Looking for a web host that lets subaccounts use web-based templates

[Doctor Q]

There are plenty of web hosting services to choose from, and I know many of them that MacRumors members have recommended. What I'm shopping for at the moment has a twist.

I want to purchase web hosting for a website (let's say it's www.mysite.com/) with the ability to create "subaccounts" for a set of users who will manage their own web pages within their own folder, e.g., www.mysite.com/person1/, www.mysite.com/person2/. Each of those will be a personal website.

I want to be able to give a user name and password to each person so they can use FTP to upload their own web pages if they have a web editor like iWeb or Dreamweaver. But... I also want to let them use web-based site-building software provided by the web hosting service. That way they can choose to create a simple personal site using templates and a web interface if they don't want to use a local application.

The security requirement is that none of my users should be able to affect pages other than in their own folder. Only I will have keys to the whole kingdom.

Lots of web hosting services provide FTP subaccounts and lots provide web-based page editing. Do any provide web-based page editing for subaccounts?

Any other advice about my plan?

 

[joro]

Couldn't you accomplish this by installing a Web-Based CMS on each sub-account and then giving users a username/password combo to that CMS? Then if users don't want to do web-based editing, they could always delete the CMS through FTP.

 

[Doctor Q]

Couldn't you accomplish this by installing a Web-Based CMS on each sub-account...?

I hadn't considered that multiple installations of a web-based CMS might be possible, each set up to manage the files within a single folder. Is that what you mean?

Do you know any particular packages to recommend?

 

[joro]

I hadn't considered that multiple installations of a web-based CMS might be possible, each set up to manage the files within a single folder. Is that what you mean?

Do you know any particular packages to recommend?

Yes to your first question.

In terms of the system, I’m a wordpress junkie which may or may not work for what you’re trying to do. I hear Joomla and Moodle (which is normally installed on most cpanel installations) are great as well though I honestly don’t have any first-hand experience with them to tell you definitely.

 

[design-is]

+1 for WordPress! Great platform & easy to manage. You could even consider WordPress Mu.. But I've not played with that.

/Doug

 

[alphaod]

Godaddy lets you create FTP users with only permissions to specific folders.

 

[brisbaneguy29]

Get a Reseller Account.

What you need to do it properly is to get yourself a Reseller web hosting account with someone like Hostgator. From here you can provision individual accounts, all with their own, FTP, Mail, MySQL, cPanel etc.. You can then install site builder, and have each account have access to site builder.
There are some very very good web hosting management packages available like WHM Autopilot, or WHMCS. These will allow your to automate the system, and will also mean you can create subdomains for each new customer. ie: customer1.yoursite.com, customer2.yoursite.com

What your talking about is a becoming a basic web host for your customers, any other way will just be clunky.

 

[Doctor Q]

What you need to do it properly is to get yourself a Reseller web hosting account with someone like Hostgator. From here you can provision individual accounts, all with their own, FTP, Mail, MySQL, cPanel etc.. You can then install site builder, and have each account have access to site builder.

Thanks. That's certainly how I'd run sites that were independent of each other. In my case, the sites are parts of a single website, in subfolders under a single domain. Will that be a problem?