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Webhosting Control Panels?
Rob Becker writes "I just started up a little webhosting company and I've noticed a lot of people have asked me if I have a Control Panel. After a little research I haven't found too many choices. The few that I come across are Plesk's Control Panel and CPanel3. I was wondering if any of the /.ers have used any of these or what they would recommend. I actually started to code my own, but unfortunatly I have another job and the time factor isn't there. It would be nice to have a premade one to take care of it for me." Now as much as tools like these can be a lifesaver in many situations, I have a hard problem with products that claim to do administration and that the users need "absolutely no Linux experience". Can these products really live up to that claim? Are there other, similar projects out there that are better than the two mentioned here?
http://www.webmin.com
I've used Cpanel extensively. I'd have to say it sucks. The creator keeps trying to add new things and keeps breaking old things in the process. It doesn't scale well either. If you have one server, it would be fine. If you have several, sorry about your luck. This is from the hosting side. From the client side it kinda sucks too. The default interface that it ships with is crappy, takes several minutes of a modem to download the 500k of images on it. If you change the interface then when Cpanel is updated again your interface may have parts that just stop working because the backend has changed. I would go with a more mature product than this if I had a choice.
Hehe. I wouldn't call them inexpensive. When we bought our Raq4r it was over $4k. Probably cheaper now.
Wow, I don't know how many of these types of messages I've seen on slashdot. The good-ol toungue-in-cheek stab at some large company while trying to remain anonymous. "I my from a company that will remain nameless, except that i'll blatantly hint to who it actually is. And BOY, does their SUCK!"
Come on, man... just because you got shafted doesn't mean there's not decent software out there. My hosting provider uses Cpanel, which has options for configuring just about anything. The UI could use a little work in some areas, but for the most part it's pretty damn good. It lets you do basic filesystem management, uploading, enabling of certain features, etc. I use the web-based tools for managing the mailing lists and mail aliases, because they're pretty slick- even though I managed to find the files that control it all myself.
The fact of the matter is, not everyone who's gonna use web hosting is going to be able to telnet to the box and administer it from there. There has to be a middle ground that provides the functionality you need without being too limiting.
Themed Cpanel example
Apparently you license the stuff from cpanel; there's more info on their site.
Agreed.. I've used many differient Canadian and American hosting services and Pair.com is by far the best all around.. I don't work for them and I have nothing to gain, but they rule.. Excellent staff, deliver what they promise, and their control panel is actually seriously useful even if you do know unix just fine..
We (www.dreamhost.com) have spent the better part of the last year and a half writing and tweaking our own control panel interface with all the goodies - billing, domain registration, email aliases, MX records, support form, knowledge base, password management, announcements, adding of MySQL databases, setting up anonftp, and more. It's also skinnable.
:>
It was _also_ a bitch to write, but we've been using it for new customers for some time now. Much better than what we were originally working with.
The panel was designed with use by others in mind (although we mostly wrote it for our own use at the time), and we have discussed licensing it out in the past but I'm not sure what the status of that is. As it is we've had a ton of resellers using it and they've been pretty happy with it.
All this running on Debian Linux w/Apache, MySQL, and written in Perl. So if that's something you're familiar with, it may be worth looking into.
If you're interested, write sales@dreamhost.com with what your plans are and what you need (feel free to ask for my name and I'll try to find out some info).
- Jeff A. Campbell
- Jeff
BigBrother is a monitor, not a control panel. You can't modify and configure the system from within BB
That being said, you should install BigBrother as well, since it's monitoring kicks ass and is super-extensible. If you can figure out how to script a true/false program to check it, you can wrap the BB scripting around it and add it to your monitoring. I've used it at the last 3 places I've worked at.
This space for rent. Call 1-800-STEAK4U
I've never trusted "control panel" type of setups and much prefer to get my hands dirty in the configs. That way I KNOW what's being changed.
Last year we had a BUNCH of problems with our host who will for now remain nameless. Let's just say they're big and they've had several ownership changes in the past year and are now a part of a subsidiary of a large company who's name starts with M and ends with icron and who manufacture memory as well as selling full systems.
Anways durring the heat of these problems I had tech support telling me to stop modifying things by hand and ONLY use the web based interface because they had made changes to things any only their interface would be capable of making the updates properly. Well after two days of tech support hell and the problem (a fairly major one involving e-mail not getting delivered) not getting solved tech support finally said "Oh, wait you're using the web interface. Stop doing that. It dosen't work right and we know it".
I'll still use these control panels for looking up information but I'll never use them for actually changing anything.
--- Juggle juggle@hitesman.com
One thing you could try would be to use the midgard web content management system (www.midgard-project.org) along with nadmin management interface developed by the guys at hklc.com.
This gives you full editable-through-a-browser PHP4 dynamic pages backed up by mysql (other database support under dev.), virtual hosting, mailling list, DNS, webmail, and who knows what else will be thrown in.
I've used this for a couple intranet sites. The initial configuration is hard, but once it's running you're good for years. Migard development is very active and support via the midgard mailing list is excellent.
Nadmin is still somewhere between alpha and beta quality, but it's coming along quickly.
Aha. In which case, the original poster said nothing about his own level of experience.
He has Linux experience: he's just prejudiced against products that claim to obviate the need for it.
