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Command line v/s Control Panels
I love managing servers without any control panel like Kloxo, Cpanel , Plesk etc.. and i am by no means a linux guru.
My server setup goes like this
Nginx+PHP-FPM+MySQL(If needed) + BIND + Custom SSH Port & New SSH Password + CSF
Its simple and is actually faster for me than installing cpanel , learning how to configure it and then optimise it.
Control panels force you to install lots of stuff that you don't need + there is always the risk of vulnerabilities.
Is it worth it to learn how to configure and optimize control panels.Most of my friends can't do without a control panel and want me to install one so that we can work on projects together
I can't figure out whether i should force them to just use ftp(which may be a bit PITA) or just
muster the courage and patience to learn how to configure and optimize cpanel.
Comments
Being able to use a control panel is certainly not a bad thing. Only relying on one though is. From a performance/clutter point of view a bare server is definitely the way to go.
Both have their merits but the more you get into the command line the less you find any control panel fits your niche needs exactly and easily. I bet I'm not the only one here who's thought of rolling their own to make their life a bit easier (and prettier)... and plenty here have.
@neroux
But i will never use a control panel for any of my personal projects , won't it be a waste of time and energy
Force them to use SCP - not FTP. :P
I don't know what your role is with your server. If you're the sysAdmin, we could think of your friends as the clients. I would set up a control panel if my clients asked for it.
For example, I personally hate all things Apple - but if my grandmother asked what her next computer should be - I would say a MAC. What would be easiest for your friends (which could make maintaining things easier for you)?
There might be always a point where you could use the knowledge (and if it is that you start working in web hosting).
It is really up to what you deem necessary.
For you, command line. For anyone else looking at your stuff, perhaps with less technical knowledge or just knowledge of your working system... a UI would probably be easier.
Don't forget not everyone works the same way as you too. One day you might be on a project where it makes more sense to use an out-of-the box solution like a control panel rather than train a team on your custom tools or argue between developers and sysadmins over the way you should administer the system (or maybe you just don't have time period). There's no one right way to control a server.
@ricardo and @AThomasHowe
You are both right .Maybe i am a bit lazy due to the fact that i will have to learn how to optimise Apache as well.In fact once i was on my own and was able to buy my server , i started straight away with nginx
Apache is dying slowly ....it's so much simpler to do things with nginx(just my personal opinion)
Apache isn't slowly dying... it's losing it's marketshare but I wouldn't say it's anywhere near dying yet. It has it's strengths (and weaknesses) over other web servers too.
I never use control panels. I've installed them before, and then spent hours configuring it and installing things.
Then when I've finally set everything up I think, what a waste of disk space and I uninstall it.
More software means more resource usage, and more possibilities of your server being exploited, so if you don't need it, don't bother installing it IMO
@AThomasHowe
Personally i haven't found any weakness of nginx....would be nice to know some:)
@hostnoob that's exactly what i am feeling right now...
It does not have native support for PHP.
Control panels are just extras. Most of the things you can do via the console. I guess if you had time, you would mess with console, otherwise you would just use a control panel.
@Brad
Time isn't a factor here since i am comfortable with console + i have coded my own bash script to automate the setup.A server is ready for production is like 5 mins
And in those 5 mins everything from the basic server setup i listed above + email alerts + my site installation is done
@neroux
I think its negligible since php-fpm is fairly easy to configure once you understand how things works
Like @neroux said you can't add new modules on the fly like you can with apache, you have to recompile nginx to add a new module, there hasn't been much effort to get mod_php or an equivalent to work natively on nginx. What we end up doing on ngxinx is passing requests to a fastcgi server which then processes PHP. Apache might be more greedy with memory in some cases and not as optimised for static content line nginx is it serves php much better under high load. It also has a bigger community and stuff and some people would also say things like unicorn (python) or fusion passenger ("mod_rails" - nodejs, ruby (on rails), python) work better under Apache too.
Nginx works better for static content though and if you want you can use nginx as a front end and back proxy to apache for php content (which sounds complicated but isn't worlds away from what you're already doing with fastcgi). Here's a nice digital ocean tutorial, not very difficult.
I'm running a php forum with 2 million dynamic page view per day on nginx+php-fpm+memcache without any problems and it only uses half of the 2 GB memory. TBH I dear not try to use apache instead as it will probably run out all the memory in less than 10 seconds.
That's some nice anecdotal evidence you have there but you haven't even tried apache so excuse me if I take it with a pinch of salt.
@khav why not use VestaCP? It's real easy and mostly already optimized. I find CPs easier or more worth it for hosting more than five websites.
Didn't they find some security flaws with vesta recently?
Link?
Nope. Just a rumor afaik.