Web Administration Tools For Hosting Web Sites?

ckm asks: "I work for a company where we support hundreds of Web sites. These are sites we own, but are run by contract Webmasters. So far, we've been hosting the sites at various companies and relying on them for tech support and management. We'd like to move towards hosting these sites ourselves, and I've been looking around for 'control panels' that are similar to what's available at the hosting companies. Everything I've found so far is either too complicated, too primitive or too expensive . Are all of these companies writing their own Web-based site management tools (for stuff like e-mail, httpd, forums, etc...)? Keeping in mind that most of our end users are quite un-technical (Webmin is definitely too complicated), does anyone have any ideas, solutions?"

Cobalt RAQ Admin

[imthejman]

You might want to check out getting a Cobalt RAQ 2 or RAQ 3 server. They have this great browser admin you are seeking, and you can find them on ebay for under $1000. One server can support hundereds of domains, and they are quite feature packed. I'm thinking of picking up one myself.

Start with Webmin

[TierNet]

Webmin is definitely too complicated

I think your best bet is to start with Webmin and make it more friendly and more suited to your application.

Yes...

[keepper]

Actually, most company write their own....

I come from 3 years experience in a medium size hosting/colo company, and we wrote our own...

Basically, the reasoning is that nothing quite fits everyones enviroment, so you do use other tools, but you modify and/or integrate them into your own.

So.. in any case, if you would like one coded... hehe j/k (unless ... ) :P

Re:Cobalt RAQ Admin

[cperciva]

You might want to check out getting a Cobalt RAQ 2 or RAQ 3 server. I'm thinking of picking up one myself.

I strongly suggest otherwise. From my own experience with a RAQ3 server, I can say that they are overpriced, underpowered, unstable, and generally a PITA. And whlie they have a nice interface, there are surprisingly simple things, like catch-all everything@domain email which you can't do.

Not to mention the general irritation of being told to wait two weeks for a Cobalt-approved patch for a security hole.

webmin may be complicated but....

[z84976]

Don't forget you can always create a user within webmin who only has authority to tamper with HTTP configuration... thus eliminating all of the unrelated, "confusing" options presented by the other webmin modules. When the HTTP admin user logs in, they will only see Apache configuration. A bit of training there would go a long way. Not to seem like a hard-ass, but there's no substitute for intelligent admins.... I for one am not a super-skilled apache admin, but you'd be surprised how far the documentation at their site [apache.org]. For that matter, it's probably on your local server, too. Must it be web-based? If not, check into Comanche.

Zope, Frontier, & WebObjects

[SamHill]

Three options I can think of are

1. Digital Creations' Zope [zope.org]
2. UserLand's [userland.com] Frontier [userland.com].
3. Apple's WebObjects [apple.com]

Zope and Frontier are similar tools, giving you both very powerful behind-the-scenes scripting and database access and customizable easy-to-use frontends.

Frontier started as a scripting environment for the Macintosh, evolved into a great tool for designing complex static Web sites, and is now a full-blown HTTP server with very powerful database features. It's very XML-enabled (UserLand is active in the XML developer community, and is a co-author of SOAP [userland.com]). Manila [userland.com] gives you Web-based editing capabilities. See the EditThisPage Top 100 [editthispage.com] for some examples of what people are doing with Manila.

There are three main downsides to Frontier from my perspective that may not be an issue for your company:

1. It's expensive. US$899 per copy (basically per machine), with volume discounts for five or more licenses.
2. At the moment, it only runs on Windows (2000 and NT, of course, but also 95 and 98) and Macintosh. There is supposed to be a port to Linux underway, but the last time I heard anything, that port was going to be using WINE, and so would be x86-only.
3. It's proprietary. As a commercial product, the source is closed. It has a powerful scripting language called UserTalk that can allow you to do amazing things, but I don't know how easy it would be to write extensions.

Zope is a lot like Frontier, but free. It's written in Python, making it easier to write extensions, and is open source. It should run on any platform that can host a Python interpreter (Unix, Windows, Mac, for sure, but also BeOS and some others). The big downside to Zope is that it has virtually no useful ``getting started'' documentation right now (although an O'Reilly book is forthcoming). As a result, I suspect you'd have to do a fair amount of handholding to get people started.

WebObjects is a pretty high-end solution for building Web applications. It's been around for a while, and has a pretty good reputation, but it's definitely not for amateurs. It's now actually cheaper than Frontier (US$699 per copy). It runs on Mac OS X Server, Windows NT 4.0 and Windows 2000, Solaris 2.6 and 2.7, and HP-UX 11. (The development tools run on Mac OS X Server and Windows NT and 2000.) Programmable using Java, Objective C, or WebScript. WebObjects is definitely more oriented toward centralized control, and doesn't (by default) provide support for individual webmasters to run their own sites within its aegis.

I hope that gives you some ideas.

webmin is okay

[eva2000]

well i am using webmin right now as a newbie to server admin functions for my sites at rackspace.com... it ain't the easiest to learn but it works well... you can also see plesk.com and ensim.com for other control panels...

eGrail

[SEWilco]

Newstrolls just mentioned eGrail. The eGrail web site is a little rough -- I think there are Microsoft proprietary characters splattered around. There's not a good description of the capabilities of eGrail. I did find this eGrail features summary [egrail.org].