Anyway, he'd better have experience, or he has no place trying to set up his own webhosting company and configure a user control panel himself.
A company I worked for used CPanel for their web stuff. The people there liked it a lot, but since I was the developer, I found it very annoying. I ended up calling the provider up and getting shell access so I could directly do things on the box. CPanel makes it easier to interact with a lot of things, but for those who actually know the commands and know what CPanel is doing, it isn't worth it.
I haven't used the other, so I can't comment on it. CPanel works fine though for those who don't develop and just need to tweak a few things
-Frijoles-
I think I'll write a user web hosting panel. So tell me what you think it should have, but without referencing any existing panel or service ... i.e. just decribe it directly. But if you think there's already one out there that fits your needs exactly, then why would you reply here.
now we need to go OSS in diesel cars
I have to agree with NooT here. I've been running Plesk for about two weeks now with around 50 domains on it, and about 1000 email accounts. After some intitial flukes (mainly due to me being too tired to see straight, after NorthPoint pulled the plug on our DSL), the box has been running like a champ.
The tech support people at Plesk are the best, they really went over the top to help us out. It is nice to find someone who will actually return your call, and know what they are talking about when they do!
Also, most of the configs are stored in MySQL on the back end, so if you absolutely __can't__ stand working with the gui, you can >probably< work with the system from the back end. Just make sure you know what you are doing. This way, the front end users can still add emails, etc. through the gui, and you can do stuff with perl::DBI if you want. Although I'm pretty sure this would void any warranty they have :)
All in all, it is a great system so far...
"Just another damned fool idealistic crusader..."
I am using Plesk's Control Panel and its not bad. It a completely simple interface for setting up email accounts, web users, etc... I would prefer shell access, but oh well...
* * * --they cant all be your best, that would be confusing
Csoft.net is run by a bunch of losers. I fell in love with their service at the beginning. They even quoted me on their web site. But a year later (around mid-Y2K), their services have turned for the worst.
Their accounting system is a mess. My account expired and they claimed they've emailed me, which I know they didn't. They lied. What's stupid is that I gave them my credit card number online but the csoft morons still wouldn't get my account activated. So I emailed them, and they gave me the run-around (e.g., need to reapply for a new account). What does it take me to get them to accept my money?! I couldn't bother trying to track down a their sales department after sending a couple of emails.
So I ditched the stupid fuckers. BTW, I have clients that are now getting their accounts mixed up. Dumb csoft fucks can't even count money. They should learn accounting.
I'm in Canada, so if they keep fucking around, I'll call the consumer affairs in Quebec.
I agree absolutely. I supose I didn't get this across before, but we operate similarly. Everyone gets access to their CPanel3 Control Panel, and those clients who request it get access to the shell.
Take care,
Brian
http://www.assortedinternet.com
Being a long time consumer and now provider of web hosting services I've found that you just need to have shell access available.
I've never even considered hosting on a service that didn't offer shell accounts - in fact, when I started hosting my own websites there really weren't any HTML Control Panels. You had to do everything yourself. Now with Control Panels there is an option to do it through a GUI, but for a lot of things you still want/need to do through a shell. There is only so much a control panel can do, and where it falls short, there is always the command line.
Having said that though, control panels like CPanel3, Cobalt Raq's CP, Webmin, etc are great for doing a wide variety of common tasks. Adding users, subdomains, viewing logs, file management, statistics, etc. Doing it through a GUI is nice, fast and far easier for the vast majority of users. So now we use and offer CPanel3 since it generally makes life easier.
I definitely believe that having both is preferable for power users. For less experienced users, they will probably only ever use the Control Panel, but should they want to use the shell, it should be there.
Brian
http://www.assortedinternet.com
And since Jumpline has been mentioned:
They're hosted by Alabanza, and the CP and all that other UI tuff that you see was developed completely in-house by Alabanza. It's also not OSS, although the platform that it runs on is.
I don't speak for my company, they have no idea I'm posting this, and if you can guess who I work for from this disclaimer, you need some help (and no, it ain't Jumpline).
PHP-Nuke is decent slash ripoff (i use it), but its not a webhosting control panel
sup
Not everything there is under the GPL. Do not automatically assume something is GPL'd. Apache is released under the Apache License which sallows for binary releases undercertain restrictions. MySQL is under its own license as well. Therrestrictions vary according to what you want to do with it. Some older versions are under the GPL though. Qmail as far as i know has some controls on how you distribute it but its not gpl per so(I could be wrong here). ProFTPD is under GPL though.
this space for rent
Hi
...
:)
I'm Vince from Site5.
I'd just like to add a few things
Site5.com are one of only 2 hosting companies in the world who have access to the Cpanel3 source code. (Our CEO is on the Cpanel3 development team). And to my knowledge, we're the only company outside of VDI.net's datacenter that can offer Cpanel3/WHM for free to our dedicated and colocated customers.
So if anyones looking for a Cpanel3 server, we can help you out.
Feel free to contact me (vince at site5.com) for more information.
Regards,
Vince.
I need a sig.
HostRocket use Cpanel3, probably with a theme.
Regards,
Vince.
(vince at site5.com)
I need a sig.
Well, when something like this is posted, and you have inside information and good contacts, it doesn't hurt to spread the word. :)
Regards,
Vince.
