We manage websites for customers that do not get access to the server at all, and I am sick of wasting time setting up vhost.conf files... how can I remove this restriction server wide... I edited the php.ini file turning them off but I still get open base dir errors...

 

The php.ini file is the 'global' config file, so either you didn't specify it correctly or didn't restart after making changes. Did you also change safe_mode to off (I don't recommend this on a global level, just asking).

Whether your clients have server access or not, doing these things is still a security risk to the server. Hopefully you have already (at a bare minimum) installed mod_security and it's rulesets....