hopefully new to DirectAdmin

[jechilt]

Greetings,

I currently have a shared hosting reseller account using cPanel. Due to bugs in cPanel, the need for more resources and access, and to ease the pain to my users in the control panel, we are moving to a Virtual Private Server that will use either cPanel, Plesk, or DirectAdmin (DA). Currently, we are strongly leaning to DirectAdmin because of its ease of use.

We have several questions about DA and hope the forum can help us in our process.
We are new to the VPS environment and will have to pick up additional monitoring of the server functions (ie, exim). Does DA have any kind of add-ins that will help make it easier to monitor our server (VPS)?

I did like the feature of Fantastico with cPanel though most of our users never used the utilities. I have seen that installertron can be added to DA for a small fee. Is this hard to do and to configure the system to install software (like Gallery)?

We currently use Whois.Cart billing software and will continue to use it in the future. Whois.Cart is closing in on their addition of the their helpdesk module. We have been looking for a long time a way to incorporate a billing software with a forum and control panel access into one. Will DA be able to interface with whois.cart to provide access to their helpdesk system? I know that DA has a helpdesk but I have not decided what the best solution will be to use. Whois.cart has forum integration. Does DA have the ability to interface with a forum?

Is there a SPAM type of software that can be used to help the user fight SPAM. cPanel uses SpamAssassin but not sure what to use with DA.
This may not be related, but does anyone have any kind of recommendation for anti-virus software to use?

Finally, since I am going to be new to DA, I will probably need a lot of help until we get familiar with the product. Will the forum be able to help us along the way?

Kindest Regards....

[Icheb]

First of all; welcome to the DA forums.

I'll try to answer all your questions I can answer now, as I'm supposed to be working at the moment.


We have several questions about DA and hope the forum can help us in our process.
We are new to the VPS environment and will have to pick up additional monitoring of the server functions (ie, exim). Does DA have any kind of add-ins that will help make it easier to monitor our server (VPS)?
Do you mean uptime monitoring, or just service monitoring ?
If you just want to see some statistics, like horus.sebsoft.nl/mailscanner-mrtg, it isn't that hard, but if you want complete statistics, it most likely can be added, but it isn't standard.
DA does check if a service is running every minute or so, if not, it tries to start it.



I did like the feature of Fantastico with cPanel though most of our users never used the utilities. I have seen that installertron can be added to DA for a small fee. Is this hard to do and to configure the system to install software (like Gallery)?
I've bought Installatron some time ago, currently a new plug in system in DA is in place. This system allows easy installation of all sorts of plugins (Installatron is the only one so far), it's not very difficult to install, you can trust me on that one :D


Does DA have the ability to interface with a forum?
No, altough you can write it yourself, as there is an API available for DA. THis is also used by Whois.Cart to do operations within the control panel. I personally don't have experience with W.C (Only with ClientExec, what I by the way don't recommend to anyone)...



Is there a SPAM type of software that can be used to help the user fight SPAM. cPanel uses SpamAssassin but not sure what to use with DA.
This may not be related, but does anyone have any kind of recommendation for anti-virus software to use?
Well let's see, at the moment a few users have created a exiscan&Exim version, which can fight spam. I use the older solution here, MailScanner&SpamAssassin&ClamAV, it isn't standard, but it will do the job...

If you need help with something like this, just search the forums (or send me a pm or something ;)).

cPanel: nice to see, but slow and tends to eat up CPU time
Plesk: Nice to see, although I would ask their dev department to start using a bit more logic. (I've been working on a Plesk server this week, the menu names could use a bit more logic in them so that you don't have to look at help every time...)
DA: Cheap when you compare it to the others, but not really less functional. It's true the sys admin will have to do some more work here. (For cPanel & WHM, a monkey can possibly do the system administration work, like updates etc..., in DA you'll surely need some linux experience, but if you do have this, DA is much more powerfull than cPanel or Plesk, at least, that's what i think).

And for the total DA using monkey's (no offence to anyone), my company is working on a DA management solution that's easy to use, not very expensive in comparrison to other solutions and can possibly even be used by a nine year old which never ever has seen the name Linux before... ;)



Will the forum be able to help us along the way?
Yeah, every sys admin that uses DA, and has any sense about what they're doing uses this forum, not only to ask for features, but also to discuss possible solutions for problems. To learn other sysadmins new stuff etc.

Hope I was able to answer your questions, I need to get back to programming now :)

note: I don't want to sound a bit strange, but usually greetings etc aren't used on forums, although it tends to make the rest here sound as primates, i guess not much use it :D

[nobaloney]

Originally posted by jechilt
Is there a SPAM type of software that can be used to help the user fight SPAM. cPanel uses SpamAssassin but not sure what to use with DA.
SpamAssassin is included with DA but you have to set it up. Instructions can be found on the first reply to this thread (http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3234).

SpamBlocker is available; see this thread (http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3145).

This may not be related, but does anyone have any kind of recommendation for anti-virus software to use?
There are several Anti-Virus threads on these forums; I haven't readied VirusChecker (http://www.directadmin.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=3155) yet, but it should be ready in another week or so.

Finally, since I am going to be new to DA, I will probably need a lot of help until we get familiar with the product. Will the forum be able to help us along the way?
Absolutely :) .

Jeff