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  1. #1

    Seeking investors/partners for a serious control panel project.

    Firstly, let me say that I am well aware of all the failed control panel projects that have come and gone. I can't imagine why, other than the programmers lacked the motivation or skills. This is not one of those situations, as tired some of us are of seeing such things and promises.

    I have a near complete back-end for a control panel that will rival any others out there. What's the difference? How about none of the bugs and security issues the one's out there suffer from.

    There's no excuse. Maybe nothing is perfect, but the one's out there are far from even being decent. I am personally tired of all the extra time each day dealing with the faults in other people's software.

    Since there's few control panels out there that offer any decent features and the one's that do suffer from too many problems, the only option is to do it yourself and do it right.

    I am more than confident I can and I've started to already. This doesn't take "years" to complete, as some of the failed promises to create new control panel by would-be competitors have promised.

    The problem. Unless there's some financial backing, I won't have the time to invest to get a good product out in any reasonable amount of time. This doesn't mean it would be a one-man operation either.

    However, the project would likely take about 6 to 12 months to completion with one person doing the majority of the work. I have years of experience in this and have nearly coded complete control panels myself.

    I don't mean to seem arrogant, but I know I can do it right and I'll be more than happy to explain how and why, as well as the features and provide references from known people in the web hosting industry.

    I've had past offers and regret not taking them, so I'm seeking some now. Don't let this terse post fool you, this isn't a pipe dream, and I am completely serious. I think it's best to just say what needs to be said.

    There needs to be a good, quality and secure control panel created. One that won't take over the system in bad ways and will be a complete solution, and above all, one that won't BREAK or be insecure.

    Perhaps a fool's promise in some people's eyes, but there's no reason why a well thought out design can't result in a superior solution without all the problems you see with existing products. I'll surely explain how and why if you show interest.

    I know this isn't a new idea and there's a few products out there. I'm fed up with those products, but I don't have the financial backing to commit all day, every day to a large project of this nature, and I don't feel like donating my time for free either.

    I will outline the project to interested parties, why I feel it's a worthy project and why you should invest and what you will get out of it. Obviously you will receive a partnership and own a percentage of the company and product and a portion of the profits.

    This is a very good way to make money off a product and service that will always be in demand, and something people are more than happy to give you business if you have a good product and treat your customers right.

    I recently had an offer to cover 1 (one) year's worth of development costs, where I can commit to the project full time, but this isn't definite and they are dragging their feet. Mostly because they aren't wise to Internet/Hosting related businesses and are justifiably hesitant to drop a large investment into a project they don't know the overall value of.

    I believe anyone that would find this offer remotely interesting to them would understand the value of such a product and how there's more than enough room for improvement given the current control panel products out now. Please contact logicman@charter.net for more information, and I'll be happy to discuss it.

    However, please do not contact me simply to find out why you should bother, just because you're curious to know things. Depending on the information you request and how serious you are, your agreement to an NDA may be required prior to any disclosure of specific aspects and features of the planned product. Thank you for your interest.

  2. #2
    1. You didn't say what type of control panel it was.
    2. eh, well 6-12 months for 1 project is a bit much for 1 project

    eh?

  3. #3
    Originally posted by DeMoKiLL
    1. You didn't say what type of control panel it was.
    2. eh, well 6-12 months for 1 project is a bit much for 1 project

    eh?

    Pardon, I had assumed that the functions of a control panel wouldn't need to be outlined, but that was a bit short sighted of me. I had intended to explain in correspondence with interested parties to see if they were interested.

    It would be best to explain that it is a control panel with multiple user interfaces. Administrator, staff, various reseller and end-user/client levels, as well as billing and support. Clustering, master/slave relationships and all the other type of functionality that would create a fully functional, complete control panel system.

    The control panel would work on Linux systems (Redhat Enterprise, Fedora, Slackware, etc.) as well as FreeBSD/NetBSD. A Windows based control panel is not planned. I'm not personally interested in creating one anyway. This project has many features I am not going to list, nor how the internals are designed, nor the interaction, as you can understand, so it's a little difficult to justify the reasons why it would take longer than you might assume.

