Web Hosting Management software

[Erek Dyskant]

Hi all,
	Anyone want to write a free (as in speech) web hosting control
panel?  I'd pay for support in an instant, and contribute to the code.
We really need an open source admin interface designed for web hosting
environments.
	I tend to think that webmin is moving in that direction, but it
isn't there yet.  It has the stability and sanity for a control panel,
but doesn't have the hosting-specific featureset of something like
cPanel or ensim.
	If I were starting my own web-hosting company, I would start
with a commandline interface, and possibly write a a homegrown set of
web-based scripts for users to do things like add email addresses or
change passwords.
	Right now my PHB insists on using cPanel.

	The customers and non-technical employees love the cPanel interface, 
but for me it creates nothing but headaches.  The closed source model, 
combined with sketchy QA make it very difficult to work with.  i.e. the last 
update changed the syntax for user-created page redirects, and broke most of our
redirects.
	I'd say that cPanel has added about 50% to our administration
workload by causing us to have to work through weirdnesses, and halved
our technical support load, as people can do a lot of the things
themselves that they used to have to call us for (password changes, DNS
updates, etc.)  It also makes it so the sales guy doesn't have to call
me whenever he sells a new site.  He can go in and create a new account
without ever having to talk to the techs.
	Enough rambling for a day.  Most control panels seem to be
simultaneously good business decisions and bad technical decisions.  I'm
waiting for a management interface that doesn't suck.

Regards,
Erek
	


On Thu, Feb 10, 2005 at 04:59:06PM -0500, Frank Kumro wrote:
> webmin is free (looking at that now) but plesk is not. It would be
> nice though :(
> 
> 
> On Thu, 10 Feb 2005 16:50:25 -0500, Dennis Ruzeski
> <dennisr at corp.kanoodle.com> wrote:
> > Plesk or webmin
> > 
> > I think plesk is free, anyway.
> > 
> > 
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: owner-nflug at nflug.org [mailto:owner-nflug at nflug.org]On Behalf Of
> > Frank Kumro
> > Sent: Thursday, February 10, 2005 4:30 PM
> > To: nflug at nflug.org
> > Subject: Web Hosting Management software
> > Importance: Low
> > 
> > What are some free alternatives to cpanel and vdeck?  It would help
> > out greatly !!
> > --
> > Frank
> > Shenanigans!!
> > 
> > 
> 
> 
> -- 
> Frank
> Shenanigans!!