What is the logic behind FTP user, client prefix, and multiple domains

Hi.

Please, can someone explain me what is the logic with FTP users and client prefix?

Example:
One client = username = firmname
Multiple sites for this client= site1.com, site2.com, site3.com

All sites are completely separate however only one company/client owns them.

I do not understand how create FTP users to distinguish between the sites. For example I have same user name for both site1.com ([email protected]) and site2.com ([email protected]). I want to create FTP user for each, however the logic in ISPConfig will allow me to create only [CLIENTNAME]george. Understand that I do not want to create different username then email address prefix.

In addition, using [CLIENTNAME] is not the best idea as it has got nothing to do with site name. Using [CLIENTID] is hard to remember on the other hand.

Can you share what you use in such cases?

 

You can remove the prefix in your ispconfig settings:

System -> Interface Config

On all our ISPConfig systems we use the clientid as prefix on everything (dbname, ftplogin, shell accounts etc .. ) everywhere you're working on the server you'll find those numbers and always reference to one client.

what if you get another client called george? Call it george2?

 

Domain ID

I personally used to like using the "[DOMAIN]." prefix on the older ISPConfig 2 (I know, you can't use for database names, actually ISPConfig 2 would correct for that).

I was hoping for [DOMAIN] support in ISPConfig 3 but I don't see it. Browsing through source I found [DOMAINID] but it doesn't seem to work. Its nicer to have clients remember their domain for a unique identifier for webdav and FTP, i.e.

mydomain.com.steve

vs

'c32steve' or worse 'stevesteve' as clientname is 99% likely to be what the client is going to use as login name as well!

 

Prefix needed for webdav

Then again, do we even need to have a prefix for webdav? Doesn't this internally normalize to a virtualhost block that already is unique to the domain name and therefore shouldn't cause a conflict anyways? I know a unique ID is needed for FTP, but webdav?

Anyone know if its unique (enough) to remove webdav prefix?

 

Curious prefix

Changing the domain name is totally destructive anyways. In fact, ISPConfig 3 won't let a user change a domain name once it is created. I get the message "contact your administrator to change your domain name". Does ISPConfig offer an interface and functionality to rename a domain? Does it go through and change the folder name on the server (that'd be pretty amazing). None the less, its very unlikely that a user would change there domain name without it affecting their source files (i.e. WordPress, Drupal). Because such sites serialize data to MySQL its not like a search/replace (byte offsets would break the database with a new domain name shorter/longer characters then the original).

Most likely the client would just create a new site and migrate files. That and a domain name change usually solicits a real world company acquisition, or at least a site redesign (cha' ching!).

 

I guess it depends on your clients. As a designer > 10 years my clients would die if they changed their domain name or lost their SEO rankings. Color.com didn't spend millions for nuthin' ;-)

But companies do get bought and sold left and right so I see your point. Nice that ISPConfig covers this. Unfortunately, although WebDAV is something I prefer because of speed and routers being optimized for HTTP protocols, it doesn't look like I can use it in ISPConfig 3 because everything is a child of webdav (i.e. no site root access). Just as well as I see it to writes under www-data. I'll try SFTP, that's probably just as fast and more secure?