Hey, I have been thinking if I should post this but here it is.

I have been working with a few programmers to develop a new control panel. It will have all the features of HostGUI, Cpanel and Plesk however it will focus on user interfaces and ease of use.

We have already done basic programming (rough programming) and are on to interfacing and extras.

The new panel will have many features including, resellers, billing, ticket system, order forms, client management, auto account setup and specials.

As a webhosting provider I have noticed things that are difficult and as project manager for the new panel I am trying to solve most of those problems.

Now down to biz:

I need some info on things that you (as a host) would prefer:

What payment processors should it be intregated with? We already have Paypal, 2checkout, Revecom.

What other features would you like to see? (Ones not currently avaiable in HostGUI, Cpanel or Plesk)

What mail program would you like to see used? (Qmail....)

Please post a bit about what you think a perfect panel should have. The Control Panel is expected to be out in 2 Months.

What are you developing your control panel in (perl / c / java) ? Also what platforms do you plan on supporting.

I would like to see:

Automated sign ups using www.enom.com, www.opensrs.com and BulkRegister.com registrars and generic domain registration integration
Site creation tool
Multiple reseller models
Different interface "skins" available
Integrated cgi's for customer to use
Ability to customize interface via templates
Programming API
Integrated ticket system and integrated support chat system
File manager
Web clients, such as FTP, SSH, etc. that are available from browser
Works on Standard HTTP ports, so it is available through strict firewalls.

H-Sphere (http://psoft.net) does the majority of these features already, but always nice to see more options out there. I will probably go with H-Sphere, unless you have a stable product in the next 3 months that competes well with H-Sphere.

Neofree

It will be kind of difficult to say what features we like or is missing in HostGui as it has yet to be released :).

As for suggestions, as I have posted in an earlier thread, Combine the administration usefulness of Ensim and Plesk backend with the Ease of use (without the bugs) of Cpanel and Alabanza front end and you will have yourself a winner in my book..

As for payment gateways I would also like to see Authorize.net added to that list, and I am sure Echo will be requested also.

Is the billing and ticket systems hand coded or is it going to allow integration with current third party products such as Modernbill, PerlDesk??

Its being programmed in PHP and is for the Linux/Unix Platform. Maybe windows later on.

It will have its own hand coded ticket system and billing system. We may have an option of using a database import tool or something to convert customers of ModernBill software over with ease.

What do you mean intregation with enom? Like setup domains?

Thanks

Yes, check out H-Sphere at http://psoft.net. I am interested if your product competes well with H-Sphere.

Neofree

Wow Hspere is incredibly difficult to use.

YES it will compete with Hsphere both on pricing, ease of use and features.

Thanks

Its interesting to see a claim of something to have all the features of HostGUI. Not a soul in the world other than myself and my tight lipped staff know the complete features of HostGUI so how can you have all the fetures of our product which are unknown to everyone? As for the others you mentioned, they are out and in use on servers, aka publicly available , so of course you can put claim to having their functions.......but not ours. If your referring to the screenshots of HostGUI, well that is not HostGUI, that is just screenshots. The underlying controls, features, and structure of HostGUI are nothing short of remarkable.

*Not a flame, just a serious question! *

I agree with you, the current version is a little hard to understand. Once you get used to it, it is actually very easy.

However, they are about to released new interfaces.

Here is the link to preview them: http://www.psoft.net/hs2.1preview/

Neofree

Design is not the issue.

I am a webdesigner and will be doing all the interfaces. So it will be amazinly easy to work. Its just features I need help with.

What makes a good panel?

My advise is to concentrate on features that no one else offers. Dont try to pack everything in. Take the best bits and leave the bad bits out.

In my opinion a good panel should be reliable, easy to use, and simple.

Originally posted by Jag
Its interesting to see a claim of something to have all the features of HostGUI. Not a soul in the world other than myself and my tight lipped staff know the complete features of HostGUI so how can you have all the fetures of our product which are unknown to everyone? As for the others you mentioned, they are out and in use on servers, aka publicly available , so of course you can put claim to having their functions.......but not ours. If your referring to the screenshots of HostGUI, well that is not HostGUI, that is just screenshots. The underlying controls, features, and structure of HostGUI are nothing short of remarkable.

*Not a flame, just a serious question! *

This was the point of my post above, I just didnt go into details about it :D.

From my research, I would rank the products that have more features in this order:

1. Ensim ServerXchange
2. H-Sphere
3. Ensim WEBppliance
4. CPanel/WHM
5. Plesk PSA

That doesn't necasarily mean that a product with fewer feature isnt any good though.

I personally want as many features as I can get with a decent interface and is reliable.

Neofree

I mean that from HOSTGUI's demos we see. The features and what it does. We can see the features because we can see links to them :D.

Also, I can prove that you can see the feautres because NO one would spend money to preorder something that you can't see the features. The demo's are good enough to show features.

Thanks

Your greatly mistaken, those are not the features, those are but links to areas where features exist. There is no public demo, there is only screenshots. I tell you what, when we release HostGUI and you release yours then you can lay claim to having the same features if yours truly does. But you can not say you have the same features because quite frankly you and everyone else outside of my staff do not have access to the features. Then again why even mock other ideas, of course HostGUI shares features with some other control panels but it has a lot of very original features. If you can't make yours original then why make it at all?