(vince at site5.com)
I need a sig.
Post links to all of the control panel companies on slashdot and see who's sites stay up.. right now both of these sites are having issues.
http://www.chaogic.com/vhost/
Updated today on Freshmeat. These tools are more for the administration side than the user side of course, but what do they want in a front-end? Maybe a web-based template based website creation tool? Web based email for their domain name? You are asking for an answer to a vague question...
One of my hosts, http://www.site5.com, use CPanel 3.7.0-STABLE Build 314 and NetAdmin 1.3-STABLE Build 293 on their site management pages. I can sort out email (POP, webmail, forwarding, etc), subdomains, users, error pages, backups, ftp accounts, MIME types, mySQL (via phpMyAdmin), cron, and quite a few other things too. I've found it very easy to use from an end-user point of view :)
The problem, though, is that if you ever want/need to edit any configurations by hand, Plesk will make your life hell. It stores configuration information in its own files, and overwrites the real files with that when you change anything. You can edit a few of those files, but IIRC, they're added to the end of the conf files. So, if you want to mess with Apache's conf, you'll be having to fight Plesk for the rest of your days with the server.
Of course, if you can live with the fairly limited options that Plesk offers, you're fine.
The other thing I didn't like about Plesk is that it moves everything around, putting all the program files, conf files, and data under /usr/local/plesk. For example, your website gets put in:
And your BIND files?
So, if you plan on never touching the conf files yourself, you can live with its limited options, and you don't mind things being moved around, you'll be okay. Otherwise, stay away.
--
--
"I personal[ly] think Unix is "superior" because on LSD it tastes like Blue." -- jbarnett
Rob Becker, didn't write that he had "absolutely no Linux experience" in his ask Slashdot question. It was Cliff who wrote that in regard to his skepticism about products claiming that users need no Linux experience.
There, are you happy? You trolled me into explaining the obvious.
Although a ton of hosting companies advertise Plusmail scripts as a feature, have you ever tried to find information on purchasing Plusmail for a system? Can anyone point to a web site for the company that writes/sells/markets Plusmail to web hosts? Reasonably thorough searches I have made have been uncuccessful.
i've noticed a lot of people pumping up all kinds of products; free ones, proprietary, and even a bunch of asses advertising their own hosting provider (couldn't resist, but at least i admit i'm an ass.), but the question of whether there are similar projects out there...
webmin and similar products don't count, because if you don't know unix, you shouldn't run it, let alone administer it, LET ALONE THAT, and try and run a business using it.
web hosting is a business. no mather which way you look, and while I have found several (many of the ones listed elsewhere on this page), most tend to coerce you into using their hosting solution(tm), instead of bending to your system.
if you're serious about doing web-hosting, build a platform. take redhat, or debian, or solaris, or whatever you like/know, and build your system. use whatever components you feel comfortable with; but don't worry about a gui. make shell scripts for your timid users. writing a few dozen perl/shell scripts to help out users is a good idea(tm), and if you absolutely want a web-based interface, it's a simple matter to write some web-glue for that.
truth here: if you think you can build a successful web-hosting company _without_ spending time on it (e.g. purchasing your components), you've definately got another thing coming, and you will run into it sooner or later.
so take my advise, give the users the capacity for control first, then make your own damn pages to actually make it easy on them. any other route spells disaster for the future.
and as a closing note, i *hate* all those 3$...5$...10$ hosting providers with a unprofessional-looking website, and some shoddy NT/IIS based or Redhat+RedhatServer(blah) garbage (hacked in five flat. guaranteed), and expect to stick around. all they do is waste people's time... and if you fuck up early, you'll make it harder on yourself in the future.
I didn't see anything that really did everything I wanted (web interface, manage websites, nameserver records, FTP accounts, shell accounts, email accounts, aliases, mailing lists, and databases), so I rolled my own for BrightNIC. Wrote a web interface using PHP on the frontend and Perl scripts on the backend, with a MySQL database in the middle of it all holding all the configuration information. And it's my hope that I've abstracted it from the actual systems far enough that you don't really need to know too much to manage things.
Unfortunately, it's so customized and woven into my hosting system, I don't know that I could ever pull it out into a package that other people could install and use. But it works for me.
-Todd
---
"The details of my life are quite inconsequential..."
I don't know about the license, but from a user perspective, Plesk seems like a decent product. My hosting service sweethomes.com uses it to allow cheapskates like me to run their $10/month sites without giving out shell accounts. For the level it seems targeted at, mostly smallish and personal sites, it seems to work pretty well. I would rather have a shell prompt available, of course, but for the price I really can't complain.
Actually, the editor said "absolutely no Linux experience". The poster didn't mention anything about the skill level of his users.
I write trance music.
I took a look at Plesk recently and found something rather disturbing. It installs it's own versions of Apache, MySQL, Qmail, and ProFTP. This doesn't sound too horrible until you find out that they don't include the source code at all, Just the compiled programs. I don't know about you, but that scares the crap out of me. I think that "Control Panel" software should work on any version of the daemon software, not just the one that it installs for you.
From a user's perspective, the hosting crew at Pair Networks has a nice control panel. You might poke around their setup, though I bet it's hand-rolled:
http://www.pair.com/pair/support/mypair/
Did anybody actually maintain the BB installation after you left?
