hi all
stewart here.....new to the forum

ive been thinking about hosting websites for quite some time.
ive canvased my area and theres pure potential for growth...also people want a hosting company thats local and any problems can be rectified with a local call....not £1.50 minute
Also thinking of moving to small shop for my webdesign,so server will be a bonus.

equipment....
tyan tiger with 2 x 2800mps
3gig ram
scsi, satas and ide
256 agp


i need help,
1> how does this equipment fair
2> as i need a good hosting controller software package ..any ideas
please will be truely greatful

not free packages.......or overly expensive
not reseller
thanx

Linux + Apache + CPanel,
But Linux and Apache are Open Source/Free softwares:)

Cheers,
Beruska

You are planning on a 256MB graphics card for your server?

In that case Hsphere or Plesk can be a option.

I'm a big fan of cPanel/WHM for management and Lpanel(.net) for billing, account setup, marketing tools, etc...

check it out

cPanel & WHM for server management and user management, and ClientExec to handle billing and trouble tickets. You can't go wrong with both, and they work together great!

cPanel & WHM for server management . . .
Eeek! Hope nooone is using WHM for "server management". It wasn't designed for that specific function, although you can do a LOT from your root WHM. It's not something that can be used for "server management". :)
. . . and user management . . .
That's better.

Eeek! Hope nooone is using WHM for "server management". It wasn't designed for that specific function, although you can do a LOT from your root WHM. It's not something that can be used for "server management". :)

That's better.

Oops, I wasn't thinking and you are correct that WHM shouldn't be used for server management. There are much better solutions out there, but IMO, server management should be done via the command line :D

Oops, I wasn't thinking and you are correct that WHM shouldn't be used for server management. There are much better solutions out there, but IMO, server management should be done via the command line :D

The sad thing is there are probably tons of people that "administer" their server only using WHM and cPanel. Disgusting.

The sad thing is there are probably tons of people that "administer" their server only using WHM and cPanel. Disgusting.

They are the people that generally post here every other day with all kinds of questions :D

Seriously though, if someone cannot administer a server via the command line then they shouldn't be administrating a server period. GUI's are pretty and all, but you'll learn so much if you do it the "hard way".

I reccomend cPanel, Modernbill, and Kayako.

thanx all
what about helm or h-sphere

thanx all
what about helm or h-sphere

I'll ask the questions that I would have expected to see posted already, but sadly they haven't been.

Do you know how to manage/secure a server for shared hosting? If not, are you going to hire someone to do this?

What operating system are you looking to use? What programming languages are you looking to offer?

It's easy for people to say "Linux/Apache/Cpanel" but what is the point if you are looking to offer a programming language that is better on Windows or if you have never used Linux before? A control panel will not manage the server for you, you must have knowledge of how to do that yourself or have someone else who can do it for you. The same is true for Windows, using it as a desktop is nothing even remotely similar to managing it on a server.

Work out what you want from the software, what you can work comfortably with and then you will have a shortlist of what the control panel needs to provide.

To be honest, from your posts here I would say that you should be going for a reseller account, not your own server because the questions you are asking imply that you do not have the knowledge required to manage that server. (No offence)

none taken!!!!!

resellers are an option!!!!

i have my own server....windows os as i can't for the life of me use linux
(wish i could)

I'm a huge fan of cpanel. If you cant afford or don't want to get cpanel, I would go with plesk next.

I'm a huge fan of cpanel. If you cant afford or don't want to get cpanel, I would go with plesk next.

If you read the thread you would see he is using Windows.

none taken!!!!!

resellers are an option!!!!

i have my own server....windows os as i can't for the life of me use linux
(wish i could)

We use Helm (Swithed to it from our own custom panel) and I am happy with it, it does nearly all of the things we require from a control panel. Before we switched I personally looked into the other options available for Windows and none of them seemed to come even close to Helm. I'd suggest trying them out though so that you can get a feel for the software and see if it is likely to do what you want. You can get trials of them and there are online demos available as well.

If you are looking to scale over time, Helm will help as you can run multiple servers with different services spread about them how you want, you are not stuck with everything on a single server. H-Sphere also does the same but you need to run the control server on Linux (or used to anyway) and if you have no Linux experience then you are asking for trouble if you go that route.

If using windows, then go with plesk. Sorry must of skipped over the windows part. :(

Good thread!:)

I am looking for feedback on Plesk 7 for windows vs. Helm. We have been hosting client sites for years and have never used a control panel - we tested Hosting Controller which wasn't too bad, but never introduced it to our clients. Now we are considering Helm or Plesk ... mainly to ease account setup, maintenance, restore, etc.

New account setups include manual additions/modifications to Merak mail server, AW Stats, MS DNS and IIS - not to mention manual creation of the directory structure:). If we can find a good control panel to automate the tasks, we would be in good shape.

Thanks!

You are planning on a 256MB graphics card for your server?
Now that's funny.