Anyone with experience with Web hosting will likely know about a web control panel - the web-based interface used for configuring and monitoring your sites. There are hundreds of different control panels out there, some of them free and others cost hundreds of dollars per year. I have experimented with several different control panels (cPanel, DirectAdmin, Ravencore, VHCS and H-Sphere are some I am very familiar with) but ultimately found each lacking in some respect.

But I have finally found one worthy of recognition: Virtualmin. From the legendary creator of Webmin (a web interface for administering a Unix server) comes this powerfully flexible control panel that just works so well. If you want a free solution, there’s even a no cost GPL version available with almost all of the same features as the paid versions, which allows you to host an unlimited number of domain names.

Installing Virtualmin is easy: the auto-installer script downloads, installs and configures all of the required packages without you having to do a thing. Once the setup process is complete, you’re ready to start hosting. Setting up a new virtual server is done by just typing in the domain name. The Apache virtual server, FTP account, DNS records and a MySQL database is automatically created. Just drop some files into the public_html folter and your web site is ready to be viewed by the world.

Bandwidth graphs, Webaliser stats, AWstats reports and Apache log files can be viewed at the click of a button, and configuration is easy through the MySQL, web site and DNS pages. If you don’t want to configure your site through the user interface, you can choose to simply edit the configuration files manually.

If you want a web control panel for personal use or for a professional hosting service, Virtualmin is for you.