Are cpanel questions really 'professional sysadmin' related?

Question

Do any professional sysadmins really use cPanel, rather than provide cPanel? To me, cPanel is indicative of non-professional (i.e. voluntary, spare time, personal) web hosting use?

Sure, I can see questions from people who run hosting farms and provide cPanel for their users having a place here, but every time I read a question with cPanel in the tags I think, this is surely someone who's not a professional sysadmin.

Being the guy or gal your company made support your little website on a consumer grade hosting service that uses cPanel does not make you a sysadmin?

• https://serverfault.com/questions/402028/enable-my-users-to-create-their-own-eimails-using-cpanel
• https://serverfault.com/questions/400151/www-keeps-getting-added-to-subdomain
• Getting a have DNS error

Answer 1

A question that mentions cpanel is not de-facto off-topic.
It is possible an otherwise competent admin inherited a cpanel disaster and now has to make it work.

HOWEVER - If you are limiting yourself to just "what can be done from within cpanel" you're no longer a sysadmin in my view - you're an application user, and all of your questions should be referred to the application vendor (cpanel).

The distinguishing factor in my view is that a professional sysadmin may (grudgingly) use cpanel as a tool, but they are willing and able to step outside the tool to get things done. and they typically provide enough other information about their problem to be helped along.

As Ladadadada pointed out these questions are generally crap for other reasons, like lack of information.
Crap questions are crap questions, and should be dealt with accordingly regardless of their content, though being "about cpanel" is generally a good marker for "this question is probably crap"...

Answer 2

I've been a professional sysadmin for 6 years and in the web business for 12. I've never seen cPanel.

So what do we do about them?

There seems to be a distinct lack of quality in these questions. Typos and bad grammar are normal and there is often loads of irrelevant information and none of the relevant stuff. Someone nearly always has to ask them for more information before a diagnosis can be made.

We shouldn't just go migrating them in their current state to webmasters.SE because we don't migrate crap.

We can:

1. Extract information and answer the question.
2. Extract information and migrate to WebMasters.
3. Close as non-professional.

There are lots of related questions here on Meta.

Answer 3

I do freelance sysadmin stuff (amongst other things). I dislike cPanel, and wouldn't use it on any of my own servers, and consequently am not especially familiar with how to use it. Some clients do have cPanel on their servers, and I might have questions about how I, as a sysadmin, can achieve the things that need to be done on those servers using cPanel.

If those questions would be considered offtopic on SF, I'd be much obliged if someone could point out the error in my reasoning.

Answer 4

It depends. As a professional System Administrator, particularly for a contractor, one might be required to manage company web sites that are running on hosted systems that only give control via a cpanel. No matter how much we might loath any kind of cpanel, in such a context the question is most definitely on topic for SF. Scary as it might sound to some of you, this is the situation for a great many pros working in the small and medium business areas.

Answer 5

The FAQ says "Server Fault is for Information Technology Professionals needing expert answers related to managing computer systems in a professional capacity", which is not quite the same as "questions from professional sysadmins" and even less the same as "questions from full time sysadmins" (it could be argued that a number of people perform sysadmin tasks in a professional capacity, but amongst other tasks).

I can understand why cPanel can be looked down upon by full time, professional sysadmins, but as far as I understand, it's still a tool for system administration of servers. (I must say I've only seen it once.)

Not every environment requires the same sysadmin needs. Generally, I'd consider cPanel to be more appropriate on ServerFault than on SuperUser. WebMasters.SE may often be a better place, but questions about e-mails and cPanel would be more off-topic there.

It may be on at the "easier" end of the spectrum, in terms of what it can do and who its target users are, but I don't think this implies it's off-topic. System administration can involve a wide range of skills; few master them all (there can be a Linux/Windows divide, for example).

In addition, there are today 485 questions using the cpanel tag, which puts it on page 4 (out of 146) of the most popular tags. 28.5% of these questions are unanswered, which I guess isn't too bad.

Answer 6

I used Cpanel and WHM (when you control the entire server) , and I think some of WHM configuration you need to know a little bit more of system administration (when you need to install it on console and stuffs like that), and when you set up a server (even with whm) you must have the idea of what you need and for what is that thing you are installing, but in some cases (as I saw on last versions) there is always a default option to help final users... I think cpanel is completly different, and even if it administrates a hosting service, could be from a final customer and not necessary an administrator (also I think an administrator would find the answer fast and wont need to ask). For me cpanel is not for a pro

Answer 7

I would consider cPanel questions on-topic as long as the quality and content of the question relate to the administration of the server, resource, or content that is being managed through the tool. It's no different for other web server management tools such as Helm, WebsitePanel, etc. If the question relates to something technical that a professional administrator would encounter we should entertain the question.

If not lets clean up the question, close it or migrate where appropriate. Admins utilize a wide variety of tools to manage our systems and we shouldn't close a question based on the technology utilized, rather it should be closed based on the merit and content being discussed.

Of course as pro and longtime admins we may also want to suggest other tools that could better or more easily assist the OP with the task they are attempting to complete. For instance: If someone is trying to make bulk DNS changes it is far easier to execute those against the actual DNS consoles/shells than you will find in cPanel or the other tools, so that would become a good suggestion for the OP. I'd rather be told I'm using the wrong tool for the job than waste hours or days trying to shove a square peg in a round hole.

That seems to be the most fair for everyone and the community.

Answer 8

cPanel related questions are not off topic in my eyes, and I tell you why: I have seen professional sys admins working together with clients, while they need an interface which can be used by both of them. In some cases they use Plesk, Confixx or Webmin/Usermin, and in other cases they use cPanel. It is ok for me when it does the job, and it certainly is "professional" when the sys admin provides this interface to his customer. So there are scenarios with professional background, although they not all seem to be reasonable to us.

Now if you forbid questions about cPanel, you should also consider declaring questions about all other sorts of web interfaces as off topic (I am thinking about interfaces for virtualization software or proprietary software here, just as an example). And if we are already there yet - why not also reconsidering questions about Windows client OS (yes, I know, some of them are also used as "servers" sometimes) or Yast or the system-config-tools from Red Hat? Or even PHPMyAdmin?

It seems that there are no clear borders and a clear definition is hard sometimes. But before you ban a topic (just because it is unclear if it's always professional) you should allow it for the chances there might be. Don't forget that software vendors also read serverfault.com, therefore there is a new chance for the professionals to make the vendors aware of the problems.

Now how to handle questions like "how do I add an e-mail address"? Well, my suggestion would be to migrate them to Superuser.

Answer 9

Here's an analogous question: "Are SSH questions really 'professional sysadmin' related?"

CPanel is ultimately a type of web-based "remote shell", granted it's a fairly limited (specialised, if you will) shell, but it is essentialy a shell for doing common server administration tasks for webmasters.

CPanel is a tool to install softwares and edit various config files for various softwares and what does a sysadmin do essentially? Install softwares and edit various config files for various softwares.

I think the argument that "I am a professional sysadmin and I don't use cPanel, therefore cPanel is not a professional sysadmin tool" is kinda elitist. Granted cPanel is easier to use than most other sysadmin tools and is often also used by normal users and therefore it does attract a swath of low-quality questions; but that's not a reason for discrediting the tool nor does it make questions relating to cPanel off-topic. Granted often Webmasters.SE is more appropriate for many cPanel-related questions, but that does not necessarily make it off-topic either.