For inexperienced beginners who are new to hosting their own website, deciding on which hosting provider to choose out of the seemingly infinite number of possibilities can be complicated. While price and performance are ultimately the most important factors that you should base your decision on, the web-based administrative panel offered by a hosting provider can be equally crucial to your success. The admin panel is your window to the server where your website’s files reside. If you have a poorly designed admin panel to work with, it can make the construction and configuration extremely difficult and overly complicated, especially for novice webmasters.
In the web hosting administration panel market, Plesk is one of the most popular and recognized options available. If you’ve never heard of Plesk, let’s start off with a quick introduction. Much like the popular cPanel, Plesk is simply a web hosting administration panel GUI front-end offered by software maker Parallels, Inc. It allows users to quickly and easily upload, edit and configure content for your web pages. It also facilitates the creation and administration of the back-end databases on which your site relies to serve up dynamic content for your visitors. While all administration panels have their benefits as well as their drawbacks, Plesk is particularly suited for beginners for a number of reasons.
The number one reason that non-technical users should opt for a Plesk-based web host is its ease of use and simplicity. That doesn’t mean it’s inflexible or lacking in advanced features, it’s just that it’s designed to be intuitive and easy to work with right off the bat. Modeled on the basic Windows XP Explorer theme, longtime Microsoft customers will feel right at home and have a far easier time navigating through folders and files with Plesk than with other programs. In addition, the interface is also highly customizable, allowing users to reconfigure the layout in just about any way they see fit for maximum speed and productivity.
One of the major selling points of Plesk is the fact that it supports a wide array of operating systems. Plesk works with Microsoft Windows Server 2003 and 2008, as well as most of the major Unix-like distributions like Debian, CentOS, Red Hat Linux, OpenSUSE, Ubuntu and even FreeBSD. It’s major competitor, cPanel, has added support for Windows Server 2008 but not any prior releases of Microsoft’s server software. Plesk also supports MS SQL, MySQL and PostgreSQL in the database arena. Basically, it’ll work with just about any combination of software you throw at it. Whether you’ve chosen a shared hosting or a Virtual Private Server hosting plan, Plesk is a stable and responsive tool for administering your website.
Another major benefit to using Plesk is its extensibility. You can add any number of plugins to the default setup for a variety of tasks, from filtering spam to supporting additional back-end languages like ColdFusion. Plesk features a website builder and code editor by default, simplifying the process of getting a website up and running. In the safety department, it utilizes the HTTPS protocol to ensure that your traffic is secure and encrypted so that your website isn’t hacked or infected with a virus or other malware. Overall, Plesk has a solid track record when it comes to online privacy and security.
At one time, Plesk was considered more difficult to use than its competitors. This is fortunately no longer true and it’s now just as easy to get accustomed to as any other admin panel. What sets it apart from the crowd is its unique combination of versatility, stability, safety and user-friendliness. For those that feel a bit intimidated at the thought of hosting their own website, Plesk is a great introduction to website administration and a solid place to start. But it also boasts advanced features that more tech-savvy users will appreciate when it comes to fine-tuning a site for performance and speed. So whether you’re just starting out or you’re already an expert webmaster, Plesk is one of the best admin panels you can get.