# ISPconfig: ISP control panel

## andersbk

Anyone used this and care to comment?

http://www.ispconfig.org/

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## leks

Bump*

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## gurke

Once again: *bump*

Looks nice.

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## ycUygB1

I have used ISPConfig and VHCS also.

Let me save you a lot of pain.  Avoid them both.

VHCS is so bad you can't even install it.  After a couple of days of trying

to install, you will actually find that there are bugs in the install script so severe

that you have to patch them before you can install the thing.  Basically, it only

works on Debian, and only if you dig through the internet to find the patch to the 

install script.  It is like your worst nightmare.  Believe me.

ISPConfig was much better than horrible.  It was just plain bad.

I was able to install it because I installed the pieces separately (ProFTP, named, MySQL,

Apache 2.2.2, and Postfix) and figured out how they worked first.

The manual is worthless.  It basically says things like, 'Enter the IP address' next to the blank

for 'IP address', but does not say which IP address.  The forums are useless.  What you really

get with ISPConfig is the opportunity to have a lot of unexplained blanks on their PHP scripts.

You make your best guess about what these blanks might do, then hit "OK" and watch all your

conf scripts get nuked and your services go down.  Then, when you try to restart your services,

you find the conf files in a unusable state.  

It is much easier to read the following and do all the configuration manually for your hosting clients:

BIND:  Read "DNS and BIND" by Albitz and Liu.  It is old, but still works, except don't use nslookup.

Then get your free dns services from freedns.afraid.org and avoid running a BIND server!  Why bother?

Postfix:  Read Postfix, The Definitive Guide, by Kyle Dent.

ProFTP is pretty easy to install and use in standalone mode.

Apache.org is awesome.  That is documentation.  Use httpd 2.2.2.  Don't think about anything else.

php.net is awesome.  That is documentation.  With comments from readers.  Avoid the Alternative

PHP acclerator, which is unstable.

MySQL 5.0 is awesome, and the online docs rock.  phpMyAdmin 2.9 beta is good.  The older ones

stink.  But command line is still the best way to administer MySQL.

Maintain all the conf files yourself, and you will not be surprised.  It is the Gentoo way.

ISPConfig is like walking in the dark.  You're going to bump into something and hurt yourself.

Do you really like getting calls from users...Uhh.  What happened to my site?

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## martinmuc

Hey all!

i have written a howto, to get ispconfig run on gentoo-servers

Its has still some todo's but it works, and i run several servers with ispconfig and gentoo.

http://www.lostregions.de/index.php?option=com_jd-wiki&Itemid=31&id=ispconfighowto:wiki

regards,

Martin

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## mattsteven

I have had good luck with ISPconfig (on other distros), it has its quirks but if you know your daemons like the previous poster mentioned it is not a big deal to find the problems and straighten them out.

It's not as polished as plesk or ensim of course, but it does give your users the ability to manage themselves.

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## oldnavy23

i dont know if you want a good control panel thats free look at www.thezpanel.com soon to be www.rapidcp.com  it is free and very easy to use

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## mattsteven

Thanks oldnavy, I didn't know about those.

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## mallchin

I've used it under Mandriva and it worked really well.

It doesn't fit with the way Gentoo does things but it is a good piece of software.

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