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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?
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.
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
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.
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
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
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
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...
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
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'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. :)
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
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
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
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!
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.
damn the temptation to skip the preview button... the FreeVSD web site is at www.freevsd.org damn my laziness in not making that a real link...
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
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?
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.