the.com/control panel

means A centralized screen (or physical panel of switches and dials) that lets you view and change a system's settings and operations.

from A straightforward compound: 'control,' from Old French contreroller (to check accounts against a duplicate register — contre, 'against,' plus rolle, 'roll of records'), which drifted over centuries from bookkeeping oversight to general command of a machine or situation; and 'panel,' from Old French panel/pan, a piece of cloth or board, which by the industrial era had come to mean a flat surface set with instruments. Push them together and you get exactly what it sounds like: a board for controlling things — electricians and engineers were already using the phrase for literal walls of switches and gauges before software borrowed it for the screen version, keeping the switches but losing the sore thumbs.