I am getting a dialtone server and was wondering wether to opt for plesk or just stick with the control panel Dialtone give you.

I am not going to be reselling space, all the sites hosted on the server will be managed by me.

But I readily admit I know shag all about Unix, so would plesk make life easier or is the control panel Dialtone give you just as good?

All I need to do is the usual, create users, managing mail boxes, manage mysql databases etc.

Thanks in advance.

Brian

Hello Brian,

I've never used DialTone control panel, but Plesk control panel is sooo easy to use, and the most important thing is that it is very stable. You can create user account, domain names, mysql database, and so on. Everything is in one package.

Also, plesk frees you up from a lot of administration task. I would definitely recommend it.

Best Regards,

Does plesk give you a webmail function, so that my clients can access email thru the web? If so is the webmail system any good and can it handle html emails?

Thanks

Yep it does... IMP if I recall, at least on the plesk server I used to have.. that was on 2.5.

~
kl

Cweb is right.

The webmail will be accessible in this format: http://webmail.yourdomain.com. It doesn't have the capability to accept html email yet (it will be in the future). But there's popper mail that can, which you can install it quite easily.

Best Regards,

Originally posted by leftofcentre
I am getting a dialtone server and was wondering wether to opt for plesk or just stick with the control panel Dialtone give you.

I am not going to be reselling space, all the sites hosted on the server will be managed by me.

But I readily admit I know shag all about Unix, so would plesk make life easier or is the control panel Dialtone give you just as good?

All I need to do is the usual, create users, managing mail boxes, manage mysql databases etc.

Thanks in advance.

Brian

I have used the Dialtone control panel and demo'd Plesk -- go for Plesk. One of the reasons they began offering Plesk was because there were so many complaints about their inhouse control panel.

Originally posted by Curious Too

One of the reasons they began offering Plesk was because there were so many complaints about their inhouse control panel.

I suppose that would make sense ;-)

Brian

Just a personal warning. Plesk is VERY good and VERY stable but written in 100% PHP. So if you ever have to install something that requires a reinstall of PHP, you could blow away the CP.

So be sure you check with Plesk before doing anything with PHP.

MikeA: that's entirely incorrect.

Plesk uses a separate instance of Apache and mod_php for itself, so you could reinstall, uninstall, set on fire or do any number of other things with your regular php, Plesk would still work. ;)

the dialtone cp works, but its very very limited :)

I'd also suggest you to go with Plesk, especially if it's offered free of charge with the server :)

Originally posted by twrs
I'd also suggest you to go with Plesk, especially if it's offered free of charge with the server :)

Unfortunatly its not free, They are looking $30 a month for plesk, is it worth $360 dollars a year?

I probaully will go for it, anything that makes life easier :)

Brian

Is it an unlimited licence with upgrades included in the price...?

If it is, than it's a good price for the first two years but in the long term, you're better off buying it yourself. Check the Plesk's website for pricing and keep in mind that you can probably get a hefty discount from the resellers/partners...

dont ever use dialtones control panel, i got stuck with it for awhile and it was a nightmare. Eventually you get several errors within the control panel and it creates a mess. Also when i reported bugs in their own software, they wanted to bill me so they could look at it....:eek:

I would like to note that when in business, do not rely on non-portable products or services to run your business.

For example - use a merchant processing gateway which is compatible with multiple banks - don't use one written by your bank. You do this so if your account gets closed, or your bank annoys you - you can change banks without much hassle and recoding of your scripts.

The same goes for web hosting control panels. Do not use propriatry CP's which are specific to the dedicated hosting provider. What happens when you decide to move providers?

Save the headache later

I have used many control panels and although I don't think Plesk is the best CP (feature and use wise) it is still easier to learn and more user/enduser friendly than the DI interface IMHO.

Regards

Originally posted by seg fault
What happens when you decide to move providers?


Oh right.. can plesk be used to save all your settings and transfer them to a new server?? I did not know that, I suppose a feature like that is very handy to have. But in real life does this feature work or is there limitations in it?

Brian

Plesk has a backup script, which is very handy if you want to move Plesk account from one server to another. However, for non-plesk server, you may have to do it manually.

i think the moral of the story is dont use dialtones cp

Originally posted by leftofcentre


Oh right.. can plesk be used to save all your settings and transfer them to a new server?? I did not know that, I suppose a feature like that is very handy to have. But in real life does this feature work or is there limitations in it?

Brian

You can config only backup and restores, which is quite fast and only copies the apache config, mail settings, and account settings

You can move a single client, multiple clients or all clients with a very easy backup tool (command line).

Plesk is alot better than many control panels simply because it's backup features are far superior.