record, visitors can’t access your website. The cPanel automatically configures A type records for your domain and website, as soon as they are created.

Add a CNAME Record

The CNAME records are used to add an Alias to its associated domain name. You can point multiple CNAME records to a single A record. So that when the DNS looks up for the Alias, you can simply rename a host, which is defined in the A records.

To add a CNAME record, please follow these steps.

Step 1 − Scroll down on Simple Zone Editor to find Add a CNAME Record.

CNAME Record

Step 2 − Enter the desired Alias name for CNAME record on Name textbox and Enter a FQDN in CNAME textbox to which you want your Alias pointing to.

Step 3 − Click Add CNAME Record and you should see a success message.

Remove an A or CNAME Record

To remove a user defined A or CNAME Record, please scroll below on Simple Zone Editor to find User–Defined Records. Press the Delete link corresponding to the Record you want to remove.

User–Defined Records

You should see a success message when record is deleted.

cPanel - Advance Zone Editor

This interface is the advanced version of Simple Zone Editor, which we have gone through in the previous chapter. We can add, edit or delete various types of records here, which are A, AAAA, CNAME (Conical Name Record), SRV (Service Record), TXT (Text Record). We can also configure TTL (Time to Live) with records in this interface.

TTL (Time to Live) indicates the time duration that DNS servers can cache resource records prior to discarding the information.

Reset Zone Files

This option resets every change that you made in your cPanel account regarding DNS records. It also resets the changes made using Simple Zone Editor.

To reset Zone Files, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Navigate to cPanel Advanced Zone Editor by clicking on Advanced Zone Editor link found in Domains Section of cPanel Interface.

Zone Editor

Step 2 − Find Reset Zone File and click on more link.

Advanced zone Editor

Step 3 − It will show you a warning that all modifications in Zone files will be erased. Select the checkbox for the Are you sure you want to erase all entries and revert to the default state?

Reset Zone File

Step 4 − Press Reset Zone File button to reset the zone file to their default state. If successful, you will see a success message shown below.

Zone File

Add an A record

The ‘A’ type of resource records are Host Name records. They contain the IP address of a specific host and map the Domain Name with 32-bit IP address.

To add an A record, follow these steps.

Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.

Step 2 − Select Record ‘Type A’ from Type Dropdown Menu.

Add Record

Step 3 − Enter Name of your A record. Enter TTL value, if there is no specific need, you can use default which is 14400. Also enter IP address of record in the Address textbox.

Step 4 − Click Add Record to save the record in the DNS entries.

Add an AAAA Record

The AAAA resource records bind hostnames with IPv6 Address, which is a 128-bit IP address.

Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.

Step 2 − Select Record type from AAAA the dropdown menu.

Add a Record

Step 3 − Enter the Hostname in the Name textbox and TTL value in the TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.

Step 4 − Enter 128-bit IPv6 address in IPv6 Address textbox to which you want your hostname to bind.

Step 5 − Click Add Record to save this AAAA record in your DNS entries.

Add a CNAME Record

CNAME records are used to add an Alias to its associated domain name. You can point multiple CNAME records to a single A record so that when the DNS looks up for the Alias, you can simply rename a host, which is defined in A records.

To add a CNAME record, please follow these steps.

Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.

Step 2 − Select Record type CNAME from dropdown menu.

Type CNAME

Step 3 − Enter your Subdomain or Alias to Name text input, also provide TTL value in TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.

Step 4 − Enter a valid zone name or domain name to which you want this Alias to point to, in the CNAME textbox.

Step 5 − Press Add Record Button to save this CNAME record to your DNS entries.

Add an SRV Record

This resource record provides information about available services in the specific ports of your server. They associate the location of a service with details on how the service can be contacted on a specific domain. An SRV record must point to a hostname with an A record.

To add an SRV record, please follow these steps.

Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.

Step 2 − Select Record type SRV from dropdown menu.

SVR Record

Step 3 − Enter Name of Service and Protocol both preceded by an underscore (_) and separated by dot (.).

Step 4 − Provide TTL value in TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.

Step 5 − Provide Priority of the Service, the lower the number in priority, higher is the priority of the service. 0 (zero) has the highest priority.

Step 6 − Enter Weight of the service, it is used by zone administrators to distribute the load to multiple targets. 0 is the lowest load.

Step 7 − Enter the Port on which service is actually offered.

Step 8 − Enter Target, it is the name of the host that will receive this service.

Step 9 − Press Add Record to add this SRV record into your DNS entries.

Add a TXT Record

The TXT records can hold any type of text. A domain name can have many TXT records, most common TXT records are used to define SPF (Sender Policy Framework) or DKIM, which is used for Email Authentication.

To add a TXT record, please follow these steps.

Step 1 − Find Add a Record Section in the Advance Zone Editor.

Step 2 − Select Record type TXT from the dropdown menu.

TXT record

Step 3 − Enter Valid DNS Zone name in Name textbox.

Step 4 − Provide TTL value in TTL textbox, unless required use default TTL value, which is 14400.

Step 5 − Enter TXT Data, it can be any type of text, or a SPF or DKIM data.

Step 6 − Press Add Record Button to add this TXT record to DNS records.

Edit or Delete a DNS Record

To edit or Delete a DNS record, you added earlier. Follow these steps −

Step 1 − Scroll down to Zone File Records in Advanced Zone Editor.

Zone File Record

Step 2 − Find the DNS resource record you wish to edit or delete from the list of records.

Step 3 − To Edit an entry, click Edit Link from Action, which is corresponding to the record you wish to edit.

Edit Record

Step 4 − Edit your record according to your need and Click Edit Record button to save the changes.

Step 5 − To delete a record click on Delete link corresponding to the record you wish to delete.

Delete

Step 6 − You will be asked for confirmation, press Delete button to delete the record.

cPanel - Email Accounts

You can create and manage email accounts of your domain through this interface. You can Create email address, configure your mail client, change your passwords and access your webmail directly.

Create an Email Address

To create an email address for your domain, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Click on Email Accounts link found in your Emails section of the cPanel Home.

Email Accounts

Step 2 − In Email Accounts, you will find Add Email Account on the Top.

Email

Step 3 − Add Email name you want to create as it will be the text that comes before @.

Step 4 − Choose a strong password and supply Mailbox Quota. It defines how much disk space this account can use. You can provide specific amount of space in MB or you can provide an unlimited quota for this.

Step 5 − Click on Create Account to create an Email address associated with your domain.

Manage Email Accounts

You can manage your email accounts through this interface, you can change your passwords, change quota amount or delete the email account.

To manage your email accounts, scroll down to see the list of Email accounts that exist with your domain.

Manage Email Accounts

Change Passwords

To change your email accounts password, click Change Password link corresponding to your email address.

Change Password Link

Enter New Passwords, and save changes by pressing Change Password button.

Change Quota

To change your email quota, click on link Change Quota corresponding to your email address that you want to manage.

Change Quota

Enter limited quota in Megabytes or select unlimited option. Press Change Quota Button so save the changes.

Configure Mail Client

To send and receive emails with your domain from any desktop or mobile email client, e.g. Windows Live Mail, Outlook or iOS of iPhone etc. cPanel provides you preconfigured setting for these applications. You just need to download the settings and run it, then it will automatically configure the email client. You may need to enter your email account password. You can also manually configure the email clients for sending and receiving emails for your email client.

To download Auto Configuration Scripts or See the manual settings, click on Configure Mail Client link corresponding to your email account.

Auto Configuration

Once the interface is opened, you will see Auto Configuration Scripts.

Configuration Scripts

You can download Auto Configuration Scripts for Configure mail client interface. Just download the appropriate settings and run it.

Or if you want to configure your mail client manually, you can scroll down to see the Manual Settings.

Manual Settings

Note − There are four types of settings – IMAP and POP3, both over SSL/TLS and Non-SSL too. Using SSL sends your messages with encryption providing extra layer of security, but Non SSL does not. It is recommended that you use settings with SSL. From IMAP or POP3, you can choose anyone you want. Both will work perfectly.

Delete an Email Account

To delete an email account, just click on Delete link corresponding to your email account.

Delete Email

It will ask for confirmation. Press the Delete Button to remove your email account.

cPanel - Email Forwarders

You can create multiple email account in your cPanel email as per your need. When the number of emails accounts get higher, you will need to open each account to view the emails received. To overcome this issue, you can forward the copy these emails of one account to another account, so now you will have to only open one account to view all the emails. You can also discard the email or send it to a program. You can also forward all the emails of your domains to another domain.

E.g. you have several email ids’ like info@tutorialspoint.com admin@tutorialspoint.com or support@tutorialspoint.com Instead of opening 3 mailboxes to check emails, you can you can forward the last two to info@tutorialspoint.com. Now you will only have to access info@tutorialspoint.com.

Create an Email Forwarder

There are two types of forwarders available, first to forward an email account to another one. Second is to forward all emails to a domain.

Create an Email Account Forwarder

Step 1 − Open Email Forwarders by clicking on the link of Forwarders found in cPanel Home.

Forwarder

Step 2 − In the Forwarders Interface, you will find Create an Email Account Forwarder.

Create Forwarder

Step 3 − Press Add Forwarder Button, it will take you to a similar interface like this.

Add Forwarder

Step 4 − Enter the Address of the email which you want to forward. It is not necessary that the email must be already created. If you do not create an email and forward it to somewhere, the only difference will be that your emails will not be stored in the mailbox of the original email, because that mailbox will not exist.

Step 5 − Enter destination where you want your email to be forwarded.

  • Select Forward to Email Address and fill the textbox with an existing email, where you want your emails to be received.

  • Select Discard and send an error to sender. If you want to discard that message and supply a failure message to sender. You can also customize the Failure message, enter the message in textbox.

In Advance Options −

Advanced Options

  • Select Forward to a System Account, if you want your emails to be sent to a system account, and provide a system account name.

  • Select Pipe to a program, if you want your emails to send to a program and enter path name of your program with file extension.

  • Select Discard and system will simply discard the email and will do nothing. Select your choice accordingly.

Step 6 − Click Add Forwarder to save the changes you made.

Add Domain Forwarder

You can forward all the emails of your domain to another domain. On the domain, who will receive the emails, you can change the default email address of that domain to a single email, which then can receive all the emails sent from your domain of which you forwarded the emails.

Step 1 − Click on Add Domain Forwarder button, which can be found under Create an Email Forwarder of Forwarder interface.

Create Email Account

Step 2 − In Add New Domain Interface, select the domain you want to forward.

Add New Domian

Step 3 − In the textbox next to your domain, enter the domain on which you will be receiving the emails.

Step 4 − Press Add Domain Forwarder button to save the changes.

Delete an Email Forwarder

To delete an email forwarder, click on delete link corresponding to the forwarder you want to delete.

For Email account forwarder −

Email Forwader

For Domain Forwarders −

Forward Domain

It will ask for your permission before deleting the forwarders, click Delete Forwarder to delete the Email Forwarder.

cPanel - Webmail

Webmail is a web-based email client, which allows you to access your emails through any browser or any computer. This is very helpful when you do not have access to your computer on which your email is setup, you can login to your account from anywhere to read your emails and to quickly respond.

Opening Your Webmail

There are two options through which you can login to your webmail client.

Through cPanel Interface

Follow these steps to login to your webmail client −

Step 1 − Login to your cPanel and click on Email Accounts found under the Email section.

cPanel Interface

Step 2 − Scroll down to find list of Email Accounts.

cPanel Email Accounts

Step 3 − Click on More button at the corresponding email address of which you want to access webmail.

More Button

Step 4 − Click on Access Webmail and the system will automatically log you into the webmail in a new tab.

Webmail

Step 5 − Choose any Webmail application. You can also set a default Webmail application, so whenever you log into your webmail, your default webmail application will automatically load.

Note − I have chosen horde to load webmail

Horde

Access webmail directly

To access webmail directly without logging into cPanel, you can use the following steps −

Step 1 − Navigate to https://your–domain.com:2096 or https://webmail.your–domain.com through your browsers address bar.

Step 2 − Webmail login screen will appear, Enter your Email and Password of your email account.

Webmail Login

Step 3 − Press Log in button to login into your web based email client, you will get same interface as we got above.

cPanel - MX Entry

This feature of cPanel allows to route all your emails to a specific server. Changes you make here also get reflected in the domain’s DNS entries. This feature is important to create a backup server for your domain’s mail server to receive when your main server is down. You can setup MX entries here to route your mail to Google mail servers when you use Google Apps to manage your emails.

Use this interface to manage your MX entries and Email Routing

Configure Email Routing

To configure the email routing for your domain, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel MX Entries by clicking MX Entry from Email Section of cPanel Interface.

cPanel MX

Step 2 − Select the domain for which you want to configure Email Routing.

MX Entry.jpg

Step 3 − When you will select the domain from the drop down, Email Routing setting will appear. The current applied setting is displayed bold.

