How To Set Up A Web Hosting Service Using Cwpanel

How to set up a web hosting service using CWPanel

Newbie developers or experienced ones, small companies, or even web agencies need at some point to publish their work, to have their own website or even to host and maintain the customer's websites.

Probably most of us heard about CPanel/WHM which is a great solution, but in this article, I will present a free alternative to it is CWPanel or CentOS Web Panel.

What is CWPanel

CentOS Web Panel is a Free Web Hosting control panel. It is designed for quick and easy management of servers, dedicated or VPS. It offers a high number of options and features for server management in its control panel package.

It includes an Admin and a Client panel, very useful for web hosting business.

The DNS by CWPanel 

CWPanel provides a full working and configurable DNS server, which translates domain names into IP addresses, making it possible for DNS clients to reach the origin server. CWPanel allows the user to Add, Edit, List, and Remove DNS zones or to Edit nameserver IPs. CWPanel comes with a DNS zone template editor too.

The Web Server by CWPanel

It comes with lots of options and features like Varnish Cache server with per domain conf, Nginx/PHP-FPM & Reverse Proxy, LiteSpeed Enterprise integrated, Apache server, Compiles Apache from source, Apache Redirects Manager, vhosts templates, Mod Security, Tomcat 8 server management, DoS protection from the Slow-Loris attacks, Perl CGI script support... and these are just a few of them.

CWPanel compiles PHP from source and it comes with PHP Switcher, which can switch PHP versions between 5.2 and 7.2 and more.

The Database server by CWPanel

CWPanel comes with MySql database server preinstalled but it also provides support for PostgreSQL or MongoDB. PHPMyAdmin is included also, alongside the Live Monitor MySQL process list and MySQL server configuration.

The Email server by CWPanel

CWPanel provides a great email service that is based on postfix and dovecot. Very easy is to set up the MailBoxes or Alias. CWPanel comes with webmail software like Roundcube. CWPanel email service ticks some boxes at the security chapter too, it comes with rDNS Checker Module, AntiSPAM, SpamAssassin, RBL checking, AmaViS, ClamAV, OpenDKIM or SPF & DKIM Integration.

The Security by CWPanel

CWPanel provides a very powerful CSF Firewall, with lots of interesting options and features. The SSL generator and SSL Certificate Manager, in conjunction with Letsencrypt, provides a free SSL certificate solutions for all your domains. CSF/LFD BruteForce protection feature, IP access control, Mod Security or DoS protection from the Slow-Loris attacks are a couple of other features very useful provides by CWPanel.

The monitoring system  and another function by CWPanel

CWpanel has built-in it a Live Monitoring, and it provides access to the SSH terminal using JAVA, but not limited to these only.

Some facts you should know about CWPanel

CWPanel provides support only for static IP addresses.

It does not come with an installer, so if you want to remove it you have to reinstall de server.

CWPanel needs a freshly installed operating system without any configuration.

Conclusion

CWPanel is a very powerful tool, intuitive, secure, customizable, and free.

You can read more about CWPanel and its features on the producer's webpage: http://centos-webpanel.com

If you have decided to give it a go, please read first the installation instructions here: http://centos-webpanel.com/installation-instructions

I hope you find it useful!

Thank you!