Our control panel is very unique becaue it intregates everything

Originally posted by x213Networks
Our control panel is very unique becaue it intregates everything

Do you have a demo? :) Anyways, i see this thread is turning a little into a flaming between competitors. Facts are:

[list=1]
No control panel can have all features.
Until it is released, nobody except the developers know how stable it is.
Certain features are being kept in secret - for obvious reasons.
[/list=1]

The above applies to all released control panels such as CPanel, Plesk, Ensim and new control panels such as VirtualCP, HostGUI, NOCSoft, etc. Its a long way from planning features to implementing them and i've seen so many control panel projects being started in the past few months that were just abandoned. Everyone wants to get there, but few do. The best features are the ones you develop yourself and which you don't share with your competitors until they're released.

:)

I agree with kiwi about it turning into a flame which would be bad but i feel i must point this out.


Features in a control panel can never be considered original. All a control panel does is create a Graphical User Interface to things which can be done with VI , PICO , JED or your other favorite text editor in a shell. The way you do it or how easy it is or how the look and feel of your panel, that is unique, what it does, is not.

You go out and program some entirely new system from the ground up, I’ll use cppop as an example within cpanel, it doesn't base its-self off any other pre-based pop program, it is its own unique feature, it may be similar to a few other custom pop dameons out there, but it is unique, especially the fact that its programmed in perl..... heh

So lets not forget that most all of what a control panel does is unique, it is just a GUI to make something easier to do.
do.

Daniel,
Thats optimistic and for a large part true but not completely. Can you currently use a base server/OS to perform recurring billing, support ticket system and tracking, client database and maintenance, cluster functions to quickly task out new accounts, or a handful of other tasks such as those? A control panel does for the most part just remove or decrease the need for command line admistration but a complete solution should also do the tasks I mentioned above.

Well this thread should not be thought of as a flame. As Kiwi said, nobody can or will be able to incorporate the features of everyone becuase quite simply at this point so many are wrapped in secrecy. That was my point all along. Cheers ;)

Regards,
Greg

Well, but by managing all of those aspects you mentioned, it is no longer a control panel, it is a complete management system for a particular business model. So it all boils down to your definition of "control panel" :)

True ;)

Most of the control panels now try to pack everything in one. A control panel / ticket system /billing system / forum server / guestbook / you get the point. That is why I want to release a control panel with needed features and nothing more. One product cant do everything. Thats why there are people making billing systems, ticket systems, and so on. Its still good to have more control panels coming up.

I agree with Daniel though.

Once you have added the billing system, ticket system etc, it is no longer just a control panel. It is a whole management solution for the people that don't want to have to take the time to get the best of this and that. The solution has already gathered it all for you and all you have to do is use it.

Michael

2 x213Networks:

What about security of your control panel?
Who will test your control panel in real enviroment, who will take care about security audit?
(IMHO) It something incredible for me to install not public/open source software because I have found some security holes even in Apache...

x213Networks mentioned it is being written in php. PHP source code is pretty open.

But his code will not be public, I guess.
So it will not be reviewed and tested by thousands of customers/hosters.

If it is open source or closed source, the only way to really find out how stable or reliable it is, is to use it.

x213Networks: Are you going to use zend to hide the source code of your control panel? And how close are you to completion? How well have you tested it. One test I highly recommend is to have two browser windows open on two seperate computers logged into the control panel. Then try to add a site on both computers at the same time. But make sure you use the same IP, same hostname, same domain name and any other option you may have. Make sure you click {ADD SITE} or {SUBMIT} on both browsers at the same time. What this does is test how reliable the control panel is. When two seperate tasks are executed at the same time, strange things happen ;).

This is just an example of what kind of tests you will need to do. Also security is very important.

How about adding a feature for macros (In a module form)...

Design the entire GUI of the site in a modulated form so that the end user can put/place/move around the gui in the way that they see fit...

As well as adding the option of adding more options so if the end user wants to add a function to the control panel in this screen they can...

If you take this idea you just added 7 months to your project :D

x213Networks: Are you parsing configuration files such as httpd.conf, proftpd.conf, etc.. or just rebuilding them everytime there is a change.

I don't know about the other control panels out there but plesk is a pain when upgrading standard installed(non-rpm) programs such as apache, bind, qmail, etc. It also installs everything to /usr/local/psa/. I would like to see something that allows you to install your programs normally and have the control panel recognize it rather than having to stick with what ever the control panel was packaged with. I would like to see the individual programs to be installed to the paths they were originally made to install to,rather than where plesk has them now. Like I said I only have experience with plesk(which I like a lot other than these few complaints) so If other control panels are allready like this and as good as plesk disreguard my post.

Reguards,
Jesse

think about email anti-virus support also :)

Originally posted by frozen
I don't know about the other control panels out there but plesk is a pain when upgrading standard installed(non-rpm) programs such as apache, bind, qmail, etc. It also installs everything to /usr/local/psa/. I would like to see something that allows you to install your programs normally and have the control panel recognize it rather than having to stick with what ever the control panel was packaged with. I would like to see the individual programs to be installed to the paths they were originally made to install to,rather than where plesk has them now. Like I said I only have experience with plesk(which I like a lot other than these few complaints) so If other control panels are allready like this and as good as plesk disreguard my post.

Reguards,
Jesse

i agree with that one, i dont want this thing to take over my whole box, i just want it to simplify what i am already doing.

It would be a bit complicated to have antivirus support unless on a NT box. *NIX boxes don't catch viruses and it's quite funny how customers call in about a potential virus when our machines are running on FreeBSD and cannot be infected with a windoze virus :) It's likely they gave access to other people who uploaded the virus. . .

there is many *nix based virus scanners/filters such as www.drweb32.com and www.centralcommand.com/mailserver_products.html

yeah :yawn:, okay this is from FEBRUARY of this year...

I wouldn't expect this cp to still be in the works.

:eek:

Originally posted by Jag
...when we release HostGUI...

How shall I put it..........

WHEN?