Email Routing

Step 4 − Change your current setting only when you need it. Select any of these four options according to your need.

  • Automatically Detect Configuration − This enables the cPanel to automatically detect the best settings according to priorities of your MX records.

  • Local Mail Exchanger − This enables your server to receive emails, even if any MX entry of higher priority is found. In this case, emails are sent to both domains.

  • Backup Mail Exchanger − In this case, your server acts as backup mail exchanger and if your primary mail exchanger is offline, then it holds the emails until your primary server is back online. You need to have a proper MX Entry for your primary mail exchanger.

  • Remote Mail Exchanger − In this case, your domain does not accept any mail and reroutes them to your primary email server.

Step 5 − Click Change and your new setting will appear in bold letters.

Add an MX Record

To add a, MX record, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Scroll down to Add New Record on MX Entry page.

Add New Record

Step 2 − Enter Priority of MX record, lower the number – higher the priority. Zero has the highest Priority.

Step 3 − Enter Destination Domain to which you want to reroute your emails.

Step 4 − Click Add New Record to add a new MX record.

Edit or Remove an MX Record

To edit or remove click Edit or Remove link in Actions corresponding to the MX entry that you want to edit or delete.

MX Record

When you will click Edit, it will ask you for the Priority and Domain, change what you need to change and finally click Edit to save the changes.

MX Edit

When you click Remove link, it will ask you for confirmation. Click Delete to remove the entry.

MX Delete

cPanel - Autoresponders

You can add or modify Autoresponders for your email accounts through this interface. You can configure an email to send an automated reply to all emails you receive to your email account. You can make an automated reply to say that you have received the email and you will reply soon.

If you are on vacation, you can configure the Autoresponders to reply that you are not available at this moment etc. you can also set a specific duration of time in which the automated reply will be sent.

Add an Autoresponder

To add an autoresponder, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Autoresponders by clicking on Autoresponder link found in Email section of cPanel Home.

cPanel Autoresponders

Step 2 − Click Add Autoresponder in this section. It will take you to Modify/Add Autoresponders.

Autoresponders

Step 3 − Choose character set, recommended is that you leave it as it is, which is utf–8.

Modify Autoresponder

Step 4 − Enter the number of hours to wait between responses to same email address, this helps in preventing sending same email to same user multiple times.

Step 5 − Enter Email and select Domain for which you want to add an autoresponder.

Step 6 − Enter outgoing email’s sender name, it may be your name or your company’s.

Email Sender

Step 7 − Enter Subject of your outgoing Email. You may keep it same as incoming email by putting %subject% in Subject, you can provide your custom subject too.

Step 8 − Enter Body of your Email. You may use %from%, which will be the name of sender, if available. You may use %email% in body too, it will be the email address of the sender.

Body Email

Step 9 − Select This message contains HTML checkbox, if there is HTML in your Email Body.

Step 10 − Schedule a Start, End Date, and Time for your autoresponder email. You can choose to start immediately or on a specific date at a specific time. You can choose this autoresponder to stop sending emails on a specific day, or you can choose never to stop an autoresponder. You can change this configuration anytime.

Create Modify

Step 11 − Press Create/Modify button to create an autoresponder.

Edit or Delete Autoresponder

To edit or delete an autoresponder, find the Current Autoresponder by scrolling down in Autoresponder section.

Current Autoresponder

Click Edit corresponding to the autoresponder to edit and it will take you to the same interface, which we have gone through when creating the Autoresponder. You can use the same interface to make the change.

To delete an autoresponder, click Delete corresponding to that autoresponder. It will ask you for confirmation, click Delete to delete that autoresponder.

cPanel - Track Delivery

This Interface of cPanel is used to see delivery reports of emails. This interface can show the errors, while sending your email. You can also see spam scores of your emails. A spam score is provided by Apache Spamassassin. You can also check the emails delivery route to help you identify any problems in the delivery attempt.

To track an email delivery, open cPanel Track Delivery by clicking on Track Delivery link found in the Email Section of cPanel.

Email Delivery

In track Delivery interface, you will see a table of email sending events.

Track Delivery

If you wish to filter the table for a single recipient email, you may do so by entering a recipient’s email in Recipient Email (optional), and then click Show All button to show the email related to a specific recipient. To view all emails again, remove the email from Recipient Email and Click Show All, it will again show all the records.

There are four main types of filters, which you can apply to a list.

  • Show Success − This will show all the emails that are successfully delivered to the destination.

  • Show Deferred − This will show you all emails with a warning, which are the system deferred emails.

  • Show Failures − It will show you the emails, which are not delivered to the destination. It will also show any other errors during transmission of emails.

  • Show In–Progress − This will show you all the emails, which are currently transmitting.

You can combine these filters too as and how they are required.

The following table shows the default information about emails −

Sr.No Emails & Description
1

Event

This column shows icon of success, failure or deferred emails.

2

Sender

It shows the email address of email sender.

3

Sent time

It shows the date and time on which email was sent.

4

Spam Score

It shows Apache Spamassassin spam score.

5

Recipient

It shows the email of recipient.

6

Result

Important column − it shows the error encountered by the system, while sending the email. This message describes the delivery results

7

Action

An information Icon, which on clicking shows the details of the report.

To view more information of an email delivery report, click information icon shown at the action column next to the corresponding report.

Delivery Report

And you will see the details of the delivery record as shown below.

Delivery Events

cPanel - Email Filters

Email filters are useful to create rules to block unwanted emails, based on certain rules you choose. You can specify some rules like a message containing a specific word should be deleted or passed to a specific program. These filters work subsequently, for example if a mail passes through a filter, but can be blocked by another filter. You can specify multiple rules in one filter too.

There are two types of Email Filters in cPanel − User Level Filter and Account Level Filter.

User Level Filter

Through this user level filter, you can create email filters, which will apply on emails that will be received by that email address.

Create a User Level Filter

To create a user level email filter, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open user level email filters by clicking on Email Filter found under Email section of cPanel.

User Level Filter

Step 2 − In Email Filters, you will see the list of emails associated with your domain. Click on Manage Filter link corresponding to your email on which you want to create a filter.

Email Filters

Step 3 − Click on Create New Filter button to go to a new filter creation interface.

Edit Filter

Step 4 − Provide a name for your filter.

Create New Filter

Step 5 − Select rules for filtering your message. To add additional rules, click on Add (+) button on right side, to remove rules click Subtract (–). Also choose ‘and’ or ‘or’ rule.

Step 6 − Select an Action for a message those passes to the rules of filter. To add additional rules, click on Add (+) button on right side, to remove rules click Subtract (–).

Step 7 − Click on Create button to create a filter.

Edit or Delete a User Level Filter

To edit or delete a user level filter −

Step 1 − Return to Email Filter Interface.

Step 2 − Choose the email for which you want to edit or delete the Filter from Current Filters.

Current Filters

Step 3

  • To Edit, click Edit Link and you will be taken to the same interface we went through to create an Email Filter. Click Save to Save the Email Filter.

  • To Delete the Email Filter, click on Delete link and you will be asked for confirmation. Click Delete to delete an Email Filter.

Testing an Email Filter

To test the filter, you can follow these steps −

Step 1 − Return to Email Filters Interface and Click on the Manage link corresponding to email address of which you want to test filter.

Step 2 − Scroll down to find Filter Test.

Step 3 − Enter complete Email with headers and subjects in Filter Email text input.

Filter Test

Step 4 − Press Test Filter and the system will generate a full report of how the filters will respond to the email you have written.

Account Level Filtering

The only difference in User Level Filtering and Account Level Filtering (or Global Email Filtering) is that the filters used in Account Level Filter will filter all emails received in your domain, no matter to which email address the message was sent.

To Create and Manage Global Email Filter click on Global Email Filter found under Email section of cPanel Home.

Manage Global Email

Process to Create, Manage and Test a Global Email Filter is same as we studied above in User Level Filtering. Only difference is that you will not find a list of Emails to choose to Manage, but you will get a list of all Global Email Filters.

cPanel - Authentications

Email Authentications prevent the email from going into the spam folder of recipients. cPanel uses DKIM and SPF to reduce the amount of spam mails. Enabling these features will prevent spammers from forging messages that claims to be coming from your domain.

DKIM

Domain Key Identification Mechanism (DKIM) verifies your incoming emails to check whether they are same as they were before when they were sent. This means, if they are altered during the transit. It also checks whether they are from the same address, whom they claim to be. This feature prevents incoming spam emails.

When DKIM is enabled, the sender signs the email with a digital signature using a private key. When the email approaches the recipient, it retrieves the public key of its sender and checks if the signature matches. If the signature is invalid, then message is treated as a spam message.

Enabling DKIM

To enable DKIM follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open Email Authentication by clicking Authentication found under Mail Section of cPanel Home.

Email Authentication

Step 2 − Find DKIM settings, if disabled then, click Enable button to Enable DKIM.

DKIM

Disable DKIM

To disable DKIM follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open Email Authentication by clicking Authentication found under Mail Section of cPanel Home.

Step 2 − Find DKIM setting, if enabled, then click Disable button to Disable DKIM.

cPanel DKIM

Note − To Enable DKIM, your Nameservers must point to your hosting. It is recommended that you use DKIM Authentication in your hosting.

SPF

Sender Policy Framework (SPF) helps in preventing outgoing messages to spams. This helps to prevent spammers in creating a message that looks like it is originated through your domain. SPF uses TXT type DNS resource records, which specify the hosts that send emails through your domain.

Enable SPF

To enable SPF, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open Email Authentication by clicking Authentication found under Mail Section of cPanel Home.

Step 2 − Find SPF setting, if disabled, then click Enable button to Enable SPF.

SPF

Disable SPF

To disable SPF, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open Email Authentication by clicking Authentication found under Mail Section of cPanel Home.

Step 2 − Find SPF setting, if enabled, then click Disable button to disable SPF.

SPF Disable

cPanel - Address Importer

cPanel address importer can be used to create multiple email address or forwarders in your account. For example, you have 100 employees in your office and you want each employee to have an email address, then if you have a list of email addresses of employees, then within two clicks, you can create as many email accounts as needed. cPanel address importer supports two type of data import, Excel Spreadsheet (.xls) or Comma separated value sheet (.csv). You can also use this interface import email forwarder list.

Importing Email Addresses

To import email address, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Address Importer by clicking on Address Importer link found in the Email Section.

cPanel Address

Step 2 − Select the Email address option in What would you like to import.

Address Importer

Step 3 − Browse and select your Excel Spreadsheet or CSV file. If you have selected XLS file, then it will only ask to treat the first row as column header, if yes, then select the check box. If you have selected CSV file, then it will ask for the delimiter. In most cases, it is a Comma, choose the one you have, and Click Next.

Note − You can see an example screenshot below. You can create a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel, and save the spreadsheet using .xls or .csv in Save As menu.


A B C D
1 Email or Name Password Quota
2 hello@tutorialspoint.com XEsjhjhh1242 300
3 Liptan Biswas


4 test@tutorialspoint.com


5



Step 4 − In the next step, it will ask you to choose a header for each column, choose an appropriate one. Select the domain in which you want to create the emails. Click Next.

Import Email

Step 5 − In the final step, it will show you a review of what is going to be created. Review the Table, take a screenshot or print the page, so that you will have a copy of passwords corresponding to the emails.

Import Accounts

Note − As you can see above for email column, which we did not provide an appropriate email, cPanel has automatically generated an Email for that name. In the password column, which we did not provide a password, cPanel has automatically generated them. While, in the Quota column, where we did not mention the Quota, cPanel has automatically provided unlimited quota.

Step 6 − Click finish to Import the Email addresses.

Importing Email Forwarders

To import Email forwarders, please follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Address Importer by clicking Address Importer link found in the Email Section.

Import Email Forwarders

Step 2 − Select Forwarders option in What would you like to import.

Forwarders

Step 3 − Browse and select your Excel Spreadsheet or CSV file. If you have selected XLS file, then it will only ask to treat the first row as the column header, if yes, then select the check box. If you have selected the CSV file, then it will ask for a delimiter. In most cases, it is Comma, choose the one you have, and then Click Next.

Note − You can see an example screenshot below. You can create a spreadsheet using Microsoft Excel, and save the spreadsheet using .xls or .csv in Save As menu.


A B
1 Forward from Forward to
2 hello@tutorialspoint.com info@tutorialspoint.com
3 test2@tutorialspoint.com info@tutorialspoint.com
4 test@tutorialspoint.com info@tutorialspoint.com
5

Step 4 − In the next step, it will ask you to choose a header for each column. Select your source and destination column and click Next.

Forwarders Import

Step 5 − In the final step, it will show you a review of which forwarders are going to be imported. Review the settings.

Import Finish

Step 6 − Click finish to Import the Forwarders.

cPanel - Encryption

cPanel supports GnuPG or GNU Privacy Guard, which is an open-source software to encrypt and decrypt messages using cryptographic algorithms. GnuPG uses a public and private key infrastructure to implement this feature.

