Hi guys,

I've been wondering why people were getting rid of plesk, and I think I've finally found out why.
Trying to create multipul FTP accounts to one domain. How can plesk not see that this is a kinda important feature in the whole server hosting thing.(thats aside from the whole time thing to setup one account)

I've just had to install webmin to get around such a basic task. Why are we paying all this extra cash for plesk? Okay webmin is pretty basic in design, and needs a bit more work to install everything, but it gives sooo much more facility to hosting.

Is there a way RS could develop a build of LWB server with webmin on it. That way it'd cut the cost of leasing even more. I'd also say that I think there'd be a few folks out there that could aid the webmin front end and make it more cosmetically pleasing and making the whole install hold together better.

Just my 0.02p

for anyone who wonders why i'd want multipul logins to domain, it's primarily for SSL space.

lol

Boomer

Personally, I'm used to setting things up manually (DNS entries, websites, new accounts etc.) and tend to want to do things that a control panel is not flexible enough to do.

I ended up disabling Plesk on my server so that I could have full control of everything. Most people aren't like me, though...

I'm a new Plesk/AMD customer here at RS and have seen a lot of requests for bare-bones systems or people posting how they've removed Plesk and do everything manually (or use webmin to help).

This seems like a fascinating idea, especially to a "tinkerer" like me, but I haven't seen a good answer to this question:

If you ditch Plesk/Ensim/, what tools do you provide to your hosted clients to allow them to manage their hosted account? In particular, managing email accounts, but also managing file/directory permissions, databases, and more.

Some of my hosted clients are companies that need to be able to create/update/delete email accounts for their employees.

Are there client-centric web-based tools for managing things like these (other than sticking with Plesk/Ensim/etc.)?

Thoughs anyone?

-Danimal

In my case, my machine is for personal use, so I don't need that sort of functionality.

If you are going to be providing normal vanilla webhosting to people who need control panels, it might be best to stick with Plesk/Ensim. I ditched Plesk because I run mod_perl sites that require complex httpd.conf changes and a custom-compiled Apache, and Plesk won't play nice with that (I heard it will overwrite the httpd.conf, discarding my changes etc.). If you're not doing this kind of thing, you may be able to coexist peacefully with Plesk.

If you want to ditch the control panel and your users don't mind doing a little stuff in the command line:

> If you ditch Plesk/Ensim/, what
> tools do you provide to your hosted clients to allow
> them to manage their hosted account? In particular,
> managing email accounts,

Use qmail for your mail server. In qmail, the e-mail aliases for each virtual domain can be delegated to a user. For example, if the user "anime" controls the domain aaanime.net, then to setup an account forward of pmak@aaanime.net to go to pmak0@yahoo.com, then I would login as "anime" and type:

echo pmak0@yahoo.com > .qmail-pmak

in the home directory.

You can also install vmailmgr with qmail to allow your users to setup virtual POP accounts for people. The POP accounts would be totally under their control, and would use their disk quota.

If you install PureFTPd as your FTP server, they could also create FTP accounts that use space in a subtree of their home directory and login as their userid. You'd have to configure PureFTPd to use a virtual database, and write a wrapper script that lets them update the virtual database (only letting them add entries with their own uid).

> but also managing file/directory permissions,

That's what an FTP client (or telnet/SSH) is for.

> databases,

They can do everything from the "mysql" client. You could also install phpMyAdmin for them.