Control Panels

[lowesthost]

Why not offer customers a choice to choose between what they want?

We went that route many years ago  and brand X fell beyond the wayside people want and expect cPanel 

 

[HostXNow]

Why not offer customers a choice to choose between what they want? You could offer cPanel, Plesk and DirectAdmin and allow the customer to choose what they want. DA will also work on a lower spec VPS than cPanel will.

We use all 3, and even some opensource ones and obsecure things (hostingcontroller) to keep our customers happy.

At the end of the day, customers will pay you if your services is up to standard, so previous comments are not wrong in saying don't skimp on the fees.

I'm more familiar with cPanel and wouldn't want to offer other panels that I don't know much about (even if my support team does) for obvious reasons. I think for smaller providers it's best to specialize in what they know best i.e most providers don't pull off offering Linux and Windows at the same time very good, due to not having the right resources etc. We prefer to offer cPanel/Linux as it most popular and we know it better compared to DA/Plesk/Windows.

No doubt you have bigger support team than us.

Chris

 

[datarealm]

If cost is a concern, there's always webmin/virtualmin.

 

[Packety]

Just go with cpanel, easy to setup, easy to use.

 

[Everyday]

I assume you are referring to running this on a VPS and not using it to do VPS hosting since neither support the latter.  

 

[oneilonline]

OP is talking about a control panel for web hosting on a VPS? Or is he asking about a control panel for VPSs?

I guess since he mentioned cpanel, we assumed he was talking about web hosting on VPSs.

CPanel is definitely the way to go. Solus for VPS control.

Is what I prefer...

 

[marlencrabapple]

I'm more interested in where to start with a control panel. I feel like it would have to run as root to be able to do anything at all. How would one go about putting something like this together without it being a massive security risk? Not only would the script have root access, but there'd be an entire instance of Perl, PHP, or whatever you wrote the control panel in running as root which could allow for even more damage if an attacker was able to run code in it.

 

[oneilonline]

So...you're talking about creating your own control panel!?! That is a HUGE undertaking. And from the sounds of what you are describing you don't know much about coding....

The control panel doesn't need to run as root to be able to execute commands. For example PHP has CLI where via the CLI code the command logs in as an executable user to execute the command. It involves a mash of many different coding languages. You have the HTML code, the bash code, and everything in between to get it to do what you want.

Many of the "tweaks" we have done with our control panels and interfaces implement CLI directly with remote servers.

So it IS possible

 

[marlencrabapple]

So...you're talking about creating your own control panel!?! That is a HUGE undertaking. And from the sounds of what you are describing you don't know much about coding....

The control panel doesn't need to run as root to be able to execute commands. For example PHP has CLI where via the CLI code the command logs in as an executable user to execute the command. It involves a mash of many different coding languages. You have the HTML code, the bash code, and everything in between to get it to do what you want.

Many of the "tweaks" we have done with our control panels and interfaces implement CLI directly with remote servers.

So it IS possible

I already have a working knowledge of everything but the PHP/whatever language I'm using -> bash/running actual shell commands part. I've only screwed around with this in Perl, but logging in as another user -from- a Perl script is pretty much impossible if you're aren't running the original script as root. Is CLI any different than what Perl offers?

 

[KuJoe]

Coding your own control panel is not hard and does not take a lot of time/knowledge/effort. You don't need to know coding to code a production control panel.

I spent more time working on flowcharts and spreadsheets than I did actually coding.

 

[Aldryic C'boas]

You don't need to know coding to code a production control panel.

After seeing Solus and.. some others, this does indeed seem to be sadly true.  But, this is a market where you don't have to know how to actually administer a virtualization platform to "be a provider", so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

 

[KuJoe]

After seeing Solus and.. some others, this does indeed seem to be sadly true.  But, this is a market where you don't have to know how to actually administer a virtualization platform to "be a provider", so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised.

I didn't even think of it like that but that's a good example also. LoL.

I was talking mostly about my (lack of) coding skills where I still need to use Google to understand how arrays work and get basic Javascript pop-ups (I also learned how to use MySQLi while coding Wyvern which was new to me). The only reason I even considered using my own code in production is because it's locked down tight and user input is limited to 3 fields which are easy to sanitize and keep track of.

 

[marlencrabapple]

I'm just curious how it all works. Luckily I've already put together a few somewhat large pieces of software for work and on my own time and have pretty much been programming nonstop for 2 years now, so I guess I'm already better off than some of the established giants, but when it comes to creating a control panel for managing even a single server I feel like there are a ton of things I need to take into account and protect against.

Also, I looked into setuid yesterday and it seems like its exactly what I need for the bash scripts my control panel will be calling. That along with some pretty strict rules about what kind of input I accept from the user (and passing args as a list directly to whatever I'm calling rather than opening a new shell) should take care of shell injection. I already use PDO for everything so SQL injection isn't a big deal, and barring any huge holes in whatever framework and language combo I choose I think I'm a position to put together something that isn't terrible by default.

Just so I know, am I on the right track with setuid for this stuff? Does cpanel do something similar? Besides running my actual web interface as root its all that stood out to me as the right choice. If both essentially get me to the same place, why not just run the script as root and do everything there?

 

[leto12]

For me plesk is the best.

Work great and easy to use to start a company

 

[thedediguy]

cPanel the rest are no way near as good, or webmin free directadmin is worth offering though

 

[S4S-UK]

cPanel is stander for lot of users, you can offer it as a addon it will be good for you.

 

[AreebMajeed]

cPanel is much better than Plesk. Easy to use and popular. A lot of people prefer "cPanel Hosting".

 

[jhadley]

Plesk 11 is ok but I would still go with cPanel. Get as large a server as possible so that the $11/month or whatever spread thinly over your accounts,

 

[Thelen]

cPanel is pretty universal, but personally I prefer webmin packages. It doesn't root itself into the server/vps, and you can also manage some things manualy (SSH) if you want to.

 

[wlanboy]

If cost is a concern, there's always webmin/virtualmin.

Or VestaCP/Ajenti for smaller projects.