When the sender sends a message, he encodes it with a public key of the recipient. The recipient after receiving the message, decrypts the message with his private key, which is available in the server. This feature helps in sending emails with sensitive information, as without a private key, it’s nearly impossible to decode the message.

Create a GnuPG Key

To create a GnuPG key, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Email Encryption by clicking on Encryption in the Email section of the cPanel Link.

Key

Step 2 − In create a New Key interface, Enter Your name and Email.

Encryption

Step 3 − Enter comment or nick name; you can use this to distinguish between multiple keys.

Step 4 − Enter Strong Key Password and Set Expiration Date. Expiration date can be set like

  • y for year, e.g. 1y for 1 year
  • w for weeks, e.g. 2w for 2 weeks
  • d for days, e.g. 4d for 4 days

Step 5 − Select key size from dropdown; larger key sizes are more secure.

Step 6 − Click Generate Key; it will take a few minutes to generate your key.

Import a Key

If you already have a key pair in your local computer, then you can import them to your cPanel. You can only import the Public Key.

To import a GnuPG key, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Scroll down to find Import Key in Encryption Interface.

Import Key

Step 2 − Click on the Import Key Button. You will be taken to a new interface.

Import Key Button

Step 3 − Paste your Public key in the text box; make sure it includes both the header and footer rows.

Step 4 − Click the Import button to import the key.

Delete or View the Key

Step 1 − Scroll down in Encryption Interface to find the list of keys.

Public Keys

Step 2 − To view a key, click View corresponding to the Key you want to view.

Step 3 − To delete a key, click Delete GnuPG key, it will ask for confirmation, click yes to delete the key.

cPanel - Apache Spamassassin

Apache Spamassassin is a software integrated into the cPanel, which helps to prevent getting spam messages in your mailbox. It helps in preventing your mail box to get flooded with spam messages. When Apache Spamassassin is enabled, it rates every message by a spam score. You can choose the spam emails to auto delete according to spam score. If you choose auto spam deletion with spam score of 5, then all emails having 5 or more spam score will be deleted automatically.

Enable or Disable Apache Spamassassin

To enable Apache Spamassassin, use the following steps −

Step 1 − Click on Apache Spamassassin link found under the Email section of cPanel Home.

Spamassassin

Step 2 − If Apache Spamassassin is currently disabled, then you can enable it by clicking Enable Apache Spamassassin. If it is already enabled, you can disable it by clicking Disable Apache Spamassassin.

Apache Spamassassin

Setup Spam Auto–Delete

To setup Spam Auto–Delete, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Find Filter options in Apache Spamassassin Interface.

Filter Auto Delete

Step 2 − Select Spam score from dropdown between1 to 10. Lower score is stricter, while higher score is more permissive. This means score 1 will filter many emails and will delete most of the emails you receive and score 10 will allow more emails to pass through the filter.

Step 3 − Click Auto–Delete Spam to enable automatic spam deletion based of your chosen score.

To disable automatic spam deletion, click Disable Auto–Delete Spam.

cPanel - Visitors

This interface of cPanel allows you to view the statics and analytics for your domains. These simple metrics feature helps you to get the idea about your performance and optimize the quality of your websites.

Visitors

Step 1 − Click on Visitors icon under Metrics section of cPanel Home. You will see the list of domains available.

cPanel Visitors

Step 2 − For details related to a particular domain, just click View indicated right after the domain name.

cPanel View Visitors

Here the obtained table is divided in five columns i.e. IP (Internet Protocol), URL, Time, Size, Referring URL.

IP (Internet Protocol) − The IP address of the visitor network computer.

URL − It refers to the full URL of the page content.

Timestamp − The date and time when the user visits the particular URL.

Size − The bytes consumed by the user for loading the URL content.

cPanel - Errors

This function will display the last 300 errors for your site. This can be very useful for finding broken links or problems with missing files. Checking this log frequently can help keep your site running smoothly. This can help you to debug your website errors.

Errors

It will take you to the following interface.

cPanel Errors

This list of the errors occurred on this domain related to any issues. In this case there are no errors on this domain. You can frequently check this error log to see if there are any errors related to your website. It will be helpful for you to troubleshoot and resolve the errors.

cPanel - Bandwidth

This function allows you to see the bandwidth usage for your site. It shows the current month’s bandwidth usage, as well as your total bandwidth usage. This will include all HTTP (web) and POP (mail) bandwidth usage, and may include FTP bandwidth usage, if your system administrator has enabled FTP bandwidth logging.

Bandwidth

Click the Bandwidth icon and it will take you to an interface. Here, in this interface, you are provided with the monthly bandwidth transfer and represented in form of graphs. This graph is able to display the bandwidth consumed by HTTP, FTP services. This is available in three forms – past 24 hours, past week, past year.

cPanel Bandwidth

Also, this representation is in the form of pie charts that is on a monthly basis. This data is beneficial to get an idea about the traffic coming in to that domain.

Pie Chart

cPanel - Webalizer

Webalizer is a complex statistics based program, which produces a variety of charts and graphs about who has visited your website. This is a sort of analyzer that shows you the data in the form of graphs and pie charts.

Webalizer

Here is a Webalizer interface of the domain listing −

cPanel Webalizer

Also the representation is in form of pie charts that is on a monthly basis. This data is beneficial to get an idea about the traffic to the domain. The data values consists of the visits, hits, files, pages that the users have accessed.

Usage Statistics

cPanel - Raw Access

Raw Access Logs allow you to see who has visited your website without displaying graphs, charts, or other graphics. You can use the Raw Access Logs menu to download a zipped version of the server’s access log for your site. This can be very useful when you want to quickly see who has visited your site.

Raw Access

Here is the Raw Access interface of domain listing −

cPanel Configure Logs

Here, the management of Raw Logs takes place. The archieved logs are available for downloads. You can also configure to remove or archive the raw logs for domains.

cPanel - CPU and Connection Usage

To access your CPU and Concurrent connection usage, click CPU and Concurrent Connection usage under Metrics section of the cPanel home.

CPU and Concurrent

This is the interface of resource usage overview −

Resource Usage

How virtual memory resources are utilizing is represented in the form of graphs and tabular data. The CPU usage with the utilization of the memories. The number of processes taking place with their usage, limit and fault data values. The input/output usage, processors, physical memory, virtual memory, processes and faults are represented as per their usage limits.

CPU Usage Current Usage

cPanel - IP Blocker

cPanel IP blocker enables you to block your website for a single IP address, domain name or a range of IP address. All those users, who will try to access your website from blocked IP addresses will not be able to access your website. You can manually deny those IP addresses, who are using your website’s bandwidth or doing malicious activity.

Deny Access to an IP Address or Domain

To deny access to a specific IP address or Domain name, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel IP Blocker by clicking on the IP Blocker Link found under the security section of cPanel Home.

cPanel IP Blocker

Step 2 − In Add an IP or Range, enter your IP address or Domain Name or Range.

IP Blocker

IP address can be entered in the following formats.

  • Single IP address, E.g. 192.168.0.1
  • IP address Range, E.g. 192.168.0.1–192.168.0.100 or 192.168.0.1–100
  • CIDR format, E.g. 192.168.0.1/32
  • Using Wildcard, E.g. 192.168.*.*
  • Domain Name, google.com

Step 3 − Press Add Button to block that IP address or Range to access your website.

Remove an IP from the Denied List

You can allow access to a denied IP address or Range, by following these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel IP Blocker by clicking on IP Blocker Link found under security section of cPanel Home.

cPanel IP Blocker

Step 2 − Scroll down to find Currently–Blocked IP Addresses. Find the IP address or Range you want to remove, and click on Delete link.

Currently Blocked IP

Step 3 − It will ask you for confirmation, click on Remove IP. It will remove the IP from blocked list and will give back the permission to access your site.

cPanel - SSH / TLS

SSL (Socket Security Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security) is a mechanism for encrypting data, which is transferring from your computer to host or server and vice versa.

Generate Private Key

Private Key resides at your server and decrypts the incoming data coming from visitor’s device. Without Private Key, your server will not be able to decode the data sent by user. Private Key is automatically generated when generating a CSR.

To generate a Private Key, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel SSL/TLS manager, by clicking on SSL/TLS found under the security section of cPanel.

SSL/TLS

Step 2 − In Private Keys, click on Generate, view, upload, or delete your private keys.

cPanel SSL/TLS

Step 3 − You can use Generate a New Private Key Interface to generate a new key.

Generate Key

Step 4 − Choose a Key Size from the dropdown menu. Provide a description which is optional, you can leave it blank.

Step 5 − Click on Generate Button to generate a new private key.

Upload a Private Key

To upload a Private Key to your server, you can use the interface below to Generate a New Key Section, which is Upload a New Private Key. Just paste your existing key into textbox and provide a description. Then click Save to import the key.

Upload New Key

Or if you have an existing private key in ‘.key’ file, you can also import it. Just scroll down to choose a .key file under Upload a New Private Key. Browse for the file and select it. Click Upload button to Import the key into server.

Choose Key

Generate a CSR

CSR (Certificate Signing Request) is an encoded certificate, which CA authorities ask for when we purchase a SSL certificate from them. To issue a SSL certificate they need some additional information, which we provide in the CSR.

To generate a CSR, follow these steps below.

Step 1 − Click SSL/TLS link found under Security section of the cPanel.

SSL/TLS

Step 2 − Under Certificate Signing Request (CSR) click Generate, view, or delete SSL certificate signing requests.

Certificate Signing

Step 3 − In SSL Certificate Signing Request Interface, scroll down to see Generate a New Certificate Signing Request (CSR).

Generate New Signing

Step 4 − Choose an existing Private Key from Key dropdown. You can also choose to generate a new Private Key.

Step 5 − Enter Domains for which you want to generate CSR. You can choose a wild card domain by putting * as a subdomain. E.g. *.tutorialspoint.com.

Step 6 − Provide all necessary information in text fields like City, State, Country, Company etc.

Step 7 − Click Generate Button to generate a CSR.

Upload an SSL / TLS Certificate

If you have obtained an SSL/TLS certificate from a Trusted Certificate Provider, then you will need to upload it to your server to use it on your website.

To generate Upload a SSL/TLS certificate, follow these steps below −

Step 1 − Click on SSL/TLS link found under Security section of cPanel.

Step 2 − Under Certificates (CRT), click on Generate, view, upload, or delete SSL certificates.

Certificates

Step 3 − Scroll down to Upload a New Certificate, paste your SSL/TLS code in textbox and click Save Certificate or Upload a .crt file, which will be provided by hosting provider and Click Upload Certificate.

Upload New Certificate

Self–Signed Certificate

You can also use a self–signed certificate on your website too, but when somebody will open your website, it will show an error that the certificate is not form a trusted certificate provider. It is recommended that in production environment, you use a purchased SSL/TLS certificate.

To Generate a Self–signed Certificate, you can follow these steps.

Step 1 − Scroll down to Generate a New Certificate in Certificates section.

Generate New Certificate

Step 2 − Choose an existing Private Key from Key dropdown, you can also choose to generate a new Private Key.

Step 3 − Enter Domains for which you want to generate CSR, you can choose a wild card domain by putting * as a subdomain. E.g. *.tutorialspoint.com.

Step 4 − Provide all necessary information in text fields like City, State, Country, Company etc.

Step 5 − Click Generate to generate a Certificate.

Installing SSL

To activate SSL/TLS certificate in your domain or Subdomains follow these steps −

If you have obtained a SSL/TLS certificate from a Trusted Certificate Provider, to use it on your website, you will need to upload it to your server.

To generate Upload a SSL/TLS certificate, follow these steps below.

Step 1 − Click SSL/TLS link found under Security section of cPanel.

Step 2 − Under Certificates (CRT), click Install and Manage SSL for your site (HTTPS).

Install Manage

Step 3 − In this interface, you can choose to install SSL in your website. Scroll down to install an SSL Website.

Install SSL

Step 4 − Choose a certificate from the installed certificates by clicking on Browse Certificates. At the same time, you can also select a Domain from the dropdown box and Click Autofill by Domain.

Step 5 − All fields of Certificates, Private Key and Certificate Authority bundle will be filled automatically.

Step 6 − Click Install Certificate button to activate the certificate for the Domain or Subdomain.

cPanel - Hotlink Protection

Hotlink Protection prevents other websites to directly load data from your website. For example, when somebody links an Image on your website to load up on his website, when a visitor visits the other website, the image is loaded form your website consuming your bandwidth. Hotlink protection enables prevention against this. If Hotlink Protection is Enabled, other websites will not be able to directly link to any file on your website.

To use this feature, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Hotlink Protection by clicking on Hotlink Protection found under Security section of cPanel home.

Hotlink

Step 2 − Click on Enable button on Hotlink Protection Interface to enable Hotlink Protection.

