Most of the time, performance is a deal breaker when selecting a hosting panel. When discussing hosting, everyone wants to have the fastest or as fast as everyone else hosting.
Considering the above, there are two main approaches regarding Contol panels:
- CP is built to manage underlying software (apache ols LS, MySQL, etc.), but no configuration options are offered.
It is like a blank (not a very smart management interface) but offers the option to do so if you know what you need to type in the empty boxes.
Most of the time, you would require a very specialised sys admin knowing all software to be able to fill up the empty boxes for you so your software starts performing. (most of the time to an average level, you can find these admins (to rent) and allow them to customise your configs). I have to say that allowing to many people to work on systems can create a security issue and also put a business in a corner, depending on someone to get things going or being left behind.
The most important in my opinion, is that debugging will be super hard in this situation as there is no precedent to errors one user has due to the fact that each system is so different from another due to individual customisations. (you can not really ask for help or compare your problem to someone else's problem as your system can be so different from another due to customisations done by the Rented admin 🙂 )
In this position is Enhance where from memory, I noticed this trajectory where Adam, at some point, wrote that there would be companies collaborating with Enhance to sell optimised services (in other words, enhance will offer the above, and the rest will be offered by the hosting company where they will have sysadmins optimising apache ols LS MySQL and so on.)
As we can see for not Enhance is already prepared for this, as most of the pages related to configurations are blank, having the option to (fill in the blanks) but no real optimisation is offered out of the box.
- Second option of CP is like Cpanel and Plesk to some extent, where the software is mature and offers a lot more.
Config pages for each service have the backend settings exposed to the admin's front end and well-explained fields for each setting. Another important thing is they offer presets for getting your system tuned/optimised, where all those fields get populated with correct settings and detect Wrong settings keeping you away from errors (man-made)
Using something like this helps you fix errors faster (reset a preset and start again) or compare a system with another due to the fact that settings and options are very similar.
I had the impression that Enhance would go the option 2, but it is not the case for now. But I understand why.
They have a bit of a hard time getting Core functions out due to probably time (they need more time)
You can not optimise something that is not well-defined and stable. (in time, Enhance will mature, and things might look different then)
As a suggestion to enhance team
Get a sysadmin (the one you would recommend us to employ to optimise Apache MySQL etc.) and ask the respective (person or team) to provide the optimisation for the software so we all benefit from it in a safe manner.
a. This way will avoid people butchering a good otherwise software package (if you do allow and actually push the end user-hosting admin to get their own optimisation, you will have so many tickets with stupid errors you will have to try to answer due to the fact that things are broken or not performing, and no one will know if it is enhance or apache or something else at fault) (i would not like to be in this position)
b. At the same time, we all will have a tuned-in-sync and easy-to-debug system where we can do our job and sell hosting, not read Apache documentation.
Having (tuning settings) options prepopulated in the config pages is critical (in my opinion). Having presets would be even better.
We have to ask ourselves, what is the difference between direct admin and enhance? if I have to type blank fields in a box or in a terminal?
I hope Adam and the decision makers from Enhance will choose a type 2 CP (in time).
If Enhance users consider a type 2 CP is the way to go and the suggestion is good, please like this so Enhance team knows our desired path 🙂
