A couple of days, I made a post on how to install ISPConfig on CentOS Linux. On my part, the install went great except for a little problem with BIND. The server on which I installed ISPConfig is mainly used for testing purposes so it didn’t have BIND (name server daemon) running properly. To fix this, I had to install and run “system-config-bind”:
# yum install system-config-bind
This configuration utility has to be run from a graphical environment. Upon it’s first execution, it will create a default /etc/named.conf file. After I’ve done that, I could start the “named” service and everything worked perfectly.
Adding A Website With ISPConfig
Start by logging into ISPConfig at http://[yourserver]:81 or https://[yourserver]:81.
At this point you won’t be able to add a new site unless you add a reseller or client account. Click on “New Client”:
Click on “Save” to complete the account creation. Now you can add a new web site by clicking on “New site”.
Fill in the required fields and specify which functionalities will be active for the new web site:
Click on “Save”. You will then be taken to the client’s profile on which you may just click on “Save” again to complete the new site’s creation. Your new web site will now appear under the “Sites” folder (if that’s how you specified it initially).
Adding A New Email Account
In order to create a new email account, you must have a web site first. From the main menu, click on “ISP Manager” and open the “Sites” folder.
Click on the web site (or domain) for which you want to add a new email account and then select the “User & Email” tab. Click on “New” to add an account.
Clicking on “Save” will create the new account. It’s important to understand that does not only create an email account, it also creates an FTP account so that the user can publish documents on the web. If you don’t want your users to have a web account, enter “0” in the “WebSpace MB” field.
If you check the “Administrator” option, the user will be able to access the main web site through FTP.
MySQL Database Creation
To create a MySQL database, select the desired web site from the “Sites” folder. Select the “Options” tab and click on “New” button.
Note the database username and specify the password for this user.
If you want to access your database remotely (for example, through an ODBC connection from your workstation), set the “Remote Access” value to “Yes”.
I think that ISPConfig does a great job as a free web hosting control panel. The only enhancement I would make would be to add the possibility of specifying usernames for POP3 and FTP accounts as well as the possibility to specify database names instead of generating them automatically.
April 12th, 2008 at 3:03 am
Hi
I got a problem! Using the method above, are there any ways for ftp-user to access web-ftp? (I mean they can login using web-based ISPConfig interface)
I need this because i’m going to create multiple user for my domain but they do not know much about FTP commands and i want to use a web console in order to ease their job to change website contents…
thanks in advance
April 12th, 2008 at 10:05 am
Although my suggestion has nothing to do with ISPConfig, I’d suggest you have a look into Adobe Contribute CS3. It’s basically a limited website management software for less experienced users. That would work nicely if you have static pages.
If you want to manage user permissions with Adobe Contribute, you can also get the Adobe Contribute Publishing Server.
Both of these softwares are really cheap.
http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/
http://www.adobe.com/products/contribute/server/