Hotlink Protection

Configure Hotlink Protection

You can configure Hotlink Protection to give access to those URLs, which you want, those URLs can link to your files directly. Additionally, you can provide the extensions of those files, which you want to protect via Hotlink Protection.

To configure Hotlink Protection, scroll down to Configure Hotlink Protection on Hotlink Protection Interface.

URLs to allow access − Enter those URLs here, whom you want to grant permission to directly access your website’s files.

Block direct access for the following extensions (comma–separated) − Enter those file extensions here, which will not be able to be linked by other website. For E.g. MP4, JPG, and PNG etc.

Allow Direct Requests − This will allow the user to access your files directly by providing full URL of your file. For example, when a visitor will enter the full URL of a PDF file, the file can be viewed in a browser. It is recommended that you select this checkbox.

Redirect the request to the following URL − If a website tries to link to a file directly from your website, the system will redirect that URL to the one provided in this field.

Configure Hotlink

Click Submit to update the changes you made.

cPanel - Ruby on Rails

This interface of cPanel allows you to create and Install a Ruby on Rails application. If you have a Ruby on Rails application developed, you can deploy it to your server using this interface.

To Create a Ruby on Rails Application, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Click Ruby on Rails found under Software Section of cPanel Home.

Ruby Rails

Step 2 − In Ruby on Rails Interface, you will find Create Ruby on Rails Application.

Ruby On Rails

Step 3 − Provide name of your application in App Name.

Step 4 − Provide a Path for your application in your Home Directory.

Step 5 − Choose appropriate environment for your Application. Select Load on Boot, if you want your application to automatically start, whenever your server starts.

Step 6 − Click Create to create a new Ruby on Rails Application.

To delete a Ruby on Rails Application, you can scroll down to the list of currently Available Ruby on Rails Application.

Ruby Applications

Click Delete link from Action button to delete the application. You can also change the preferences of application from this interface.

Create a Rewrite

Ruby on Rails applications run on a different port rather than the incoming traffic. People will access port number 80 or 443, which is for http and https, and hence you will need to redirect people from that port on to which Ruby on Rails application is running. To create a rewrite, scroll down on Ruby on Rails Interface to Create a Rewrite. Click Create Rewrite link next to the app name of which you wish to create the rewrite.

Create Rewrite

It will take you to the following interface.

Create URL

Choose a domain from the dropdown and if you want, you can specify a URL for that too in the URL text box.

Click Save to create a rewrite.

cPanel - Optimize Website

This interface of cPanel helps you to enable gzip compression. Apache allows you to compress the data before sending it to the browser and then web browser extracts the data and displays the webpage. All modern browsers support gzip compression. This gzip compression needs Apache mod_deflate to function currently, which is available in most cPanel installed Linux servers. This compression is very useful, because it helps in compressing data hence our bandwidth is saved, plus it makes our website to load much faster.

You can compress specific types of MIME (Multipurpose Internet Mail Extensions) or you can compress all the files using this interface.

To enable gzip compression, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Optimize Website interface by clicking on Optimize Website link in the Software section of cPanel.

Optimize Website

Step 2 − In Optimize Website, you will see Compress Content.

cPanel Optimize Website

You can choose from the following −

  • Choose Disable to disable gzip compression.

  • Choose Compress All Content to enable gzip compression for all content.

  • Choose Specified MIME types and provide MIME types in text box. MIME type are similar to file types. It has both file type and file format information separated with a slash. E.g. text/javascript, text/css, image/jpg, image/png etc.

Step 3 − Click Update Settings to update the settings.

cPanel - Cron Jobs

If you want to run a command or a php program on a specified time interval like once a day or once a week, you can setup cron jobs in this interface. Cron jobs allow you to run a specific command or program automatically. This is often required, if you are using a software like CRM or Billing Software. Setting up cron jobs more often may degrade your server’s performance.

Setup Cron Job

To add a new cron job, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open Cron Jobs by clicking Cron Jobs found in the Advanced section in cPanel.

Cron

Step 2 − Scroll down to see Add New Cron Job interface.

Cron Job

Step 3 − You can choose an existing setting from common settings. If you do that all the fields of cron execution time will automatically get filled. Or you can choose your custom runtime settings by specifying in the next text inputs accordingly.

Step 4 − Enter your command to run in cron job. If you are running a php file, enter full name of php file. For example −

php /home/tutorialspoint/public_html/cron.php

Step 5 − Click Add New Cron Job button to add a cron job.

Cron Email

cPanel by default sends an email each time a cron job runs. It also redirects the output of the command or file into the email. Default email for this is your system account, but you can change this email too. To change the email on which you want to receive cron email, firstly find out Cron Email interface in Cron Jobs. Then enter your new email in which you wish to get cron emails. Click Update email to update your email.

Cron Email

If your cron runs more frequently, then you may not want to receive emails, you can disable receiving emails by redirecting your output into null by writing >/dev/null 2>&1 at the end of the command. For example −

php /home/tutorialspoint/public_html/cron.php >/dev/null 2>&1

Edit or Delete Existing Cron Jobs

To edit or delete your existing cron jobs, you can scroll below on the Corn Jobs interface to see current cron jobs. Once you select the job, you can click either the delete link or the edit link to edit or delete a particular cron job.

Current Cron Jobs

cPanel - Track DNS

You can use this interface of cPanel to find out the general DNS of a domain. It will give you the IP address of that domain, mail servers and raw DNS information. This can be useful to retrieve network information.

Domain Lookup

This tool retrieves the IP address of the domain and displays email hosts used by the domain. It also displays the raw DNS data of the domain.

To lookup a domain, use the following steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Track DNS by clicking Track DNS link found under the Advanced section of cPanel.

Track

Step 2 − In the Domain lookup interface, enter the domain, which you want to look up.

Domain lookup

Step 3 − Press Look Up button to lookup a DNS of a domain.

You will get information in the following manner.

Track DNS

The top-most line provides the IP address of the domain. The other following lines tells about the mail servers. In Zone Information, you will see the raw DNS information of the domain.

Trace Route

Another function in cPanel Track DNS is the trace route. This function of Track DNS gives you information of the route between the computer in which the user is logged in and the server, where your website is hosted.

Trace Route

To trace the route of your computer and the server, scroll down to see Trace Route interface. Click Trace to get the information of the route between your webserver and you.

cPanel - Indexes

You can customize the way a directory looks in your website. By default, cPanel displays the list of files and directories, if there is no index file in that directory. You can choose the way it displays the list of contents in the front-end. You can also choose to disable the indexing of files in that directory by choosing No Indexing.

To manage cPanel Indexes, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Index Manager by clicking on Indexes found under Advanced section of cPanel Home.

Index

Step 2 − You can select a directory of which you wish to manage indexes by clicking over the name of directory. To navigate within directories, you can click on the folder icon corresponding to that directory to open up the directory.

Indexes

Step 3 − Once you have selected the directory, you will be given some options to choose form.

  • Default System Indexing − Enables the default setting your hosting provider setup for you.

  • No Indexing − This option will disable the directory listing and if there is no index file such as index.php or index.html in the directory. User will get an error.

  • Standard Indexing − This option will enable the directory listing and user will see the name of the directories.

  • Fancy Indexing − This option will enable the directory listing and user will see the name and description of the files and directories under your indexed directory.

Set Indexing

Step 4 − Click Save to save your choice for that directory. If successful, you will see a success message.

cPanel - Error Pages

When visitors browse your website and there is some problem accessing your website, your webserver automatically provides a basic error page. A Basic error page shown by apache webserver, when an error is encountered.

A Basic page contains the error code and error message only. You can customize this error page according to your choice. Each problem your webserver encounters has a unique error code; your webserver displays the error accordingly.

To modify an error page, follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel Error Pages interface by clicking on Error Pages link found in the advanced section of the cPanel Home.

Error Page

Step 2 − In Error Pages interface, select the domain or subdomain for which you want to configure the error pages from the drop down menu.

Error Page Manage

Step 3 − Select the error code of which you wish to edit the error page. You can choose from the Common Error codes or you can click All HTTP error codes to see the list of all error codes.

Forbidden

Step 4 − It will open an HTML editor for you in which you can enter the HTML code for the error page you selected. You can also use predefined tag in your code, click on the tag to insert it to the editor.

HTML Editor

Step 5 − When finished inserting the code in the editor, Press Save button to save the error page. Now each time your visitor will encounter the error, he will be served your custom error page.

cPanel - MIME Types

MIME (Multi–Purpose Internet Mail Extensions) types tell the browsers how to handle certain types of files. When a file is sent to a browser of your website’s visitor, it also sends the MIME type of that file with that too. The MIME type tells the browser about the type of file and how the file will be served to the user. For example, if a .js file is sent to the browser then application/JavaScript MIME type is also sent to tell the browser that the .js file is a JavaScript file, and browser handles the file accordingly.

Most of the MIME type are defined in a system defined MIME types. But if you have a file with custom extension, you can specify MIME type for that file in this interface. This will tell the browser about your custom extension and how to handle that file.

To add a custom MIME type, please follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open cPanel MIME Types by clicking on MIME Types in Advanced Section of cPanel.

MIME Types

Step 2 − In Create A MIME Type interface, Enter your MIME type.

Create MIME Type

Step 3 − Enter the extension for your file. If you have multiple extensions, you can add all of them at once by separating them with a space.

Step 4 − Click on Add button to save the custom MIME type.

Delete a MIME Type

You can only delete the MIME Types defined by you. As, you are not allowed to delete the MIME types, which are defined by the System automatically. To delete a MIME type, Scroll down to the User Defined MIME Types and Click Delete link corresponding to the MIME type you want to delete.

User MIME Type

It will ask for confirmation; click Delete MIME Type to delete a user defined MIME type.

cPanel - Virus Scanner

Many cPanel web hosting comes with this ClamAV virus scanner feature to guard against potential threats on your server. You can run on-demand scan of your files to see if they are infected with any virus or not. ClamAV is an open source powerful antivirus, it uses its extensive database to detect several types of potential threats like viruses, Trojan horses, malwares, malicious scripts etc.

You can scan different sectors of your home directory using the antivirus. To scan your account with a virus scanner, use the following steps.

Step 1 − Open cPanel Virus Scanner by clicking the Virus Scanner link in the Advanced section of the cPanel home.

Virus Scanner

Step 2 − You can choose the scan type from here.

Virus New Scan

  • Scan Entire Home Directory − This option will scan your entire cPanel account. If you choose this option, no need to run the scan on other options. This will scan your home directory, which contains the Emails, FTP accounts and Website.

  • Scan Mail − This option will scan your emails for viruses. If somebody sends a malicious email having some virus or malware, this virus scanner will tell you that.

  • Scan Public FTP Space − This option will scan your public_ftp folder. If somebody uploaded a malicious file through FTP, virus scanner will find it.

  • Scan Public Web Space − This option will scan your public_html in which all your front end files reside.

Step 3 − Click Scan Now button to start the scan and it will automatically show you the results.

Virus Scan

If the Virus Scanner finds any malicious software, then it will give you options to correct the error. You may choose the option accordingly.

cPanel - Softaculous Apps Installer

Softaculous Apps Installer is an auto script installer, which installs the most popular PHP, JavaScript, Perl applications in just a few clicks. When using Softaculous Apps Installer, you will not need to manually install applications by first uploading the files and then creating the database and finally installing them. But you can install them in a few clicks.

To access Softaculous Apps Installer, you can find the Softaculous Apps Installer link in the Software section of the cPanel Home.

Softaculous Apps

You can also find a dedicated section of Softaculous Apps Installer in the cPanel home, which displays the most popular applications and the application category in the front panel.

Softaculous

You can install the applications, modify the installation and Create as well as Manage Backups.

When you will click on Softaculous Apps Installer in the Software section, it will take you to the App installer interface like shown below.

Softaculous Installer

Install Application using Softaculous Apps Installer

To install an application from the Softaculous Apps Installer search from the search box given at left or click on any of the categories. Then you can select the application you wish to install.

Application Softaculous

Click Install and follow the instructions that follow to install the application directly into your website.

Create Backup of any Application

You can easily create a backup of your application using the Softaculous Apps Installer to restore it in your account later. To create the backup of your application, you will need to go to the list of all installations section of your Softaculous Apps Installer. Click on the icon at the top of the navigation bar to open All Installations.

Create Backup

In All Installations, you will find the list of all applications, which are installed by the Softaculous Apps Installer.

Script Installation

Click on the Backup icon to create an automatic backup of the whole application installation. This backup will include all the files, database and configuration of the application. You can always restore the application by going into Backup and Restore interface of Softaculous Apps Installer, which can be opened by clicking on Backup and Restore icon from the top navigation menu.

