Panel Plugins

MediaLabz

A plugin system for the panel would be great as it would allow for a very streamlined panel with just 'core' functionality. This would be very beneficial in terms of efficiency and performance.

Any additional features can then be added using plugins as needed. Enhance developed plugins could possibly be installed through a repository with one click, which would make it very easy to install and update. This would also allow external developers to add functionalities which can then be installed as a plugin, and then could integrate into the panel in the correct area - eg. a plugin for email could show its options under the email tab.

manu

+1 this would make enhance quite amazing and it will stay optimized with our choice based configurations.

Hennie

Great idea. +1

JohnB

+1 far in the future after the pressing stuff is worked out. I don't think a plugin repo is a good idea because it leads to a false sense of security (see 1M+ install 5 star plugins on wordpress with horrible security). This leads to people saying the base product is insecure because they they don't grasp basic concepts. This is why wordpress is considered insecure to some.

Enhance can't be expected to vet each one either especially through each update.

Maybe a good middle ground would be really good documentation and examples and the capability for plugins. Hosting providers can write their own code or review github projects and use them.

You usually don't want to add plugin support or the like until a product is matured. Once you have to think of not breaking plugins with each update, the development speed goes way down or requires a lot more manhours.

Adam

Unlike most legacy panels, Enhance is compiled code, it doesn't run in an interpreter such as PHP or Perl.

This is great for security but it does mean that it's not possible to support plugins in the same way as software such as WordPress and WHMCS where those plugins execute alongside the core code and have full access to the database.

The best way for 3rd party developers to integrate their product with Enhance is using the API. Existing integrations such as cpguard do this. However it means the 3rd party products need to provide their UI, either using their own web server or through a website running on Enhance.

It is possible in the future that there might be a framework for adding custom Javascript to the Enhance UI so that custom UI can be presented within the Enhance panel itself. This isn't immune to security issues because malicious Javascript could still capture user input.

It may also be possible in future to upload a script which is run on website creation, as the website user. This could be bash, PHP, Perl, etc. This could be used to integrate 3rd party software installers, to install custom frameworks on website creation, etc.

broskees

Adam Thoughts on a Lua API that can run server side rather than client side? Could solve the security issues of javascript integrations (It's doesn't escape me that this is a lot of work, but the benefits would be pretty great).