I had it running at the last three companies where I was as well, but after I left nobody kept it's hand on it, and now it more or less died...
My current employer though would rather spent 250.000 on BMC than use BB... Well, it took me a day to roll out BB on all my boxes and it's working... BMC is still trying to figure out WHAT they actually have to monitor .
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
I'm a current csoft customer, and I routinely experience outages of greater than 1 hour, with no notice or explanation posted (in fact, they rarely admit to an outage unless it lasts the whole day.)
The concept is cool, and I like the amount of control that csoft offers (csoftadm rocks), but all in all, csoft sucks.
A quote from their current motd:
Nothing like telling your customers up front that complaints about their network will fall upon deaf ears.
Anyone know of anything like csoft that actually works?
-jerdenn
And, the community of Brothers kick ass.
I've been on the mailing lists for a long time now, been with BB since pre 1.2, if I remember right. It really does a great job without annoying extra bloat, even if it does page me at 3 AM because Cold Fusion on NT has choked on another chicken bone. :)
Another great thing about it is the extensibility - if you can write a simple shell script, you can make a custom test. Or perl, or C, or whatever tickles your fancy. Or just download a premade contributed extension from www.deadcat.net.
Finally, the authors, Robert-Andre and Sean, are also probably the most approachable guys I've ever met on a mailing list.
But yeah - it's not really anything to do with webhosting control panels. :)
Yep - lots cheaper. From the Cobalt website:
RaQ4 (64MB RAM/10GB HD/single Ethernet) is $1499
RaQ4i (256MB RAM/20GB HD/Dual Ethernet/SCSI Port) is $2699
RaQ4r (512MB RAM/2 30GB HD w/RAID1) is $3599
(other SKUs with different RAM/HD configs change the price as well)
These all use commodity PC-100 DIMMs, so you can do your own memory upgrade to the 512MB max pretty easily (of course your own memory isn't covered by the warranty, but...)
They are more expensive than a white-box general purpose server, but it comes back to "everything you need is pre-integrated" so you can literally have it online within 10-15 minutes of opening the box without having to be a Linux "guru". That's what the slight premium in price is all about...
Put 50 domains on a RaQ4r at $40 a month each, and it's paid for in 2 months. And that's without charging extra for bandwidth, backup services, etc, which most every ISP does anyway...
The BIND patch has been available since Feb 6
Command-line administration does not necessarily void your 30 days of free telephone support, and absolutely doesn't affect the hardware warranty. If you don't touch things provided in the GUI, you're ok. And some things, like Interbase, have to be set up from the command line. Third-party apps which don't overlap/replace/affect supplied services don't alter warranty support in any way (Real server, MySQL, etc).
Free support isn't provided for every possible end-user kludge-up of the Apache/Sendmail/etc config files... but does anyone provide free support for things like that anyway?
Cobalt server appliances are just that: appliances. (How many of you fiddle with your microwave to get better/different performance out of it?) If you are totally into complete customization of every detail of your server, then a general-purpose server is what you want.
Server appliances (not just 1U boxes with an OS on them!) are for people who don't want to spend the time finding/installing/configuring Apache, sendmail, FTP, etc. They just want a few basic internet services to work, and be easy to understand. Cobalt appliances are probably not the best solution for the average Slashdot propellerhead...
Yes. I ordered a RaQ3, and it was connected while I was away on holiday. The first day back from holiday, I hooked up to it, and the first thing I did was go to the Web Admin interface to look around.
It was all chugging along nicely, so I went to get a drink. I came back and went back in (to install security patches, ironically), and I'd been H4X0R3D. 6 days after the server came up.
I caught it in time, though, and managed to salvage it. Only a web defacement, thank God. Good job, as the support at my ISP (www.tele7.net) is crap.
...if you can get it installed, which takes mroe than a little linux experience. But if you're going to be setting these up for the clients and you're obviously a programmer, it should be no problem. You can find more about webmin at: http://webmin.pucpr.br/webmin/
--- It's THAN, not THEN, moron! Fnord.
I had a good experience using Domain Console. Simple, straightforward, and useful for basic hosting services. I used it for MirPool.com, a little contest where users guessed where Mir was going to fall.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
Oh.. you're talking about THAT kind of control panel. ;-)
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
I haven't used e-smith (www.e-smith.com), but it is a full web based server solution ala cobalt RaQs, and all open source, bring your own hardware (BYOH). Zope (www.zope.org) is another option, but that involves using zope through and through, which may or may not affect your customers.
It's for a new hardware product that we're developing, but it is free and GPL'ed.
Anyone with an interest in getting involved in development please email me (perl knowledge required). Apache virts work, users are created, and home directories are made, in the modules current form. The rest of the picture is adding a new Webmin user (with correct permissions), DNS, and Sendmail. Someone today recommended adding MySQL and PostgreSQL users, so it's on the todo for a later version. I haven't put up a website yet, but I'll do so immediately if other people want to get involved.
I don't know who makes it, but a hosting company that I'm looking into has a nice control panel. They even have a live demo setup. It will even allow you to make cron entries.
THIS SPACE FOR RENT
I've had a chance to play around with the Plesk interface, and I have to admit it's pretty cool. It's user heirarchy allows the serveradmin to manage the box, but site-specific functions can be delegated to the siteadmins.
