Okay, first a quick background so you can better answer my question:

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I have spent the last 7 years as a professional web site designer. You know, the concepts, the designs, the images, the HTMl code, etc. That's it.

Now, I have a new job, working as a Webmaster. The company that hired me is run by a close friend of mine and he knew I wasn't a Webmaster right from the start. But, he knew I wanted to work for him because his company is run really well and gives great benefits to all employees, regardless of status.

So, he hired me and knew there would be a largre learning curve. In about another month, another Webmaster is being hired that will have all the experience. Then, we will be doing shift work.

So, with that in mind, when I ask my question, please don't just tell me that we should hire someone experienced. I have heard that before, so that's the reason for the little background first.
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Okay, onto the question.

One of the test servers we run here is an Apache Web Server running on a Linux box. We are in the market for a control panel of some sort to implement to all our Apache servers (approximately 45)

All servers already have clients being hosted on them and are all about 75% of capacity.

I am looking specifically for a control panel that is driven by CGI (Perl) or PHP. Something that doesn't need a fresh, clean server to be installed on. A panel that can be installed over an already operating web server (with little or no downtime being experienced) without negatively effecting the clients web site.

The control panel should be able to handle most, if not all of the regular tasks.

One task, that I feel is a bit custom, is to have billing handled, not on a per package basis, but on a usage basis only. For example, when we charge some clients no fees, except for usage of hard drive space, number of domains, bandwidth, etc. the monthly billing should be able to handle all of that.

I will leave it at that for now. It is my task to research the different control panels available to us, and from looking around the last week or so, I now know there are many.

I am hoping this group can guide my research in a direction where I don't have to research each and every single one.

I loved everything available in cpanel, but unfortunately, it needs a fresh system to be installed.

I appreciate all feedback.

H-Sphere offers help migrating but thats about it..
Most of these control panel need a fresh system because it would be a nightmare to write software to auto detect all different types of directory conventions that people have.








http://www.anantsystems.net

That's understandable, but I was hoping there would be a control panel with a similar installation procedure to the E-commerce shopping cart, eDatCat.

There, you tell it your directory structure and it creates the installation file.

Nothing similar for control panels then hey? :bawling:

It is true that edatcat installs into an already functioning system but that is simply because it is an addon software program. It does not set up things like storage, bandwidth, email, etc...

We use the Ensim platform and are very happy with it. You might want to contact them about a way to migrate customers. I know we can migrate customers pretty well for resellers who are switching to us.