10 replies to this topic

[01globalnet]

As I saw in the changelog, this version comes with support for Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder.

Any plan to see it in production?

SiteBuilder always looked more professional than SiteStudio.

[CH-Andrew]

01globalnet said:

As I saw in the changelog, this version comes with support for Parallels Plesk Sitebuilder.

Any plan to see it in production?

SiteBuilder always looked more professional than SiteStudio.

Hello,

I would expect sitestudio to be going end of life in the near future (ie no new installs, existing installs will be kept)

I am not yet certain about Plesk sitebuilder and what we will be doing on that front. I have heard of a few issues with their integration with hsphere, but, I assume as that improves, we will take a good look at that solution along with other parallels integration with hsphere.

[esites]

I have been asked by several people about sitebuilder. Although I have not used it personally, others have spoken quite highly of it in comparison to sitestudio.

If it is a better option, I would think that it is necessary to keep something like this available to our clients.

As we all know, this has been the frustration of using H-Sphere... having new products (features) announced but people being reluctant to implement them because of security or bugs. This has been so much more of a problem with H-Sphere than any other control panel that I have worked with.

Hopefully Parallels will bring some improvements in creating more stable builds.

[CH-Andrew]

esites said:

As we all know, this has been the frustration of using H-Sphere... having new products (features) announced but people being reluctant to implement them because of security or bugs. This has been so much more of a problem with H-Sphere than any other control panel that I have worked with.

Hello esites, which features have been announced that we have been reluctant to implement because of bugs? As far as I know, we have always implemented every feature that came available, and if certain features were not released, it had very little to do with security or bugs of the actual feature.. Now, I have heard of providers not want to launch certain features for various reasons, and the easiest answer always seems to be "its not secure"... heck, we just did this with easyapps (ie taking it end of life) - and, we did it for security purposes.. however, hopefully we are open and honest enough with our thinking and our explanations that customers understand our perspective and reasoning.. Having said this, I can think of very few (if any) new features in hsphere that were too problematic or that could not be implemented due to security or bugs..

[esites]

I wasn't trying to strike a nerve here... lol

I do appreciate the fact that (as I have mentioned many times over in the forums) that Cartika is a front runner who gives us great tools to work with. However there are some features like VPS which you didn't support right away, and even today don't support in the H-Sphere implementation. You yourself said that you would (and did) implement the solution, but in a different way. Also, the EasyApps program which you are taking to EOL. This is another feature that H-Sphere offers, yet due to the several valid reasons you have recently outlined you are removing.

This is not a knock of Cartika, but more of PSoft. Everyone knows that you don't roll out the first release of any H-Sphere product... you wait for at least one or two updates before it is usable.

Can you still feel the love in the air Andrew? We love Cartika, that is why we are here. You and only you make H-Sphere a great solution for many of us. I have been other places and know what can happen... that is why I am here now and for the first time in years, not looking for my next hosting provider.

[CH-Andrew]

esites said:

I wasn't trying to strike a nerve here... lol

I do appreciate the fact that (as I have mentioned many times over in the forums) that Cartika is a front runner who gives us great tools to work with. However there are some features like VPS which you didn't support right away, and even today don't support in the H-Sphere implementation. You yourself said that you would (and did) implement the solution, but in a different way. Also, the EasyApps program which you are taking to EOL. This is another feature that H-Sphere offers, yet due to the several valid reasons you have recently outlined you are removing.

This is not a knock of Cartika, but more of PSoft. Everyone knows that you don't roll out the first release of any H-Sphere product... you wait for at least one or two updates before it is usable.

Can you still feel the love in the air Andrew? We love Cartika, that is why we are here. You and only you make H-Sphere a great solution for many of us. I have been other places and know what can happen... that is why I am here now and for the first time in years, not looking for my next hosting provider.

Hi esites,

I think you misinterpreted my comments, or I was just too rushed when I typed them and it didnt come off properly.. Please do not be concerned, there was no nerve struck, I was honestly curious what you were referring to...

I do not mind giving parallels and psoft a bit of a hard time when needed, but, I also do not like when they are just flat out blamed for everything (typical provider strategy we try VERY hard to avoid "passing the buck")..

Having said this, you are certainly right about VPS - the legacy VPS deployment in hsphere using FreeVPS was horrible and practically no one used it. Parallels did just add in Virtuozzo support, and apparently that is pretty good. But, we still chose to go the Citrix Xen route vs the Virtuozzo route as we wanted true, isolated VPS offerings and wanted to better enable our evolving cloud offerings..

