Hello all,

Well I've got couple of questions from those who are running their own web hosting business and has got enough clients and in other words they are EXPERTS in this industry.

- Do you give support for 3rd party scripts, databases ?
If a client comes to you and ask you I've got a problem with MySQL DB or with a PHP script, till where you have to guide him?

Unfortunately, people they don't take time and trace their script, DB and see where the problem may rise from. What they learned to do is : E-mail Support @ Hosting Provider ?subject line : What the hell is wrong with my account !!!

Jesus !!!

- I've heard that most of hosting providers do not allow some command lines such as wget, gcc, cc, pico in their virtual accounts. Why is it so? And please let me know if it's normal or should be included in the virtual accounts.

- Do you charge anything if a client of yours ask you for a restart to Apache web server because he's made some configuration and until Apache is not restart, his changes won't take effect ?

- Support of which features has go too much hassle ?? JSP/ASP/MSQL/FrontPage ?

- A client of yours comes to you and ask he needs you to add entries in Tomcat's server.xml and Apache's httpd.conf, will you do that ? Any charges ? Safe or unsafe ?

All your answers and suggestions are highly appreciated.

Thanks everyone.

Have a great day....

Originally posted by HeadMaster
Hello all,

- Do you give support for 3rd party scripts, databases ?
If a client comes to you and ask you I've got a problem with MySQL DB or with a PHP script, till where you have to guide him?

We do not support 3rd party scripts. There are so many out there, and it is practically impossible for us to take the time to understand how the script is supposed to work and get it working properly. What we will do is install a perl module to allow a certain script to function if it will not have any security or adverse effects on other clients. We will also allow the customer to purchase script installation support for $10 per incident and we will install his/her script for them.

- I've heard that most of hosting providers do not allow some command lines such as wget, gcc, cc, pico in their virtual accounts. Why is it so? And please let me know if it's normal or should be included in the virtual accounts.

Well certain things should not be allowed, i do not see it necessary to have a c compiler available for users, seems like a security problem waiting to happen. If a module needs to be compiled we will do it on an admin level not a user level. We allow pico and wget as they are very useful to our clients. Of course we do not offer SSH access by default it has to be requested and a reason has to be given.

- Do you charge anything if a client of yours ask you for a restart to Apache web server because he's made some configuration and until Apache is not restart, his changes won't take effect ?

No, it does not take long to restart these services and therefore it is not a problem. Of course, we use Plesk so every time someone updates their hosting, the httpd service is restarted.

- Support of which features has go too much hassle ?? JSP/ASP/MSQL/FrontPage ?

JSP, MSSQL, Frontpage 2002 are hassles in my opinion. We offer ApacheASP and support for earlier Frontpage extensions with little or no hassle. Of course, if a ASP app has problems, we do promise 100% compatibility.

- A client of yours comes to you and ask he needs you to add entries in Tomcat's server.xml and Apache's httpd.conf, will you do that ? Any charges ? Safe or unsafe ?

In a shared hosting environment you may run in to some problems if you adjust the httpd.conf file with too much extra items. Our policy is, if customization on this level is required then a dedicated server may be the better route of hosting.

I am not by far an expert in hosting, but I have been in the trenches working for ValuableHost and have dealt with these issues numerous times. If I made a mistake on anything, please let me know. :)

John Oliver
VP-Support, ValuableHost.com

Very Nice...

Thank you very much... OK Ollie was one of the experts, Where are the rest ?

All your opinions are highly appreciated.

Once again thanks Ollie

Hello ???

Still waiting for your comments. I really appreciate you guys, taking time and writing me couple of lines.

Thank you in advance

- Do you give support for 3rd party scripts, databases ?
If a client comes to you and ask you I've got a problem with MySQL DB or with a PHP script, till where you have to guide him?

Yes, we give such support to some extent. But basically that's a matter of your prices, if you sell $20 per year hosting accounts you can't afford that kind of service.

- I've heard that most of hosting providers do not allow some command lines such as wget, gcc, cc, pico in their virtual accounts. Why is it so? And please let me know if it's normal or should be included in the virtual accounts.

