Hosting multiple websites for ICT course?

[mikeglover]

Hi,

 

I am currently looking at starting a project where we have a web server that hosts our students websites that they create in ICT lessons. The idea being it gives them experience of uploading to a server via FTP and all the sites being in a centralised easy for marking and moderating.

I am looking at something that would run on Linux, use Apache and also connect via LDAP (AD Integration) to create ftp users and virtualhost folders for the students that will be making websites, so I'm looking for an easy web hosting management system with AD integration. I've looked at ISPConfig and Webmin but wondering if anyone else could recommend a management system that would suit this project? This would all be internal based and not public facing.

[pcstru]

I use a virtual Ubuntu server. I don't link it with AD, I use a report to get the names of students on the course and then a small bash script to create the accounts. We allow ICT teachers restricted access to webmin to enable them to change passwords. You could use SAMBA to link to AD for authentication. That might have the unintended consequence of allowing them to navigate to a share rather than forcing them to use ftp. It also might be a pain to then block people who are not on the course.

[british_government]

Just out of interest, why not use IIS?

 

I am a LAMP man through and through but was asked the same question for the school here, took about half an hour to setup on IIS using AD authentication. FTP access to file root for each user then one server with a list of directories, one for each user.

[glennda]

I setup the following at my last place.

 

We did - ubuntu with apache and VSFTPD - and then set the website to /home/webuser/ students logged in and then created there own folder so that when they accessed they went to http://studentcoursework/therename and got access to the site they created.

[CyberNerd]

apache and mod_userdir with samba access is the most straightforward.

If you use samba as their fileserver then H:\public_html becomes their webserver.

[mikeglover]

Thanks for all your replies. I was going to stay clear of SAMBA as i dont want them to browse their web root using explorer.exe as I could see them moving folders about and causing all kind of issues with their sites. We use Dreamweaver for web development so we want to get students into the practice defining their site with Dreamweaver and then using remote server.

The reason why I was thinking of using AD was that it will be roughly 100 students users that would need to make the system so didn't want to manually create users and need some way to nicely manage it. Must admit I don't have much experience with IIS and I'm more comfortable with LAMP but that might me a solution. The bash script thing sounds like a good way to go as well for bulk creation that I hadn't thought of. Thanks

[british_government]

This is a really nice piece of documentation for IIS with AD if you want to go down that route.

How to setup AD FTP User isolation

[twin--turbo]

Install ISPconfig3 using a one of the guides.

 

Rob

[nev104]

Would this be the solution you are looking for

 

FTP and Web server [bishop Barrington IT Wiki]

 

Webman is the man behind this fantastic solution.