Another strange HSphere feature?

[Spirited]

Stepping up on the soap box.

I am starting to feel like one of those pesky complainers, but I am sure seeing a lot of strange things with the Web host sign up process. Bringing my reseller site online, I am simulating a lot of customer sign ups in the process of testing and attempting to customize the "Look and Feel" of the sign up process to make the customers sign up experience a little more user friendly, i.e., help them understand what they are doing and giving some direction.

The latest, if I am not loosing it (and the jury is still out on this issue) I have noticed that, on about half the sign ups, HSphere causes my browser to close after it creates a new site. (This has happened on both IE and Mozilla.) Other times it takes me to the login page. That isn't totally bad, but I wish it would take the customer to a page that informed them they were successful, and provide a link to the login page. Has anyone else noticed this? This would sure leave a customer hanging as to what he has accomplished, and what he was to do next.

I am just seeing too many issues to confuse a customer. Then too many traps to leave a customer confused and bewildered when something goes awry. We can only hack in an attempt to overcome the deficiencies.

I suppose I am on a campaign to entice PSoft to improve HSphere some. As I get involved and learn more about HSphere I appreciated the excellent fundamentals of the product. But the folks at PSoft just didn’t complete the job. A good analogy is a car that someone forgot to paint, install the trim and hubcaps. It drives great, but you can't sell the damn thing because it doesn't look right. With just a tad more effort they could increase the value manifold.

Stepping off the soap box.

Nick

[Spirited]

Adding to the above. In an effort to simulate situations the customer might encounter during the signup process, I attempted to sign up a domain using a User Name that I knew already existed. When I click on next on the Invoice page, there was a delay. And it automatically closed my browser, without any indication of what might have happened.

I did notice that my credit card was charged. And, no new Web site hosting was created.

In summary this would leave the customer not knowing what occurred, no hosting plan, but charged for the service.

What is scary is that I have only tested a small subset of things that could go wrong. If you extrapolate the sample I have it appears that the folks at PSoft never factored in the many things that could go wrong.


Nick

[craigdunlop]

I know where you're coming from with the H-Sphere bugs Spirited. There appear to be many that your average developer would always ensure weren't in there before their product was released. The ones you mention are fairly minor compared to some I have heard of and experienced that are of major concern - so this may explain why the minor ones are still existing.

I think it is an amazing program and really would not want to use anything else now I have familiarised myself with it - but on the other hand it scares the hell out of me - both the minor and major issues that can go wrong with it. I just hope in their pursuit to please everyone and add features and OS compatibility, etc in upcoming versions that they pay attention to the existing bugs in it and be careful not to introduce anymore.

[generic]

Automatically closing a browser sounds like a client issue rather than a psoft issue.

My suggestion, move your hsphere complaints over to psoft's forums, not here, not much vortech can do about it.

greg

[craigdunlop]

Originally Posted by tracewebspace

Automatically closing a browser sounds like a client issue rather than a psoft issue.

My suggestion, move your hsphere complaints over to psoft's forums, not here, not much vortech can do about it.

greg

No offense Trace but I thought the forums were an open discussion mechanism, not so much a Vortech support mechanism. It could be helpful to discuss H-Sphere bugs here since many of us are affected by them. Would be nice to know how others are affected by them and what they are so we can be prepared. Maybe even hear of some client workarounds. Is this thread in the wrong spot?

But yes, if there's an issue you want fixed - for sure bring it up with PSoft as it is not a Vortech issue, although if it's affecting their clients and they see it as a major issue I'm sure they can and do add a little urgency to it with Psoft.

Cheers

[nelsonke]

Thanks for posting the bugs you have run into. I would rather learn it from you than lose clients and not know why.

[generic]

sorry all, I was'nt trying to be rude, exchanging ideas here is great, just thought if we wana get something done to hsphere, we would have to go to the source - psoft.

Actually,
Just as your customers have no leverage with us, you guys have little "leverage" with Psoft. They have a complex support/suggestion system that lets us "vote" on what to fix, add, etc. They are aware of a lot of bugs in the system (which I'd wish they'd fix rather than spending time adding more buggy features).

We also have a very "customized" install, so if you do manage to get someone at Psoft's attention, they'll probably assume you're running under the default installation, and return bad/invalid answers.

So, if you find a BUG, the best thing to do is let us know and we'll contact Psoft about getting it fixed. Depending on the severity it may be fixed immediately or in the next release, or far down the road (unfortunatly). If it's a bug we're aware of, we'll let you know, and save Psoft some time sorting through emails/posts reporting the same bug over and over.

In this particular instance however, with the "closing" browser, I can't quite remember what the cause of the issue is, but I do not think it was an HSphere bug, rather something is misconfigured. It's been a LONG time since that issue came up, before our current ticket system, so I can't quite pinpoint it off hand, but if you submit a ticket with all the proper information, I may be able to look at your setup and figure out what the problem is.