My observations so far...

[Dathorn_Andrew]

Here's a quick list of suggestions/questions/etc. Keep in mind that I was using the power users theme the entire time.

Admin Panel

Resource allocation values do not display on the power users theme.

Changing user/reseller/admin password - should have at least a dropdown list to choose from with the username and domain (if applicable) listed so that it doesn't have to be typed in.

Manage reseller/user tickets - If the ticket system is disabled where does that text get shown (ie: "Follow this link for a 3rd party ticket system.")? Haven't been able to find it.

Message system disabled - goes with the above, can the link and text just disappear for it?

Managing skins at the admin level needs to be an option.

User Panel

E-Mail disk quotas. The webmail shows a 2MB quota for each account it appears. The option to set quota values when creating accounts and to modify quota values is necessary.

Site backup - how does the restore work? Will it overwrite any existing data or what?

MySQL - modify it such that you can create users and databases and assign (multiple) users to a single database. Much like cPanel offers but please not nearly as cluttered.

Custom error pages - allow the extension to be modified such that when you go to edit the particular error page again it loads the previous one (ie: 404.php).

How long does it take for Webalizer stats to show up? How often and when is Webalizer run?

FrontPage Extension - Is the system password an admin or root password? Why is there an option to enter it in a typical user's panel?

Since you have a link/page to show the installed Perl modules it's only fitting that you add one for phpinfo().

Move subdomain management to a seperate page like everything else.

Other

What's the private_html folder for that is located in the admin's FTP (/domains/domain.com/)?

Is there a skeleton directory feature available that can be changed/modified on a per reseller basis?

 

[Dathorn_Andrew]

A couple more things...

Add an option to regularly backup the important config files (HTTP, FTP, etc.) so that an older one can be restored if something disasterous happens. If nothing else I know that cPanel has this feature and has saved me when cPanel itself messed it up completely.

What is the /usr/local/directadmin/conf/mysql.conf for? Does DirectAdmin use a MySQL db/table to store data in?

Add the ability to change the root MySQL password via the admin panel. Though I suppose I can see this as potential problem with multiple admins that you wouldn't want having access to that.

Allow MySQL to be hosted on an entirely different server than the local server. cPanel tried to implement this but it never worked. The majority of performance related issues these days come from sites that heavily use databases. It is a big advantage to be able to seperate database operations from everything else.

 

[Dathorn_Andrew]

One thing that is really needed is a PHP configurator much like cPanel offers with /scripts/easyapache. The default PHP offered by DirectAdmin is PHP 4.3.0 compiled with only "'./configure' '--with-mysql' '--with-apxs'" is quite useless. Most people will need quite a few extensions that are pretty standard these days such as cURL, GD, FTP, gettext, etc. These common ones could easily be auto-compiled to work with PHP and then PHP compiled with support for them.

 

[DirectAdmin Support]

Hi Darkhorn_Andrew,

Resource allocation values do not display on the power users theme

Not sure what you mean there, usage data is recalculated everynight, so maybe it hasn't been done yet.

Changing user/reseller/admin password - should have at least a dropdown list to choose from with the username and domain (if applicable) listed so that it doesn't have to be typed in.

Ok, thats not too hard an and can be added when time permits. We've had a few other people mention it, so we'll push it a bit higher on the priority queue.

Follow this link for a 3rd party ticket system

When you disable it, it will only be shown to people created by 'this' person when they try to create a ticket. Because the messaging system is integrated with tickets, we had to enable allow the messaging page to be viewed. We can make the the text dissapear, right now its just a costmetic issue and there are things of higher priority.

Managing skins at the admin level needs to be an option.

So you mean like a duplicate of the Reseller vesion, except server wide?

E-Mail disk quotas[/quote
pop accounts don't currently have a disk quota, the 2 meg limit in the webmail is just for the webmail.

Site backup - how does the restore work? Will it overwrite any existing data or what?

Restore will just untar the data in the backup overtop of any existing files, so yes, it will overwrite existing data.

MySQL - modify it such that you can create users and databases and assign (multiple) users to a single database

You already can add multiple users.

Custom error pages

Right now, the error pages are set inside the main httpd.conf file, but that is a feature we can look into.

How often and when is Webalizer run?

Webalizer is run nightly at 12:10 am. It can be changed in the /etc/cron.d/directadmin_cron file to do it more often. It's under "action=tally&value=all".

