Well. Since Alabanza wants to go the Microsoft way, if we get together to go the Linux way, we can get over this.

I recently found out a control panel available under the GPL license. So you can download the control panel source code too and develop upon it, but you must share it with the world.

Check out http://www.freevsd.com for more info. If you know about anything else similar available preferably under the GPL/Open Source, please post it here.

*********************************************************
Here's a scoop of what FreeVSD offers:
VSD is the foundation you need for an advanced web hosting architecture. It has been developed and designed to scale with your customers' needs. Therefore VS's can easily be migrated to higher powered or less populated servers.

The ISP products include a number of optional modules for Customer Account and Virtual Server administration.


For the Service Provider
Point and click Virtual Server creation/deletion/management
Centralised backup and recovery system
Traffic/Bandwidth Monitoring
Network and Hardware monitoring system
Customer Support Tracking System


For the End User
Web based administration
Windows based VS administration client (Win32)
VS Configuration Wizards
Automated Domain Name Registration

**
It can provide for the individual domains,
- private databases, private apache server, private sendmail and lists, telnet, SSH and FTP.

*taken from freevsd.com*
**********************************************************

So if those of you who are good in linux get together, study the source code and improve on it, you can come up with a better CP than anything available now. And share it under the GPL.

Seems the freeVSD can have separate POP accounts for different Vservers so the one who had a doubt about having the same POP account name for different domains can have peace.

So if you develop this, you can rent a plain vanilla server from a good NOC who gives unlimited IP and build on it. A little bit of homework, and you can also automate the billing part.

And if all of you Alabanza powered hosts can come together, mirror your Alabanza server's hard disk, pool all your money, start your own NOC and start your own superior server farm. Sounds fascinating.

To boldly go where no one has gone before. (Wow! I love Start Trek. That should be obvious from my Nick).

Thanks for reading the long post. Now help us sort this out.

I was planning to get a reseller account with an Alabanza powered host till 2 days back but am now hesitant to go ahead with it.

Cheers,
TheWingThing.
[You can call me Wingy].

Here are some features I always wanted to see in a website control panel.

I guess Alabanza lacks them, atleast as yet.

1. Webmail for POP accounts.
2. FTP administration with user quotas.
3. Email disk quotas.
4. Only SSL access for the CP.
5. IP and IP-less subdomains administration.
6. DNS administration for the private nameserver.

If there are any more cool features you can think of, post them here so that someone can work towards it.

Also, the server should support PHP4, Servlets, JSP parser, (ASP for the easy-life fanatics).

BTW, bandwidth is not as expensive as Alabanza charges. It can be provided at still cheaper rates.

Cheers,
TheWingThing.

Here are some of the Applications supported by VSD, as from their website http://www.freevsd.com

Many compatible applications can be installed globally by the ISP or by the Virtual Server Administrator at the command line, providing the perfect environment for software development or rented applications.


Here is a small selection of software already tested and supported on VSD:

HTTP: Apache Webserver
DEV: Perl, PHP3, PHP4, Python, GCC, JDK, JVM
EMAIL: Sendmail, Cyrus IMAP Server, Qpopper
MEDIA: RealServerG2/Darwin Streaming Server
DATABASE: MySQL, MSQL, Postgres, Berkley
MISC: Named, Cron, X, ProFTPd, Telnet, SSH
STATS: Webalizer, Analog, Webtrends


Many more applications, daemons and scripts have already been tested, and many more are planned.

****************************************************
Wish they support and pre-install QMail too. I am not in favour of sendmail. Dunno about IPv6 readiness of this product though.

I will inform you of any similar/better solutions as and when I know.

I don't endorse/promote them anyway. I am a Physician in India and a computer enthusiast, always been fascinated by networking, Unix, Linux and the open source. That's about it. I have nothing to do with these companies I write about.

TheWingThing.

Check out these sites to know about alternate options for your control panel.

Plesk: http://www.plesk.com
Sphera: http://www.sphera.com
FreeVSD: http://www.freevsd.com
SmartCP http://www.smarthostingtools.com

If you know any other, write it here.

TheWingThing :wavey:

I guess any VDI host has a good control panel. Soon it will be as good as the abz one.


------------------
Mike L.

E-mail: Mike@interserver.net
ICQ#: 42499339
AOL/AIM: IntServer
http://interserver.net
(877)272-4551

Also see H-Sphere from http://www.psoft.com

It already has auto billing included. I have some concerns with it. You can see them here http://www.webhostlink.com/showthread.php?threadid=2108

The guy from cheap servers is supposed to set it up and tell me if my concerns are true or if it is a decent product.

Originally posted by interservermike
I guess any VDI host has a good control panel. Soon it will be as good as the abz one.Easy to say. Remains to be seen.

Hi there,

Thanks a lot for freevsd control panel. I have downloaded the modules , but facing some problem in installation.
Can you guide me further or from where I can get further help ?

hspehere is ok but not ver useful for what most hosting companies want. VDI is the closest thing to Alabanza minus the billing and my vote goes to them. I have used freevsd and find it very basic but i guess it could be used for a footprint to build on. We have two developers working on a control panel solution to suite our own needs since we dont want to wait for the battle of the control panel vendors to end before we are able to pick a solid panel that covers everything we want and is still scalable. So a custom panel , if you have the developers available may be the way to go for companies that have certain wants/needs.

