Ability to manage multiple websites
in progress
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Arni from Webdock
Although we highly discourage using a VPS for shared hosting we are under the impression that this is a feature many users are missing from Webdock. Please cast your vote here and chime in if you have seen good examples on how to manage multiple websites out there in other control panels which can serve as inspiration to our team on how we would implement this.
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Andrea
Thank you Arni.
You said it right before answering to Epsilon PS _ Paul Schiffer: "at the same time we have an awful lot of users who install 3rd party control panels for this purpose (and are paying for them) such as runcloud, cpanel etc.".
I'm one of the Runcloud's.
Moreover, if their websites increase their traffic everybody will be more than happy to assign them one vps for its own.
Since I have many projects (even many just HTML websites) and also many staging wordpress site to test updates before updating the live websites, the possibility to have multiple websites in one vps (or..., see later) is critical, that is why I need a centralized control panel like Runcloud.
In this case, however, you should think of your control panel to be able to manage more VPSs, so to be able to manage all the websites from one centralized panel.
Thx,
Andrea
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Arni from Webdock
in progress
This has now been moved to in progress
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Arni from Webdock
planned
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Stephen Jeffers
I'd like to say that I'm not seeing any use cases but I'm seeing assumptions. My use case is that I'd like to have multiple websites on one VPS for testing website builders or plugins. If a website is new, why not have it on a shared VPS. As it stands your control panel is not there yet and we're forced to use thrid party server control panels.
As experts in managing servers, I'd ask you, to think about the commands that you would have to write that could be in a GUI. More so common command to start and build from there.
Based on the support tickets that you have had, why not list them here who wanted multiple websites and why?
The final thing that I'd say is a staging site not being an option without writing commands isn't great for customers.
I do think you should think about who your ideal persona is and take it from there.
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Arni from Webdock
Stephen Jeffers: Thank you for this feedback Stephen. This feature is indeed very high on our priority list and some work has already been done here:)
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Arni from Webdock
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Epsilon PS _ Paul Schiffer
I, for my part, am glad that Webdock takes the approach to explicitly discourage shared hosting since multiple websites on one server is a major availability and security problem I see in the whole WWW. And since we have such small footprint VPS options here with Webdock, it isn't a huge financial hit to provision multiple servers, even more so once we can run scripts for Ansible or other provisioning systems after deploy to streamline multiple servers.
However I can understand why we are even talking about this:
- Does Webdock as a company swim against the tide and won't offer shared hosting for the reason of availability and security, and because of that, loose a few potential customers but shape and strengthen a good image about best practice WWW?
- Or does Webdock want more customers for increased profit and better cashflow for more amazing features but follow suit like almost all other providers and depreciate the one-website-per-server approach?
When talking about other instances of this problem, like multiple apps on one server in a datacenter, I will also always go for the strict implementation of one app per server, with the knowledge that I have increased OS overhead, when running Windows.
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Arni from Webdock
Epsilon PS _ Paul Schiffer: You've absolutely hit the nail on the head here. We really have it as a foundational philosphy that shared hosting is a terrible idea. At the same time, we realize we are a low cost provider which does attract a certain segment of VPS consumers, who are a lot of the time looking to save money and are thereby rather skewed towards wanting to do shared hosting.
Which is ironic, because the whole point of having such affordable VPS servers in the first place was to encourage people to NOT do shared hosting.
We are still in the "we should probably not do this" camp - but there is a lot of push from customers on our support channel to implement this and at the same time we have an awful lot of users who install 3rd party control panels for this purpose (and are paying for them) such as runcloud, cpanel etc.
So yeah ... This is a tough one - do we want to stick to our beleifs or do we want to cater to the users we are onboarding a lot of....
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Epsilon PS _ Paul Schiffer
Arni from Webdock: Would you want to partner with 3rd party control panels to offer them for install on deploy? That has to be a paid add-on to not increase the base price of the server.
Does the profit from winning these additional customers outweigh the implementation effort?
If you make it "unnecessarily" hard and still discourage the users that want to do shared hosting from doing it, but let them decide for themselves, then I can understand it as a necessary evil to grow and have cash flow available for other important features.
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Arni from Webdock
Epsilon PS _ Paul Schiffer: When we completed our API we reached out to a number of 3rd party control panels in order to see if they wanted to cooperate. We were uniformly ignored. They simply don't see us as big/important enough to even bother talking to.
So we have parked that idea until we have a larger presence in the market at which point I suspect they may come to us.
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Epsilon PS _ Paul Schiffer
Arni from Webdock: I feared that this would have happened. Big companies nowadays have their noses too high in the wind to care about small projects anymore, its really sad to see. They should remember from time to time where they came from...
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Stephen Jeffers
Arni from Webdock: Become a teaching centre for people who want to use VPS. Best practices. I would like you to stand out from the crowd.
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Arni from Webdock
Stephen Jeffers: You are in luck: We are soon launching a first of many educational series of articles (and possibly videos based on these) - at first we are focusing on the basics of a webserver and will later move into lifecycle management and maintenance. So that's all in production as we speak:)
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Stephen Jeffers
Arni from Webdock: One of the things that experts have is that when writing educational material they miss out things that a beginner would need to know. ,It's just human nature.
Can I suggest that before the, matertial is released it's tested internally by your staff who are not Network engineers? Maybe by your marketing team. The reason being is that they may reveal any gaps.
I'd also do videos to compliment the articles but try to leave in any mistakes and how to resolve them. Try and show output we can expect to see as much as possible. ,
The aim is to empower users to maintain their VPS but also reduce the strain on your support.
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Arni from Webdock
under review