Hello all!

We are pleased to announce that SimpleCP (www.simplecp.com) is expected to be released within the first 3 weeks of July!

Please check constantly for updates! In addition, we are looking for beta testers and developers! If you are interested in helping out, please email help@simplecp.com

Thanks!

I've just taken a very quick look at it and it looks good. I'm not sure if it has this feature, but you've got to have some kind of template support, as all hosts would like to customize the look of the control panel, to allow integration into their own company. After saying that... the current design you have there is already smart/nice.

This isn'st a post to become a beta tester, sorry :d. But well done on what you've achieved so far.

Alan

Thanks very much!
We are already looking into the template system, it will probably not be available in the first release, but it will definately be an update... but then again, if it is pushed enough, we will try to get the templates worked in there.

we are also in the process of finishing the DNS manager and adding SSL support to the client.

We have a small todo list before releasing:
Finish DNS
Finish SSL
Create nicer install scripts (right now, we have install scripts, they are very messy)
An update system.

Which brings me to a question:
How should I work the update system?
1) Admin types a URL into an update box and it will download and install - but the problem is if the download is large (happened with cobalts about 20MB) the browser will time out
2) Admin types a URL and then every 15 minutes a cron job is run to download the updates and then install it - mabey

any other suggestions/comments ? Thanks

Sounds good.

The update system could be done in other ways too... hmmm... if it's a CP for the whole server, then you can have the System Admin SSH in as root and run a script? Or get them to click a link in the Admin interface, and then the script will activate it on the server and email the admin on whats going on, such as if it went successfully or if there was any errors. This would avoid any browse time outs.

Alan

Thats a very good idea! How about a link in the sysadmin that will show the admin all the available updates. Then the admin can check off the ones he wants and the server will email him the status. Very nice.

Thanks!

Yes, that'll work, just make sure that it doesn't display things in the browser, as it'll most likely time out. I hate it when you've got to wait for things to update in the browser when installing large programs, as sometimes you never know if it's stopped or not :).

Alan

Hi. Would the following pricing plan be ok

For Individual/Private Use: Free
For Web Hosting Company: $10 one time donation for unlimited servers
For Data Centers with > 100 servers: $10 one time per server otherwise $10 one time donation for unlimited servers

My target with this project is to create very low cost CP for hosting companies to reduce cost, (but I still need to put food on the table) - not for datacenters with 1000's of servers to reduce their cost.

I don't feel like building a license thing into the control panel - will people actualy donate $10 ?

The pricing plan is good, but it's also slightly confusing for data centers. I would offer it free for personal use and then charge say $20 per year at least or something per year. We want something that is going to continue to develop and become a better product if we plan to use it for offering web hosting. But if the development team doesn't have the cash to do it then there's no point in using it. You should charge whatever you think that you need to keep the product going and we'll then see if we are prepared to pay the price for it.

Alan

Dude, if you can give us the functionality of cpanel, I'll donate a hell of a lot more than $10. :) Looks good!

That's what I was thinking... it could easily become close to CPanel, in which case a lot of customers would be happy to donate a one off fee, instead of paying the monthly costs of CPanel.

Alan

Originally posted by Drewcifer
Dude, if you can give us the functionality of cpanel, I'll donate a hell of a lot more than $10. :) Looks good!

What features would you like to see?

Please note we've moved our demo to a slower machine, so if it starts to bug out on you, give it a second :)

In addition, does anyone know of a live demo (or can set me up with one for a few minutes) so that I can see what CPANEL offers end users, i've seen static HTML demos of the main page, but i cant goto the subpages like MX settings or apache handlers

Thanks :)

Originally posted by MaB


What features would you like to see?

Please note we've moved our demo to a slower machine, so if it starts to bug out on you, give it a second :)

In addition, does anyone know of a live demo (or can set me up with one for a few minutes) so that I can see what CPANEL offers end users, i've seen static HTML demos of the main page, but i cant goto the subpages like MX settings or apache handlers

Thanks :)

Contact me at diederik@freestylehosting.com or ICQ 25949802 - And i'll set up a (free) account for you , so you can see how CPanel works ;)

Alright, i saw cpanel :)

The features that we will be adding (or hope to add)
Webmail
Email Blockers (anyone recommend a good way to do this? or should we custom-develop a solution :( )
Modify MX Entry
Mailing lists (we will see what happens with that)
Backup SQL/email/ftp settings/subdomains
Redirects (whats the best way for this? .htaccess.. that gets messy if they already have one and I do not want to modify httpd.conf....)
Mime types and apache handlers WONT be included
Cron Job
File Manager
Network Tools
And some built in cgi scripts - probably clock, counter, guestbook, countdown, and others - but not 100% sure about that.

Anything else I'm missing?

Originally posted by MaB
Anything else I'm missing?

Nope :)

I'm just glad that you're keeping the price cheap, I like it.

It looks really good, btw.

Thanks, we are trying :)

If anyone has any good ideas on how to implement a simple template system, let me know. Should i use seperate text files for each screen and give users the ability to edit, or should there be 1 main template file, or.... again, I've never used anything but Cobalt and the CP that im going to be offering, so I don't know how to make skins or how they interact/work...

Thanks

The template system that I like the best is where you have one main template which covers the header and footer, and this is always wrapped around another template file, which are the sub-templates of forms etc. So you have your main template, and an example of another templat file would be the DNS screen where you make DNS changes... the DNS form will be the other template. I hope you understand that as it's a little confusing :).

