Re: [webmin-l] Ramblings after reviewing the pole

[Barry <we...@i1...>]

John Hinton wrote:

>
>
> OK, yes, Webmin is for sysadmins and since Virtualmin is to be 
> operated within Webmin, I guess that it should be considered for 
> sysadmins. As far as these are concerned, yup, more help files and 
> perhaps a review of terminology used would be of benefit to us sysadmins. 

Well, yeah, but I bet that was all written long ago before OC started 
asking around...and what Paul cubbage is asking are inbound marketing 
questions, which signals that they are open to reconsidering the 
original mission, and funding or otherwise driving the changes.


> Virtualmin is in some places sort of advertised as being for end 
> users. Well....... if that is the case, it has missed the mark. My 
> personal experience is that it is also for sysadmins and is easy 
> enough for some well trained colo sysadmins.. with a lot of hand 
> holding. And then only after some clear and concise 'methods' laid out 
> by me. I really think Virtualmin is also only for sysadmins.


I agree - I can't imagine anyone but a sysadmin using virtualmin - to 
me, it is just a way to handle a lot of related, repeated tasks over and 
over again in a consistent way.

>
> Usermin... This is the 'logical' area for 'users' and its purpose is 
> advertised as such. Usermin does need a 'lot' of clarity, as users can 
> 'read' just about anything wrong. Users also feel that if something 
> 'looks good' it is 'good'. The Usermin interfaces that I see seem to 
> be a bit old school (something I might be able to do some work with) 
> and then just some tweaks to naming conventions and a pop-up help box 
> for just about every action available.


I would make the same points with Usermin I made earlier - what 
specifically are the personas of the users, and what are the tasks they 
need to accomplish, and go from there....

>
> My second concern is compatibility. I feel like compatibility between 
> Webmin/Virtualmin/Usermin will always be better than for instance 
> Webmin/Virtualmin/Squirrelmail_with_plugins. With the quality of the 
> Webmin product line, how could any other combo work as well and have 
> fewer issues? Also, keeping up with where things are on the servers.. 
> get more complex as more interfaces are added... upgrading/moving to 
> new servers is a lot harder already with just Webmin. More stuff? Yuck!


How about a team whose purpose it is to build collaborations with the 
creators of other packages to build and maintain modules?

>
> Hmm.. that could be interesting to play with. An webmin.conf for 
> Apache that would send them to miniserv.. I wonder if that could work?


OTTOMH you could do it with a mod_rewrite rule that would proxy the 
:2000 address. Probably a single rule with regexes  could handle all of 
your domains...

>
> Also, third party modules can potentially come and go. If they go I 
> could be faced with retraining my users or taking on another project. 
> (and I'm not very proficient with perl)


All the more reason for them to be coming from the creators of the sw 
itself in a collaboration...

>
> Looking at the new Virtualmin Pro, whew!! Now a new theme like that 
> would be fantastic, at least in the Usermin section. Personally, as a 
> sysadmin I just want clean, compact and fast loading. The users 
> though, they do like the glitz and glamour and the look of something 
> that is current which must make them feel like the program itself is 
> current.


Speaking of that, there was a discussion/promise that the features of 
Virtualmin Pro would be GPL'd at some point...whatever became of that?

Best,

Barry