Why control panels are so useful?

Control panels are something that comes preinstalled with almost every VPS. It could be cPanel, Virtualmin, DirectAdmin, VestaCP, Plesk, or any other out there. You might be asking why you ever need it when you can do everything on the server. The reason for using the control panel is quite simple. Imagine you are having an old TV. Back in the day in order to switch a channel you have to stand up from your couch and change the channels manually. After a little while, the companies invented the remote control. Control Panel is in fact this remote control with extra functionality. Let’s see what kind of stuff it can do.

Quick start

With a control panel, you don’t need to log in to your server in order to start working with it. Imagine that you are ordering a server with Windows or Linux on top. Most certainly you’ll need to install a lot of complementary software on it, like Apache, Nginx, MySQL, phpMyAdmin, .NET (if it is Windows), and other stuff. FTP server is also a must if you need to upload files in a constant manner. 

For an experienced administrator, it could take a few hours, but if you are new to all this stuff it can take days to understand and configure correctly. Control Panel can do all this stuff for you in minutes, and you will be sure that you won’t screw up anything and it will work as meant to be.

Why should you do something on the server when you can do it via the control panel?

As we have mentioned the remote control analogy works here. You don’t need to connect to a server in order to manage it. This results in less hassle in order to update some software or reconnect a domain. The control panels are built in such a way that breaking something on your server is quite a challenging task.

Easy updates

Timely updated server and their software are crucial parts of a stable and secured server. You could either do it yourself by keeping an eye on every part of the software on your server but why? Control Panel can do it for you and remind you that new updates are en route. 

Improved security

Okay, your server is up to date, but that doesn’t mean that it is invulnerable. Control Panels are usually built with security fail switches that cannot allow you to create passwords like 123123, they should contain at least one capital letter, and symbol and should be not less than 12 characters. Of course, it is not a panacea, and if a really good hacker tries to hack your server he can succeed, but those measures can save you from 99% of amateurs on the net.  

Easy backups

Almost every control panel has a variety of backup scripts to help you set up a reliable backup of your data. You can use your own scripts if you wish though. 

Monitoring

It’s not easy to live in the dark, the same goes for the server. By default, all you can see is from the VNC of your provider but the data it offers might be limited. That’s why control panels are very useful for monitoring the activity of your server. Some typical parameters you want to monitor are:

1. Traffic consumptions
2. Disk usage and space available
3. Server uptime

Each control panel dumps a log file in case you need it for debugging purposes.

Easy SSL installation

Typical installation of SSL Certificate is not rocket science even when installed manually. All you need to do is install openssl => generate a private key => generate CSR. With a generated CSR order an SSL from Sectigo or any other suitable provider. 

If you are short on budget you can always use free certificates from Let’s Encrypt. They’ll last for 3 months and then you should generate another SSL by setuping a renewal process. 

Control Panel does all of this with a few clicks. You can easily generate a Let’s Encrypt certificate even from the control panel. 

Managing roles

If you wish to set up new mailboxes, replicate a few databases, or add additional users to the server apart from admin, you need to manually go to each software and do it manually. Control Panel developers have thought of this mundane process for you and automated it so you can do it from the CP itself. Also, the control panel allows setting certain templates for new group users. Imagine that you have a group called accounting and you know that they have access to certain folders and programs and you need to add 20 people to this group. If it was not for the control panel you’d spend an hour setting up rights for every user added. 

Quick installation of complex applications

Every complex CMS out there, would it be WordPress, Joomla or Magento has a quite complex update procedure. This includes syncing databases, configuring them, and many more. Thanks to the control panel you can do the updates with a few clicks and even if some errors occur, control panels can fix them or tell you where is the problem. 

Conclusion

You can easily live without control panels, but why should you, when they save you so much valuable time? BlueVPS offers a variety of control panels to be preinstalled, this includes VestaCP, cPanel, DirectAdmin, Virtualmin, and ISPmanager. If you wish to install some other control panel like Plesk, you are free to do so, because we do not limit our customers. If you have any other questions regarding the control panels, make sure to contact our team via LiveChat. We work 24/7/365 days a year and are always happy to help.