webhosting company

Hi Rick,

Well, that's kind of a trick question :-)

Firstly, I might suggest setting up something like vmware or virtualbox on your desktop, installing a Linux distribution you like, and setting up Virtualmin on it.

That'll let you tinker around a bit and get a handle on what all it does, as what all it doesn't do.

There's a ton of software involved in running a web hosting company. Virtualmin's task is in managing that software for both you and your webhosting users.

Virtualmin's install script will setup your Linux distribution with the ability to act as a web and mail server, along with things like a DNS server, a database (MySQL), and so forth.

There's also the hardware side of things -- what kind of hardware are you looking to run it on? A dedicated server? A VPS of some sort? How to choose that depends on your budget, how many customers you think you'll have, as well as what sort of resources those customers are using.

Notably absent from the above is how you'd get paid. If cost is your main issue, you might want to look for some Open Source invoicing apps to run on your server. Some people use Paypal for that. However, a wonderful billing app that works in conjunction with Virtualmin is WHMCS:

http://www.whmcs.com/

So, do you need software beyond Virtualmin? Sure. What all do you need that Virtualmin doesn't provide? It all depends on what you want to do :-)

With that in mind, I'd highly recommend setting up Virtualmin in vmware or virtualbox, and just play around with that a bit to get your head around what it does, and what else you think you'll need.

And then, feel free to ask more questions as you're developing your plan for moving forward :-)

-Eric