These are my initail comments on the new InterWorx 1.8.0.RC1
I will be posting followups to this in the same thread this weekend as I have time to play (err . . . test) the software and features.
From what I can see, Chris is right. It IS the most significant upgrade yet
The software seems to load faster; not sure if this is something you changed or just my connection.
NodeWorx:
I like the fact that it now shows disc usage on the main screen.
I like the fact that it now shows the OS Distribution on the main screen.
Looks like you added a feature to allow SiteWorx accounts to add SSL certificates. Excellent.
Looks like youāve beefed up the monitoring screen in InterWorx. More graphs for specific things/services (this is new, isnāt it? I donāt go to this screen that often).
The new themes management looks nice. It appears to work much smoother than some of the othe php software I have used. The one looks to be text only. People with slower boxes will be pleased.
On the Updates screen it now only lists OS updates, not InterWorx updates. Have you consolidated the two or is the InterWorx updates crippled in the beta? The list of old ones only has the software updates so Iām guessing itās the latter.
New Apache, php, mysql ā excellent!
SiteWorx:
Looks like you beefed up the logs section. Great!
Other than that I donāt see any real changes here.
What I still would like to see:
(some Iāve posted before some not)
FrontPage support (Version 2000 is fine)
Spamassassin support
Enhance the backup tool ā Give the user the option to either download the backup file to their local machine (for those with fast connections) or save it to a file on their server. My prefference would be to save these files in the directory /home/username/domainanme.com/html/archive [or backup]. The file name would be sonething like mmddyyyy-hhmm-domainmame.com.zip and InterWorx would keep track of these updates (a simple listing would suffice) and a user would be able to generate a direct url to the file so he or she could use wget (or some other protocol) to copy it to a different machine or download it at a later time. The ability to schedule an update (daily/weekly/monthly) would also be nice. And of course a user should be able to restore any of these saved backups in case of an emergency. Anyway, my two cents.
** from what Iām hearing from users these first three are high demand options and Iād suggest you move them up the list a bit if they arenāt already **
A limited ability to edit the httpd.conf (or domainname.com.conf) file from the InterWox screen.
The ability to change settings in php.ini and other config files from NodeWorx (i.e. turn register globals on/off, safe mode on/of). Not necessarily every option here, but the common ones. Iāve looked at some of them so I know how complicated they can be.
Multiple domains per SiteWorx account. A reseller panel would do this and give people that feature at the same time.
Either a file manager in the NodeWorx account or a way to install things like phpBB in a SiteWorx account (both Plesk and cPanel have this). This is more of a ādreamā but a number of my sites use phpBB on them and it is a bugger to do with the file manager. I always log in with my shell account, do it from there, and chown the files back to the SiteWorx account.
Long range thoughts:
Beef up NodeWorx to have more contol over server wide things like Webmin does. For example a listing of all of the RPMās that are installed and the ability to add/remove them (through yum). I know this is easier said than done, but itās something to look at down the road. I know Iāve said it before and Iām sure itās a pipe dream, but I can dream canāt I?
Anyway, thanks Chris, Paul, Greg, and all the other members of the InterWorx team for their hard work.