Hello,

I've been thinking to switching from my current host to other host that uses Hsphere.

How long does it normally take to get used to using hsphere both from the reseller and the end customer point of view?

I'm more into web development (design and programming), so I don't have much time to spare for learning new technologies (in this case learning how to use new control panel).

I currently only have 10 sites in my reseller account (2 sites are mine, and the other 8 are clients').

Will it be hard for me to transfer/switch all those sites to other HSPHERE host?

Does Hsphere have database admin feature like PhpAdmin that's available in the CPANEL control panel?

One last question, at which stage should I move to dedicated hosting? I plan to grow my hosting business once my webdevelopment business has really got into stable stage (that's maybe another 1 or 2 years ahead).

Thank you very much in advance for anyone who help me on this stuff. ;)

Cheers,
Irvin

Hey Irvin,

Hsphere does not take that long to get used to.... the new 2.4 version has a nice interface.

The main thing is setting up your reseller account.... once that is done its smooth sailing.

It shouldnt be to hard to transfer them... some hosts will even help you move the sites.

Yes hsphere has MySQL and PgSQL with phpMyAdmin and PgMyAdmin.

You should move dedicated once you have the know how on server management and you have enough customers.

Hope this helps.

Hi Chris,

Regarding stuff on server management, where/how should I start? I have studied network administration/management in my IT course at Uni 2 years ago. But to be more precisely, how to get to really manage a server in order to provide dedicated server?

I feel like I don't learn that much by just being a hosting reseller, I mean all the features for administering the hosting are already there in CPANEL.

In terms of customers, how many customers at least do you think I should have before moving to dedicated?

Thanks for your help Chris.

Irvin

Irvin,

Regarding CPanel-Hsphere moves:

With the two CP's being vastly different, this would be a complete manual move, so no automation. If you yourself are not comfortable with it, ask your provider if they'll help you out.

The one main thing that people run across, is the difference in directory structure. Whilst CPanel uses the "public_html" directory for it's files, H-Sphere uses the actual domain name as the folder name.

Be sure not to copy directory structures over from CPanel, directly to H-Sphere, or your files won't show up online :)

It can cause a little confusion at first, but that wears off after a few days. The H-Sphere community @ www.psoft.net is truly first-class. It's the ideal place to 'study up' on the in's and out's of the best CP on the market, aswell as gaining valuable tip's and tricks :)


Simon

Just currious why make the switch from cPanel? there are plenty of hosts that offer cPanel at a wide range of prices..

Reason I ask is this move may cost you some customers if they get frustrated with the new control panel and cant figure it out in my experiance the less turbulance the better with clients many dont want / need to learn new control panels all they want is whatever is the easiest for them..

Just my .02 cents But may want to think on this prior to the move as I have said there are several hosts that could get you what your looking for minus the turbulance (unless you just dislike cPanel and want something new then drive on! LoL)

Simon,

Thanks for another useful lesson from you. ;)
Hey, I've checked your PM, and am still in doubt whether to move to Hsphere from Cpanel or not, so please let me have some more time to think about it.

DSLWeb,
I've always been happy with Cpanel, it's just that I plan to offer more options (windows, asp, coldfusion) to my customers, particularly when I really focus on the hosting side of my web development business at later stage.

For this time being, all I do is to get as many local clients as I can (web development). And when I have enough portfolio/clients, then I think I'll even move to dedicated.
And frankly speaking, I'm having lots of troubles with my current host (server uptime has been less than 99.99%, the downtime has caused lots of complaints from my clients, and I can't even use my own email/site). If this keeps happening, I believe I'll lose my customers and prospects.

So basically, what I'm trying to do at the moment is to find a good webhost, and am thinking to try Hsphere to broaden my knowledge in the hosting control panel area. So when the time comes, I should be able to offer CPANEL (Linux) and HSPHERE (Windows/Linux) hostings.

Hmm, it seems pretty hard to transfer my sites and clients' sites from my current CPANEL host to another Hsphere host.

Well, hopefully by constantly learning from you guys, more options will become available and make me confident toward which direction to go.

Thanks everyone.
Irvin

Just to clarify, Irvin contacted me, not the other way around :)

Sorry Irvin, I just had to state that, or people would be all over me like a rash with accusations of breaking WHT rules :)

-------

Now, in regards to the switch from cpanel, to H-Sphere, it's not at all hard, so long as you make sure you put thing's in the right places (directory structure, as mentioned above).

This can be done via FTP, with not much trouble

Simon

Yea cPanel - Hspgere is un-automated (not to say you cant upload your clients sites yourself) And I personally would suggest to get another reseller account to test Hsphere and the workings of it as a control panel so whenyou do transfer your clients you will be ready to answer thier questions.

As far as your current host if thier downtime is below acceptable limits by all means find a new host that will as that will also make your clients run and nobody wants that.

As a note I feel that is the only way these Hosts will ever learn, if they lose clients! I gave up on using reseller accounts because of service such as what your getting from your current host unfortunatlly bad service is running rampent in the industry and until resellers speak out and leave it seems they will never learn.

Hi IHSL,

Yup, I declare that I'm the one who contacted you via PM :D
And I hope no body will accuse you or anything like that. :P

Qustion for Hsphere hosts, does offering unlimited Coldfusion module cost a lot to you? And so customers wanting unlimited coldfusion module have to pay a lot more.

Another question, does anybody know a resource/tutorial that teaches how to migrate sites from CPANEL to HSPHERE? :D
This will make my learning process a lot faster and efficient.