Backup Restore

cPanel - Installing WordPress

You can directly install WordPress in your website by making a few clicks through the Softaculous Apps Installer. WordPress is a very popular content management software as more than a million websites are powered by it. It’s secure, reliable, easy to use and totally customizable. To install WordPress using Softaculous Apps Installer, follow these steps.

Step 1 − In the left menu click Blogs and you will find WordPress. Click on that and follow the instructions.

Blogs

Step 2 − It will take you to the WordPress overview. Click Install and it will take you to the installer interface.

WordPress

Step 3 − You will be asked for some configuration, which are explained below.

WordPress

  • Choose Protocol − Choose protocol of your WordPress website. You can use http or https with or without www. If you choose https, then a SSL certificate must be installed in your website. You can change this setting later in WordPress setting, if required.

  • Choose Domain − You can install your WordPress in the root domain or any subdomain you created, choose from the dropdown menu.

  • In Directory − Choose the folder in which you wish to install the WordPress. If you want to install in your root website, make this field empty.

Site Settings

  • Site Name − Give a name to your website in this field.

  • Site Description − Provide a short description of your website.

  • Enable Multisite − If Checked, then it will install a WordPress network installation.

Network Installation

  • Admin Username/Password − Enter your administrator username and password, you will need these to login to your admin panel later.

  • Admin Ema − Enter the email address on which you want to receive the important notification of your WordPress.

Choose Language

  • Select Language − Choose a language for your WordPress Installation

Select Plugins

Plugins − You can select to install these 3rd Party Plugins, this is optional.

Database Name

  • Database Name − You can specify a custom database name for your WordPress database, or you can leave this setting as it is.

  • Table Prefix − If you are going to use the same database for more than one installation, you can specify table prefix here. All the tables that will be created will have this prefix before them.

  • Disable Update Notifications − You can choose not to receive update notification on your admin email by selecting this checkbox.

  • Upgrade Options − You can choose to auto upgrade your WordPress CMS, Installed theme or Installed plugins. Select appropriate options.

  • Automated backups − You can choose to create a backup of your WordPress automatically using Softaculous Apps Installer, if selected you can choose a backup rotation for your system.

Theme

  • Select Theme − If you select any theme here, then Softaculous Apps Installer will make an auto install of that theme. If you do not choose any theme then a clean WordPress Installation will be done.

Step 4 − Click Install to install the WordPress CMS on your website. If successful, you will be given the links to your installation and admin panel.

WordPress Installed

cPanel - FileZilla FTP Client

FileZilla is an open source FTP client, it is available on multiple platforms like Linux and Windows. This client also supports FTP over secured connections that is SFTP and FTPS. You can use this software to upload and manage your files in your webserver. When you wish to upload your website and number of files are more or size of files are very large. Then you can use FTP upload, because uploading a file of very large size through cPanel File Manager can cause an error in uploading.

Most of the cPanel accounts comes with a system FTP account, through which you can access and manage all the files in your home directory. Passwords of system account for cPanel and FTP are same in most cases.

To use FileZilla FTP client, to manage and upload the website, please follow these steps −

Step 1 − Download and install FileZilla FTP client from FileZilla website. The installation process of this software is the same as other software’s.

https://filezilla–project.org/download.php

FileZilla

Step 2 − After installing open your FileZilla FTP client. In the quick connect bar, you will find text box to provide hostname. Enter your ftp hostname, which can be IP address of your server or ftp..

Step 3 − Enter the username and password for your ftp account.

Step 4 − Enter Port on which you want to connect to your FTP server. In most of the cases, it is 21, but if you leave this field empty then FileZilla will automatically find the appropriate port to connect.

Quickconnect

Step 5 − Click Quickconnect to connect to the FTP server.

Step 6 − After a successful connection, you can move or copy files from the left hand side pane (which are your local computer directories) to the Right hand pane (which are your remote server directories and files). You can drag and drop files from the left to right pane or vice versa.

Step 7 − You can view the status of your moving or copying in the pane, which is on the lower side of the interface.

cPanel - CloudFlare

CloudFlare is a CDN (Content Delivery Network) with both free and paid plans. Most cPanel hosting comes with cPanel CloudFlare plugin, which helps you to quickly signup for CloudFlare and use their CDN. Using CloudFlare has many advantages like it distributes the content over the Internet making our website load faster. It protects the website from SQL injection and DDOS and encrypts the website using SSL.

To use CloudFlare CDN, please follow these steps −

Step 1 − Open CloudFlare interface by clicking CloudFlare found in the cPanel Home under CloudFlare – Supercharge your website section.

CloudFlare

Step 2 − In CloudFlare Interface under Sign Up / Log In, Enter your email address and click Signup Now. If you have an existing account with CloudFlare, it will ask you to login, otherwise it will sign you up.

Signup Now

Step 3 − Once you are logged in, you can see the status of your domain in overview section of CloudFlare interface. You will need to change your current Nameservers to those provided by CloudFlare to use it with your website. If you do not like services of CloudFlare, then you can change your domain’s Nameservers back to default.

Nameservers

Step 4 − Once you have updated your Nameservers, you can use CloudFlare CDN. You can also view and configure your website for CloudFlare on their website.

Cpanel Basics

posted on May 18, 2021

tags:

cPanel is a Linux-based hosting management control panel. It is used to manage your website and server’s backend working system. It provides graphical user interface for most of the tasks we perform on the website’s server, for example, uploading files, creating emails, setting cron jobs, handling databases, etc.

cPanel Users

cPanel is installed on a Linux system by the server administrator. With the help of the cPanel Software Server, an Administrator can create Virtual Private Servers or it can dedicate the whole server for shared hosting environment. cPanel Shared hosting has three types of user levels.

Server Administrator − This user is the root user of a cPanel Linux Server and has all the permission over the server. Server Admin can create, modify or delete any account from the cPanel Server. The Server Admin has access to cPanel WHM (Web Host Manger), which can be understood as the backend of cPanel.

Reseller Accounts − This user is created by the server administrator and server administrator can choose which type of permissions should be given to reseller accounts. A Reseller account can further create user accounts and has access to all those accounts, which they have created. One reseller account does not have access to the user accounts that were created by another reseller accounts. They also have access to WHM with limited permissions.

User Account − These are normal user accounts, each user who subscribes for a web hosting from a company, is given this type of account. They do not have access to Web Host Manager. User account can host single or multiple websites according to their plans they have purchased from web hosting provider.

Why cPanel

cPanel is packed with many features that is not provided by other web hosting management panels. It is graphical, hence, non–technical users can also use it perfectly. cPanel is responsive to the screen size, hence can be used in mobile and tablets. It will automatically adapt the screen size of the device.

cPanel is very easy to use and configure. It automatically adjusts all the advanced setting for web hosting. A user hardly needs to go to the command line to configure any settings, as it already has all the features inbuilt.

Advantages

cPanel offers the following advantages −

  • It is very easy to host a website using cPanel.

  • It is multiannual and available in many languages.

  • It is responsive and adapts to any screen size, it can be used efficiently in mobile and Tablet too.

  • cPanel has in–built File Manager, which helps in managing your files without the hassles of an FTP.

  • cPanel has integrated webmail software, which helps in sending and receiving emails through online webmail client.

  • You can easily create a backup of your website in a few steps. This will help you to restore your backup, if your website encounters any error.

  • You can easily manage your website databases, as cPanel has integrated phpMyAdmin, which helps to directly manage databases.

Disadvantages

cPanel does not have any significant drawbacks, however here are a couple of its notable disadvantages −

  • cPanel is a commercial software and you need to pay to get this.

  • cPanel is meant for small and medium websites only. Creating a large website using cPanel is not recommended.

WordPress FAQ

posted on May 18, 2021

tags:


These WordPress Interview Questions have been designed specially to get you acquainted with the nature of questions you may encounter during your interview for the subject of WordPress. As per my experience good interviewers hardly plan to ask any particular question during your interview, normally questions start with some basic concept of the subject and later they continue based on further discussion and what you answer.

WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS), which allows the users to build dynamic websites and blog.

The features of WordPress are −

  • User Management
  • Media Management
  • Theme System
  • Extend with Plugins
  • Search Engine Optimized
  • Multilingual
  • Importers

The disadvantages of WordPress are −

  • Using several plugins can make website heavy to load and run.

  • PHP knowledge is required to do modification or changes in the WordPress website.

  • Sometimes software needs to be updated to keep the WordPress up to date with the current browsers and mobile devices. Updating of WordPress version leads to loss of data so it requires the backup copy of website.

  • Modifying and formatting the graphic images and tables is difficult.

The different types of gadgets present in the WordPress Dashboard are −

  • Dashboard Menu
  • Screen Options
  • Welcome
  • Quick Draft
  • WordPress News
  • Activity
  • At a Glance

The Quick Draft is a mini post editor allows writing, saving and publishing post from admin dashboard. It includes the title for the draft, some notes about your draft and save it as a Draft.

The WordPress News widget displays the latest news such as latest software version, updates, alerts, news regarding the software etc from the official WordPress blog.

This section gives overview of your blog's posts, number of published posts and pages, number of comments. When you click on these links, you will be taken to the respective screen. It displays the current version of running WordPress along with currently running theme on the site.

The Activity widget includes latest comments on your blog, recent posts and recently published posts. It allows you to unapprove or approve the comment, reply to the comment, editing the comment or you can delete the comment or move it to spam.

WordPress general setting is used to set the basic configuration settings for your site.

The writing settings controls WordPress writing experience and provides options for customizing WordPress site. These settings control WordPress's features in the adding and editing posts, Pages, and Post Types, as well as the optional functions like Remote Publishing, Post via e-mail, and Update Services.

This option uses email address to create post for you and publishes posts on your blog by email. To use this, you'll need to set up a secret e-mail account with a POP3 access, and any mail received at this address will be posted.

Reading Setting is used to set the content related to the front page. Here you can set the number of post to be displayed on the main page.

The user can view the number of posts when they download one of the site feeds. By default, it is set as 10.

It Discourage search engines from indexing this site, your site will be ignored by the search engine.

WordPress discussion setting can be defined as the interaction between the blogger and your visitors. These settings are done by the admin to have a control over the posts/pages that come in through users.

It is used to set the height and widths for the images which you're going to use into your website.

Permalink is a permanent link to a particular blog post or category. It allows setting the default permalink structure. These settings are used to add permalinks to your posts in Wordpress.

Plugin allows easily modifying, customizing or enhancing wordPress blog or post. The wordPress Plugin is software that can be uploaded to expand the functionality of the site. They add services or features to wordPress blog.

Category is used to indicate sections of your site and group related posts. It sorts the group content into different sections. It is a very convenient way to organize the posts.

Posts are also known as articles and sometimes referred as blogs or blog posts. These are used to popularize your blogs.

Preview Post is to view the post before it is published to the user. It's safer to preview your post and verify how your post looks on website.

Publish is used to make the post available to all the users wherein every user can view that particular post.

Media Library consists of the images, audios, videos and files that you can upload and add to the content when writing a Post or Page.

It displays all images in the grid format.

Media files can be inserted to your Pages or Posts from libraries, from local storage or from URLs.

Pages are static content and often do not change its displayed information.

WYSIWYG Editor is similar to a word processor interface where we can edit the contents of the article.

Page attributes module allows you to select parents for your particular page. You can also set order of the pages.

Tag is small information attached to main content or post for the purpose of identification. It tells the visitors what actually the post is about. If the tag is mentioned properly then it helps to find the content very easily.

It is used to specify the tags URL.

Link is a connection from one resource to another. Adding links to your pages or blog posts helps you to connect to other pages.

Adding comments allows your visitors to have a discussion with you. Comments are approved by the admin and then posted to be discussed further.

Comment moderation is a process where, when visitors comment on posts, the comment is not published directly until and unless it is approved by the admin to be posted. It manages your comments so that there is no comment spamming.

Contributor can only write and edit their posts until published. They can create their own posts and pages but cannot publish them. They cannot upload images or files but can see your site's status. When they want to publish any post, it must be first notified personally to the administrator by the contributor to review. When the post is approved the contributor cannot make any changes once publishe

Themes make your websites display with modification. It includes image files, templates, css stylesheets etc that can help you to make your website look great.

Customizing themes helps you to give a new look to your website. Here you can change background images/colors, add titles, and do much more.

Widgets are small blocks that perform specific functions. These give design and structure control to the WordPress theme.

  • They help you add content and features.
  • They can be easily dragged and dropped in widget area.
  • Widgets vary theme to theme. They are not same for every theme.

The steps to optimize the WordPress are −

  • High quality and meaningful content.
  • Have right names for images.
  • Use short permalinks that include keywords.
  • Optimized themes.
  • Sitemap in XML format.
  • Connect posts to social networks.
  • Beware of black hat techniques.
  • Delete your trash box.
  • Keep Checking Your Site Statistics
  • Keep checking your plugins.
  • Using Css and JavaScript effectively.

The Editor has access to all the posts, pages, comments, categories, tags, and links. They can create, publish, edit or delete any posts or pages.

