Web Hosting Talk : Advertising Forums : Web Hosting Related Offers & Requests : Other Offers & Requests : SimpleCP Release Date

[MaB]

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!

[ho247]

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

[MaB]

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

[ho247]

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

[MaB]

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!

[ho247]

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

[MaB]

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 ?

[ho247]

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

[Drewcifer]

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

[ho247]

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

[MaB]

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

[diederik]

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

[MaB]

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?

[311]

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.

[MaB]

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