jtara - 5:08 pm on Dec 11, 2007 (gmt 0)

Have also asked my hosts if they are willing to Install Plesk or some other cpanel to work with. But I dont think they will.

That's because they are fairly expensive to license. So, just get a license and install yourself - though you'll pay quite a bit more than you would through your host if they had it available.

I'm a bit surprised at a host that doesn't offer a control panel, though. Who are you using, Paleolithic Hosting? ;)

Do you know of any software with which I can manage the server from home?

Yes. It's called Linux.

Using a Linux desktop, rather than a Windows desktop, gives you much tighter integration without your website. But, still, it would take a bit of work.

An example of the kind of integration you can easily install: install the FUSE filesystem 'sshfs'. You can then mount your website's filesystem through an ssh connection, and you will see your site's files in your local file hierarchy. Any Linux program that can work with local files can then work with them - e.g. editors, file browsers, development tools, etc. etc. etc.

In theory, you could install the X libraries on your server and run GUI programs on it and have them display on your desktop. However, X doesn't run real well over the web, and is a huge resource hog that you don't want on your web server. So, scratch that. But I thought I'd throw it out and explain why it's a bad idea. (You can get an X server for Windows - but it's still a bad idea...)

Quite a number of GUI configuration and maintainence tools can be pointed at a non-local server. Some of these are available on Windows. An example would be the MySQL Administrator and MySQL Query Browser that are optionally available from MySQL. These are available in both Windows and Linux versions. You can use them to browse a remote MySQL server, and you can do so securely through an ssh tunnel.

Another example are some of the GUI tools available for configuring IPTables firewalls. Most of these can be used to remotely administer the firewall on a different server.

So, you can probably find at least bits and pieces of what you need as local GUI programs that can connect to your server remotely.

The web-based administration packages seem to work well for most. What is your objection to them?

I think at least one person has mentioned here that they've put together their own remote monitoring and configuration system that uses local programs to access their site(s) over ssh. Maybe they will chime in and refresh my memory. That perhaps is the ultimate way to do this - something tailored to your own specific needs. However, that would require quite a bit of Linux and webserver knowledge, and some programming ability.

Perhaps some searching will find a comprehensive GUI package for over-ssh website administration. But I think you're more likely to find it for Linux than for Windows, because under Linux it could leverage a lot of existing tools that already come with Linux.