55.6. Design Goals

A typical Webmin module is written to configure some UNIX services, such as Apache, Squid, or NFS exports. Most UNIX servers are normally configured by editing a specific text file, which may have a complex format. Any Webmin module that modifies a configuration file must be able to parse all possible options in such a configuration file, even if not all options are presented to the user.

No module should ever corrupt a service configuration file or remove options that it does not understand. Modules should be able to parse any valid configuration without requiring special comments or a special format. If your module cannot deal with some option in a file, it should be left alone.

Webmin modules should be designed to be easy for novices to use but still allow the user to do almost everything that could be done by editing the configuration file directly. In some cases, however, configuration options will exist that very few users will need to edit, or that do not lend themselves to be edited through a GUI. These kind of settings should be left out of your Webmin module because they will clutter up the user interface with their presence.