Thalasar Ventures

Today, many web hosting accounts use ‘CPanel’ as an interface that is used by a webmaster for managing the files on the domain. And within this control panel, there is an icon known as ‘Fantastico’. This is a service that many web hosts subscribe to and this service allows the webmasters to automatically perform script installation for new scripts without a usual mySQL database creation, file uploading, installation and configuration.

Let’s understand the whole process from a closer look.

Script installation by ‘Fantastico’ includes Blogs, customer support, content management systems (cms), discussion board scripts (bulletin boards), ecommerce scripts, mailing list scripts and more. Some of you may be familiar with this that they usually require a mySQL database in order to function properly. Also they have frequent updates needed to be installed. And these updates are generally used to fix bugs, security holes or are program upgrades.

In Fantastico, there are no warnings that one should manually back up the mySQL database and other files prior installing any upgrade. And, if you fail to back up everything before you upgrade, it means that you cannot restore the files when things go wrong. Sometimes, you may have an upgrade mess that it will require you to restore the site from the backups.

When you use the automatic installer, you may not have the username and password used for the mySQL database. Actually, with some scripts, one needs the database name, database username and database password in order to reinstall the script and then restoring the data from the backup. And in case, one does not have this information, they need to backup a copy of the mySQL, so that they can import the old database backup after a new install of the script again.

And, if you ever decide to leave the current host for an another web host, it will need your back up of the database and scripts along with the usernames and passwords, so that they script works without any need for a new install on the new web host.

So, you could either learn abut the script installer process and complete the installation on your own and then record the information somewhere safe or you can use the automatic script installer under the icon ‘Script Library’ inside the C-Panel. It will allow you to determine what the database name, username and password should be.

Whatever you choose, but always do regular backups of the scripts, files and your databases, you will stay protected.

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