I've been playing with some control panels and would like some opinions on which one fits the bill for mailing. cPanel: This is obviously the easiest and best control panel out there for most domain configurations. It also has a lot of features not needed in a mailing server. Kloxo: Similar to cPanel in terms of usage but is less user friendly. Webmin: this is more for server config rather than for the domain. LAMP (no control panel). uses the least resources but uses the command line in unix. ( been trying to install this plus postfix as the bare minimum needed in a server) So what control panel do you use?
+1 What would you use the control panel for? Some of them force you to use older/insecure versions of software in order to work correctly and they do not give you access to all the features of the software installed. You are better off just setting up each component on your own and managing the configuration files.
As an added question, I am guessing a completely customized platform would be the best way to go as well? If not then what platform would be suggested?
For me the best one was and is Webmin. This is a really powerful shell. The worst one - Kloxo. It's disgusting.
I agree with this 100%, nothing beats your own config through flat config files, yes if you are doing it for the first time it won't be fun figuring it out, but once you do, just write yourself some scripts to reproduce it and instead of having to work around and manually set up through a control panel, you can make your own scripts that let you add a domain name and will do your own custom config with just a button push. Also to add to Nick's reasons, control panels will also take over some of your programs, so you lose flexiblity. I recommend postfix with dovecot, virtual set up through config files (super easy to add to once set up), apache, mysql and either bind or this cute little program called mydns which lets you add all your dns records in 2 mysql tables.
I think I saw you post this before, you love Webmin I don't share your love, but I will say this to anyone considering it, its a love / hate kind of thing. For Daa to love it means he must know how to set up stuff manually, if you aren't technical you will be like WTF is this and can fuck up the system with misconfigs which doesn't have much of a safety net. I use it at times, and its fine since I know it, but as a software developer I have to say I hate it because in my opinion it defeats its own purpose, someone needing a control panel "usually" isn't technical enough to do everything manually, and you need to know how to do things manually to really use webmin correctly, so its target user is someone who really doesn't need it. I'm sure there are counter arguements to my opinion, but that's why I mainly don't like it.
There's an exploit for webmin in the wild.. I'd be careful running it. If you still choose to run it, firewall that shit or have it only listen on a non-routeable behind a vpn... The only way to really maintain a system is to learn how everything works.. Download vmware workstation, install whatever distro you want to work with.. Experiment, break shit. Learn how to fix it.. It all depends on how you learn best.
^^^ What He said... Give me a Bash Shell, Vi, and YUM and I'm set! Learn *nix or stick with Windows....
Back when I had hosting servers I liked WHM/cPanel. C'mon people, the OP asked a question about control panels. He didn't ask for everyone to put their dicks on the table.
