Hello everyone,

After a major debacle I have finally recovered my domain and am once again on the hunt for a new host :)

I have a question I must clear up before I can proceed though,
Popular control panels (for clients, I have no intention of being a reseller at the moment) are cPanel, ensim and Plesk, right?
I know 3 years ago I decided on cPanel as being right for me, but 3 years ought to have changed a couple things and I am more knowledgeable about things now, so panels that seemed complicated before might not be now.

Can anyone recommend a site that has demo's all all the major control panels? Or other panel suggestions.. Provided with a demo of course. I plan to be on a linux server, so windows-only control panels are a no-go.

Thanks in advance, and there's no need for a cPanel demo, since that's what I've used for 3 years lol.

www.demodemo.com

Umm.. how exactly do you use this? lol I'm a bit lost here

On an unrelated note your title inspired me to make a quick 2 minute sig for kicks lol

I think the feeling PE-Steve got from you post is that you were looking for flash tutorials (for your clients or yourself) on how to use control panels. DemoDemo (owned by the WHT member Vito) provides wonderful flash demos that most people use as a support medium for their hosting business.

Maybe you could clearify a bit what you're looking for?

I think the feeling PE-Steve got from you post is that you were looking for flash tutorials (for your clients or yourself) on how to use control panels. DemoDemo (owned by the WHT member Vito) provides wonderful flash demos that most people use as a support medium for their hosting business.Yes, that's what I thought the OP was referring to. I'm sorry if I missed what you were looking for.

Oh, sorry for the confusion then, I meant demos for myself to view.
I'm not a company lol, just a simple client trying to find a new host. As different hosts offer different panels, I wanted to ask for suggestions on panels, and as those three panels seemed to be the most popular for end-user clients like myself, I wanted to see some demos of them in action.

Basically, it's the "filtering" step so I can narrow down what type of host I will look for based on this. Most hosts offer demos of these panels, but I was trying to see if there was a place that collected these together, and if there were other good panels besides cPanel, ensim and Plesk, with demos of those so I could make a good decision.
And I know some panels are windows-only so I specified I'd be using linux.

Well in that case nothing beats a live demo :)

cPanel: http://www.cpanel.net/
Ensim: http://www.ensim.com/products/pro/demo.html
Plesk (7.6 Windows): http://www.swsoft.com/en/products/plesk76win/demo/
Plesk (8 Linux): http://www.swsoft.com/en/products/plesk8/demo/

lol I should've figured as much :P
Are there any other good and well-supported control panels out there?
If not I'll just limit myself to these three and pick one to require my next host to have.

Oh man don't make me start listing off the CP's out there :)

HSphere
Helm
DirectAdmin

those 3 also are worth taking a look at :D

lol ok I'll take a look at the first 3 (tho is there any reason there are 2 Plesk demo's for different versions?) and look for demos of the second three.
Any others I'll gladly accept :)
Thanks again

edit: any sites with a summary of the pro's and con's of each?
edit2: lol nevermind i'm blind x_X didn't read the windows/linux thing
edit3: (haha how many of these will there be...)
I noticed these all have a lot of different levels of access.. while good, I'm not sure which fits me the best.. I don't think I'm a server/reseller so would I go to client demo or domain owner demo.. or something.. o.O I'm really confused here lol

All right, assuming these are the only 6 viable control panels I can use..
I had trouble finding the right demo's at the official sites, but I did manage to demo them off hosting providers, since they should probably give u the correct access to demo.

In any case I think I'd prefer cPanel, Plesk or DirectAdmin..

Hsphere is a little too.... I'm not sure what the word is lol, but not to my liking.
Helm seems windows-only, but even if it's not, it seems kinda buggy..or insecure maybe. The main site's demo had its password changed, and some web host's own helm demo was suspended for some reason.
Ensim I remember being powerful but I dunno what I'm looking at anymore. I don't mind that it's all text but I have no idea where any settings are or how to change anything, so ensim is out.

For the ones I do like however,
cPanel is cPanel, I've used it for 3 years and am familiar with it, has a wide popularity/support and generally works well enough, I know how to get to most options.
Plesk looks really really nice, but will take some getting used to, to find where all the options are. On first glance, it looks like it has less functionality/features than cPanel.. is this control-panel-dependant, or is it up to the host to provide features?
DirectAdmin almost looks like a cross between the two, looks better than cPanel and slightly more (visible at a first glance) functionality than Plesk. It looks quite appealing, but as I'm used to and most familiar with cPanel, it gets some bias there. Also, my current backups are cPanel, so I would assume I need a cPanel server to restore them.. it gets another plus there.

What can you guys suggest from all this?
Anything that can be said about the stability/security/resource usage/etc about these panels?

Thanks again

I think you ended up with what I would call the big 3 (cPanel, Plesk, and DirectAdmin). From reading over your reply I would honestly suggest that you go with cPanel as you have been using it for a long time and it does provide all the features you want.

I have worked with plesk lately and I do not care for it (it seems pretty difficult to get anything done in it as I find myself clicking all over the place just to find the area I need to get to). In addition I don't like the way the software is written with forcing you to wait on each section to load and breaking the ability to click the back button. The more I use it and get used to it the "nicer' it is, and it can provide a feature set right up there and beyond some of the other control panels (for example built in Anti-Virus control, Application Vault, and TomCat support) but that is really up to the hose.

DirectAdmin is my panel of choice but it's all about personal prefrence. I find DirectAdmin to be the simplest to use, and most light weight on the resource usage (this is from a provider's view, you being a customer shouldn't worry too much about resource usage as it's up to the host to provid the grunt to push the control panel). I also find it to be quicker (sometimes) than cPanel and Plesk but observations will vary. I have seen sllloowww DirectAdmin systems before as well.

