Overview

The SnappCMS hosting control panel is the second major part to the whole SnappCMS project and has been custom build to better suit our purpose of deploying and reselling of the SnappCMS to partners and customers.

The major guidelines for this part of the project were:

• Allow both Customers and Partners to deploy and manage their own sites based on SnappCMS
• Allow partners to signup and easily deploy new sites based on a template or their own creation
• Provide a simplified interface for managing various aspects of their sites.
• Provide automated and unattended billing via stored credit card details

Infrastructure

The SnappCMS Hosting environment has been setup on it's own dedicated server allowing us to full customize and control the services installed and running on the server. The server has been deployed on a fairly stand LAMP stack with the exception that all sites are virtual and access to these sites is all database driven.

Server Side Technologies

• Linux (Centos 5.2 64bit)
• Apache Web Server (2.2)
• MySQL 5 with Replication
• PHP 5.2.8 (Custom Complied)
• ProFTP with MySQL Intergration
• MyDNS with MySQL Intergration
• Automated Offsite Backup

Client / Partner Interface Features

Site Creation Wizard

A step by guide to creating a site, allowing customers to choose from hosting packages, site templates and additional hosting features like dedicated ip addresses and ssl certificates. All this information is then used in the automated creation of the site and a welcome email dispatched to the customer

Visual Site List

This is the main home page of the control panel and list all your sites, and if you are a partner all you client sites as well, with a small thumbnail screen shot and small bar graphs showing the sites current bandwidth and disk space usage. The list also provides quick access to other site information as well site's content management login and dns zone edit information

Site Details

Thought the site details page customers can manage various aspects of their site from hosting feature upgrades, dns zone management, ftp access, database creation, and ssl certificates.

Zone information and site alias domain name that can be either parked or redirected back to the primary

Company Profile & User Management

Customers can update their own contact details and also create additional users who can access the control panel.

Client Billing and Accounts

Allow customers to store and update their credit card details stored for automatic payments, as well as view current and past invoices and payment history. 

Clients also have the option of making manual payments if their automatic payment was declined.

Customer Support Tickets

Customers can submit support tickets for their sites, support ticket are automatically assigned to that customer's controlling partner, otherwise is escalated up to the system administrators.  If a partner submits a support ticket it is automatically assigned to the system administrators.

System Admin Interface Features

Administration Overview

A quick snapshot of the number of sites being created per day, plus current bandwidth usage for the past 30 days.

Site Management

Administrative Support has access to all sites on the system. With all the same features as clients and partners. At a quick glance you can see any sites which are exceeding their bandwidth or disk space allotments as the bar charts turn red once exceeded. 

Once sites exceed their bandwidth they are automatically throttled until the next billing cycle or upgrade their bandwidth allotment.

DNS Management

Administrative Support can update and domain name pointed to it's name servers. With All DNS records stored in a database, records can be easily updated, and instantly replicated out to secondary name servers.

The DNS editing also contains one click mail configuration for use with Google Apps.

Partners & Customers Management

Ability to update and maintain customer and partner information, as well as control panel user login details.

Customer Support

Respond to any support tickets requiring administrator attention

System Logs

All system errors and changes made by customers, partners and administrators are automatically logged and flagged for debugging and trouble shooting

System Options & Customisation

Configuration options and settings for the hosting control panel can be add, edited and updated through the web interface