Automated systems - adding users and sites

[Jonathan]

Hi all,

I'm looking at writing a simple interface to allow the creation of 
websites through a web based tool.

Are there any guides to this sort of thing? My thinking at the moment is 
to allow the web user on a secured server to log into another server 
through ssh as root (passwordless) to allow for the creation of 
accounts, but I'm sure there must be a "right way" for doing this.

Any suggestions please?

Regards,

Jonathan