    After all, this "one project" is pretty much going to allow user's to start with a bare system and have a complete, dynamically updating web hosting service control panel interface to allow them to do anything they could need from a control panel, making their lives a heck of a lot easier, since that would be the job of the development team. This is a project that consists of hundreds of others when you break down everything it will be doing.

    As for 6 to 12 months being a bit much in your opinion, you will note that I said if one person was doing the majority of the work. A full featured control panel takes a lot of design, planning and coding. It will do more than you may assume, perhaps.

    To have a control panel install, update your entire system, doing server hardening, efficient and secure configurations and keeping that software up to date and secure on the fly (if users choose to), a good licensing system, low bandwidth, stable builds and releases, along with all the functionality and interaction between client and server applications/interfaces and interprocess communications without bugs and done right, a goal of 6 to 12 months is not unreasonable by any stretch.

    I would assume anyone that would believe such a large project could be completed, fully tested and released without issue as a professional product should be in any less time, probably hasn't had real world experience in the areas required to do such a project. Of course, you may not have assumed the project was going to be so large, but as you can see, and as I said, it will be. Were you further interested, or just interested in knowing?

  4. #4
    Also, I didn't wish to post this in the jobs and offers forum, but it seemed to be the closest forum topic/area. I can't post in the other offers forum for some reason (perhaps because I'm new and don't have enough posts?).

    I also attempted to go to the site to buy a sticky post for this, but the site is not complete or suffers from problems and the prices aren't updated. Additionally, the offer in an above thread says it starts on Jun 19th, but the next sticky date's weekly 'block' starts June 20th.

    Overall, it was not clear how or what needed to be done to obtain it, so pardon my post if it's not best suited for this forum over another. I'll email and try and get this (or another) post sticky in a few days.

  5. #5
    2. eh, well 6-12 months for 1 project is a bit much for 1 project
    Not at all

    I assume that you'll have ideas to make this different from the numerous others out there?
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  6. #6
    Exactly. Many out there just have a daemon running and accepting connections, which ultimately points to open source webmail, CGI and PHP scripts and executing calls to the system or passing arguments to programs on the system or preexisting scripts.

    I'd estimate, perhaps naively and off the top of my head, that to create only a user-end control panel with features such as Cpanel has, throwing in things like phpMyAdmin, SquirrelMail, Horde, Neomail, open source CGI and PHP scripts, QmailAdmin for all the email interface (which is far better than Cpanel's system anyway), it wouldn't be unreasonable (in regards to the client panel only) to complete it from scratch with a simple daemon in, I'd say, maybe a couple of weeks.

    That wouldn't include updates, licensing, the admin site, much configuration and wouldn't really be anything too great (there's enough simple, thrown-together control panels out there that do that already). This is, as much as it could be, something fairly different, and in my opinion, superior and dare I say "right". Of course I'm going to have faith in a project I'm involved in though, but I intend to meet my goals. I don't think this time frame I estimated is at all unusual for such a project, as I'm sure most will agree. (Most would probably say it's too optimistic, if anything).

  7. #7
    A few people have inquired about being involved in the design/skins aspect of the control panel project. I just wanted to say that this is actually something I might be very interested in.

    I have an extremely talented designer/graphics guy available, but he's usually pretty busy. I can do the layout and templates without problems, but I'm not thrilled with my graphic abilities, so I might seek some assistance in that regard, unrelated to the programming aspects others have shown interest in.

    Ideally, the investor issue is the biggest one, however. It would be a challenge to develop as much as I wish to on this project, if I am working full time contracting my programming and admin and security services. Not that I don't mind, but it's one or the other and I'm tired of working Sundays (I really like weekend time!) :)

    Nonetheless, there will be full documentation and templates outlining exactly what all the features are, which will make it extremely easy for people to create skins for the control panel, much like many have done for Cpanel, but these will be even easier to create and design around.

    The licensee's will be able to modify and use their own templates as they wish, but some affiliation with some designers creating skins and maybe offering them upon the first launch would be cool. I don't mean to get ahead of myself (or anyone else) here, but if this is something you're interested in, certainly contact me. I also expect people only interested in that sort of commitment, once they have some working examples, so that's not a problem. Thanks.
    Last edited by LogicMan; 06-20-2004 at 02:10 AM.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Dec 2001
    Location
    Arizona
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    LogicMan, contact me and we can talk..

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