SSH accounts are only available to know and trusted customers, so that's no big problem. And if someone with good server knowledge wants to break your server, believe me, we won't stop him if we don't allow pico :)

- Support of which features has go too much hassle ?? JSP/ASP/MSQL/FrontPage ?

We do not provide JSP/ASP/MsSql. FrontPage support sometimes has problems, but many customers use it.

- A client of yours comes to you and ask he needs you to add entries in Tomcat's server.xml and Apache's httpd.conf, will you do that ? Any charges ? Safe or unsafe ?

We are very careful with changes to general config files so every change request will be reviewed carefully. No charges.

Walter,

I appreciate your comments.

What about free domain registration. Some hosting companies offer free domain registration on each of their packages.

And customers usually want to have their domain to be propagated within 24 hours.

Lets say a client comes to you and signs-up for a package that you have to register a domain for him, however he has paid you and you are waiting for your merchant provider to review the pending. May take up to 24-48 hours. Lets say it took you more than 30 hours, still client is waiting for his domain.

What will you do at this point ? You are waiting for the payment to be approved and to make sure there's no fraud risk.

Any advise will be appreciated.

Originally posted by HeadMaster
Walter,

I appreciate your comments.

What about free domain registration. Some hosting companies offer free domain registration on each of their packages.


While we don't offer a free domain with our hosting packages, we do offer domain registration. If our prices were a bit higher it would support this feature, however the majority of our clients still register their domains through us.


And customers usually want to have their domain to be propagated within 24 hours.


While we are not a registrar, we do utilize OpenSRS and this makes registering domains much easier and quicker. Unfortunately we can not control domain propagation. Registars update the root zones every 12 hours. However with the advent of cache servers, ISPs that impose their own TTL expiration on their nameservers, peoples own computers, etc. It is next to impossible to promise propagation in less than 24 hours. Does it happen? Sure most of the time. Does it not happen, sure probably 10% of the time. We tell our clients to use our nameservers if it becomes a problem for them or make use of a static IP.


Lets say a client comes to you and signs-up for a package that you have to register a domain for him, however he has paid you and you are waiting for your merchant provider to review the pending. May take up to 24-48 hours. Lets say it took you more than 30 hours, still client is waiting for his domain.

What will you do at this point ? You are waiting for the payment to be approved and to make sure there's no fraud risk.

Any advise will be appreciated.


We utilize a real credit card processing service, so we get an AUTH immediately on the credit card, so we have a high degree of confidence in the credit card, so we register and set the domain up immediately. Generally within an hour, a welcome e-mail, domain registration, setup instructions, and a receipt have been sent out. There are exceptions of course. But we try our best.

Good luck, I hope you are getting the answers you need from everyone.

Originally posted by HeadMaster
Hello all,

- Do you give support for 3rd party scripts, databases ?
If a client comes to you and ask you I've got a problem with MySQL DB or with a PHP script, till where you have to guide him?

We don't support that ourselves. However, we do have a forum with plenty of moderators who help out on cases like that. If the client has command line access, we often recommend they run the script via command line to find where the errors are occuring. If it is a problem with the PHP or MYSQL program itself and affects everyone, then of course we jump right on it and get it fixed.

- I've heard that most of hosting providers do not allow some command lines such as wget, gcc, cc, pico in their virtual accounts. Why is it so? And please let me know if it's normal or should be included in the virtual accounts.

Some we dont, such as top, ps, compilers, etc. SSH access has to be requested via their control panel, which we approve or disallow as we check them.

- Do you charge anything if a client of yours ask you for a restart to Apache web server because he's made some configuration and until Apache is not restart, his changes won't take effect ?

Our system does that automatically if the change is made thru the control panel. However, we dont restart our Apache, we reload it. That makes it re-read all configuration files and adjust to changes without any http downtime whatsoever.

- Support of which features has go too much hassle ?? JSP/ASP/MSQL/FrontPage ?

We offer ChiliASP for an additional charge. However, we dont offer tech support for ASP scripts.

- A client of yours comes to you and ask he needs you to add entries in Tomcat's server.xml and Apache's httpd.conf, will you do that ? Any charges ? Safe or unsafe ?

Each of our clients have their own httpd.conf file. We never need to edit our main file.

All your answers and suggestions are highly appreciated.

Thanks everyone.

Have a great day....



Your welcome.