Lipanel: A Next-Generation Lightweight Website-Building Panel Developed in Go

Internet services Website Building
1

Lipanel: A Lightweight Single-File Linux Panel of Just 9.6 MB, with Core Features Built In and On-Demand Extensibility

The motivation behind developing Lipanel is simple: some server panels on the market become increasingly bloated as features are added, while others use relatively closed plugin ecosystems.

We wanted to create a Linux panel with a sufficiently lean core, support for plugin-based extensions, and single-file deployment.

Completed Features

The following features have all been completed and verified through actual operation:

  • Core Features

    • systemd service management
    • File management
    • Website management, including Nginx static sites and reverse proxying
    • Automatic application and renewal of Let’s Encrypt SSL certificates

  • Plugin System

    • Communication via Unix Socket and HTTP
    • Support for permission declarations and audit logs
    • Plugin frontends use iframe sandbox isolation by default
    • Plugins cannot read cookies or directly call the panel API

  • Security Mechanisms

    • Three-level path security validation
    • Commands are executed uniformly by slicing argv arguments, without concatenating Shell commands
    • All write operations are recorded in audit logs
    • Permissions are checked before sensitive operations are executed

Tech Stack

  • Go
  • Vue 3
  • Vite
  • Naive UI

The generated single binary is currently approximately 9.6 MB. It is built as a fully static program with CGO_ENABLED=0 and requires no Node.js, Python, or Java dependencies at runtime.

Implementation Details

  • After modifying the Nginx configuration, the system automatically runs nginx -t for validation. If validation fails, it automatically rolls back the changes.
  • SSL certificates are validated using the webroot method, without occupying port 80 or modifying the existing Nginx configuration without permission.
  • The boundaries of the permission model are clearly documented in the code comments: Lipanel manages a “panel forwarding channel” and does not describe it as a kernel-level sandbox.

Development Roadmap

In Development

Software store, planned to support:

  • One-click installation of PHP, Nginx, and MySQL
  • Specifying installation versions
  • Multi-source fallback

Future Plans

  • App store
  • Docker plugin
  • Plugin marketplace

Project Link

github.com/LiStudioorg/lipanel

Contributing

Currently under active development

Feel free to try it out and submit Issues. Developers are also welcome to participate in developing official plugins.

Lipanel will not create paywalls by cutting core features; its core features will always remain open source under the AGPL-3.0 license.

2 Likes
2

Let’s use Apache and turn it into an enterprise-grade service.

3

We don’t really consider commercial or enterprise use, since this project is mainly aimed at small and mid-sized developers and startup studios.

4

There’s no way around it—if you want to reach more people, it becomes bloated, because you find yourself having to include many features that beginners might use.

5

That’s right, so we’re doing our best.

6

How about using Caddy? Automatic SSL.

7

By the way, is it compatible with Alpine?

8

Does it work now?

9

Can I take over the existing site directly, or do I need to recreate it from the control panel?