Follower can only read and comment on the posts. Followers are the ones who have signed in to your account to receive updates.

Viewers can only view your posts; they cannot edit but can only comment on the posts.

It is the tool for managing the media files and folder, in which you can easily upload, organize and manage your media files on your website.

It allows translating all the content into the user choice languages.

It allows managing the user information such as changing the role of the users to (subscriber, contributor, author, editor or administrator), create or delete the user, change the password and user information. The main part of the user manager is Authentication.

PHP 5.2+

The WordPress Dashboard is a first screen which will be seen when you log into the administration area of your blog which will display overview of the website. It is a collection of gadgets that provide information and give a glance overview of what's happening with your blog. You can customize your needs by using some quick links such as writing quick draft, replying to latest comment etc.

Avatar is a small image that displays at the top-right-hand corner of the dashboard screen beside your name. It is like your profile picture.

It is the URL of WordPress directory where your all core application files are present.

It allows reading the emails that you send to WordPress and stores them for retrieval. For this you need to have POP3 compatible mail server and it will have URI address such as mail.example.com, which you should enter here.

It allows importing data in the form of posts. It imports custom files, comments, post pages and tags.

Host Transfer of WordPress Website

posted on May 18, 2021

tags:

We have used Hostinger web hosting to transfer the WordPress site to another host.

Just follow the simple steps given below to transfer your WordPress site to another host.

Step (1) − Keep the backup of WordPress files and export the database.

Step (2) − Login to your cPanel and click on MySQL Databases as shown in the following screen.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (3) − Create a new database and MySQL user as shown in the following screen. The page has the following fields −

WordPress Host Transfer

  • MySQL Database Name − Enter your database name.

  • MySQL Username − Enter your username.

  • Password − Set password for your database.

  • Password again − Once again set the same password as previous for authentication.

After filling all the fields, Click on Create button.

Step (4) − You can view your created MySQL database, User and Host as shown in the following screen.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (5) − Click on + symbol.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (6) − Click on phpMyAdmin.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (7) − Click on Import tab on the phpMyAdmin page.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (8) − Click on Choose File button to select the backup file from your system and click on Go button.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (9) − You can view the tables of database uploaded as shown in the following screen.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (10) − Upload your WordPress files by using file transfer protocol(FileZilla) as shown in the chapter WordPress - Backup & Restore in Restoring WordPress Files section.

Step (11) − Edit wp-config.php file as mentioned in the Restoring WordPress Files section in chapter WordPress - Backup & Restore.

Step (12) − Inside the Website section of hostinger, Click on Auto Installer.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (13) − You can view the uploaded file of the WordPress. Click on the URL link as shown in the following screen.

WordPress Host Transfer

Step (14) − You can view the login page of WordPress.

WordPress Host Transfer

Joomla FAQ

posted on May 17, 2021

tags:

Joomla Frequently Asked Questions have been designed specially to get you acquainted with the nature of questions you may encounter during your interview for the subject of Joomla. As per my experience good interviewers hardly plan to ask any particular question during your interview, normally questions start with some basic concept of the subject and later they continue based on further discussion and what you answer:

Joomla is an open source Content Management System (CMS), which is used to build websites and online applications. It is free and extendable which is separated into front-end and back-end (administrator).

The features of Joomla are:

  • User Manager

  • Content Manager

  • Banner Manager

  • Template Manager

  • Media Manager

  • Contact Manager

  • Search

Framework is collection of open source software, where the Joomla CMS is built on. It developed for more flexibility and breaks the framework into single modular packages which helps each package to develop more easily.

MySql Database

The disadvantages of Joomla are:

  • It gives compatibility problem while installing several modules, extensions and plugins simultaneously.

  • Plugins and modules are not free in Joomla.

  • Development is too difficult to handle when you want to change the layout.

  • Joomla is not much SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly.

  • It makes website heavy to load and run.

Components are considered as mini applications. It consists of two parts i.e. Administrator and Site. Whenever a page gets loads, component is been called to render the body of main page. The Administrator part manages different aspects of the component and the site part helps in rendering the pages when request is made by site visitor. Components are main functional unit of joomla.

Modules are an extension which is used to render the pages in Joomla. It is also used to display the new data from the component. It frequently looks like boxes such as login module. In Joomla administrator the modules are managed by the module manager. It displays the new content and images when module is linked to joomla components.

This is also a kind of Joomla extension; it is a very flexible and powerful for extending the framework. It contain a bit of codes that is used to execute the particular event trigger, it is commonly used to format the output of a component or module when page is built. The plugin functions which are associated with event are executed in a sequence when a particular event occurs.

Breadcrumb is used to display the hierarchical representation of the navigation links so that the users can easily understand where he/she is in the website and allow them to navigate back.

It check-in the particular selected article. Multiple articles can be checked-in.

It is used as an optional paragraph which includes a description of the page and is displayed in the results of the search engines.

It defines whether link must use SSL or Secure Site URL. It provides three options such as Off, On and Ignore.

It specifies the number of the times the item was viewed.

TinyMCE Editor.

The Editor buttons are:

  • Article

  • Image

  • Page Break

  • Read More

  • Toggle Editor.

It indicates how the clients are purchasing the banners i.e. yearly or Monthly. By default it is monthly.

Extension Manager is used to extend the functionality of Joomla website.

Official Support Forum helps in supporting the exchange of ideas and views officially in Joomla.

The Documentation Wiki is used for formatting the content of articles, cross linking pages and creating the documentation of Wiki template by themselves.

Joomla translations help in translation of language in Joomla core files. It helps in documentation and screens along with other task to meet the need of diverse language community.

Setting this parameter causes Joomla to either add a new CSS class or modify the existing CSS class for the div element for this specific module.

Feed Display Module is used to show the RSS News Feeds from a website. It is a way to provide user with the updated content from other resources.

Footer displays the information of the Joomla license and the copyright of the website.

Latest News Module is used to display the most recent published article in a list.

Search Module is used to display a search box, where the user types a particular name to search the website.

Random Image Module is used to display the images randomly from the selected directory.

This module helps to display the user's information that is accessing the website.

Syndicate module helps in creating an RSS Feed link for the page. It allows creating a Newsfeed by user for the current page.

It gives a path to store the logs by Joomla. This path is automatically set up on Joomla installation and should not be changed.

Joomla Media Settings help to configure the global media files options such like file format, MIME specifications, upload of files, size of files etc.

The Joomla language manager option is used to set the Native Title, Language Code, SEF Prefix, and Image Prefixes of the installed or to be installed languages.

Mass Mail is used for sending emails to the group of registered users. Users can be selected based on groups.

It is a debugging system of Joomla which provides debug information by setting it to "Yes". It provides some various forms such as diagnostic information, language translations and SQL errors.

It manages the various templates that are used in the website. The templates can be used without changing the content structure of the website.

The templates present in Joomla are:

  • Beez3

  • Hathor

  • Isis

  • Protostar

In body section the jdoc is used to include the output in Joomla from some parts of Joomla system. The name="top" is used to set the menu at the top.

Category Manager is used to create categories for the article which allow grouping your content better.

The red dotted line gets displayed in the editor. The further information part of the article gets displayed after the read dotted lines or sometimes it displays the entire article.

Metadata describes details of the article in short. It makes easy to work with the particular data.

SEO (Search Engine Optimizer) is about optimizing a website for search engine. It helps search engines find and rank your site higher than the other sites in response to a search query.

The Content Management System (CMS) is software which keeps all the data of your content (such as text, photos, music, documents etc) which will be available on your website. It helps in editing, publishing and modifying the content of the website.

It is the tool for managing the media files and folder in which you can easily upload, organize and manage your media files into your article editor tool.

The link resource is provided for user of the site and can be sorted into categories.

It allows creating menus and menu items and can be managed subsequently. You can put menu in any style and in multiple places.

It stands for Really Simple Indication which syndicates your site contents and RSS files can be automatically updated.

PHP 5.4+ or PHP 5.3.10+

The Web-server that supports Joomla are:

  • WAMP (Windows)

  • LAMP (Linux)

  • XAMP (Multi-platform)

  • MAMP (Macintosh)

  • Nginx

  • Microsoft IIS

Community Portal helps in bringing Joomla news from all over the world at one place.

Extension Manager is used to extend the functionality of Joomla website.

Check out one of the best Joomla Hosting on the market!

Joomla Basics

posted on May 17, 2021

tags:

Joomla is an open source Content Management System (CMS), which is used to build websites and online applications. It is free and extendable which is separated into front-end and back-end templates (administrator). Joomla is developed using PHP, Object Oriented Programming, software design patterns and MySQL (used for storing the data).

What is Content Management System (CMS)?

The Content Management System (CMS) is a software which keeps track of the entire data (such as text, photos, music, document, etc.) which will be available on your website. It helps in editing, publishing and modifying the content of the website.

History

Joomla is based on Mambo CMS which was developed by an Australian company in 2001 and initially released on August 17, 2005. The official version of Joomla 1.0 was released on September 22, 2005.

Features

Joomla has its own powerful built-in features (core features).

Joomla Features

  • User Manager − It allows managing the user information such as permission to edit, access, publish, create or delete the user, change the password and languages. The main part of the user manager is Authentication.

  • Content Manager − It allows managing the content using WYSIWYG editor to create or edit the content in a very simple way.

  • Banner Manager − It is used to add or edit the banners on the website.

  • Template Manager − It manages the designs that are used on the website. The templates can be implemented without changing the content structure within a few seconds.

  • Media Manager − It is the tool for managing the media files and folder in which you can easily upload, organize and manage your media files into your article editor tool.

  • Contact Manager − It allows to add contacts, managing the contact information of the particular users.

  • Web Link Manager − The link resource is provided for user of the site and can be sorted into categories.

  • Search − It allows users to search the appropriate information on the site. You can use smart indexing, advanced search options, auto suggest searches to make Joomla search best.

  • Menu Manager − It allows to create menus and menu items and can be managed subsequently. You can put menu in any style and in multiple places.

  • RSS − It stands for Really Simple syndication which helps your site contents and RSS files to be automatically updated.

Advantages

  • It is an open source platform and available for free.

  • Joomla is designed to be easy to install and set up even if you're not an advanced user.

  • Since Joomla is so easy to use, as a web designer or developer, you can quickly build sites for your clients. With minimal instructions to the clients, clients can easily manage their sites on their own.

  • It is very easy to edit the content as it uses WYSIWYG editor (What You See Is What You Get is a user interface that allows the user to directly manipulate the layout of the document without having a layout command).

  • It ensures the safety of data content and doesn't allow anyone to edit the data.

  • By default, Joomla is compatible with all browsers.

  • The templates are very flexible to use.

  • Media files can be uploaded easily in the article editor tool.

  • Provides easy menu creation tool.

Disadvantages

  • It gives compatibility problem while installing several modules, extensions and plugins simultaneously.

  • Plugins and modules are not free in Joomla.

  • Development is too difficult to handle when you want to change the layout.

  • Joomla is not much SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly.

  • It makes website heavy to load and run.

Real World Examples of What Joomla Can Create?

  • Corporate web sites or portals
  • Corporate intranets and extranets
  • Online magazines, newspapers, and publications
  • E-commerce and online reservations
  • Government applications
  • Small business web sites
  • Non-profit and organizational web sites
  • Community-based portals
  • School and religious web sites
  • Personal or family homepages
You will need a quality web hosting specialized in Joomla Hosting like SiteGround so that you don't experiance any problem!

101 Websites Types Basics

posted on May 16, 2021

tags:

Internet Forums

An internet forum is message board where people can hold conversation by posting messages.

 

Key Points

  • A forum can contain several sub forums.

  • Each of sub forums may contain a number of topics.

  • Within a forum’s topic, each new discussion started is called a thread.

  • This thread can be replied by as many people as so wish.

Blog

The term Blog is taken from web log. It is a kind of web site that is updated regularly, with content about almost anything. In other words, blog is a Content Management System (CMS), an easy way of publishing articles on the internet.

internet_technologies_tutorial

Blogging Terminologies

Blog

A type of website used to publish content on the internet.

Blogger

A person who writes for a blog.

Blogging

Writing for blogs is referred as blogging.

Blogosphere

A term is used to refer all the blogs on the web.

What to Blog about

Following discussion will help you to figure out what to write about and as well as what to name your blog.

  • Write what you know about. For example, if you have good computer knowledge. You can write what you know about the subject.

  • You can share your experience. You can also write what you gained from that experience, what you learned.

  • Detail your personal research.

  • Share your memory of someone.

E-commerce

E-Commerce or Electronics Commerce is a methodology of modern business which addresses the need of business organizations, vendors and customers to reduce cost and improve the quality of goods and services while increasing the speed of delivery. E-commerce refers to paperless exchange of business information using following ways.