I especially dug the console for BIND, so your users can manage (and possibly mess up) their own DNS records. They have demo up on their site, I think.
If you're into serious large scale deployments, you can get Plesk pre-loaded on Crystal's super small RIA appliance.
Information wants to be Free. Useful Information will cost you.
My company does a lot of ASP work for smaller clients, who don't want to pay 400.month for a dedicated server, so we've found a few shared hosting places that have NT and ASP support. The best one by far is Intermedia.NET (www.intermedia.net). If you go to their control site (hosting.intermedia.net) you can use their demo account to try out their control panel. It does about 75% what the IIS control panel does. Intermedia's shared hosting is about as good as your going to find, and they apply patches and bug fixes relatively fast. If you can stand to run on Microsoft, give these guys a look.
Th
I tried various open source AND commercial products. The only way you're truely going to find what you want is to code your own. Any other solution you find is most likely going to require you to have special directory structures, user/pass formats, use a specific mail server, etc. Most users simply want to modify email accounts. QMail has a few great control panels available for it. This may be a great option if that's all you need. I recently sold my hosting company and had developed about 1/2 of a control panel. The only fully functioning part was e-mail control. I can say that with PHP, MySQL, SSH, SuDo, and some very basic shell scripting, it is very easy to code your own. Any commercial product you use is going to tie you down. Any open source project you use is going to tie you down to hacking at existing code if you want to make changes. But if you code your own, you have infinite flexibility. Code your own while you still can. And, my opinions of the RaQ's is that they are unnecessarily expensive, don't perform well with more than about 100 sites on one, and the control panel is very very slow. I just left a company that exclusively used them for hosting, and everyone there who thought they were cool at first considered them worthless towards the end.
- E-mail forwards
- Pop account creation/deletion
- Default pop account designation
- Autoresponder configuration
- URL redirects
Does Microsoft offer such a utility that is well-suited for a webhosting facility? Am I missing something?Either I'm ignorant, or you're what they call a reactionary.
What interesting timing, me and a couple of other developers are just finishing a control panel/ISP management system from hell for the company we work for to use, it is going live next Wednesday. I dont want to say how long we have been working on it, its almost embarassing.
The system consists of many components. Its core is a cooperatively multitasking daemon that manages all activity. Any requests for service modification (customer addition, plan addition, service configuration) come in via XML. These requests typically originate from either the end-user control panel or the reseller control panel. The daemon checks to ensure that nothing odd is going on (like a zillion requests for service modification in the last x minutes), breaks the XML down into subpackets destined for the appropriate servers. For example, one incoming hosting add request will require a packet destined for the DNS server and another packet destined for the hosting server. When translating the packets, the daemon also transactionally updates the postgres database. If all packets translate OK, the data commits. The daemon then establishes a connection to a second, forking daemon which examines the subpacket and connects to the indicated server and issues the XML to a script on that server. The nonforker also runs internal events that monitor the status of the provided services. The whole thing is a little more complex than that, but you get the idea. The system also handles all billing and accounting.
The system offers several advantages over a traditional control panel. The most obvious advantage is that the customer manages all of their domains from the same login on the same control panel, regardless of what hosting servers those domains may be spread across. The second advantage is with the central server being aware of every request, it can monitor request processing statistics, which results in enhanced security and reliability. The maintained database is substantial enough where if one of our hosting or DNS servers went down, the customer configuration could be regenerated from the information in the management system database (this was not the intent, but a byproduct).
Anyways, to answer the original question, the type of control panel solution really depends on the scale of the internet service operation.
Maru
I'm the primary developer for a product called ISFree. It's 100% GPL'd code. System independant. AND it will function from a text browser, or a GUI. We don't use Java, or ASP, or scripting.
I've been through several ISP management software suites and found them all to be lacking in one of several critical areas. Stability, Security, Usability, or Portability.
I'm looking for some more developers to join the team to develop ISFree. I've been getting quite a bit of attention from the release on FreshMeat.net.
If you like what we are doing with it please feel free to join the mailing lists(isfree-dev@lists.terrabox.com) or check us out on Openprojects.net IRC network in #isfree.
What? me have a sig? don't be ridiculous.
I have tried: http://www.ensim.com/products/sxc.shtml this product makes provisioning and management a breeze! def take a look.
A control panel such as this is hard to make generic for the simple fact that everyone's server configuration is different, some host NT, other Linux and we primarily use FreeBSD, so how do you write a control panel that interacts with all of these different hosting platforms? That is why your not finding a suitable solution. Besides most hosting companies like ourselves tend to develop our own solution to the problem and then why would we give away our proprietary control panel after spending countless of dollars and man hours working on it. You are asking the impossible really. If your new to the webhosting business then be prepared to spend a lot of hours developing and honing your business. There is no "quick fix" just lots of hard work and long nights programming little niceties for your customers benefit.
Some things you can find on the web and integrate or make your own, but most of these solutions at least require some cosmetic alterations and minimal configurations.
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
Domain Names for $13
Nathaniel P. Wilkerson
www.haidacarver.com
I have a hard problem with products that claim to do administration and that the users need "absolutely no Linux experience".
:)
Seriously. If you want a no-brainer solution, just use (gasp) Microsoft products. They have spent billions making sure that your mom can do this kind of stuff! Lets focus on using the right tool for the job, instead of smushing one product into every conceivable nitch.