FrontPage Extension - Is the system password an admin or root password?

It's the user's password, just the same as the one they use to log in. The reason it's there is because DirectAdmin was program to tightly, that the DirectAdmin frontpage module isn't allowed to get the password from the DirectAdmin authentication module. If it's bugging a lot of people, it can be removed.

phpinfo()

We could, but its quite easy for a user to create a php file containing <? phpInfo(); ?>, again just a time and demand issue.

Move subdomain management to a seperate page

Yes, that is an option... the page /CMD_SUBDOMAIN?domain=domain.com *does* exist for power_user, its just not linked. Its just a personl issue, some people might like it, some might not, it's hard to please everyone

What's the private_html folder for

This is used for https (Secure) documents. The main server's hostname wasn't intended for actual domain hosting, so the main httpd.conf file just points to the public_html folder for https. There are 4 files in the /usr/local/directadmin/data/templates which are used for http and https domains and subdomains. The locations of the folders can be changed by modifying the values inside, and saving them in the "./templates/custom/virtual*.conf. The custom directory (which you might have to create) is so that when you make custom modifications to these files, they won't be overwritten directadmin is updated. It checks this folder first, before using the ones in the ./templates folder.

regular backups

There have been a few inquiries about this and it will be implemented, again when time permits. FreeBSD is currently at the top of the list.

mysql.conf

is used to store the username/password that DirectAdmin will use to create/delete databases and database users for DirectAdmin users. DirectAdmin data is all stored inside text files.

Allow MySQL to be hosted on an entirely different server than the local server

Honestly, we haven't even considered this. If enough demand is created for a certain feature, it will be pushed higher on the queue.

PHP configurator

Yes, I agree that our default install of php is pretty dry. Right now you can edit /usr/local/directadmin/scripts/php.sh and insert the ./configure directives you want.


Thank you very much for the wonderful suggestions. Just a note to anyone else that all suggestions are taken seriously, but please understand that although many of them may be great, we can only do so many at a time, so it may take a while for them to be implemented.

John

 

[Dathorn_Andrew]

Thanks for the replies

So the disk/bandwidth usage data is only calculated once every night?

Yes managing skins at the admin level just like you can at the reseller level would be good. These skins should then be available to all like the two default ones that are installed.

Is there a way to change the 2MB disk quota limit for webmail? How is this data stored for webmail? Will it count towards the domain's quota or how does that work (perhaps that's why there is a limit)?

The FrontPage password thing may just be a bit confusing which can easily be solved by editing the skin then.

I honestly haven't looked, but what access does the user in the mysql.conf have exactly? This can be a real problem since it isn't a chrooted environment someone can easily go and grab the login information.

As for the PHP configurator, the reason I mention it is because it is often difficult to meet the requirements and dependencies of certain parts of PHP. I have no problem modifying the ./configure directive but installing all the necessary software takes quite a long time, which is where the automation would definetly help.

 

[DirectAdmin Support]

Thanks for the replies

So the disk/bandwidth usage data is only calculated once every night?

You can tweak how often its run by changing the cron file. The DirectAdmin task queue makes it easy to do things whenever you want, it just add them to the bottom of the task list.

Is there a way to change the 2MB disk quota limit for webmail? How is this data stored for webmail? Will it count towards the domain's quota or how does that work (perhaps that's why there is a limit)?

/var/www/html/webmail/inc/config.php
$quota_limit = 2048;

This is just the default configuration that comes with UebiMiau, (although we change the code to meet our needs, thanks ProHacker ) This data is not counted towards the total usage.

I honestly haven't looked, but what access does the user in the mysql.conf have exactly? This can be a real problem since it isn't a chrooted environment someone can easily go and grab the login information.

The file is set to chmod 600 and owned by diradmin, however some encryption could be in order... The user/password stored in that file has access to create and remove databases and users in mysql.

As for the PHP configurator, the reason I mention it is because it is often difficult to meet the requirements and dependencies of certain parts of PHP. I have no problem modifying the ./configure directive but installing all the necessary software takes quite a long time, which is where the automation would definetly help.

Yes, thats the type of feature we plan on adding in the future.

John

 

[wolfy]

You already can add multiple users.

John

But can you add an existing user to an existing db?

 

[DirectAdmin Support]

as of the last release, yes:
http://www.directadmin.com/features.php?id=663

DA version 1.27.4



John

 

[wolfy]

beeeeeeeeeeutiful. Thanks