Many web hosting accounts today use cpanel as the interface for a webmaster to manage the files on their domain. Within this control panel, you'll often see an icon titled Fantastico. It is a service many web hosts subscribe to that allow you, the webmaster, to install new scripts automatically without any of the usual mySQL database creation, file uploading, installation and configuration. This seems like a great service doesn't it?

Let's take a closer look at the possible long term effects of using this automated service.

Many of the scripts Fantastico can install are discussion board scripts (bulletin boards), content management systems (cms), blogs, ecommerce scripts, customer support, mailing list scripts and more. If you are familiar with the requirements of many of these, you know they usually require a mySQL database to function properly AND they often have frequent updates that need to be installed.

These updates are usually to fix security holes, bugs or are program upgrades.

There are no warnings in Fantastico that you should manually back up your mySQL database and your files before you install any upgrade. Failure to back up everything before upgrading means you do not have a way to restore your files when things go wrong. At some point, you will have an upgrade mess things up so much you will need to restore your site from the backups.

The thing you were not told when you used this automatic installer was the name and password that were used when the mySQL database was created. With some scripts, you'll need your database name, database username and database password so you can reinstall the script then restore your data from the backup. If you don't have this information, you will need to backup a copy of the mySQL so you can import the old database backup after you have done a completely new install of the script again.

If you ever decide to leave your current host for a different web host, you will need your back up of the scripts and database along with all of the usernames and passwords to get the script working without having to do a complete new install on the new web host. How are you going to do that if you let Fantastico or some other automatic script installer do the work for you?