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Although cPanel comes with plenty of feaures including a script library called fantastico that includes some of the most popular scripts, there may be one that you would like to use that is not included within fantastico.

As there are literally thousands of web scripts out there, it would not be possible or practical to have them all included as a package within the control panel and of course some are paid scripts so these could not be included.

Even though fantastico allows you to install one of the included scripts from within cPanel, i still always recommend that you actually perform a manual installation as you can then install the most up to date version of the script that you want to install, fantastico might not have the most recent version of scripts in the library so unless you dont mind using an older version of a script, which could have security issues that have been fixed in a newer version i suggest you always opt for installing any scripts manually.

Each script that you find available will have installation advice either included with the script, available on the website that you find the script on or both.

Whether a free or a paid version, there will be instructions on what you have to do in order to successfully install the script at your web hosting account and depending on the popularity of the script, you will often find that there is a bit of a community and help from a support forum too for some of them, but this depends on the type of script, it's size and popularity and the way the developers choose to offer the script.

You can find a web script by searching on google if you specifically know the type of script that you are looking for and you can also use some of the web script sites and directories that might help you find what you're looking for as they have categories that you can browse through.

Sites like scripts.com allow you to narrow down your search by looking at scripts created with a certain programming language like PHP, ASP or Perl and to browse by category which can save you some time.

One thing that you need to do, regardless of the script that you are interested in being free or paid is to see when the script was last updated, this type of information is usually common and in place on the script directory sites but it will also be mentioned most of the time on the individual site for a particular script.

You might find a nice little script that seems ideal for what you need but when you look a little closer you discover that it hasn't been updated since 2007, or that the developer does update but not often enough or is rude when answering questions by users.

These are all things that will matter to you if you require more information to successfully install a  script or expect support.

Also if it's a paid script that you are interested in using, check to see if you will have to pay extra sometime in the future for the upgrades that become available or if you will need to subscribe yearly for support.

Outside of what is already included with fantastico there is a huge choice of available web scripts, in various languages and from completely free versions to quite expensive, they can take the hard work out of trying to get a website together and you can even build up a portal type of website with various features by using a handful of various scripts for different features of a site.

As you can see, when you go beyond the fantastico script library, you can find a whole world of options, you still need to make sure that the script is updated often enough, especially for security reasons and it's important that enough detailed installation advice is provided to you with the script and that you follow it as advised.

You will need to use your ftp account to transfer a web script from your computer to your hosting account but this is quite easy to do and once you get used to it you become more confident at installing web scripts for yourself at your web hosting account.