Sphera is nice too but the pricing leaves a lot to be desired.

hsphere :( - functions
freevsd :( - functions
shpera :( - cost
VDI :)

just my two cents

And maight I add that some guy made a killer skin for the VDI CP :D

hehe, shameless pat on the back for yourself huh? Well at least its deserved, its way better looking.

H-Sphere review:

After waiting 2 weeks (was supposed to take one) and numerous email they finally installed H-Sphere on one of our servers. First of all I would be a little iffy on a product that requires the company to install. Installation on control panels should be streight forward.

After the installation, I logged in, the control panel is not user friendly at all exp. for a end user, and many of the features are set by values not a simple yes I want this option or no I dont want that option. Again makes admin. a little hard. Menus and submenus are not layed out well at all, and it requires extensive searching to find what you need, over all the learning curve for most would be too much for a control panel.

Product support is via email and the normal turn around in my case was about a week for a question to be answered.

The end result, lets just say that within a week we dumped it off our system and loaded plesk. While not nearly as advanced it sets itself up in less than 2 minutes and has a 10 minute learning curve, truly what a control panel should have, of course its functions are lacking but its only a year old, give it some time. The next version of it (december release) will incorporate automatic shopping cart setup and hopefully billing.

That was my impression as well, when one of my techs installed freevsd to one of our servers it too turned out to be a waste of time. He ran into a few problems (im not sure exactly what they were) but when all was said and done we had a very basic system where admin could add pop,ftp accounts and edit the httpd file via the web, other than that there wasnt anything that it could do. If you wanted a system to add VS and not just websites and had the resources to build up the control systems then it might be worth looking into but it probably wouldn't satisfy 95% of current hosts.

So how does the Site5-VDI combo CP compare against Alabanza? I am thinking abt an account with them as the CP has options for subdomains whereas this has to be done manually on an Alabanza if at all. I don't know how many Alabanza hosts will be willing to do this. AFAIK, Annette will do this, but I dunno abt the rest. Also, Site5 allows multiple accounts in a single account. But Site5 isn't reliable in terms of uptime as yet.

Also, Alabanza has no FTP manager. And no CP afaik has the option to set user quotas for FTP and Email. Say, if I have a community website or a company website, different departments or persons can be set quotas so that they dont eat into other departments' space. I need this as I am looking for a college Alumni site with 1 FTP login for the webmaster of each batch of students, and give a subdomain for each of them, say class-of-99.college.org, class-of-2000.college.org and so on.

So it seems there is no affordable host that has it all. Does anyone know a better CP? Has anyone implemented a subdomain and FTP manager in an Alabanza CP? (if Alabanza allows that).

And why in the hell is no CP accessible over https? Why is everyone still using http when they all say proudly that they use SSH and not telnet?

How long will it take for getting a CP that addresses all these issues? Real time subdomains, FTP manager, FTP and Email quotas, access over secure https to name a few.

Is this too much to ask for?

Wing.

Originally posted by CRego3D
And maight I add that some guy made a killer skin for the VDI CP :D

Hi Carlos,
I visited yor site.
I found that the CP illustrated at http://www.wizardshosting.com/chpt2.html looks exactly like the Alabanza CP. And jaguar says that you did one skin for VDI? You are not using it yourself? You are with Alabanza?

Please clarify.

Wing.
------------------------------
As part of our cost cutting exercises, the light at the end of the tunnel has been shut down until further notice.

Wing, I think that CP you saw was a VDI CP made to look similar to Alabanza's so that people that were using Alabanza wouldn't freak their customers out :)

Also, Site5 might have a buggy server (which they are watching, and might be 100% now), but I don't think they have widespread reliablity problems, or you'd hear about it (loudly) here.

For you alumni project, is there a homepage scipt that would work? I know some of these allow limits to be set, etc.

Thanks Chicken.

I was probably misled to think it was an Alabanza CP. But I dont remember seeing subdomain manager that I would regularly see in a VDI CP.

For my Alumni site, I would like to give just one page for a public profile per user. I want to integrate the user registration with the Everyone.net API so that they get a common login for services provided by me and also by everyone.net

I am also planning about giving free homepages through excelland.com if they give me their API so that I can integrate that one too.

So, the FTP accounts on my server are for the webmasters of different batches and also departments in my college to post info about themselves and original content. I dont want to use a homepage script without setting disk quotas for FTP or I wont be able to control the limits for each FTP user.

And do you know if any host has provisions for subdomain manager and FTP disk quota setting through the control panel? Sadly, Alabanza doesnt even have a FTP account manager on the CP.

Wing.

Plesk: http://www.plesk.com

This company is pretty good, I have spoke with the owner a few times. The problem is they lack some of the features that are required of today's webhost.

I think that level of integration is beyond me. I know how to make things bold and slanty like but that's where the fun stops.

Hi TheWingThing

Yes, you are correct, that is the ALabanza CP

I just recently switched over to VDI, currently working in the new Manual (I left the old one up for the customers that are still in the ALabanza box) :)

you can check the new CP here:

http://testvdi:testvdi@216.74.69.227:2082/