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Fantastico Hosting

One of the basic tasks that webmasters must do today is the installation of PHP scripts. For some webmasters, this may only take a few seconds, but for many others who are not as experienced with PHP and MYSQL, installing even the most basic scripts can take large amounts of time. For the second type of webmaster, an auto-installer for popular scripts may be what is needed and one of the best auto-installersout there(and the most popular one) is Fantastico.

Fantastico auto installs many of the popular scripts with just one click and at a one-time licensing cost of $90, it is quite a bargain for many because the amount of time it will save many website owners. However, there are drawbacks of fantastico you should be aware of which may hinder the future progress of your website. In this article we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of using an auto-installer like Fantastico as well as look at some of the other auto-installers that are out there.

Fantastico is an excellent program which installs most of the popular PHP scripts people use including, b2evolution, Wordpress, Nucleas, phpNuke, Drupal, Geeklog, Xoops, PHP support tickets, PerlDesk, PHPBB2, SMF, as well as many other scripts. If you have Fantastico, setup of these scripts is incredibly easy as all you have to do is tell the script where to install it and the database name you want to use. It takes about 5 seconds to get the scripts up and running with Fantastico auto-installer. The cost of $90 is very economical when you think about it. Fantastico installs over 40 scripts instantly and companies that charge for professional script installation charge at least $25 per installation. If you need many scripts installed, this is quite a savings over hiring professional help. Fantastico is also less likely to make errors than human installation as it will tell you if there are conflicts in your databases or install paths so you can have flawless installations without effecting any of the scripts you already have installed. These benefits of Fantastico have won many people over and are good reasons why you should looking into buying a liscense for Fantastico.

However, despite the convenience of Fantastico, it does have many drawbacks that may have you think twice about using it. First of all is the knowledge you are missing out on when using an auto-installer. An auto-installer requires no technical knowledge to use and therefore using it will not make you more tech-savvy in the future. When you have to troubleshoot problems in the future, Fantastico cannot do it for you and you will end up having to hire professional help because you have no idea what is wrong. Since having some technical knowledge is critical for running any kind of website, this will be a major drawback in the future. The second thing is that Fantastico will not install upgrades(it may install some if you update) or customizations/plugins for your scripts. You will have to install those yourself. A good example of this is wordpress. There are many useful plugins for wordpress and an auto-installer generally will not install any of those, so you will have to manually apply them. Since you did not install the script manually, you will probably have no idea how to install the many plugins and will have to hire someone to install them for you. This can be just as costly as getting the initial script installed. Thirdly, you will not have full control over the script install when using an auto installer. You can only specify the folder and database it will use but not much else. There are many configurations in some scripts(especially shopping carts) that can be tweaked or changed and a installer such as Fantastico will not do this for you so you may be missing out on some of the features. Since you did not read the step-by-step instructions of the setup and used an auto-installer instead, you will not know of these features and so may be handicapped in your use of the script. Some scripts also require certain settings on your server and will give errors at certain steps if these requirements are not met. When installing with an auto-installer, sometimes these error messages will not show and it just says “installation complete”, while in reality, the script may not function right because you did not change the server settings. A fourth drawback of Fantastico is it does take up extra space on your server. Auto-installers have to have all the files for the script on the server before they can install them, so even if you are not using some script, the files are still taking up room on the web server somewhere. This should not be a problem for most hosting plans as they offer several Gigabytes of storage room, but if you are running short on storage space, then this can be an issue. The last problem of Fantastico relates to the first three I pointed out in the lack of technical knowledge. If you don’t have an understanding of the script and how they work, you will not know how to tweak them for optimizing performance and most likely you will not know how much CPU/RAM usage the default script installations are taking up. This is a large problem because many of the bigger webhosts today grossly oversell their hosting resources and have severe caps on CPU and Bandwidth usage. If you took the time to learn the script and install it manually, you are more likely to be aware of this issue and will take steps or make arrangements with your host to avoid account suspensions for these reasons. However, using an auto-installer, you are less aware of these issues and people who use these auto-installers to install server-intensive scripts are the ones most likely to get suspended.

Now since we have looked at Fantastico and its advantages and disadvantages, lets look at some of Fantastico’s competition.

1. Installatron(http://www.installatron.com/) - Installatron is another feature packed installer that installs about the same scripts as Fantastico but has a price tag of $60 instead of Fantastico’s $90. The program does installs, installs on subdomains, and script upgrades as well. It also has some features that are not present in Fantastico. It has auto-core upgrades which upgrade your script each time on install automatically and is always updated with the latest version of popular scripts. It also has a c-shell install option for server administrators. The c-shell option will not effect most people since most people are either on shared or reseller accounts and do not have shell access to use this option. Installatron also has some plugin install options and stats overviews for installs. While these are great extras to have, generally the same pluses and minuses apply for installatron as for Fantastico but if your looking for the best deal for the dollar, give installatron a shot.
2. Auto installer(http://www.autoinstaller.com/) - Auto installer installs more scripts than Fantastico or installatron but its website does not give much information about pricing or features of its software. It is hard to make a judgement on this software without some specifications. They do have a live demo on their website for you to try out but from the looks of it, they lack certain features that Fantastico and Installatron have. It does have all the options that most webmasters need so contact their sales support team for a price and feature descriptions before making a decision on this installer.
3. CP installer(http://www.cpskins.com/productinfo/autoinstaller.htm) – This application installs 75 of the most popular applications and integrates well with WHM. Its price tag of $60 is in-line with Installatron and it does have an add-on scripts option. It also has a script management feature for easier management of applications and they will notify you when updates get released but do not have an auto-update feature. For the price, it is a pretty decent package and goes along nicely with Cpskin’s other software. It is not too different from any other installer except it installs a few more scripts. While the number may be impressive, generally only 10 of the 75 scripts get installed 99% of the time so the extra scripts are more for show than for use on any installer. Check them out if your using cpanel/WHM.

Overall, all the script installation softwares are about the same. Some offer more scripts than others while other offer more options and features. Fantastico is by far the most popular, not because it is the best option(I believe Installatron is better), but because it was the first and still the most commonly used option. If you must use an installer, I’d say check your options and ask your host if they already have one available. Many hosts already have auto-installs for the most popular scripts.
My advice is its okay to use some of these scripts when you are first starting out but as you advance in being a webmaster, it is best to ditch these auto-installers and install things yourself. The better understanding you will get by doing so has far more value than the few minutes you will save by using an auto installer.

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