I am going to sign up with as a reseller soon to start a hosting venture. I have a couple administrative questions for anyone who can help :

1) If you chose to change the host you are with and you have a large client base how is this done in a manageable way? I know I have read about several of you who have made transitions.

2) Similar to 1): Transitioning users from one host to another obviously needs to be as seemless as possible. Are there good resources that someone can point me to that can guide me on the dns/nameserver process to help me with this process (thread/site)?

3) I work full time and would only be able to effectively manage the venture after work and on days off. Is this common for most of you or would this be a big negative for client support reasons?

I certainly appreciate this site. I have been reading it for a few weeks now but just now registered to post. Great resource!

That is all I have for now. Sure I will ask again! :)
Dave

well I know transferring clients' data wont be really really hard, but it's really possible to do it.

Anyways, if u work full time you should get somebody so they can give support to your clients. This person probably wont matter if he's 15 year old or 30 years old. Support is important. If you think you cant handle support, you should pay somebody as i said probably a teen, so they can help u with support!!!

Thanks for the input. I would hesitate to have someone else support what I am trying to build though. I may have to juggle my schedule around or maybe even look for a different job (mine sucks anyway).

What is are some typical (if there is one) support issues that come up during a day? Again, I would rather not have someone else screw up my dreams. I can take care of that one pretty well on my own!
;)
I plan on building a pretty extensive help faq but undoubtedly there will be questions still. As far as sales inquiries those would be secondary to support issues.

Thanks again!

Dave

Groundhog,

I work average 60-70 hour weeks and have a family of wife and 2 kids and my mom and my grandma! :)

I started off as a reseller 3 months back and I am now going for my dedicated server... support is not difficult in the beginning but can get taxing if you have a lot of clients [like 100+]

But my work also allows me to access internet off and on so I can support my clients even from the office

Most of the support will be on domain pointing, emails, control panel [if you have one] , SSI,custom error pages, CGI and stuff like that.

If you have a stable upstream provider you will have less support issues on web hosting and you can add value to your clients by supporting them in web programming issues

As for moving sites form server to server it is quite difficult if you have a control panel environment and also if the sites use mySQL or other databases - but it is not unmanageable.

Well good luck to you and welcome to WHT

Cheers
Balaji

Thanks for the info! I was thinking the xfer of accts would be a B****! Assuming you would have to backup the site and then upload to new server location.

On your dedicated server... What point do you recommend that transition? 100+ or is just a cost analysis issue?

Thanks again!

Dave

Originally posted by Groundhog
On your dedicated server... What point do you recommend that transition? 100+ or is just a cost analysis issue?


As soon as the income justifies the cost for it and as soon as you know enough about administration.

Something to consider: as a reseller I would not choose a host for me if I don't have some experience with them with a "normal" account. Of course a change to another host is technically no big problem, but if you have some clients it will be work. And what if your new host has complete different hosting plans or is missing a feature your old host had? What will your customers say?

Great points. Thanks! The plans I am seeing are pretty consistant in features but I will remember that in the future if I need to do a switch.

Thanks again!

Dave