Plesk Feature Requests

[Cranky]

Time for a new feature-requests thread as my last one has become messy and confusing. Lots of great feedback, I think I've pulled all the important ones here - some from my last thread, some from elsewhere on the forums, and some from Plesk for Windows:

- AWStats as an option alongside webalizer

- DSpam integration

- Reseller creating sub-resellers user hierarchy

- Statistics for subdomains

- Branded webmail (per-client and per-domain basis)

- Language packs inclusive in cost

- Multiple FTP logins (with restrictive access for some FTP logins to certain directories)

- Ability to hide un-necessary directories from FTP users (bin, conf, pd, etc.)

- Hard-disk quota in "limits" section

- Separate DNS templates for each Client

- Circular/notifications system to communicate with clients, domain users and email users - with reseller support

- Per-client trouble ticket controls (e.g. admin can switch it off for his clients, but his clients can use it for his/her domain users)

- Zope support

- Remote access MySQL option per-db

- Moving clients to a predefined template rather than manually adjusting limits to change package

- Suspended domain holding page when domain switched "off"

- Per client holding page (instead of Plesk placeholder)

- Vhost.conf and vhost_ssl.conf updates via interface

- Urchin integration (like Coldfusion integration currently is)

- SPF DNS entries (http://spf.pobox.com) - at the moment we can enter these, but a wizard to generate them would be useful

- Have rollover transfer, where you have a monthly transfer and allow to set max rollover. Like they have 60GB/mo, and they only use 20GB, and the max rollover is 15GB, so they'll have 60GB next month plus the 15GB rolled over for 75GB next month.

- Automated server backup system

- Improved spamassassin support (e.g. score <1 = normal, 1-3 = tagged, 3+ = deleted) and also option to forward spam to a second mailbox

- Subdomain/webuser password-protected directories

- Subdomain/webuser frontpage support

- GnuPG support for email

- phpsuexec support

- Client overselling support (useful occasionally)

- Hard data transfer limits (overuse transfer and your site switches to holding page)

- Outlook automatic email account installer generator

- Additional webmail options (choose between IMP and SquirrelMail)

- Database user sharing ... 1 user for more than 1 database (maybe, I believe technically this can cause problems with PHP)

- Multiple users with same name in control panel (At the moment you can't add 2 clients with the same name (eg: John Smith))

- Shoutcast streaming integration (live streaming)

- Darwin streaming integration (streaming from playlist)

- mod_bandwidth integration for limiting bandwidth to some domains/clients

- Domain registration plugins - ENOM, DirectI, OpenSRS, etc.

- Master Control Panel On/Off switch to control whether clients can log in or not (like forum software has) which would be useful prior to and after upgrades.

- Jabber support might be a pretty cool option to be able to offer your clients. Their own IM server, with transports to AIM, ICQ, MSN, etc (http://www.jabber.org)

- Ability to have the central webmail covered by a domain's own SSL certificate instead of the default PLESK certificate.

- Option to hide Greyed-out buttons.

- /webstat and /ftpstat only viewable within Plesk (admin option).

- Option to add the DB username as a required prefix.

- FrontPage and FTP logins use same login details (click a checkbox to copy the details from FTP to the frontpage fields, or just automatically do it greying out the frontpage fields when the checkboxes clicked). (Plesk 7 for Windows uses same login for both)

- Option to have httpdocs and httpsdocs merged per-domain, e.g. checkbox makes http and https both serve files from the same directory

- "Live Support" addon option in the CP. Like an IRC chat window in the CP where sessioned clients could interact with logged in admin or support staff.

- I would be nice if the Plesk interface supports the abillity to choose with ACL rights a created database user should have... (at least in MySQL as its very simple to implement a point and click interface that supports it).

- Ability to register ACL for other allowed hosts than localhost to login as database user

- Easy setup for backup MX

- Improve spamassassin for users: trusted_networks, ok_languages, ok_locales and allow decimals in required hits.

- Client/domain templates, ability to decide which skin the client/domain has.

- Cerberus helpdesk integration (or even a simple 'contact us' form as option instead of the Helpdesk

- Redirect : Ability to choose between Redirect, Redirect Copy, Forward First ## characters (can be used for generating SMS alerts on mobiles).

- Advanced Filters / Forwarding rules : To create rules for handling & forwarding emails. Current rules apply only for webmail interface - Would be nice to have comprehensive rules at the mailbox level. (Example: If TO/CC Contain/Do Not Contain <Value Here> then Forward/Forward Copy/Move/Delete message to email/folder ).

- WebDAV support via the Control Panel just like that of protected directories.

- Webalizer should have more "clever" settings, for first, we need to remove referer from itself.

- SpamAssassin settings need an option to forward spam to a seperate email box and not just the one that it is currently filtering, this was you can forward it to your spamcop.net account ect..