It's feature set would match cPanel IMHO, but the navigation doesn't quite show it. With Installatron you recieve the same functions that you get with Fantastico on cPanel.

In the end if you have been using cPanel for years I truly believe it will be the very best for you. It provides all the features that you need and you are the most familiar with it.

lol So it looks like Plesk is a more graphic Ensim?
In any case, thanks for that quick overview, it looks like cPanel would be best for me, with DirectAdmin as a last resort sort of option.. Since you seem to have experience with all of them I'll take your word for it :)
What about security concerns, though? Is any panel particularly less secure/stable than the other?

Well security is your host's issue much more than it is yours (or at least that's how it should be!) but in any event none of them have any large known secuirty concerns. Not working from the admin side of Plesk and cPanel much I can't comment fully on them other than to say I have heard cPanel has had some secuirty issues in the past, but I don't know of any at the moment. DirectAdmin hasn't had any security problems that I have ever seen or heard of and I can't say Plesk has had anything I have known about either.

Excellent then.
One more thing, and this is probably one of the msot important things for me right now..
How does each panel handle multiple (add-on) domains?
I am trying to host several, completely different and completely separated sites with their own domains on one account, so I would like to know how they handle the directory structure, or however they handle this task.

I can't speak for cPanel or Plesk on this (I have never used them as a true user before); however, with DirectAdmin they are each given their own directory in the following structure.

/home/username/domains/domain.com/public_html
/home/username/domains/domain.com/private_html

a different domain.com folder for each of the domains obviously.

Hmm, well, would the root directory there be /domains/ then?
I wish to install Expression Engine to power all my sites but with only one license, to make it work I need to isntall it in the root, then run each domain off there.

It's too bad I don't have a spare domain to run some tests with right now, I still have my cpanel account with HostPC/CH so I could try to see how it organizes an add-on domain.

I think if you have CPanel backups of your site, then CPanel is probably what you should go with. Generally speaking, all of the above control panels do similar things, so it really becomes a decision based on which panel you can more easily use. In the end, your website will still display the same, regardless of the control panel you choose.... and that's the most important thing anyways.

LINUX control panels:

CPanel
Plesk
Direct Admin
ServerCP (www.zervex.com)

Any of those panels will do..... but with your familiarity with CPanel, and the fact you have CPanel backups, choosing a CPanel host would be your smartest/safest move IMO.

Since there are so many CPanel hosts out there, your biggest concern now should be choosing one with the support/price/uptime combination you need.

Best of luck :)

Rob.

It's too bad I don't have a spare domain to run some tests with right now, I still have my cpanel account with HostPC/CH so I could try to see how it organizes an add-on domain.


Addons are placed in subdirectories of the main account. (you can put it anywhere inside the account and use a redirect to point to it if you want) A FTP user is created for the addon so FTP access can be provided to that subdirectory tree only. The addon domain user will not have cPanel access unless access to the cPanel account is provided.

Thanks Dave,
Could you give me an idea of how the directory structure would look like?
I can picture the add-on domains since they'll be subdir's of the "main account" but what is the main account? The main (first) domain?

This is important because I am trying to install a single-license ExpressionEngine to power multiple sites and the only way to do that is to install EE into the "root" directory, according to their FAQs.

Currently, when I log into my cPanel and go to file manager, my defualt root directory seems to be /home/username/
and my site files are in /home/username/public_html
although there is also a /www folder that seems to do the exact same thing as /public_html (I'm confused about that one.) And there's also a /public_ftp folder I'm not quite sure what that does.

Would an add-on then be /home/username/addon/public_html ?

Thanks Dave,
Could you give me an idea of how the directory structure would look like?
I can picture the add-on domains since they'll be subdir's of the "main account" but what is the main account? The main (first) domain?



It would be

/home/username/ -- root of the user's area
/home/username/public_html/ -- user's web root
/home/username/public_html/addonname/ -- addon's web root (they don't have a non web root atm)
/home/username/public_ftp/ -- anonymous FTP root




This is important because I am trying to install a single-license ExpressionEngine to power multiple sites and the only way to do that is to install EE into the "root" directory, according to their FAQs.


Not sure which "root" they mean. I've supplied a few different "roots" above.



Currently, when I log into my cPanel and go to file manager, my defualt root directory seems to be /home/username/
and my site files are in /home/username/public_html
although there is also a /www folder that seems to do the exact same thing as /public_html (I'm confused about that one.)

www is a symlink to /public_html/

Thanks for the quick response!

This is from the EE FAQ from their site (www.pmachine.com/ee/faq/):
Can I set up multiple weblogs, each with a different domain, using one installation of ExpressionEngine?

Yes this is possible, assuming your hosting provider allows you to map discreet domains to sub-directories within one hosting account. The EE backend files must be accessible to all domains through a common file system, which is only possible if your domains all reside on the same server, within the same master directory root. It does take a little more set-up to get EE to work this way, and there are some limits to how far you can take the concept, but generally it can work. Note: Please check our License Agreement to make sure your usage doesn't violate the terms.

Yes, there are several roots apparently, I just got a little more confused lol.
Thanks for clarifying www and public_ftp though.
In any case, would it work based on the information above?

Yea, all your roots reside in a master root (/home/user/) Your public_html -- main docroot, and /home/user/public_html/addons -- the addon docroots. As far as configuration of EE, I'm not familiar with it so I'd check their forums or site for more info.

All right, thanks for the help :)
I will ask around on their forums about their setups with various control panels.