All About ISPConfig3 Clients

Author: David Boutcher (http://www.badbison.com/)

ISPConfig3 is a complete hosting solutions and has a number of levels of users as such, all which are fully customisable.

As far as ISPConfig3 is concerned the highest user is the default user, ‘admin’. Admin sits at the very top of the food chain and has complete control over the control panel and all it’s functions. Be careful not to get ‘admin’ confused with ‘root’, remember ‘admin’ is king in the ISPConfig3 control panel where as ‘root’ is a system user.

The admin user can also create other control panel users that have similar rights. You might want to create another user if a few of you are running the server; you might have techi who can give clients new sites and email domains and boxes, but you don’t want him to have access to the DNS records, you have a DNS guys for that!

Click here to see how to create an additional control panel user.

Remember, think BIG! ISPConfig3 isn’t just about you. Why sell webspace, email addresses etc, when you get can other people to do it for you?There’s a lot of web designers out there who, probably like you, sell websites and would like to offer a complete package full of email, webmail, imap, ftp and webspace. So, this is where the ‘Reseller’ account comes in. It’s a bit like selling off a complete ‘Virtual Server’; but not quite, it’s more like selling a complete ‘Virtual ISPConfig3’ control panel, with a server behind it. You can limit resources to a ‘Reseller’, after alll, you don’t want them reselling all your resources on you server leaving none for you and other clients, or maybe for the right price you happy with this.

Coming soon – Click here to see how to add a reseller.

The next rung down the food chain is the ‘Client’. Again, this customer is totally customisable. You might want them to have just one site and one email box. Or you might want them to have for example, 15 websites, 15 email domains with 5 mailboxes on each and limits hard disk space to 25Gb… AND let them manage their own DNS records.

ALL OF THESE TYPE OF USERS LOG IN TO THE CONTROL PANEL IN THE SAME WAY!

http://yourservername.com:8080

They just get different views with different tabs and resources depending on what you have given them.

In summary

Admin –

The admin manages the whole system
The admin may add other control panel users of the system
The admin may add resellers
The admin may have his own clients independant of resellers

Control Panel Users –

Control Panel users can do just what admin had given them permission to do. There may be able to everything ‘admin’ can do, or they may only be able edit email mailboxes.

Resellers –

Resellers can do almost anything the ‘admin’ users can do except configurations. They have a determined number of resources they can sell on such as DNS records, web domains, email domains etc. They can then set limits to their clients.

Clients –

Clients can use the resources that you or their reseller has given them. They may only has one web domain and other than use it, may not be able to do anything else. Other clients may be able to host and manage their own DNS records. It’s totally customisable.

REMEMBER – think BIG. ISPConfig3 does, A LOT!

Users and Clients