- When training your Bayes filter they need to add a "Select all as spam" for people who have a dedicated spam dropbox instead of having to click on thousands of emails to designate they are spam.

- The ability to choose between different virus scanner backends such as clamAV, f-prot, etc., and have the email virus scanning icon appear if you have any of them enabled not just for dr.web.

- Have the default skins managed in the Skins button, as opposed to the Preferences button.

- Make the skin dropdown boxes list the skins alphabetically.

- Ability to move clients and domains between "client templates" and "domain templates" would be useful.

- A feature that allows users to import there address book to the white list in spam filter configuration would be nice.

- Possibilty to switch off the user rights to change the skin.

- Mono open source asp.net interpretor for *nix systems support.

- Spamassassin 3 support

- Ability to add an IP block rather than individual IP's to server IP Pool

- TMDA Support would be really, really nice.

- Nagios integration (www.nagios.org), as a module

- APF integration, as a module

- Reseller-level creation utilities (so resellers can link a system such as modernbill to Plesk for automated account creation, etc.)

- A basic and advanced interface selection (basic including the odd thing such as FTP password changes, mailbox setup - basically a very simple interface for users who don't have a clue, and standard Plesk interface for those who do - controllable by admin/client/domain level)

- Advanced feature selection (such as not showing any of the hosting stuff if we want to setup an email only domain-level account)

- Web user control panel access

- ProFTPd SSL patch

- Easy-to-configure control panel access so that we can serve Plesk from port 443 on a specific IP rather than messing with httpsd.conf, etc. to bind Plesk to an IP for behind-firewall access when 8443 is blocked

- Password-protected directories for subdomains

- Domain vhost and email aliasing (web/ftp, mail, or web/ftp/mail type)

- Advanced reseller branding (ability to add welcome message and news to main page of control panel etc.)

- Automated client backups (similar to domain-level, but client-wide)

- GUI for psa-bu with full-server backup automation

- Password Revealer, show to admin/client/domain/mail any password under their control, like FTP, mail, DB, PLESK etc.

- Ability to move domains between clients

- SSH sessions manager

- Database Space Limits

- Remote MySQL support

- Urchin Stats Support

- Hotlink protection

- Shared SSL Setup

- DNS SOA/IFXR customization

- Configuring script library access (in client/domain templates, and afterwards)

- phpMyAdmin root access

- FrontPage extensions on subdomains

Any further ideas?

Let's try keep it on topic please ...

 

[Cranky]

Can you try to keep moaning in another thread? I'll respond there if you want, but I'll be backing Plesk.

 

[Cranky]

That post is actually more like it .... but I really don't think that Plesk is behind any other control panel (that I know of) in terms of features. Sure, there are a few things that are missing, but Plesk then has more features which other control panels don't have. I don't for one minute believe that SWsoft will include even half of the features I posted above in the next release ... but neither do I think any other control panel will have all the features Plesk 8 will have when released.

Wouldn't you agree with that?

 

[Cranky]

Originally posted by crimmson
Name one that is important to a reseller or provides a better feature list than the competion for a simple hosting package.
I'm not talking about managing the server, i'm talking strictly hosting packages that grab the attention of the client, that is after all why we use Plesk in the first place.

33 Application Vault scripts - to my knowledge, no other CP on the market features anywhere near as many - these are incredibly popular amongst my clients.

I'm not saying at all that you're not wrong ... there's plenty of must-have features which we don't have ... but it's software development, you can't expect everything to appear all at once without major bugs and problems - I don't want ANY of the above features if they're going to break my servers because they're rushed.

SWsoft have increased Plesk dev team significantly since acquiring Plesk, Inc. and have done a fantastic job at developing the product that is Plesk752 IMHO. I'd love to see some of these features in Plesk 8, but I'd also like to see a stable, reliable and relatively non-buggy product.

 

[matt.simpson]

crimmson, what a stupid place to post a ranting post you idiot. Get a freakin life. Damn, Cranky probably spent hours compiling that list (which is a huge, thanks cranky) and you go and ruin it with a rant. You jerk. Damn, if I was SW-Soft I would have just deleted your stupid whining post.

---

Anyways, thanks Cranky for your list, it is very very useful. I just went through that list going "yeah, that'd be great, yeah, that'd be great, yeah" so hey! It looks like a damn solid feature request list to me.

SW-Soft, Cranky is right. Include these features at your pace, but make sure there aren't bugs in the release before it's released. I don't care if I have to wait another whole year for a release, I want it to be without problems.

So my last feature request is that you spend the time doing QA like noones business. If your product is solid, and stable people will still prefer it. Damn, look at Debian stable

P.S. I could care less about the Application Vault and how many scripts it has in it.

