I was talking to a couple of friends I almost got to sign up for WestHost accounts (an referral for me :) ), but they have cPanel with their current hosts. They considered the WestHost control panel "clunky" and "unintuitive". My question is, is will WestHost be getting cPanel or the equivalent anytime soon?
There are plans for a new Site Manager to be released soon. Last mentioned by WH it would be the end of November. Like you I have almost had a few folks convinced to move to WH but they have not yet because of the Site Manager. I think that many of these issues well be taken care of with the new version of Site Manager. Comparisons are done quite often with cPanel and users seem to like it. Hopefully the new SM well have the same ease of control.
I did get one person to switch over and I am helping them out with navigating the SM and getting things set the way they need them. Maybe you can get your friends to switch with that inticement if have the time to dedicate to it.
I've checked out the "new" SM. It isn't being replaced by cPanel (I doubt they would do that; they'll just continue to improve the current Site Manager). The only change (that I know of) is that the Site Applications section has been redesigned to be a lot more user friendly (but no applications have been updated yet).
Fayez, that's my understanding too.
I suspect (but I don't know) that the control panel (Site Manager) is very closely tied to the Sphera Virtual Server system that they use on Westhost, so there will probably be no change.
Unless WH decide to move from Sphera to something else.... which is unlikely.
As to being clunky and unintuitive, I don't think it is so bad. I know there are much nicer ones out there, but Site Manager gets most things done, and the added ability of being able to SSH into the site takes care of the rest.
I think this is more of an issue of what the underlying virtual server software would support, and right now that is Site Manager.
I think you're right: I've noticed 'sphera' mentioned in various "places"/files in my VPS.
I don't think the SM is bad either. I do, however, detest the "Please wait" box ;) As for SSH, it's all I use too - it would be nice for them to add the ability to check bandwidth (and various other things) through SSH that can currently only be done via the SM.
From what I've read, the Sphera VDS technology isn't compatible with CPanel, so you can have one or the other, but not both. I think the control VDS's offer are more valuable than a better control panel.