Not a troll or a flame, just pointing out the obvious. Otherwise I'd be an AC.
You quitting proves that the karma kap worked. The most annoying of the whores shut up. --CmdrTaco
Sphera is another commercial system, along the lines of Ensim, I believe. I've been at presentations for both, though I've used neither (rolled my own, starting 6 1/2 years ago before there were any other choices available).
Have you seen monster controls? It's what CIHost uses. It's nice :)
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
As long as a webhoster gives me the option of not using the "control panel" then I prefer to use one. (Oh the paradox!)
If you're running a site on your webhoster's machine (i.e., not leasing a rackmount or something), then why be afraid of the pretty interface? Besides which I can maintain my sites while I'm at work (when it's slow, of course).
Agreed. I've got BB down to where I can stand up a new version in 6-8 hours. We're sending two techs and a clueless manager type to Unicenter training for 14 classes so they canlearn how to get things running. BB is a) freeware (By and large. If you're reselling the monitoring capabilities, they charge a license fee, but if you're using it for your own internal network it's free.) and b) Easy to use, extend, and understand. http://www.bb4.com
If you need a "small slice" of the server and full root access to your box - check out beta.sw.com.sg. There can be nundres of hosters on one physical box and still each one of them can have his own root (not affecting others), config files and his own Apache... Sorry if it sounds like an Ad..
The system is built using PHP 4.0 for the front-end, several MySQL Databases and several PERL based daemons that do the actual system level work. The Control panel handles an intitial customer bill, then lets our home-grown accounting package track the billing from then on.
WebSHowHost is very open-source friendly, and I have already had discussions about releasing our package as GPL with the partners who thus far have been very open to the idea.
I like building this application to building my dream house. I have tried to put in all the "extras" to make it well suited for me, and other developers like me.
I hope to have a demo on-line within the next week or so. Visually it is pretty spartan now, and the navigation isn't as intuitive as I'd like. So in other words it needs some polish. I also need to make it a bit more generalized, so it more flexible in other situations.
The neat thing about the aritecture is the "auto-form" code I worte to provide an abstract method of generating HTML forms for mySQL databases. Each form is defined by a n assoiciative array so visible fields can be turned on and off ddepending on the situation. Updating and Insert is as easy as passing the array to a specific function, so adding field to the database the html form automatically reflects the change, making the tool very easy to customize, because you don't have to change a lot of static forms or modify any sql statements to add fields. I have been meaning to release the auto form code for a while (since I orginally developed it for another independent project, but have been to usy to get to it.) Anyway please feel free to drop me a line if your interested in talking about this.
-Brandon (MS2K)
I work for Wirex. Check out our Immunix ISP Appliance Server Software. We think our interface is very easy to use; we built in some mini-expert systems in the form of "wizards" (yes, like them :-) so that the web interface is more intelligent than just filling in fields that would otherwise be the content of conf files.
The appliance software is integrated with Immunix which is a security hardened Linux distribution. Security hardening is important in a web-managed appliance, precisely because the web interface (and the users that accompany them :-) don't have the smarts to address security issues in a timely fashion.
The company I work for insists that we use Plesk to add new virtual hosts.
Dont get me wrong, plesk is a fairly decent tool, but its not even close to being a replacement for a few well designed perl scripts run by the admin himself.
Plesk makes -extremely- dirty config files, nearly unreadable except to itself.
Just keep that in mind when you use it, dont expect to go through you config files later after Plesk gets done with them.
Systems Administrator
Servu Networks
http://www.servuhome.net
Brent Jones
I personally hate things like this.
Making administration easier by hiding the "gory details" of what's actually going on has a tendency to reduce the knowledge needed to properly administer a system to nearly nothing. What you end up with is people who setup a system and then call themselves SA's or something of that ilk, when in reality all they know how to do is fill in a few fields and click some icons.
This is probably the single most irritating trait of most NT/2k administrators (and increasingly, linux/unix admins) - they know what to do with their admin tools, but the majority have no clue as to what their actions are doing.
I'm a CLI jockey - i like to know what is happening and why, so if something breaks i can have some idea as to what is going. i like to know the capabilities of my tools, so if i need to do a non-standard config, i know how to do it. only after i have a solid understanding of what a particular tool does do I look for a quick and easy, point and click interface to it - but i always check the end result at the command line.
ISPMan ROCKS! Requires Apache (of course) OpenLDAP, Cyrus IMAP, Postfix, and ProFTPd. (All/most of which are best of breed.) Handles centralized web-based authentication of FTP, IMAP, and SMTP users via LDAP without need for /etc/passwd. Also a separate web-based control panel for users, and a customized version of IMP for webmail based users.
www.ispman.org
Atif (the author) is very clever, very responsive, and ispman works very well and has been tested on Linux and FreeBSD.
https://jamiesonbecker.com
I was searching for the same thing today found this one: http://webcp.can-host.com/ Also do a search on http://sourceforge.net I found some webost panels wandering around there too!
You need to go read the GPL and then understand that even if what the poster said is true that this is not a violation of the GPL (besides only one of the things he named is under the GPL) but in any case this may be a violation of the GPL but that would depend on *many* details that we don't have.