Alan

I understand :)

I think for the first release, we will just have one main template, where the customer can customize header, footer and colors of the tables/links/text/etc...

The more complicated templates will just delay a release :) We will surely make a newer template system available via update system.

Thanks

Originally posted by MaB


What features would you like to see?


Thanks :)

Before I just blurt it out, let me really think about it and I'll come up with a good list. I'm assuming you have the cpanel demo already. If not, I'd be glad to provide you with whatever you need. :)

Thanks for the offer :) We have already been setup with a demo account! But it is appreciated. Just to let you all know, we've already put the network tools in along with forwards :) = .htaccess on its way, still pondering how to do it...

Avi,

I am ready to pay $50/year-server or even more if I can have bug free version of your CP (with only current features).

If you can develop a better reseller level it will become a popular CP.

By the way would you please describe a little about file structure you have used? (Site directories etc)

Mac

Hi. While i can't promise you a bug free version, I can promise you an inexpensive CP to compete with pay ones. The problem is I am a one man team with some developers and I'm not getting paid to sit down and write this :) - in addition, if pay control panels have their rare bugs, mine may have some too :) Don't worry, we will be quick to update and fix them:)

File structure really comes from cobalt:
/home/sites/SITEX/web, users, certs, logs
that is also linked to /home/sites/www.domain.com

/etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf for apache config /usr/sbin/httpd apache binary /etc/named.conf /etc/named, /etc/admserv/conf/httpd.conf for admin httpd files, /usr/admserv is where the magic happens
/var/lib/mysql, all the good stuff :)

It should be simple to transfer from cobalt to this, but that is a little ahead of myself at this moment.

I agree with the reseller statement, and we are working on it. We hope to have something close to webhostingmanager (feature-wise - setting up domains etc) in the near future, but our main goal right now is just to give startups and other companies an alternative to other expensive cp's. Once the main cp is out, we will start to offer updates which will include resellers and others. Again, right now we have a very simple reseller structure, a domain can "own" another domain - so that customerX can log into customerY's control panel using customerX's username/password. That's it for now, but it will get better :)

Also, let me make a request, that any and all funding / donations once we release the CP (or even before, but we don't think you will) will be extremely helpful.

Thank you all for your time and interest :)

Hi. we are working on a template system and would like to get a basic cpanel theme - basic nothing advanced so we can see how they are setup and structured

Thanks :)

What languages is this cp being programmed in?

Perl 100% for front and back end, with MySQL database driving it all :)

On a side note, some good news:
Once we will justbe finishing up the DNS section and the Updates section to hopefully make a very early release (in the next week or 2) to get things going :) All the rest will be updates :)

Have fun, good luck, keep viewing the demo and asking questions :)

Originally posted by 311
What languages is this cp being programmed in?

If I can remember it correctly, it was Perl + MySQL , please correct me if I'm wrong :)

Wildcard DNS support would be nice and the ability to have email addresses with the same username on different accounts, like cpanel supports, where the user has to log into his email account with his full email address rather than just username. I think this would require the use of exim or some other mail server than sendmail.

Thanks for the suggestions! Right now, we don't have enought man power to make the CP dummy proof (we will over the summer) so for this release the cp will allow invalid dns entries unfortunately - but i don't think wildcards will work :( Sorry. it is definately on the todo list though!
Again, the email account idea is great, but at this time I dont think we can seperate it from sendmail and incorporate a whole new mail system in :( But these are great features that are on the list for future features :)

Thanks :)

DNS manager complete :) Update manager is last feature on the list before a beta release! Sign up for beta testing guys!

Originally posted by MaB
DNS manager complete :) Update manager is last feature on the list before a beta release! Sign up for beta testing guys!

How would we sign up for beta testing, again??

goto simplecp.com and there is a url to sign up for updates, put yourself on that list :)

Hi. We have released the beta version for all you beta testers, goto http://www.simplecp.com/beta.html

Let me remind you 1000 more times:
1. We are NOT responsible for your use of this.
2. we have not tested this software extensively for invalid inputs
3. do NOT install this on a live system
4. this will DELETE ANY OTHER CP include password and apache settings!
5. This release is NOT idiot proof and NOT for newbies
6. There is NO upgrade feature. You will need to override the beta version once newer versions come out

With all that in mind, please test it as much as possible and report back to us :)

I have to say it one last time: DO NOT USE THIS IN A PRODUCTION SYSTEM - DO NOT USE THIS IF YOU ARE NEW - THIS WILL OVERRIDE IMPORTANT APACHE/PASSWORD/DNS FILES!

Have a good one,

Please note, this release runs on redhat 7.1 and will run on 7.2 by updating one file. Details are available on our beta page.

:)

A built-in billing manager, helpdesk would be nice to add to your SimpleCP and I think many webhosts will love them. You don't have to write these scripts, many free scripts out there, just integrate them into your CP. If you need to see Cpanel template files, email me, I also plan to make a template for your CP when I have free time. Good luck.

Thanks for the suggestions :) We already have written our own billing software that we use that can be intergrated into the control panel, but since it is dealing with customers $$ and cc#'s, i figured its best not to rush :)

Right now, the basic cp is out for beta, we want people to test it and make sure the base product is working before we add all the bells and whistles :)

Thanks, (but, billing system and helpdesk are on the todo list)

I wouldn't bother with a ticket system. Use PerlDesk, it's written in the same language and the copyrighted version is free. No sense in doing work that's already been done :).