cPanel Pro and Network Tools Traceroute Tool

For slightly more advanced users, this section provides a quick interface to a couple of common network tools (domain lookup and trace route).

Domain Lookup Tool

Domain lookup will return the IP address for whatever domain you type in to this location as well as basic information about the domain (from the DNS zone). If the domain you are looking up is not on the same server as your account, the information returned will be quite limited (just the IP address that the domain is using).

Traceroute Tool

Traceroute lists the route your data would take between your computer and the domain that you type in. Each stop on the trip will list the response time (ping) from each server in milliseconds (ms). Lower numbers are better, high numbers mean your connection may be adversely affected. You may be able to get complete results from http://dnsstuff.com/. The only problem with using a site like this is that the trace route is listed from their servers to the destination. If you want to see the route between your current location (perhaps, your home computer) and the destination server, you need to run Traceroute from your current location. On PCs running Windows, you can go to the Start | Run option and then type:

tracert domain name or IP address

On a Macintosh, running Mac OS X, go to Applications/Utilities and then double-click on Terminal. At the command prompt, type:

traceroute domain name or IP address

For Linux or Unix, the process is similar to Mac OS X (since Mac OS X is based on OpenBSD), just drop to your favorite shell command line if you aren't there already and type in the same command as above.

cPanel Pro

Despite the name, cPanel Pro isn't a new or special version of cPanel, though if your web host has activated it, you will likely have access to a few extra features. cPanel Pro is designed to make it easier for third-party developers to add new features to cPanel. Prior to cPanel Pro, it was very difficult for a developer to add new features to cPanel since these features would often be removed whenever cPanel was updated. This made it very hard for web hosts to offer extra features to help enhance their service. cPanel Pro gives developers an easier way to incorporate new features that won't break every time cPanel is updated. To show developers how to write cPanel Pro modules, cPanel Inc. provides several new features along with the sample code showing how the feature is implemented. For the end user this means you may have access to several extra features. cPanel Inc. has moved a couple of features (Stats Select and BoxTrapper) from cPanel Pro add-on modules to standard cPanel options, so it may be that even if your web host doesn't offer cPanel Pro features yet you will see these in some future version of cPanel.

Image Manager

This feature uses ImageMagick to help you accomplish several image-related tasks. You can create thumbnails (small preview pictures) of a graphic image or even an entire directory full of images. Each image will have a separate generated thumbnail. You can use the thumbnail as a preview of the full-size image, saving download time while allowing your visitors to get a sense of what the image looks like. You can scale an image up or down in size (perhaps to make it fit better on the average monitor). Lastly, you can convert one image or a directory of images to a different format supported by ImageMagick.