Cypherpunks: Civil Liberty Through Complex Mathematics. Those who live by the sword die by the arrow.
BTW, while I'm planning on making the affiliate program availible for a small charge (about $30 or $40), I think I'll be using the GPL for the control panel program once I get aroudn to writing it.
Now, a shameless plug: my hosting company is Synergy Global Networks. They specialize in a no-TOS hosting plan, which would take a court order to remove your site.
There, I'm done whoring myself.
Friends don't let friends use multiple inheritance.
Of course you could go with the server/web admin that Xitami offers. My 2 bits.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
CPanel3 because it's site is more resiliant to the /. effect. And cause they got a chick on their page.
This comment was generated by a Squadron of Ultra Ninjas
Seems like plesk isn't that good as there site seems to have been /.'ed. But here is the google mirror if you want to check it out.
Csoft has a custom made command line control panel that is run from the shell. According to the tool they are opensourcing the next version, so you can question them on the status. It controls mail/DNS/mysql amoung other things. csoft: http://www.csoft.net commands for csoftadm: http://hail-eris.com/~nekhbet/cadm/cadm.html
There is a nice one called 911 that let's you do alot from a browser interface. Web2010.com uses it on their Unix hosting accounts. It's pretty easy... once it's installed you just hit http://www.mydomain.com:911, authenticate, and you can add and delete mail users, forwarding, etc. Sorry, no URL. Maybe someone else can supply it.
This might not be exactly what you're looking for, especially if you've chosen an OS - I, of course, mean Linux distribution -but how about "e-smith"? (www.e-smith.org).
It must be one of the easiest distributions to set up and administer; although if you know what you're doing you'll be a bit frustrated with always having to use the GUI.
I set a couple boxes up for total beginners, and I mean real beginners, not IIS/Windows refugees. The people I set them up for have hardly ever called me with questions. (Setting up FrontPage extensions is a PAIN though, so if one needs that c)
"Consistency is contrary to nature, contrary to life. The only completely consistent people are the dead." A. Huxley
Their control panel is ok, but their service is really bad. I was a customer of theirs for 3 years and they where going force me to pay more money for a lower account. After quoting their own contracts on how they couldn't do this, they wouldn't back down so I canceled my account. I found a MUCH better host with a better price and more features.
despite the similarity in name to FreeBSD it's a kickass web control panel thing.
lots of power to the user, the best I've seen yet.
Of course, 'no previous Linux experience' doesn't really come into it so it might not be for your client - but for cheap virtual hosting for geeks its unbeatable.
for an ISP that uses it, check out www.dsvr.co.uk (very good, fast, reliable).
excellent stuff!
The poster said he has "absolutely no Linux experience". How do you think he is going to use Comanche!!??
Yea.. That's right... THEWEBBIE
If you really want a good control panel backed by a great company and low cost then you should check out Ensim WEBppliance LS .
It is the only Virtual Hosting control panel on the market designed strictly for the Novice Web Hoster.
Check it out.
Yea.. That's right... THEWEBBIE
The BIND patch has been available since Feb 6
Yes, a patch - if you sign up for dedicated hosting from most places, you'll probably start with a fresh install and an unpatched BIND. Since most people going for RaQs don't know much about being a sysadmin, they will be h@x0r3d within days. (I get on average 6 or 7 attempts a day against the 'known insecure' services, aka sunrpc, lpd, BIND every day from skript kiddies).
A large chunk of the traffic on the Cobalt Users mailing list is "Help! I've been hacked" from RaQ3/RaQ4 users. Not really Cobalt's fault - they weren't to know when they shipped the software - but if you're getting a RaQ it's something you need to know so you can fix it before the kiddies get in. Since BIND can run happily as a non-root user, I'm surprised that Cobalt's (and RedHat's for that matter) distro doesn't run it as a non-root user. My motto is "if it can be run as non-root, then it's going to be run as non-root". Any good distro should avoid running stuff as root that doesn't have to be run as root.
Cobalt server appliances are just that: appliances. (How many of you fiddle with your microwave to get better/different performance out of it?) If you are totally into complete customization of every detail of your server, then a general-purpose server is what you want.
I agree - but the only reasonably priced dedicated hosting tends to be CobaltRaQs, so a lot of people who don't need just an appliance get them. They can be customized and improved. In fact, if you have a RaQ2, you need to do some of that if you want to be able to run things like MySQL (the shipped glibc is broken).
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
you don't want a CP that has features that users don't know much about or that they really don't need. You are just asking for more phone calls and emails.
Also, most hosting companies don't realize how scarcly people access the CP. Most people just setup email accounts once and they're done. So spending a hundred thousand dollars on all those cool features is really a waste. You probably should keep the prices down and spend more on marketing instead. As long as you have a good email control panel.
I am a plesk user as well. I have used their product for about a year now. The support issues that were brought up are true. About 20 days after we put up a box running plesk it was hacked into. This box was our production box at that point and it was critical. They didn't have to help us, but they did. They got the box back to functional while we got another one up and running in its place.
Now the bad news about Plesk is that if you wish to move OS's, forget it. Their installer basically installs everything for you, Apache,MySql,PHP,Frontpage Extensions, SSL, Qmail,etc. But if you want to move from OS to OS, you are in for a nightmare. There are no triggers to recreate DNS entries in a domain, there are no procedures to call to generate email accounts for names of people in a domain.