Take care,
Matt Simpson

 

[Cranky]

I absolutly could not agree more with you ... But... the clients don't care, they just want the same features as the other hosts provide and if they compare packages and don't see as much as the other hosts for relatively the same coin they leave .. simple as that.

YOUR clients don't care, mine do - most of them anyway - stability is much more important than the odd feature. I still don't know of any CP with 40 scripts included (I know of several with add-ons from third-parties though) .. but anyway, I give up, you win, Plesk is useless, I'm uninstalling it now.

 

[bensontrent]

Autoresponder needs ability to reply to "reply-to" field

You're welcome Cranky

 

[justyxxxx]

Amen to the Reply to field for the autoresponder. That's been an issue FOREVER.

 

[justyxxxx]

I looked thru your list, but didn't necessarily see this particular issue. I'd like to see it so that the email clients can't change their mailbox/control panel passwords and settings - have this as an option on a per user basis. This is because I use a third party system for billing and the two don't integrate. I'm sure others use third party systems. And, so to keep them up to date with the same info, I'd prefer that we have the control to allow the email client to change their information or to not change their information.

 

[justyxxxx]

Also, I disagree about Plesk being behind the times as a control panel. I believe that they've really stepped up their features in the last year alone. And now with module feature, it opens up an entire new playing field. Hopefully they'll begin introducing additional hosted applications that we can offer to our clients - such as Word processing/accounting (actually I think there's alraedy an accounting program)/spreadsheet/etc) so that we can offer additional value added programs that cater to the general public so that they don't have to buy these programs, they can just "rent" them from the hosting provider.

 

[bensontrent]

I agree with Justinxxxx, although the purpose of this post is to rant on what Plesk doesn't offer, I'm pleased to say my clients rave on what it does offer. Among user CP user interfaces (and I've used several), Plesk beats everyone hands down--Even before the xp interface makeover. They've laid the groundwork for a truly, modular, scalable, programmable user experience. Although I'm currently pulling my hair out trying to figure out a work-around for Plesk's inability to autorespond to a reply-to field-- I think the whole plesk team deserves a standing ovation for making my life easier on a daily basis.

 

[Cranky]

Originally posted by bensontrent
...although the purpose of this post is to rant on what Plesk doesn't offer, I'm pleased to say my clients rave on what it does offer.

It's far from a rant from me ... just a place to pass ideas to the developers, from those of us actually using the product.

I agree completely with your posts.

 

[crimmson]

Ok guys, i have removed my rants as that was not the purpose of Crankys post in the first place .. .

What i would like to see included in the next release: multiple ftp accounts, ability to move accounts from one reseller to another, more stability and bug fixes ..

 

[NightStorm]

On "Dedicated IP's" (not shared, but exclusive), a total bandwidth monitoring option... instead of just including FTP, Mail, and HTTP, also include IRC, Shoutcast, and any other traffic that moves on that IP address when calculating the monthly total.
Right now, if you give a user an IRC server on their IP, they can burn theough 50MB of web traffic, 200GB of IRC traffic, and the bandwidth monitor will only say they used 50MB that month.

 

[faris]

non-resolving email rejection

I'd like to see a facility to reject incoming email if the sending domain does not resolve (basically an additional tick box next to the current "Reject" option for email addressed to non-existent mailboxes).

Or would this lead to too much DNS load because a DNS lookup would have to be done for each received email?

Faris.

 

[JLChafardet]

something that may not be hard to do, is also to see the expiration date of the domains on the listing, that would be a nice feature to add, maybe not much requested, but good to have it.

 

[akamaka]

Users to see their mailbox quota and usage from CP and webmail.

 

[insel]

Some items from my wish-list (some are allready on the very goof list of Cranky)

- Filter for spam-mails: Hits < x into mailbox, mark mails with more than x hits and forward them to a seperate spam-box, delete mails with more than y hits. (Customers could fetch mails, which are recognized as spam less frequent or delete them via webmail)

- Domain aliases. Mail to [email protected] goes to the mailbox of [email protected] or http://www.example.com/ shows the content of http://www.example.org/ (ServerAlias within Apache-configuration)

- Set mail-quota for the domain, not for each mailbox. So you don't have to think about how many mailboxes (and diskspace) a customer could use.

- Within domain creation process: Show, how much traffic, disk space, ... is still availavle for the client

- Possibility to enable spamassassin/drweb as a default for new mailboxes.

- If you have 5 mailboxes free and you start to create box no. 6 no warning is shown until you try to save this mailbox.

insel

 

[webbit]

Mailbox Limits and Group Operations

I'd like to see a group operation that can be performed on every mailbox on the server in one go to adjust the mailbox limits - not on a domain or user by user basis.

 

[BBaboon]

Intergate some Real streaming (audio/video).
There are server packages available for Windows, Linux and FreeBSD.
I saw shoutcast, but Real is more pro.

Tnx.