Hi ccton,



We don't yet have a demo setup for Webmin, however, you can visit http://www.webmin.com/ to see documentation and screenshots there.

As for cPanel, you might be familiar with the control panel portion itself, but WHM is the administrative end that you may not have used before (as shared accounts don't provide WHM access).  So to compare both Webmin and cPanel, here is a breakdown of the 2 of them:

Webmin
- Best open source control panel available
- More of a web based server admin system then user interface, although there is a usermin which is installed separately as part of it (and we do include this component).
- Meant for the complete control of the system not for hosting. With some knowledge of shell and how the system operates, you would still be able to use it for hosting.
- For one user if you would like to host only one account. Creation of new accounts is relatively difficult for someone new to Linux systems. You would have to setup the web site account, mail, ftp and related services seperately using webmin.
- Requires proper knowledge of Linux boxes for trouble shooting issues.

cPanel
- Has a price tag, but it is a full featured and easy to learn and use control panel.
- Provides user-level and system administration functions.
- Requires minimal server understanding or knowledge.
- Is primarily targetted for the hosting industry.
- Can easily create new accounts by entering less than 15 fields such as username, domainname, password, number of mysql db's needed, etc. In less than 2 mins, the new account would be ready to use FTP , mail and the site.

The best way to describe the differences is that Webmin is for managing servers while cPanel is for easy management of web hosting.  Webmin is for those familiar with Linux and shell in addition to servers. It can be learned, but it would be difficult to use if you are not well versed with the environment. Alternatively, cPanel costs $10 to install and an additional $35 per month on top of the dedicated server cost, but if you are not familiar with Linux, it is ideal. cPanel comes with WHM or WebHosting Manager, a very in-depth server and account administration system.

For a screenshot of how WHM works, please visit http://www.cpanel.net/features-whm.html and documentation on WHM at http://www.cpanel.net/docs/whm/



CentOS is the free version of RedHat Enterprise 3.  It is the same as it but it doesn't include the support basically.  It is like running RedHat Enterprise 3, which is what runs on the majority of the shared servers.



You can configure whatever you would like on the server, so any text length, any db, anything that is legal to run on the server in the state of California. You do have Apache on the server as well as MySQL included by default (Apache is a bit of requirement to be running for the other components to work anyway, so we definitely install Apache on the server for all dedicated plans or CentOS wouldn't even function/install nor would php, nor a slew of other stuff...).



We only help with transfers when the user purchases cPanel as this simplifies moving the account.  Otherwise, we would certainly help with explaining how to go about moving the account, but we would not do it personally for the user.

Thanks.

Thanks Danielle, katrina1 for the quick reply. I will go looking into the given links.