As for Easyapps, I just want to clarify here. This is not an hsphere statement or even an easyapps statement per se... it is more of a statement about script installers in general and the cumulative affect on shared servers of having old, unused installs sitting there which people installed and abandoned.. this is the case with any script installer really and psoft/parallels should not take heat for this :)

On that note, thank you very very much for the kind words and for your continued business. It is customers like yourself that keep us in business and help us push our business forward...

[01globalnet]

I would like to request if Parallels SiteBuilder is going to be implemented in h-sphere (built-in). We are going to launch a new service and this tool is very convenient.

Another solution would be a standalone installation and Cartika would manually enable it for any requested site (w/ a fee of course) - I've seen this method in other hosts, too.

Please let us know, thank you.

[CH-Andrew]

01globalnet, on 23 August 2010 - 09:07 AM, said:

I would like to request if Parallels SiteBuilder is going to be implemented in h-sphere (built-in). We are going to launch a new service and this tool is very convenient.

Another solution would be a standalone installation and Cartika would manually enable it for any requested site (w/ a fee of course) - I've seen this method in other hosts, too.

Please let us know, thank you.

Hello 01globalnet,

Thank you for your comments and your ideas.

We have spent a fair amount of time thinking about script installers and how to handle them. Honestly, script installers do not have a place on a large shared hosting environment. It is just impossible to keep all scripts up to date, and it is impossible to force customers to keep scripts they install up to date or forcing them to remove scripts they install and never actually use - which of course, become a serious security concern 6 months or 12 months down the road.

So, unfortunately, script installers are a no on our shared cluster. Having said this, our partners have different business models and different requirements - and we certainly understand this as well. Maybe a partner like yourself has the resources built into your model to allow for granular control and monitoring of your customers, the scripts they have installed, whether they are keeping them upgraded, etc and monitor and control and enforce policies around this.

If you have such a requirement and are able to monitor your customers usage, or are willing to accept the risks of script installers in your environment - we can certainly support this, however, this will need to be done on a VPS, Cloud or Dedicated server (ie in any isolated environment). You can choose any control panel you want (hsphere, cPanel, DirectAdmin, WebSitePanel, etc) - and choose any script installer you desire. You will only be charged for your environment (ie VPS, Cloud or Dedicated) plus any fees (if any) for the script installer you have chosen.

Hopefully this meets your requirements

[Bluesplinter]

And to add on to what Andrew said, I have in the past used Installatron, and the admin dashboard for that auto-installer will let you monitor AND update any scripts for your clients, as well as send them notices so they can do it themselves. I don't use it anymore, but when I did, I only enabled a few of the top apps (WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc), and that made it easier to keep on top of them.

FWIW
Steve

[01globalnet]

Hello

I was talking about Parallels Sitebuilder (http://sitebuilder4....lels.com/Wizard), not a script installer. The following weeks we will launch a service based on opencart (we will keep the installations updated), but we think of another version of our product offering (more affordable with less features) and Sitebuilder is a great option as it requires no work from our part.

Please let us know, thank you again for your time.

[CH-Andrew]

01globalnet, on 25 August 2010 - 05:13 PM, said:

Hello

I was talking about Parallels Sitebuilder (http://sitebuilder4....lels.com/Wizard), not a script installer. The following weeks we will launch a service based on opencart (we will keep the installations updated), but we think of another version of our product offering (more affordable with less features) and Sitebuilder is a great option as it requires no work from our part.

Please let us know, thank you again for your time.

Hello 01globalnet, I apologize. I am not sure why I got that mixed up. I think I misread your original post.

You are correct that sitebuilder is just that, a site builder and not a full script installer. Unfortunately though, we still are not looking to offer this in shared hosting, as we simply do not want to be supporting specific applications like this moving forward. We are working hard towards being a pure hosting and infrastructure provider, vs an application specific provider.

Having said this, I understand your requirement and I also understand that you likely would not want to invest in your own hsphere cluster to accomplish this as well as be able to provide all of the other services our cluster accommodates. Honestly though, the demand for such a solution is not very high any longer amongst our customer base. However, if yourself or any other customer is interested in this, we would be willing to do so in an isolated environment (VPS, Cloud, Dedicated). We would then plug that environment into our cluster and give you a custom plan from which you could allocate resources onto our cluster for your services, or allocate plans and accounts onto your environment (VPS, Cloud, etc) and charge you a per install fee for sitebuilder (we would charge you an at cost fee that parallels would charge us per license)

Is this a reasonable compromise?

Thanks again and I apologize for my original understanding of your question...