Hi,

I am fed up with the current way I add resellers. It is getting to troublesome, especially with the rate of reseller orders growing and growing.

Currently, in WHM, to add a reseller by resource usage (MCHOST, SPLASHOST, DIATONE Type plans). I have to create a small, 10MB account for administration, so that they can add domains/accounts from it. Then, I set them up as a reseller through the reseller center. Currently, I am having to name them things such as r1024, r1025, r1026, etc. and not the domain names they requested, because if I used the domain names they wanted, they couldnt add them themselves later. I have to use little small administreation accounts like this because there is nothing where I can make just a 'reseller account' in whm. If I created an account with 1GB of space and 12GB of transfer, then it would all be for that account, and not the accounts they add. I am sure that mchost and splashost, especially because of their extreme popularity, have found easier ways to do this. If one of them, or some other knowledgable person could help me out, and show me a better, more efficent way of doing this, it would be greatly appreciated.

BY the way, I already put in a feature request at http://support.cpanel.net/obb/read.php?TID=1854 - haven't seen any changes yet.. If you feel like this feature would help you to, post on the cpanel forums, and maybe we can get nick to change things.

I thought that if you define the account as resource based and give it say 1GB of space, then that will be for all the domains that user adds. Doesn't it work that way? I think that's a recently added feature.

We add the reseller account, give them the space and bandwidth that they ordered for the main account, edit the reseller options in the reseller center, enable subdomains, edit the dns, update our database and fire off the email.

The whole process takes 2 - 3 minutes when you've had lots of practice :)

Matt,

Yea, but, when you add the account, how much space do you give for the main account? I mean, I specify the resource usage as 1GB of space and 12GB of transfer in the reseller center, but if I did that on the main account, they would have double space and bandwidth. Do you do it like me? A small, administration account?

If a reseller orders our standard plan, which comes with 12Gb of transfer and 1Gb of space, we assign the account those values.
You can use the limit account to predefined resources (or whatever it's called) in the reseller center to limit the account to this. Incidentally, we don't do this; we use soft limits on accounts.

Regards
Matt

Hey Matt,

Thanks for all the help. I do appreciate it.

Two more questions though, I don't see a limit account to predefined resources or anything similiar anywhere in the reseller center, I only see that you can limit the account to resource usage, but you have to specify the amount of disk space and bandwidth they can use. which would again create the same problem.

Also, what are soft limits on accounts?

Thanks again.

What do you mean by "predefined resources"? You need to set some limit for the reseller, say 1GB of disk space and 10GB of data transfer for example. Alternatively you can create "predefined" packages if that's what you mean and limit the reseller to that.

No.. If you don't specify limits, it won't let a reseller add a plan.

Originally posted by ebo
Hey Matt,

Thanks for all the help. I do appreciate it.

Two more questions though, I don't see a limit account to predefined resources or anything similiar anywhere in the reseller center, I only see that you can limit the account to resource usage, but you have to specify the amount of disk space and bandwidth they can use. which would again create the same problem.

Also, what are soft limits on accounts?

Thanks again.

That was the option I was referring to.

By soft limits, I mean that resellers can use over and above their allotments, we invoice them for the overage they use.

We contact them prior to reaching their limit, and check if this is suitable, which it normally is, then just send them the invoice at the end of the month.

Matt

Well you've got to set limits right? I mean you're looking to create a plan where a reseller gets like 1GB of space and 10 GB of bandwidth and then can create "unlimited domains", right? Just create an account as resource based and define the 1GB and 10GBs as the limits. What am I missing here?

Cpanel only lets you set hard limits, not soft limits, which means for a 1 GB/12 GB reseller plan, they'd only be able to make two 512 MB/6 GB hosting accounts. It's based on resources allotted, not resources used.

I'm not sure what you mean. We give resellers 1GB and they create sometimes 20 or 30 hosting accounts.

Originally posted by rbro
Well you've got to set limits right? I mean you're looking to create a plan where a reseller gets like 1GB of space and 10 GB of bandwidth and then can create "unlimited domains", right? Just create an account as resource based and define the 1GB and 10GBs as the limits. What am I missing here?

Yes, but when you add the new account, what do you specify for disk quota and bandwidth? I know you specify 1GB and 10Gb in the reseller center for the reseller. But for the main account, what do you do?

Originally posted by rbro
I'm not sure what you mean. We give resellers 1GB and they create sometimes 20 or 30 hosting accounts.

With hard limits, if everyone uses only 10 MB of disk space, a 1 GB reseller plan can hold 10 100 MB hosting accounts. With soft limits, if everyone uses only 10 MB of disk space, a 1 GB reseller plan can hold around 100 100 MB hosting accounts. As far as I know, Cpanel only lets you set hard limits, not soft limits.

Originally posted by ebo


Yes, but when you add the new account, what do you specify for disk quota and bandwidth? I know you specify 1GB and 10Gb in the reseller center for the reseller. But for the main account, what do you do?

This is driving me nuts. Since nobody seems to be understanding or answering your question, I'll tell you what MCHost does. MCHost creates an account with like 150 MB of disk space and 1,500 MB of bandwidth for the main domain name and then makes that account a reseller account with a 50 domain limit which can be increased by request. Since Cpanel doesn't have a way to set soft limits, I don't think they place a limit on disk space and bandwidth. If they do, they use some sort of in-house script. If not, they probably monitor the reseller accounts either manually, or through a script. I like your idea better because it lets resellers create an account for themselves.

Thank you toastyx. That's all I was wondering. Whew.. Atleast someone understood the question ;)