Problems with the new hosting plans

[cgarvey]

I've taken my new Windows Minimus account out for a test drive now and there are a few things to be ironed out:

1. No proper support for Domain Pointers/Aliases

There's a workaround of creating a new domain that uses the same physical directory as the master domain... doesn't work all that well though as I ran into some problems when trying to install stuff afterwards, the system told me I couldn't because I might overwrite another domain's content.

2. Can't set up email until the site is registered

I like to set up my sites, email addresses etc.etc. before I transfer the domain so I don't lose anything. Not letting me set up emails in advance is a serious no-no

3. Awkward temp domains for websites.

The "mydomain.ie.somedomain.ie" available on Helm was great as it let me make sure the whole site was running smoothly before transferring the actual domain. It also let me show the site in development to customers before the CRO was finished authorising RBNs. These days the CRO are backlogged up the ying-yang so it could take you weeks to get your i.e. domain authorised so it would really help to have a common dev domain that worked like somedomain.ie. Finally, the technical gotcha in all of this is that root relative links and Server.MapPath type connection strings/ generated paths no longer work with the available temp domain which ends up looking like http://xxxxxxxxxx.blacknight.com/myd...e/default.html

4. Sitebuilder

I think this is running in demo mode or something. It won't let me create more than 2 top level pages and the templates are clearly designed to have more than that ! Also, there doesn't seem to be any way of adding new designs or customising the graphics etc? I accept that this is a basic tool but surely swsoft could produce a document outlining how a template could be created?

That's all for now.... Don't get me wrong, I love the new integrated Control Panel, but I hope you can sort out the aforementioned potholes sooner rather than later.

Anyone else run into other problems?

[blacknight]

Thanks for the feedback.

A couple of those issues we should be able to resolve without too much difficulty, others are going to take a bit more, however we will be addressing each and every one of them

Michele

[cgarvey]

I'd like to add a couple of new gripes cunningly disguised as "Constructive feedback"

1. Limited facility for email aliases. This should be a case of simply adding aliases to a mailbox, but instead you have to go to the same trouble you would setting up a regular email address and then set up forwarding and removing the Create Mailbox option... so basically it's requires more clicks to create an email alias than it does to create a real email address.
   
2. Navigating round the site throws exceptions in Firefox that Firebug catches. Nothing serious but it just shouldn't - y'know? (let me know if you want me to mail these on to you)
   
3. Clicking on Help & Support doesn't take you anywhere useful. I haven't been able to find any "downloadable documentation" for the hosting plan.
   
4. This isn't strictly a Control Panel issue but is relevant: After transferring a .ie domain to you I received an (automated?) email notifying me the domain had been transferred. 2 days later a domain ping still wasn't resolving correctly to the new IP so I rang your support dept. I was told that the NS records for the domain needed to be manually set to the blacknight nameservers. Now there are good reasons for this and I accept the logic and rationale.. but I wish you'd mentioned it in the email so I could have done something about it earlier !

Gripes notwithstanding, I'm still moving all my websites to the new CP - that's how good it is.

[blacknight]

Could you email us about the firefox errors - management@blacknight.com

The IE transfer email is easy enough to fix (thankfully!) and you should be able to make the update yourself via the control panel

Michele

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