Popular Free Control Panels – No Charge, Great Value
Posted on Tuesday, Jan 19, 2010 in "Control Panels"
If you have just recently built a small website, and you are not sure whether or not you want to spend money on a control panel, then you may want to consider trying a free control panel first. Many webmasters do not need an expensive control panel to accomplish all of their daily website management tasks. If you are a novice webmaster and you are weary about spending money on a control panel, then you may find the information below to be quite useful.
SysCP
Although SysCP is a free control panel, it still carries all of the important functions of an expensive control panel, giving webmasters the ability to create CGI scripts, adjust DNS settings, create custom error messages/pages, view website statistics and so much more. You’ll also have access to turn-key control over third-party applications such as BIND, Apache, ProFTPD and Courier. SysCP comes with all of these features automatically integrated within the software, but even more impressive is the overwhelming amount of extensions available for download that will enhance your administrative capabilities even further. The features of this control panel are practically endless, and after a few hours of using it you will wonder why the developer’s are not charging an exuberant fee for it’s services. This free control panel makes it to the top of the list because of it’s ever expanding nature and it’s compatibility with almost every operating system.
Webmin
Webmin has been receiving a lot of attention lately from users with dedicated hosting packages. It’s administrative capabilities, combined with a sleek user-friendly interface make it a favorite amongst many novice users. Among other notable features, it comes fully integrated with modules for cron job management, BIND, bandwidth monitoring, firewall administration, and Apache. Like other control panels, there are a wide variety of compatible extensions and plugins available that can enhance your server administration experience. One interesting feature of Webmin is that you have the option to create your own modules and extensions. Webmin is also amazing when it comes to compatibility, because it supports nearly every operating system on the market today. The primary reason why Webmin has become so successful is because it is an open-source software, allowing independent developers and programmers to improve the control panel continuously. These modifications have resulted in a truly superb control panel software.
GNUPanel
GNUPanel is a new Linux-based control panel that is scripted in PHP5 programming language. Among the more notable features of this software are FTP/domain management, database administration and email management. Like the other free control panels discussed in this article, with GNUPanle you’ll have the ability to control and install third-party applications such as phpBB, Joomla, WordPress and osCommerce. Even though this control panel is an open-source software, it is not compatible with many operating systems, which is why it is last on the list.
