Have any of you tested the Helm 4 control panel yet? A beta was announced at Hostingcon last week in Vegas. I installed it to see what it's like but ran in to an issue with the database. According to others who have tested the CP it seems like it might not be really a beta version but just something to click around and get a feel of what it's about.

When I get the demo working I will post a URL for a test (if possible).

I've seen a demo of Helm 4 recently on the WHA website. At first, I didn't like the new layout at all but it's growing on me and I'm seeing the benefits. It also seems to have some good features that were causing it to lag behind competing control panels such as service management, server reboot, windows processes, windows users and groups and more...

First impressions are great. I may have to get a demo version to try it out for myself. I hope my host will be upgrading to it!

I might install a trial version for everyone to try out. H4 does look good and those extra features that you mentioned should make it do well!

Not sure why users can't set file/folder permissions like they can in Unix, though. I know to do so, HELM would need some service or other running under a user account with "full permissions" over your domains directory. Maybe Windows just isn't good/secure enough to allow this.

Helm runs with an admin account and in theory is fully capable of controlling individual files. It uses this admin account to communicate with some services etc...

I do not know why they do not include this. They put the "enable write" on the root but thats just for the guest user to enable write on the whole domain or not.

I am going to put a question in their forums to see if this can be enabled. I will also have a quick search around first to see if it has been answered already.

There doesnt seem to be much on it. Someone mentioned it's possibly due in Helm 4 and another said "why do you need to do that?". It seems that the general opinion is that Helm should sort everything out automatically.

From my experience this is incorrect and it seems those who say this are adding write perms to all folders for each users domain.

So how do we best ask the question over at WHA with out this group jumping on the thread

When you say "write" - is this write permissions of "modify" permissions? It's modify permissions I need and *only* on certain folders.

Not sure how best to ask - do you have any support routes you could take as a paying customer of version 3?

WHA say there's an upgrade tool out soon to go from v3 to v4. Hope that works out well.

Sorry Will... I believe the guest user gets modify permissions when Helm adds it. To me it looks like a feature that they added but really didnt put too much attention on to it.

I will create an email today, or post, and ask the question in detail on their forum. I am in Marseille airport at the moment and have a bit of time before my flight leaves.

Hopefully the upgrade path will work well. We have quite a complex set up of Helm running which now connects 7 servers (although I think another 3 are being prepared to be added)... so I need to make sure it does work and have a good backup of the V3 database just in case