Cheers,
Irvin

Quote:
"As a note I feel that is the only way these Hosts will ever learn, if they lose clients!"

Now, this is a wake up call for me :D
Thanks for that one DSLWeb.

Greetings:

DSLWeb: Control panel moves, when done correct, cause very minimal customer impact.

Since 1996 our parent company’ customers have been through four control panel changes (the 4th – H-Sphere hopefully being the last; we’ve been on that towards 2 years now).

Our experience has been that most business customers don’t know one control panel for another; and just want something easy to use that works.

Lastly, H-Sphere provides complete hosting automation; it includes private label reseller automation, and an end user control panel. Cpanel is just another control panel; if that’s all you need, fine.

Irvin: H-Sphere does have a learning curve greater than other systems.

However, our experience is that H-Sphere’s learning curve is front end loaded. Meaning, you plan a lot to start, then you start, and it becomes a breeze.

If you are a H-Sphere reseller, unless you have your own box where the provider grants root shell access to the box, there is no server administration work for you to perform.

See http://www.psoft.net/HSdocumentation/sysadmin/migrating_users_from_cpanel.html about migrating from Cpanel to H-Sphere; if you are a reseller, your provider may be able to do this for you.

Ivrin, btw, H-Sphere is among the best documented systems out there with documentation additions and improvements on a regular basis.

The community forum at http://forum.psoft.net/ is filled with polite and experienced customers willing to share their knowledge when they can do so.

Thank you.

Originally posted by dynamicnet
Greetings:

DSLWeb: Control panel moves, when done correct, cause very minimal customer impact.


Hello irvin,

I have to concur here with dynamicnet. Transferring it should not be a big deal. Your parent host should be able to take care of the transfers for you. It will be a simple three step process.

1) Copy all web content (in most cases your provider would be more than willing to take care of that.)
2) Test all copied web sites via temporary URLs / IP addresses
3) Switch DNS

There is no reason why there should be any kind of problem. If any thing its going to be a pleasant change for your clients.

Regards,

Dynamicnet & Mediopia,

You guys just gave me a lot of clues and just have convinced me to be one of the Hsphere fans. :D

It feels really good where there are guys like you around who already know the way to get to a destination place (the Hsphere palace ;) ) that I'm about to go very soon. Hehehe...

Alright, guess what, I just got some new projects/clients (horayyy, thanks 2 God!) and that means I'll have to postpone continuing my journey to the Hsphere palace. :)

I'll keep in touch. Thanks very much Dynamicnet & Mediopia.
Cheers,
Irvin

For the more professional look go with Cpanel hsphere does offer alot of control thans cpanel due to mainly its template interface.

Someone need to create another x template foe cpanel which is still user friendly but has more in-depth access to the server.

Originally posted by MaxieHost
For the more professional look go with Cpanel hsphere does offer alot of control thans cpanel due to mainly its template interface.

Sorry, but that's simply not true.

I do not know how much more of a professional look you can have to a control panel, then it's header matching, it colors, it's background, it's entire look and feel can be mirrored from your website.

Whilst you may be refering to the 3 old skins included in 2.3, 2.4 introduces two very nice looking skins, complete with drop down menu navigation capabilities. Very easy on the eye, and so simple you can't go wrong.

Then you have the customizable templates, offered by HsphereTemplates.com - these templates are literally customizable to your every need.

Team the fact that you can have your company look and feel instantly mirrored to your HSphere CP, with the fact that you have the billing, and support protocol's right these also, I honestly can not see how a control panel could be more professional.

If you wish, I can screenshot our CP, with the URL taken out for privacy (protects our resellers) , to show you what I mean :)

Simon

sorry to have offended you, that just my personal opinion. A screen shot would be great tho.

H-Sphere is more flexible than cPanel and H-Sphere combines
much more features. :)

Originally posted by MaxieHost
sorry to have offended you, that just my personal opinion. A screen shot would be great tho.
You didn't offend me :)

Attached, is the screenshot of the CP. Don't mind the quality of the jpeg.. I had to compress it a little to be able to upload it :)

Simon

Guys,
Thanks again for your reply and thoughts.

Ok, here's another situation/question I'd like to know what everyone think.

My current reseller account is using CPANEL/WHM as the control panel. I was thinking if I could make a backup to each site hosted on this account by using another account (backup) with other host that uses HSPHERE.

So when my current host/server goes down, the back up host/server will take over automatically.

To get clear picture of what I'm trying to say, so the dns setting of one site will be like this:
ns1.CurrentHost.com (cpanel)
ns2.CurrentHost.com (cpanel)
ns3.BackupHost.com (hsphere)
ns4.BackupHost.com (hsphere)

Some of my sites use those php scripts/features that were installed through FANTASTICO, and some are just static sites.

The purposes I'm doing this:
1. Back up for my current host/server (one of my client/a corporate client got penalized US$1000 because some documents didn't get to their emails due to server downtime, luckily he's one of my best friends, we're like brother to each other, so he didn't claim that US$1000 from me, and guess what?!! I had just been given a mercy, I mean another chance, final chance indeed! )

2. Learn to use Hsphere (as reseller and end user) as I'll surely provide windows/linux hosting soon.

3. Simply following the basic rule of 'not putting all eggs in one wok' (and cook 'em, hehehe....gee, for people who always 'put their eggs in basket', those eggs must have been rotten. )

As usual, thanks a lot in advance for your thoughts, opinions, feedback, etc.
Cheers,
Irvin