  • Electronic Data Exchange (EDI)

  • Electronic Mail (e-mail)

  • Electronic Bulletin Boards

  • Electronic Fund Transfer (EFT)

  • Other Network-based technologies

internet_technologies_tutorial

Features

E-Commerce provides following features:

Non-Cash Payment

E-Commerce enables use of credit cards, debit cards, smart cards, electronic fund transfer via bank's website and other modes of electronics payment.

24x7 Service availability

E-commerce automates business of enterprises and services provided by them to customers are available anytime, anywhere. Here 24x7 refers to 24 hours of each seven days of a week.

Advertising / Marketing

E-commerce increases the reach of advertising of products and services of businesses. It helps in better marketing management of products / services.

Improved Sales

Using E-Commerce, orders for the products can be generated anytime, anywhere without any human intervention. By this way, dependencies to buy a product reduce at large and sales increases.

Support

E-Commerce provides various ways to provide pre sales and post sales assistance to provide better services to customers.

Portfolio

Online portfolio is collection of images, multimedia, emails, blog entries, and hyperlinks that are managed online. It can be seen as a kind of learning record that provides actual evidence of achievement.

Types

There are three types of online portfolio:

  1. Developmental (e.g. working)

  2. Reflective (e.g. learning)

  3. Representational (e.g. showcase)

Developmental portfolio contains all the things that an individual has done over a period of time.

Reflective portfolio contains personal reflection on the content.

Representational online portfolio refers to learner’s achievement in a particular work.

There are many types of websites nowadays, but each one of them requires a quality web hosting service provider like LuquidWeb.

WWW: What does it mean?

posted on May 16, 2021

tags:

WWW stands for World Wide Web. A technical definition of the World Wide Web is : all the resources and users on the Internet that are using the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP).

A broader definition comes from the organization that Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee helped found, the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C).

The World Wide Web is the universe of network-accessible information, an embodiment of human knowledge.

In simple terms, The World Wide Web is a way of exchanging information between computers on the Internet, tying them together into a vast collection of interactive multimedia resources. Web hosts are intergrated part of WWW.

Internet and Web is not the same thing: Web uses internet to pass over the information.

internet_technologies_tutorial

Evolution

World Wide Web was created by Timothy Berners Lee in 1989 at CERN in Geneva. World Wide Web came into existence as a proposal by him, to allow researchers to work together effectively and efficiently at CERN. Eventually it became World Wide Web.

The following diagram briefly defines evolution of World Wide Web:

internet_technologies_tutorial

WWW Architecture

WWW architecture is divided into several layers as shown in the following diagram:

internet_technologies_tutorial

Identifiers and Character Set

Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) is used to uniquely identify resources on the web and UNICODE makes it possible to built web pages that can be read and write in human languages.

Syntax

XML (Extensible Markup Language) helps to define common syntax in semantic web.

Data Interchange

Resource Description Framework (RDF) framework helps in defining core representation of data for web. RDF represents data about resource in graph form.

Taxonomies

RDF Schema (RDFS) allows more standardized description of taxonomies and other ontological constructs.

Ontologies

Web Ontology Language (OWL) offers more constructs over RDFS. It comes in following three versions:

  • OWL Lite for taxonomies and simple constraints.

  • OWL DL for full description logic support.

  • OWL for more syntactic freedom of RDF

Rules

RIF and SWRL offers rules beyond the constructs that are available from RDFs and OWL. Simple Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL) is SQL like language used for querying RDF data and OWL Ontologies.

Proof

All semantic and rules that are executed at layers below Proof and their result will be used to prove deductions.

Cryptography

Cryptography means such as digital signature for verification of the origin of sources is used.

User Interface and Applications

On the top of layer User interface and Applications layer is built for user interaction.

WWW Operation

WWW works on client-server approach. Following steps explains how the web works:

  1. User enters the URL (say, https://www.google.com) of the web page in the address bar of web browser.

  2. Then browser requests the Domain Name Server for the IP address corresponding to www.google.com.

  3. After receiving IP address, browser sends the request for web page to the web server using HTTP protocol which specifies the way the browser and web server communicates.

  4. Then web server receives request using HTTP protocol and checks its search for the requested web page. If found it returns it back to the web browser and close the HTTP connection.

  5. Now the web browser receives the web page, It interprets it and display the contents of web page in web browser’s window.

internet_technologies_tutorial

Future

There had been a rapid development in field of web. It has its impact in almost every area such as education, research, technology, commerce, marketing etc. So the future of web is almost unpredictable.

Apart from huge development in field of WWW, there are also some technical issues that W3 consortium has to cope up with.

User Interface

Work on higher quality presentation of 3-D information is under deveopment. The W3 Consortium is also looking forward to enhance the web to full fill requirements of global communities which would include all regional languages and writing systems.

Technology

Work on privacy and security is under way. This would include hiding information, accounting, access control, integrity and risk management.

Architecture

There has been huge growth in field of web which may lead to overload the internet and degrade its performance. Hence more better protocol are required to be developed.

101 Firewall Security Basics

posted on May 16, 2021

tags:

Firewall is a barrier between Local Area Network (LAN) and the Internet. It allows keeping private resources confidential and minimizes the security risks. It controls network traffic, in both directions. Quality web host takes firewall security very seriously.

The following diagram depicts a sample firewall between LAN and the internet. The connection between the two is the point of vulnerability. Both hardware and the software can be used at this point to filter network traffic.

internet_technologies_tutorial

There are two types of Firewall system: One works by using filters at the network layer and the other works by using proxy servers at the user, application, or network layer.

Key Points

  • Firewall management must be addressed by both system managers and the network managers.

  • The amount of filtering a firewall varies. For the same firewall, the amount of filtering may be different in different directions.

101 Internet Security Basics

posted on May 16, 2021

tags:

Internet security refers to securing communication over the internet. It includes specific security protocols such as:

  • Internet Security Protocol (IPSec)

  • Secure Socket Layer (SSL)

Reputable web hosting companies always take internet security very seriously.

Internet Security Protocol (IPSec)

It consists of a set of protocols designed by Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). It provides security at network level and helps to create authenticated and confidential packets for IP layer.

Secure Socket Layer (SSL)

It is a security protocol developed by Netscape Communications Corporation. ). It provides security at transport layer. It addresses the following security issues:

  • Privacy

  • Integrity

  • Authentication

Threats

Internet security threats impact the network, data security and other internet connected systems. Cyber criminals have evolved several techniques to threat privacy and integrity of bank accounts, businesses, and organizations.

Following are some of the internet security threats:

  • Mobile worms

  • Malware

  • PC and Mobile ransomware

  • Large scale attacks like Stuxnet that attempts to destroy infrastructure.

  • Hacking as a Service

  • Spam

  • Phishing

Email Phishing

Email phishing is an activity of sending emails to a user claiming to be a legitimate enterprise. Its main purpose is to steal sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details.

Such emails contains link to websites that are infected with malware and direct the user to enter details at a fake website whose look and feels are same to legitimate one.

What a phishing email may contain?

Following are the symptoms of a phishing email:

Spelling and bad grammar

Most often such emails contain grammatically incorrect text. Ignore such emails, since it can be a spam.

Beware of links in email

Don’t click on any links in suspicious emails.

Threats

Such emails contain threat like “your account will be closed if you didn’t respond to an email message”.

Spoofing popular websites or companies

These emails contain graphics that appear to be connected to legitimate website but they actually are connected to fake websites.

E-mail Service Providers

posted on May 14, 2021

tags:

There are several email service providers available in the market with their enabled features such as sending, receiving, drafting, storing an email and much more.

The following table shows the popular email service providers:

S.N.Service and Description
1. Gmail
Gmail is an email service that allows users to collect all the messages. It also offers approx 7 GB of free storage.
2. Hotmail
Hotmail offers free email and practically unlimited storage accessible on web.
3. Yahoo Mail
Yahoo Mail offers unlimited storage, SMS texting, social networking and instant messaging to boot.
4. iCloud Mail
iCloud Mail offers ample storage, IMAP access, and an elegantly functional web application.
5. ATM Mail
ATM Mail is a free email service with good spam protection.
6. Mail.com and GMX Mail
Mail.com and GMX Mail offers reliable mail service with unlimited online storage.
7. Shortmail
Shortmail offers easy and fast email service but with limited 500 characters per message.
8. Inbox.com
Inbox.com offers 5 GB of free online storage. IMAP is not supported by Inbox.com
9. Facebook Messages
Facebook Messages includes the message conversation.
10. My Way Mail
My Way Mail offers clean and fast free email service but lacks in secure messaging.

When you get your own web hosting from a reputable web host, then you will be able to have your own @yourname.com domain email address.

101 E-mail Security

posted on May 14, 2021

tags:

Email hacking can be done in any of the following ways:

Spam
E-mail spamming is an act of sending Unsolicited Bulk E-mails (UBI) which one has not asked for. Email spams are the junk mails sent by commercial companies as an advertisement of their products and services.

Virus
Some emails may incorporate with files containing malicious script which when run on your computer may lead to destroy your important data.

Phishing
Email phishing is an activity of sending emails to a user claiming to be a legitimate enterprise. Its main purpose is to steal sensitive information such as usernames, passwords, and credit card details.

Such emails contains link to websites that are infected with malware and direct the user to enter details at a fake website whose look and feels are same to legitimate one.

E-mail Spamming and Junk Mails
Email spamming is an act of sending Unsolicited Bulk E-mails (UBI) which one has not asked for. Email spams are the junk mails sent by commercial companies as an advertisement of their products and services.

Spams may cause the following problems:

  • It floods your e-mail account with unwanted e-mails, which may result in loss of important e-mails if inbox is full.
  • Time and energy is wasted in reviewing and deleting junk emails or spams.
  • It consumes the bandwidth that slows the speed with which mails are delivered.
  • Some unsolicited email may contain virus that can cause harm to your computer.

Blocking Spams
Following ways will help you to reduce spams:

  • While posting letters to newsgroups or mailing list, use a separate e-mail address than the one you used for your personal e-mails.
  • Don’t give your email address on the websites as it can easily be spammed.
  • Avoid replying to emails which you have received from unknown persons.
  • Never buy anything in response to a spam that advertises a product.

E-mail Cleanup and Archiving

In order to have light weighted Inbox, it’s good to archive your inbox from time to time. Here I will discuss the steps to clean up and archive your Outlook inbox.

  • Select File tab on the mail pane.
  • Select Cleanup Tools button on account information screen.
  • Select Archive from cleanup tools drop down menu.

Select Archive this folder and all subfolders option and then click on the folder that you want to archive. Select the date from the Archive items older than: list. Click Browse to create new .pst file name and location. Click OK.

A reputable web hosting company can save you the troubles with email hacking.

Rack Server – a Closer Look

posted on May 11, 2021

tags:

What Is a Rack Server?

Rack servers are mountable servers placed in metal frame racks. Rack servers are one of three form factors for servers, with the other two standards being blade servers and tower servers.

As data centers and IT professionals worked to develop improved methods for storing more servers while not sacrificing space or connectivity, server racks entered the scene. Server racks offer the space, fit, and proper environment for servers to continue operating at a high performance.

What is a 1U rack server?


Racks are designed to hold the dimensions of rack servers. Standardized frames are 19 inches wide and a variable number of rack units or U’s (equivalent to 1.75in) in height. A standard rack-mount server is a 1U rack server, with a width of 19″ and a height of 1.75″. Most rack servers are 1U or 2U, but the largest rack server comes in at 70U (10ft).

With pre-installed rails for a 2U rack server’s height, the data center administrator only needs a push inwards and rack screws to secure the 19″ by 3.5″ module into the rack.

Also Read: Dell Continues to Rise
Rack Server Components
Component     Function
Motherboard     Enables communication between components
Central Processing Unit (CPU)     Executes start instructions; also known as the processor
Random Access Memory (RAM)     Stores server memory; increases speed of data access
Host Bus Adapter (HBA)     Connects external devices to server
I/O Ports     Embedded into system board for endpoint access into system
Drive Bays     Open slots for adding hard drives (HDD) or solid state drives (SDD)
Supporting equipment     All else needed for smooth performance: rails, screws, cable managers, cooling system, sensors, etc.
NVMe     Non-Volatile Memory express facilitates access to storage and come in the form of SSDs, NVMe cards, and M.2 cards
PCIe     Peripheral Component Interconnect express connects expanded hardware to the motherboard

How Are Rack Servers Compared?

Manufacturers have designed servers to do just about everything you can imagine a computer to do. When comparing rack servers, the indicators frequently used to compare products include:

  • Target workloads: What tasks is the server capable of or specializes in doing?
  • Processor type: Which CPU processors are included with the rack server?
  • Memory: What is the server’s RAM capacity and DIMM slots count?
  • NVMe drives: How many drives of NVMe drives are available?
  • PCIe slots: How many PCIe slots are there and are they compatible with 3rd and 4th Gen PCIe?
  • Disk drives: What size and how many disk drives are insertable?
  • Storage: How much total storage is possible?
  • Rack height: How many Us does the device take up?
  • Operating systems: What OS software is the server compatible with?
  • Integrated security: What security features come pre-installed on the server?

