For as long as I can remember, Fantastico has been the most popular form of auto installing WordPress without having to mess with the hassle of uploading files and configuring WP-Config. However, I logged into my cPanel account the other day and noticed a long message from AnHosting.
We’re glad to announce availability of a new tool to help install software on your account: Softaculous – Instant Installs! Softaculous has replaced Fantastico in your account, providing more software for automatic installation and upgrade. New features are available including a user-feedback rating system, software demonstrations, and more. Softaculous currently offers 131 applications and scripts for quick, easy installation, with more arriving every day.
The good news, at least for those with AnHosting accounts is that any installs of WordPress that were performed with Fantastico have already transitioned to Softaculous. Softaculous has a new interface for installing scripts than what I’m used to with Fantastico. The list of scripts is on the left hand side but there are icons in the top right portion of the screen with a center column dedicated to content related to the scripts. One of the biggest differences for me is that I’m now able to automatically install WordPress MU.
How the merging of WordPress MU into WordPress will affect these auto installs is beyond me. I’m sure it won’t be that hard of an upgrade path. The other interesting thing I noticed is that this script installer is that each script has a rating as well as reviews by end users. WordPress 2.9.2 has a rating of 4.75. The reviews I read were short and sweet despite having 500 characters to work with.
I was a little disheartened to see that WordPress was filed under the Blog category and not the Portal/CMS category but it’s nothing to worry about. Softaculous provides the same easy script installation routine that Fantastico users were familiar with, so don’t be alarmed if you see this show up in a control panel near you.
I just prefer to perform all the installs myself instead of relying on any of these automated installs.
@Ajay – Me to, but just about everyone knows about Fantastico. I thought it would be good to start spreading the word regarding Softaculous since it may be ending up on other popular hosting accounts in the future.
This is a good thing because Fantastico has been behind on keeping WordPress up to date. Fantastico was still using WordPress 2.8.6 up until yesterday. In my books that is poor!
For someone like me who offered WordPress auto-installs with my hosting plans having the WordPress updates so far behind is intolerable. I might checkout softaculous…
Must admit I just looked at the pricing page for both Fantastico and Softaculous. Softaculous works out a lot cheaper, maybe it’s going to be a heavy weight against it’s competitors. Still unsure about quality, I’m going to have a play with the free version.
that’s nifty. my host hasn’t gotten this yet. and i don’t think she will. i think she likes fantastico to much ;)
We’ve been big advocates for Softaculous for a number of months and we’ve been installing it for users of our VPS and Dedicated servers. This month we finally dropped Fantastico altogether (after 9 years) and are now 100% on board with Softaculous. Our users love it, system admins love it, and there’s regular software update. Bye Bye Fantastico!