From my standpoint, it was well worth the $550 that they wanted for it. I would highly recommend it if you are an admin that doesn't want to spend your day adding email accounts, setting up password protected directories, etc. Now, if they could get Analog and a Web Based Email reader then it would be a complete package!
Dave
One very excellent control panel interface is the one offered by XO (formerly ConcentricHost). But it's proprietary, of course. Cobalt Networks (now Sun) has a very nice interface. Also proprietary. There are others.
I'm bothered by the Cliff's comment that I have a hard problem with products that claim to do administration and that the users need "absolutely no Linux experience" since I've seen many products that successfully hide the complexities of the OS quite admirably. Maybe he's only referring to open source products?
That was Cliff's comment, not the original poster's. Read it again. Carefully, this time.
Alabanza.com and their spin-off YourWebHost.com both show their excellent control panel, developed by Alabanza.com, with US and Chinese programmers. Alabanza now wholesales hosting (with control panel) to a bunch of resellers, who market and bill for Alabanza.
I was told by Alabanza's techsupport two years ago that the control panel was started from Webmin, and quickly branched. I think Alabanza called it Webmiester for a while. Like Webmin, the Alabanza Control Panel is framework supporting extension modules all written in perl/cgi.
-Nathaniel
If you're unsure of paying for a pre-fab solution, you could use Un-CGI. It's free and it takes care of all the really boring de-URLencoding stuff. Then can use scripts in whatever language you want-- shell, Python, C, whatever.
Art At Home
I haved used the Plesk Control Panel since version 1. It works great for what it was designed for. If you are just doing webhosting and need to create domains and email accounts quickly and easily it will do it. If you want to change anything, get some coffee and a programing book because it is not easy. They are now upto Version 1.3.1 with PHP and Mod_perl. This is the first version I would recomend people useing for complicated domains. The support people at plesk are great, they pass almost any idea you give them onto the developers so it can get in the next version.
Where'd who go?
If it's true, which I can't check as the site is currently being slashdotted, then it seems to me that this is a clear violation of the GPL because of the lack of source code. Anyone with evidence to confirm/deny this?
If god had intended you to be naked, you would have been born that way.
go setup a site through jumpline.com....they do an excellent job with their control panel, and most of it is oss stuff.
Good point!!??
Still - if the goal is to have a time-saving device for managing multiple web servers *and* one capable of leveraging his/her programming experience, Comanche is the way to go and may be *the* reason to become Linux-competant.
He didn't explicitly ask for a tool capable of leveraging his/her programming acumen, I know. But the fact he/she was tempted to "write it" himself/herself, implies to me there is some programming talent on tap.
I've found that the store-bought solutions have a relatively steep learning curve - despite the marketing hype - and are generally too inflexible to allow you to easily customize the interface to meet the specific needs at hand.
This is a niche - shallow learning curve with maximal flexibility/expandability - Comanche fills quite well.
Just my $0.02
I've started using Comanche and found it to be very powerful. You can check it out at: http://www.covalent.net/projects/comanche/ It's open source, XML-based and looks to be pretty easily expanded, if you have some Tcl/Tk, Perl/Tk or Java experience.
A long list of Apache configurators are here. This is the best list I have seen anywhere.
Just my $0.04 (adjusted for inflation)
Sounds like you're looking for www.ispman.org
I wrote one of these back when I was in your situation. It's pretty user friendly and will allow a user to browse thier filesystem, view/edit/delete files, create/delete directories, password protect directories, configure mail forwarding, can hook into a support help system, and plugs into webalizer to view stats.
The interface is more or less a template-based system and can be modified rather easily to fit your hosting site. It's more that just a series of 'Forms' like Communitech's control panel. It actually has some semblance of a GUI. There are also a couple of other considerations like how sendmail is setup and the format of your httpd.conf file.
It's open-source and I'd be glad to talk to anyone interested in more details. If you're interested, please contact me at mr_jasoncox@yahoo.com. By the way, it will only work on Unix/Linux with Apache/Mod_PHP. It could be modified to use Perl though. --jason
I liked their interface at first cause it did some cool drag and drop shit. That was before the software continually crashed. Not only did we pay a fortune to have it but within months it was Dog! Use Plesk... very low on resources and stable, stable. We had to restart the box once in the last 8 months.
I run a small Web Hosting company at (http://www.host45.com). I've searched and searched only to find that most of these Control panels are mostly the Same. What about users with a 'NameVirtualHost' setup in Apache and FTP? None of these work with Ncftpd which is the only ftp daemon I've found to support multiple users using the same IP address that can log them into separate directories. Otherwise you would need to have 50 million IP addresses so each client could use a separate one. From what I've found the main thing that users are looking for is being able to configure email accounts from a web browser. Most users you wouldn't want mucking up your DNS anyway. Anyone know of just a package that is just for email accounts and nothing more? Or of something that you could turn all the other stuff off, and tell it to only control email? If not, then I will continue coding my own. fun, fun. The life of a SysAdmin...
It is so hard to make the panels easy and simple to use. We need to update our own panels every month or so. But we need more feedback to make it better. Pls provide us with your generous comments after taking a tour on our demo. http://www.interplay.com.my/webcommander.htm