How Do Rack Servers Work?

The rack environment has been critical to organizations because it offers interchangeability and access for essential components, including the server rack. A server rack’s easy implementation also means server administrators can easily remove them for inspection and troubleshooting. Rack servers can also hot-swap with another server to continue the mission-critical activity and limit downtime.

Because a rack server describes the form factor and not the intent, rack servers can take on any number of roles for a network. Responsibilities could include storage, email, web, proxy, application server duties, data-intensive applications, and more.

Benefits of Rack Servers
Self-contained and accessible


Rack servers are designed with their power source, CPU, and memory to run as a standalone or network system. The server’s operation is independent of the remaining rack components, which means that the rack server can be installed, configured, or removed quickly–without disassembly of the rack’s infrastructure or downtime.

Efficient space usage

In a world intent on expanding resources, available physical space is a data center’s most precious gift. The thinking goes more space, more racks, more server power. Racks and the servers built to fill them maximize space limitations with the dense organization. Unless dealing with a 70U rack server, frames hold many servers and equipment that save space.

Cooling mechanism

A top priority of any server administrator is ensuring the module won’t overheat when working hard. Unlike blade and tower servers, rack servers have an incredible capacity for a cooling system. Many racks come pre-installed with cooling systems today, with more available for installation. Fit with real-time sensors and accessible configuration, the rack server’s cooling mechanism protects against overheating and system failure. And the more powerful and densely packed servers become, the more important cooling becomes.

Rack Server Considerations

Though many of the top solutions share some of these features, buyers should consider the following factors when purchasing rack servers:

  • Processing Power
  • Scalability
  • Expandability
  • Upgradability
  • Size, Weight, and Power (SWaP)

Whether an organization needs additional storage, additional servers, or a server replacement, rack servers are the best form factor. With their portability and ease of access, organizations can scale, expand, and upgrade their systems seamlessly. Still, processing power remains the biggest selling point for server manufacturers.

Size, weight, and power (SWaP) also play their part and can cause faulty server or rack performance if not correctly configured. For example, an overly heavy rack server could require more cooling. Without adjusting the cooling system or moving other components, the rack’s pieces are at risk of overheating.

Server Market

After raking in $83.66 billion in 2020, the global server market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 7.8%% between 2021 to 2028. Rack server sales accounted for over half of server market revenue with $43 billion.

As noted, nearly 50% of the server industry market has long been owned by Dell, HPE, and IBM. One of the reasons for this is clear market stratification—the ODM white boxes on the low end and the midrange and high-end systems are experiencing massive growth as separate segments. So as you shop, be aware of what price level you find most appropriate for your business.

More than just high-computing machines, vendors continue to add features that support big data analytics, software-defined solutions, and hyper-converged infrastructure. Factors influencing the server market include increasing data center needs and the adoption of new technologies like cloud computing.

Rack Servers: Contained, Condensed, and Cool

Rack servers are self-contained to prevent disruption to other rack components, condensed to offer high-powered performance in minimal space, and are kept cool to facilitate the best environment for work. On top of these features, rack servers offer organizations scalability, expandability, and upgradability. Racks offer both the additional space and structural framework for organizations to scale out or up and upgrade when necessary.

Top Rack Servers of 2021

posted on May 11, 2021

tags:

Businesses shopping for rack servers have fewer vendors to choose from than in years past, as market consolidation and acquisitions have left a rack server industry dominated by the few. Web hosting companies also choose the best possible servers for their business.

The top three providers remain Dell EMC, HPE, and IBM, accounting for almost 43% of the server vendor market, according to Gartner. Vendors competing for a seat at the table include Lenovo, Huawei, and Inspur, while Cisco, Fujitsu, and Oracle continue to produce unique, high-performance machines. We look at the top rack servers available today, whether you need a general-purpose server or one for data-intensive applications, followed by an overview of the rack server market and what buyers should look for in a rack server.

Top Rack Servers
Cisco UCS C240 M6


The newest addition to the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) C-Series servers is the 3rd Gen AMD EPYC processor. The Cisco C240 M6 includes 32 DIMM slots, 8TB of capacity, RAID control, and an internal dual M.2 drive option.

The C240 M6 is a two-socket, 2RU form factor and goes further than its predecessor in offering high-performance computing. This upgrade includes additional ranges of DDR4 DIMMs capacity, eight PCIe 4.0 slots, 28 storage interface slots, up to 960GB for M.2 boot options, and support for up to five GPUs. It’s worth noting that the fourth and most recent generation of PCI express is twice as fast as PCIe 3.0, with a data rate of 16 GT/s.

This server is fit for an array of tasks including storage, I/O intensive applications, and high-performance computing. For small organizations, consider the C225. For anything more, your best bet will be the C240 M6.

Dell EMC PowerEdge R750

The Dell EMC PowerEdge R750 sits atop the suite of Dell EMC PowerEdge rack servers, offering up to 24 NVMe drives and eight PCIe 4.0 slots for throughput. Specs include two 3rd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable Processors that total 80 processors. For memory, the PowerEdge R750 carries 32 DIMM slots, up to 8TB of capacity, and can take six different disk types.

Designed to manage demanding workloads ranging from database analytics to AI, virtualization, and machine learning, the PowerEdge R750 provides excellent performance for a general-purpose server. According to Dell EMC, this server is “the optimal rack server to address application performance and acceleration.”

Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX4770 M5

With long-time partner Sun Microsystems, Fujitsu continues to make moves in the server market, including unveiling Solaris-compatible UltraSparc chips in September 2020. For now, Fujitsu’s PRIMERGY server lineup offers the latest generation of Intel Xeon processors.

The Fujitsu PRIMERGY RX4770 M6 is a 2U, quad-socket server using 3rd Gen Intel Xeon processors. Providing 28 cores per socket and 12 DIMM slots per CPU, this server can hold up to 15 TB in memory. The RX4770 is flexible, with twelve operating systems to choose from and a 3-year warranty. Storage disk allotments include 16 general slots for up to 6 NVMe adapters and 8 PCIe 3.0 slots. Solaris as an operating system continues to gain steam as the only enterprise-class Unix system available for x86.

Organizations seeking a scalable and expandable server solution won’t be disappointed in the Fujitsu RX4770.

HPE Proliant DL380 Gen10

The HPE Proliant DL380 has long been a popular server in the market, offering reliability, performance, and a wealth of features for a reasonable cost. In its newest iteration, the DL380 Gen10 continues to meet SMB needs with better processors, more memory, NVMe ports, and more robust networking. Notable improvements include the addition of two 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors that upped performance by 60% and 27% in cores.

The 2U rack server functions well for databases, analytics, and mission-critical applications, but loses out to some more expensive models on high-end features. That said it comes with enough reliability, serviceability, availability, GPU options, and Windows Server support to make it a good choice for general-purpose servers in the enterprise.

Huawei FusionServer Pro 2288H V5

Established in 1987, China-based tech giant Huawei has experienced accelerating growth over the years, including a sturdy position in the rack server market. The FusionServer Pro 2288H V5 is a flexible, 2U, 2-socket server that’s suited for an array of workloads. From big data processing to databases and cloud computing, this server is suited to contemporary tasks and cuts power consumption up to 15% without a change in performance.

Where the FusionServer Pro 2288H V5 truly stands out is its availability to NVM express drives. Tied with Cisco C240, both servers offer up to 28 NVMe drives. With 12 Intel Optane persistent memory modules, the 2288H V5 can achieve up to 7.5 TB in-memory capacity and offers 10 PCIe 3.0 slots.

IBM Power System S922

The IBM Power System S922 is quite different from almost all the other racks in this guide in that it is one of two without an x86 processor from AMD or Intel. The IBM homegrown POWER9 processor adds to the initial cost but is worth it for organizations that need a resilient, cloud-enabled server. These servers offer top-notch processing power and up to 4TB of memory, easing cloud applications, analytics, and other demanding workloads.

The Power System S922 also includes fifteen PCIe 4.0 slots and two U.2 modules slots for expansion capabilities. The list of embedded features includes the PowerVM hypervisor. In line with its cloud-optimized focus, the PowerVM can consolidate and plan workloads that result in reduced overhead costs.

Inspur NF8480

Inspur was one of the first organizations to manufacture servers in China. As of late 2020, the company is just short of Dell EMC and HPE in global revenue for the broader server market.

We look at our first 4U server via the Inspur NF8480 M6. This four-socket module is fit for high-performance computing such as AI and deep learning inference and offers a whopping 50 slots for SAS, SATA, and NVMe drives. With 19 slots for PCIe 3.0 drives, this server is only second to Dell EMC’s E980. With the addition of 24 Intel Optane Persistent Memory 200 series, the total memory capacity is 7.5 TB.

The Inspur NF8480 M6 is a highly scalable solution and flexible for administrators who need full-height and half-height options for I/O balance and expansion.

Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630

If you are looking for a higher-end server with up to 7.5TB memory and 123TB storage capacity, the Lenovo ThinkSystem SR630 is hard to beat. It scored very well in benchmark tests for single-threaded compute-intensive applications and is well-regarded for most large enterprises.

Featuring the latest Intel Xeon processors, it comes with flexible I/O expansion options, four PCIe 4.0 slots, and four NVMe ports. It is also able to cope with harsh environments and keeps energy costs low relative to the amount of raw compute power it unleashes. With the Lenovo XClarity Controller and Administrator, the user experience only keeps improving for server managers.

Oracle Server X8-2

The Oracle Server X8 series is the newest industry line of x86 servers for middleware and application workloads. The Oracle Server X8-2 specifically is a compact, 1U module that allows up to 64TB of memory and 51.2TB of storage. For Oracle users, the X8-2 is a no-brainer as it interoperates with the wide range of Oracle hardware and software packages.

Unlike its predecessor, Oracle Server X7-2, which used 1st Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors, the X8-2 is based on the Platinum or Gold 2nd Gen Intel Xeon Scalable processors. This upgrade means being able to execute in-silicon patches for Spectre and Meltdown vulnerabilities whereas prior generations required microcode patches.

Dell EMC PowerEdge R840

The PowerEdge R840 is the second four-socket rack server to make the list and is a big upgrade over the previous generation from Dell. Its small footprint includes up to four 2nd Gen Intel Xeon processors, 24 NVMe drives, and can also support two GPUs to accelerate workloads. Impressively, it comes with the second most memory offered in this rack server guide, with up to 6TB in capacity, and expanded to over 15TB capacity when using DC persistent memory and load reduction DIMM (LRDIMM).

If you are looking for an entry-level server, this is not it. But for more sophisticated workloads or a powerhouse server that can host multiple virtualized applications, this is a strong candidate.

HPE Proliant DL325 Gen10

The HPE Proliant DL325 Gen10 is a general-purpose server that packs more into a single socket than most 2-processor servers can manage. Notably, the Gen10 offers 2x the performance of the prior generation. For organizations that demand an enterprise-class processor without purchasing a dual processor, this might be for you.

The DL325 is a 2nd Gen AMD EYPC-based platform with enough security included to suit enterprise needs. It has plenty of memory in the form of 64 GB RDIMMs, supporting up to 2TB of memory. It boasts a low power consumption profile and power-packed chassis along with 8 NVMe drives, two PCIe 3.0 slots, and networking options.

IBM Power System E980

For our second IBM pick, the Power System E980 is a mammoth of a server for a 4U, quad-socket module. Ideal for large-scale, mission-critical applications, this server comes with a solid list of reliability, availability, and serviceability features.

With the use of four POWER9 processors, the Power System E980 can manage up to 48 cores per socket and 64 TB in memory. Though the server only offers 16 slots for NVMe, the E980 tops our list in PCIe 4.0 with 32 slots for optimized interconnection between system components.

The Power System E980 also provides easy to execute consolidation of under-utilized servers by sharing POWER9 processor resources. All said, the E980 is a good solution for enterprises working heavily with AIX, IBM i, and Linux applications.

Oracle SPARC T8-1

We can’t finish our list of top rack servers without mentioning the SPARC M8 processor, which just a few years ago set a world record for Java enterprise performance. All in a condensed 1U, single-socket server, the Oracle SPARC T8-1 is an excellent general-purpose machine and is reportedly 2x faster than competitor systems for Java software, databases, and applications.

Built for enterprise workloads, the SPARC T8-1 contains 16 DIMMs and can hold a maximum memory of 6.4 TB with NVDIMM capabilities. With only 8 insertable drives–only 4 of which can be NVMe–and 6 PCIe 3.0 ports, the server can store up to 25.6 TB. For organizations using Oracle software, adopting the T8-1 for its integration is a worthwhile consideration. Additional software like Oracle VM comes built-in to aid virtualization.