Domains vs Domain Aliases... Why?

[pgentoo]

I've been contemplating this for some time, and I really don't understand why we have the concept of a "domain" and a "domain alias". Really all a domain alias is, is another domain that isn't the primary one on the account. So why have different php pages, sql tables, daemon code, etc.... to handle these?

The database already has seperated out the admin user, and the domain. Why not just kill the concept of a domain alias, and allow a user to create multiple domains?

I'm really trying to get converted over to ispcp for my systems, but the whole idea that login to the control panel is based on a domain name, and there can only be one, is a big pain for me. Sure there are domain aliases, but these have their own limitations currently, and i just don't see the point.

Anyone feel the same?

Would it be hard to just kill domain aliases and allow more than one domain to an account? Then we could allow the actual login to manage the domains either be one of the domains (the master?) or some arbitrary username.

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pgentoo

[Boboga]

pgentoo Wrote:I've been contemplating this for some time, and I really don't understand why we have the concept of a "domain" and a "domain alias". Really all a domain alias is, is another domain that isn't the primary one on the account. So why have different php pages, sql tables, daemon code, etc.... to handle these?

The database already has seperated out the admin user, and the domain. Why not just kill the concept of a domain alias, and allow a user to create multiple domains?

I'm really trying to get converted over to ispcp for my systems, but the whole idea that login to the control panel is based on a domain name, and there can only be one, is a big pain for me. Sure there are domain aliases, but these have their own limitations currently, and i just don't see the point.

Anyone feel the same?

Would it be hard to just kill domain aliases and allow more than one domain to an account? Then we could allow the actual login to manage the domains either be one of the domains (the master?) or some arbitrary username.

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pgentoo

That would be great, now it's really confusing. At this time it's almost better to give a client 2 usernames instead of adding an alias domain.

I agree

[Eminos]

I agree. The domain and the user should be separated. Implementation of "username" would be great.

/E

[zpin]

I fully agree on this...
I think the login should be arbitrary (so it can also be the full primary [or secondary or whatever] domain name)

[joximu]

I don't like the term "domain alias" in the way it's used in ispcp.
Normally (apache) an alias is a second/third domain showing the *same* website as the primary (does not have an extra folder) - and then you maybe can choose if you want also mail-aliases (*@domainalias.tld -> ...@primary-domain.tld) or not....

Maybe theese things can be improved in a later release of ispcp.

I can live with several logins for different domains. I'd rather wish a second login e.g. to manage all mail accounts (an nothing else...) and another to manage ftp + sql.
Often the mail accounts are managed by a secretary and the ftp/sql login has to go to a external webmaster...

/Jo

[BioALIEN]

+1 on the proposals here. Maybe after v1.0 is out?

[aseques]

(09-29-2008 11:56 PM)BioALIEN Wrote:  +1 on the proposals here. Maybe after v1.0 is out?

+1 from me too

In plesk, whenever you create a alias of a domain, the new one, is just a SiteAlias for apache, a redirect for the mail, and another domain with exactly the same template for DNS.
Many customers want the .com AND the .co.uk for example, and want to forget about the aliased domain.

There's no hurry tought, I'd prefer reaching stable asap.

[soomon]

same here

[ephigenie]

yeah for newer version we're planning to change the domain.tld = username to something else in terms like login with vu2xxxx or something like that.

Within this concept we'll merge a lot of things together so that there's no /var/www/virtual/<domain>.<tld> dir but a /var/www/virtual/vu2xxxx/ dir with extra dirs for domains below that.
And of course only dirs that really need to be there - as a result of it :

-no restriction on deleting a former main - domain while you still want to have a former alias domain
-no restriction on features "only for main domains"
-no must for a directory

[pgentoo]

Thanks to everyone for your feedback on this issue.

Have any of you done prework to see what it would take to patch the current code to add multiple domains under a single login?

I'd be willing to contribute to the PHP/sql side of things to get this done, but I've never done any perl...

I REALLY want to get moved over from my current control panel (one i wrote years back) to ispcp, but this is honestly a deal breaker for me... I need to have more than one domain per username, and those domains need to have full functionality... The current domain_alias implementation is just not going to cut it.

Ideally i would also like the ability to create a real "Domain Alias" which clones every aspect of a existing domain (something i can do with my system now). How this works, is it creates ServerAlias entries for all subdomains (including www) for the parent domain, but also clones the email addresses...
So if there is blog.domain1.com, and domain1.com has a alias of domain2.com... you also get blog.domain2.com by default. In this case there is no need to even allow them to edit stuff on domain2.com, because it just inherits from domain1.com

As an example of the mail... if i have domain1.com and i add user@domain1.com. A cloned domain2.com would also have user@domain2.com setup by default.

Like i said, i'm more than willing to put some time into getting this setup, but without it, ispcp just really doesn't meet my needs.

Let me know if you are willing to help out in getting this implemented... I honestly think this is a deal breaker feature, that should have been included in the 1.0 planning...

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pgentoo

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(10-01-2008 12:25 AM)ephigenie Wrote:  yeah for newer version we're planning to change the domain.tld = username to something else in terms like login with vu2xxxx or something like that.

I'd like to see something like vu-<SOME_USERNAME_THAT_THE_USER_PICKS>. So if they want their username to be "cfx", and it's not already taken, they get a system user called "vu-cfx". They woudl however login to the control panel with "cfx". Something like this i think would be very clean, and not require them to remember that tehy are "vu10072".

ephigenie Wrote:Within this concept we'll merge a lot of things together so that there's no /var/www/virtual/<domain>.<tld> dir but a /var/www/virtual/vu2xxxx/ dir with extra dirs for domains below that.
And of course only dirs that really need to be there - as a result of it :

I really like this though... In this case they could have multiple domains added, say domain1.com and domain2.com. These would be like:
/var/www/virtual/cfx/domain1.com and /var/www/virtual/cfx/domain2.com.

This is essentially what i have now in my system, however I have all my stuff under the users /home, for some unknown reason.

My current structure is like /home/cfx/htdocs/domains/domain.com/html,logs,errors,tmp,cgi-bin,...

I have the extra level in there because i also give them /home/cfx/htdocs/public_html/domain.com/html,logs,errors,tmp,cgi-bin,... (created with just symlinks to their actual domain). This way before their dns is active or what not... they can access the site using http://www.mydomain.com/~cfx/domain1.com/ I know this could have been done with subdomains, which would have been a lot cleaner, but i didn't do it that way...

Just some ideas... always good to get some discussion about stuff to come to the best result.