Hi. Im not new to PHP but I have not come across my current problem before.

I'm creating an automatic website creation tool for a bit of a niche market, using my own CMS with themes and fancy editors and all that jazz. And while my CMS is almost complete and working I have recently realised that I have no idea how I wish to deploy it.

My service involves setting up a new account on my reseller hosting package for my clients, and then them using either my database based CMS system or ordinary FTP access, depending upon their experience. My problem is that I dont really want to have to put all the control panel PHP scripts in their webspace. In case they delete them, edit them beyond repair and all sorts of security issues I havn't thought of... Also, it means I can't subtly update it once I have clients.

Im sure my service isn't completely unique. How do other people get around this?

well that is not possible if you want to create a seperare hosting account for each "site"

you could have it so its the same script and u have a script where user signs up and ir creates a database for that thing or something..

I would personally say u should have the files on the account and give some degree of trust to them.

i would have a script which creates the new hosting account, moves a compressed archive with all the files in, decompress it create a database user with full privs
create a config file with those settings, install the DB structure.
and then it should be all fine.

BUT i very much doubt you would be able to do most of that because u need Root access. so u would need VPS/Dedicated.

Dan

Thats what I am currently doing on my testing setup, more or less. Im using WHM/cPanel's skeleton directory which populates all new accounts on the server, including an install script to setup the tables.

One of my goals was to have the control panel self updating. That possible, let alone sensible?

Ah bother, your right - you cant create databases from PHP on my server. Anyway to do this through cPanel automatically?

Dont think so, (i forgot about the skelton directory lol that would be best)

I think the only way is to get the client to set up a db user and run the install script, or u do it for each one.