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?

Comments

One free solution (under development)

[Outland Traveller]

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.

Webmin? vhost?

[hattig]

Webmin and vhost might be suitable, I forget the URL for webmin, but vhost:

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...

Control Panel - another Web Host's Perspective

[NatePWIII]

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

CobaltRaQ

[Alioth]

It's probably too late now (since you probably already have the hardware), but CobaltRaQs have nice web-based admin software. The downside with the RaQ is that they are not secure out of the box (run a version of RedHat with exploitable BIND etc.) and Sun expects you to never use the commandline (in fact they say that commandline administration 'voids your warranty'. Bah, I do it all the same - it's the only way to secure the box!)

Comanche - GUI management of Apache & Samba

[MemexMutex]

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.