A few people (myself included) have lately been doing new development on the "old" 0.5.2 web://cp codebase. I've read comments on here about a few people who currently use web://cp in production and quite a few users have posted such on the web://cp forums. Our goal is to enhance the current control panel so that it will have the features, security and flexibility necessary for a 1.0 release.

For those who don't know, web://cp is a free, open source PHP/MySQL based control panel. It is made to use standard web / database / mail / dns packages and to be installable on virtually any Linux distro (and FreeBSD).

We're interested in hearing what types of enhancements and changes people would use. What do you use most in your current CP (eg. ensim, cpanel, plesk)? We would also like to receive bug reports if you encounter any errors or unexpected behavior. For anyone interested in contributing to the effort - you are more than welcome to submit code (either bug fixes or enhancements).

Visit http://www.web-cp.net for documentation, to contribute and to download the latest CVS.

(I hope I've posted this in the right forum)

There was a fair bit of interest in web-cp at one time on these forums. Nice to know development is going ahead. i did download and install it on a local PC and was quite impressed. I'll be following your development with interest.

My own feedback to you would be to concentrate on the basics and keep it bug free.

I also recommend you make it easy for developers to add their own software. For instance, have the cp check a directory and create links in the cp for every folder under it. For example, the directory might be called "developers" and under it I might place a folder called Freddos_HelpDesk. When the cp loads it adds the link to "Freddos Helpdesk" (underscores replaced by spaces). You could even have an icon on the cp if developers included a cp-icon.gif in the root of their folder.

This allows developers to easily add advanced features to your cp. Everybody asks for this type of feature but most cp's ignore the request because they want to charge extra for these services down the line. It's easy to implement and will add a dimension to web-cp the other cp's just don't have.

I would use it if it was:

- Template based
- Multilanguage
- Multiserver (for each service)
- Billing and "business management" tools

I like the Server -> Reseller -> Domain -> Personal tree categorization.

I personally use Apache+PHP+MySQL+qmail+vpopmail+bind/djbdns but I guess it should be bash-command based or something so that everybody may customize it for their needs.

Kind regards.

I would say start by setting up a error free install script.

I was too interested in this but after jerking around with it for a few days trying to get it to work I gave up.

If you want this thing to take off and be taken seriously you will have to start with a install script that looks at dependancies.

Your forum is full of bad install attempts, probably from people who do know enough about linux and should have had success installing your product.

unwaw:

Currently web://cp is loosely template based. Several templates are included in the default install.

web://cp is already Multilanguage - 9 languages in different states of completeness are included currently.

For multiserver we are considering supporting one or both of the following scenarios: different services on different servers and/or all services on each of multiple servers capable of load balancing and fail-over.

Basic invoicing is a planned feature (listed in our bug tracker as an issue currently which is a great place for discussion about it). If you would like to help implement or have specific suggestions you're welcome join in.


root_loggins:

Thanks for the comments. Currently we are not providing install scripts or significant install support since the code is still under development. Until all the features are ironed out it won't be known what requirements will exist. The 1.0 release will definitely include some install scripts to help out with the more complex problems. If you'd like to share with me what issues you encountered when installing I'd be glad to revise our installation documentation and make it better.

I successfully installed web://cp on my first try (on Fedora Core) - most (not all) install failures seem to be because of not reading and following the instructions in "INSTALL" carefully or trying to use FreeBSD which is harder, apparently.


freddo:

Currently by editing the language files (the section labeled External Menu Content) a basic implementation of what you are suggesting is possible. It would be a great idea to add a gui to the control panel that will allow this to be edited. Icons would be an additional way to expand this - thanks for the suggestion!

Will it run on Redhat Enterprise ?
Will the project become commercial once it's stable?
It looks really nice:)

I can't get to the website

Maybe if services are independent from each other both scenarios could be supported. I'll check that in the website.

Great!

I could help with the service handling functions in qmail, apache ...

Dave#:

Apache was down for a few hours last night. MailScanner-MRTG messed up a config file and we didn't realize it so when it restarted by cron it stopped but couldn't start. We've got everything working properly now.


unwaw:

Definitely feel free to contribute anything you like. You can check out our bug tracker to see what is currently needed.


jaume:

web://cp is not dependent on any particular distro. You should be able to run it on RedHat Enterprise right now. I've never tried but if someone would donate a copy (of RHE) to me I would be glad to create installation instructions for it and post them in the web://cp manual.

As far as becoming commercial - if you mean a single commercial entity selling the control panel then most likely not. The control panel is GPL so anyone can sell services (eg install and support) for it. The wonderful thing about it is that it does not depend on any custom packages so security patches will not need to be obtained through a web://cp provider and can be gotten directly from the software developers (eg. directly from the Apache Software Foundation).

Looks very nice! Can't wait to drive it around the block.

Thanks (on behalf of the developers) for the compliment. I've only done minor bug fixes and feature enhancements so far but it's coming along. Check out some of the new features and let us know what bugs you find.