I've been playing around with ISPConfig for the past few days and I have quite a few questions. The reason I've been playing with ISPConfig is because I'm currently building a new webserver to replace an older one, and I'm considering using ISPConfig. A little background: I have a software development company, and also do the web hosting for a few of my clients. Anyway, here are my questions. If they have been answered already or are even mentioned in the manual(s), then I apologize. I've read the manuals and searched the forums but couldn't find the answers. 1) Can I create sites that are directly linked to "admin" or a reseller instead of a client? The reason I'm asking is because I also have a few sites of my own and I was wondering if I need to add myself as a client first before I can add my sites. I can also imagine a reseller would want a site of his own - does he need to add himself as a client first too? 2) Can I create users under a client instead of under a site? Most (if not all) of my clients have serveral websites, like www.productA.com and www.productB.com. They don't want seperate users for each website when it's the same person. For instance, salesperson X wants to receive all mail for [email protected] and [email protected]. I know I can do it by manually editing the virtusertable, but can I do it in ISPConfig? 3) Is there a way to use a different folder structure for websites? On my servers, I use a different default folder structure for websites. So instead of the default cgi-bin, log, ssl, user and web folders, I use other. Some websites even use their own specific structure. Can I change both the default as well as a specific website's folder structure? 4) Can I override the default website root folder name? Right now, ISPConfig simply creates folders like "web1", "web2", "web3" etc. for the sites and then creates a symbolic link "www.domainname.com" to this folder. Can I override this behavior? Can I determine foldernames myself on a per site/client basis? For instance, my webroot is "/var/www" and I have a client "XYZ Inc." with two websites, I want to be able to create these two folders: "/var/www/XYZ/website1" and "/var/www/XYZ/website2". 5)Is there a way to globally change an IP-address? Every now and then (thought I admit seldomly) a website's IP address changes, or sometimes I "park" a website on a temporary IP-address for testing purposes. Is it possible to change an IP address throughout the system? For instance, let's say I create a website and give it a (local) IP address of 192.168.1.100 for testing. This also creates an entry in the DNS and in several other places. Later when I'm done testing, I want to change this IP-address to the real IP-address. But if I do so in the "ISP-Sites" form, it only changes it there, and not in the DNS, local-host-names file, hosts file, etc. Is there a way to do that? 6) Can I change/override the user prefix per client? As it is now, you set the user prefix globally, i.e. "web[WEBID]_". I can't use that. I need to be able to set the prefix per client. For instance, if I add client XYZ Inc., I want to be able to set the user prefix to "XYZ_" for this client only. That way I don't have to give my client weird usernames, and that way I can easily recognize to which client a specific username belongs. Is this at all possible? Ok, these are the questions I have after just a few days of testing. I'm sure I'll have many, many more later. If anyone can answer these, I would be very grateful!
Answers Hi, thanks for your interest in the ISPConfig hosting controlpanel. I've tried to answer your questions as good as possible: 1) Within ISPConfig you are able to assign websites to the admin, resellers and clients as well. Of course you need to create the Reseller and clients first. The admin contains also all privileges of the reseller and their clients. The reseller contains all privileges of its clients. 2) Within ISPConfig it is not possible to create users under a client. Within ISPConfig, you need to add a client to the system, after that, you need to create the clients website, where you need to add the users of that site. ISPConfig rewrites the vhost file everytime a modification has been made. For this reason, you should never edit the vhost file manually. Within ISPConfig and for every website, there is a Apache directive field available, where you can add the directives for Apache2. 3) The default html folder that ISPConfig uses is /var/www. Within this folder the webspaces are created like web1, web2 and so on. Each web has a symbolic link to another folder. The name of that folder represents the fqdn. For example: If you've created your first website within ISPConfig for www.mydomain.com, within the /var/www folder you will find two new folders, like: www.mydomain.com and web1 as well. Each web, lets say web1, contains the user folders, the log folder, a cgi-bin folder and a separate web folder for the site itself. You can not change this structure for every single website via ISPConfig. 4) You can not store websites within a client folder as you suggest. All the websites are stored within /var/www. When you provide your client a login account for the ISPConfig controlpanel, every client is able to manage its websites via that single login account. 5) Within ISPConfig, you have an IP-list available. By default the IP-address of your server is stored here. If you have more then one IP-address available, you can add those IP-addresses within the IP-list. On the moment you create a website, you can choose the IP-address for that website from the IP-list, which means that different websites can have different IP-addresses. You are always able to change the IP-address afterwards. 6) Within ISPConfig, you can define a webprefix. The default prefix is: "web[WEBID]_". You can change that prefix in whatever you want or you can even leave it blank. You have to realise that this is a global setting and you are not able to define a different prefix for every single client.
