As fairly novice to hosting, one of my main things I want from a host is a great control panel. ie lots of features and very easy to implement. In particular I am looking for a easy to implement form wizard!

The two hosts I'm looking at closely are Hostrocket and Futurequest.

The Hostrocket site only has a screen capture of their control panel, so although it looks good I'd appreciate it if someone could give me their views (especially forms).

Well hostrocket uses Alabanza (the panel is their biggest feature) and probably more useful than Futurequest's custom built one. Alabanza panels have more functionality.

Any vdi host will have a good cpanel.

burst.com
liquidweb.com
site5.com
interserver.net (us)

+------------------------+
| Mike |
| Mike@interserver.net |
| http://interserver.net |
| 877-566-8398 |
+------------------------+

*ahem* interservermike

check out forum rules
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/announcement.php?forumid=1

Summary: self promotion against rules

Plus you referred a company that has a bad reputation ...

later

David

David said it all...... Mike, please take particular note of Points 2 and 6. Thank you for your co-operation.

Yeah and mike quit freaking spamming my email with check out our site we can help you. once would of been nice but 9 times is a piss take.

Communitech.net has always been my favorite (when it comes to control panels). ;)

*ducks*

AHA! You missed!! :D

Matt
mlightner@site5.com

I second that, communitech has a kick ass control panel

Humm .. Communitech.net CP looks great ... but we must admit, VDI's CP with a little work can look great as well (Right Matt ? ;-)

I do have a question for Matt and other VDI host's .. I know I'm going to contradict myself on this one but ... do you find VDI's CP a little slow ?? (expecially when you have heavier Gfx's) is it the http engine ?

YEs, I do find it a tad slow for my likings.

Originally posted by Site5-Matt
Communitech.net has always been my favorite (when it comes to control panels). ;)


But they are a prime example of a web host that looks good on the outside, but ar far from what they appear to be. JMO.

CRego3D - It sure can! :D

To answer your question, I think the Cpanel is quite fast, considering how much it does. When you run it, it doesn't just spit out HTML pages or pre-written code from a single script. It has to decrypt/read the cpanel license file and verify that it is a valid machine. Then it reads the form data and parses the entire document for <cpanel> tags and processes any that it finds. Only then does it return the HTML. Not to mention the normal time that you wait for pages to load.

Any time you have a program like that, it is going to take a while (not a LONG time) but maybe a second to run. Heck, the cpanel binary itself is 2.2MB (that's one big Perl program!).

Now, I have never really used Alabanza's control panel, so I cant compare the two very well. However, I would have to say that compared to other programs I've seen, the cpanel runs quite nicely for it's large size. It is a true masterpiece, and an ingenious method for creating an easily themable control panel. I can't think of any better way to set something like this up. In fact, we have modeled the NetAdmin program around this method of parsing custom tags out of HTML pages. Overall, it's an excellent program.

Matt
mlightner@site5.com

Rob,

That's definitely true. Just take FutureQuest as an example. If you compare their site/control panel to Communitech.net, the two are almost, well.... incomparable ;)

However, I think most people here would agree that FutureQuest beats Communitech hands-down in the area of customer support.

That's why it's always best to visit forums like these before buying. :D

Matt
mlightner@site5.com

OK, tried to Email BC to ask this question (since BC was the only Mod in this thread) but couldn't do that. Being as I fully believe in the "try before you buy" theory, there is a fully functional Alabanza Control Panel (http://www.potentproducts.com/webservices/cpdemo.html) freely available for anyone to use.

Not wanting to get in dutch (for obvious reasons), and not knowing the speediest way to pose the questions to a Mod, my apologies in advance for contravening the rules, but what's a body to do? This is just a one-time thing you understand.

Rob,

Excused for this thread only :D

I really should activate the mail feature on my profile, but usually leaving a post on the actual thread or starting a new thread clearly 'Pinging' me is quite fine, as I do keep an insomniacal eye over the forum.

<edit>
I've re-instated my own Mail function, so feel free to e-mail any questions, concerns, et. al. to me :)
</edit>

For those of you considering Cpanel (used by Ultraspeed, site5 and a few others), here is an example of what you can do with their fully skinable (I think that's the words they use) control panel. Looks alot like an Alabanza one, doesn't it. For anyone who is a VDI customer and would like a copy of this, let me know and I'll zip it up for you. Go here:

http://216.74.75.159

I'd give you the link the the actual CP, but for security would rather not. This one actually works for my clients and was VERY easy to build, though this is just a screen shot. Took about 2 hours to do.


[Edited by MikeA on 10-19-2000 at 08:56 AM]

Site5 control panel.

Is very fast nicely designed and does everything you could want it to.

My friend has just moved her site there. I have been setting up her site for her using the control panel and its much easier than albanaza.

Originally posted by MikeA
For anyone who is a VDI customer and would like a copy of this, let me know and I'll zip it up for you.

Although hosts don't *always* get along (hee hee) on the boards, it sometimes simply amazes me how generous most of you are with your time (sharing your knowledge here), and helpful (as Mike is here with this offer). Simply amazing!

Cheers Mike!