ok, the startup I work for/own part of has just added a dedicated hosting server (with Hostgator if it matters) and we have a need to have a sales person with proper passwords have access to the ability to install software on virtual hosted domains with ownership and permissions set appropriately.
Currently we use a shell script when needed, quick easy and totally unusable by a click and drag sales kind of person.
our current ideas:
1) add a menu item to whm and have the sales person click "install our stuff" menu item. [host gator does not allow this according to top level support people who helped us get our special cgi stuff working]
2) write a php/perl script which will be run as root from a password protected page etc.
Any other ideas or problems we may run into with #2?
The script copies php and mysql from a special domain we set up, and we also update appropriate accounts from this domain using cron
Currently we use a shell script when needed, quick easy and totally unusable by a click and drag sales kind of person.
our current ideas:
1) add a menu item to whm and have the sales person click "install our stuff" menu item. [host gator does not allow this according to top level support people who helped us get our special cgi stuff working]
2) write a php/perl script which will be run as root from a password protected page etc.
Any other ideas or problems we may run into with #2?
The script copies php and mysql from a special domain we set up, and we also update appropriate accounts from this domain using cron
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Salt Lake City
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Re: new area of expertise for us...
Mon, December 12, 2005 - 12:05 PMYou usually try to keep sales dweebs far away from computers. What about using an attached network storage cabinet and let them pop in CD's? Then they would have access to the files from CD. -
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Re: new area of expertise for us...
Mon, December 12, 2005 - 1:26 PMThanks for the quick response... perhaps I need to be a bit more clear and hopefully this posting solves that problem.
agreed on keeping the sales people (and anyone else wearing 'real' clothing) away from anything that looks like it may have electricity running through it [grin]
The server is far remote from us (we are in Utah, the hostgator dedicated server we use is in Florida). Hosting is not our core business as such, but something that our custom clients have asked for "can you host a web page for my kids little league team" etc. and rather than turn away an established client we added hosting to our services. The stuff we are copying/installing is our customized version of mambo (all copyright notices left intact, which is/will be given back to the mambo community) and the associated mysql stuff designed for your mom (well, at least my mom who is afraid of anything more complex than a digital radio) to run her own website (yes, she runs 2 on our system now).
the upload speeds are a problem this is why we set up a domain blank.ourdomain.com where we can make changes, and then the shell script for updates runs daily to update selected accounts, and for initial install when we techies run it from SSH.
What we are trying to do is automate this process such that the sales person (who have all figured out how to create accounts using whm/cpanel) can answer a couple of questions, click 'doit' and have a functioning web site in seconds rather than the nearly 15 minutes of upload on our cable at work/home/etc. that they are currently dealing with (thus why we run the shell script) and the last thing we want is anyone wearing real clothing (suits, bosses, accountants, sales dweebs, etc. anyone not in a free t-shirt) anywhere near a root ssh session, most of them get nauseated just watching people actually use a keyboard let alone when you hand them the keyboard [giggle]
Previously we had a module added to whm/cpanel by the crappiest hosting company on the face of the planet (at least that I have ever dealt with) but hostgator prohibits this according to their top level support people. -
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Re: new area of expertise for us...
Mon, December 12, 2005 - 3:48 PMIf alls you are doing is subdomains for simple web sites, why do you need all this functionality? Creating the subdomain, assigning a diskquota and handing out a pwd should be easy. What you really need to do is send them to netfirms.com. :) I've never used Mambo, it looks like a CMS of some sort. If it is, why get so sophisticated? Just use a simple set of HTML/CSS templates. -
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Re: new area of expertise for us...
Tue, December 13, 2005 - 12:41 AMthe only subdomain in the source domain, everything else is the customers url/domain on our dedicated server. so the sales droid goes out today and sells zigs-beds a website, gets back to work, uses our app to register the domain zigsbeds.com, goes to ourdomain.com/whm and adds the account, and then hands it to tech because zig wants mambo.
We want to make it so that droid goes to blah.ourdomain.com fills in the form, clicks doit, waits 15 secnds for results, if no errors calls zig back and tells him his web site is ready etc. instead of handing it to people who are doing work for our core business which in this example we will say is zig's online store inventory system he uses between his 3 stores,
yes, Mambo is a CMS, one of the better ones when it comes to making it simple for anyone to operate without needing backend access or being able to break things.
We tried simple, but many of these people want the extra features like a gallery or forums or weblinks etc. and this is where we charge hourly to setup or teach them how to set up these added features. We also found they wanted to change content in a manner of a CMS instead of 'those scary editors'
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