[GLLUG] web hosting control

[Bill Bartilson]

I'm always thinking simplicity when looking for solutions that involve 
multiple folks handling a central/common task.  While there might be a 
commercial product that will do it, the question always comes down to 
cost/hassle/benefit comparisons.

If it were my project to split up (and when I worked at Lakewood, it 
was) I'd simply create a different user account for each segment, like:

lsd.k12.mi.us/~sexton
lsd.k12.mi.us/~eastern
lsd.k12.mi.us/~everett

Then just make a launch page for the district that gets the user to the 
site that is of interest to them.

Now, if you want common style sheets and such like, that will add a 
layer of complexity on initial setup, but won't be a daunting task.

That's how I handled it...I'm very interested to hear other opinions on 
why that's a good/bad idea.

Regards,
-Bill



Mike Rambo wrote:

> Lansing Schools is looking for something to ease management of the 
> district web server. What is desired is to be able to hand off some 
> level of web site configuration to staff at some of the local schools 
> (ie. the netadmin at sexton be able to administrate all web sites that 
> are derivatives of programs at sexton etc.) without district admins 
> needing to make every change that has to be made.
>
> We have found a commercial product called cpanel (cpanel.net) that 
> appears to do this but I have reservations because it is closed. It 
> works with apache, php, mysql etc but does so in such a way that it 
> obscures what is happening behind the curtains and also appears to 
> heavily modify many aspects of the server (to the point that they 
> recommned to wipe and rebuild the server to uninstall).
>
> Does anyone know of any open solutions that use standard off the shelf 
> apache (and other) packages to accomplish this? Freshmeat supplied a 
> few possibles (web-cp, vhost, Domain Technologie Control, host4net) 
> some of which are more complete than others but I wondered what folks 
> on the list might recommend.
>
> Thanks.
>
>