Tutorial Videos (DemoWolf, etc.)

May 29, 2012 by

I spent some time looking at DemoWolf.

DemoWolf allows you to submit a logo and in return they brand thousands of demonstration videos for end users.  They’re made available by installing a player on your web site.  So you, as a web host, could then turn around and say “we have thousands of tutorial videos for customer use”.  Also, if you get a support ticket asking how to dosomething, you could potentially just respond with a link to a video that shows the customer how to do what they want.

Neat idea, and DemoWolf has been around for a while.  However, there are some problems:

Very Generic.  You can find all of these videos on many sites (and watch them on DW’s own site).  DW doesn’t require that you password-protect them or make them available only for customers.  So there’s no reason I couldn’t watch the videos on Hosting Company A’s site and then use the information on Hosting Company B’s site.

They’re Expensive.  Figure $50/month. I say that because while they have lower-priced offerings, the reality is that it’s hard to know which videos customers are going to want.

They’re Not That Good.  They’re not bad but they’re mostly step-by-step task procedures.  Want to change a password?  Click here, click there, congratulations, end of video.  They don’t get into anything more advanced than that.  Sure, that’s good for lots of things like ticket replies, but for a lot of their series, the info isn’t that good (e.g., I can’t imagine learning WHMCS or cPanel reselling through their videos).

So I’m thinking of making my own.  I used to podcast and have the audio/video software and gear (though my Shure SM58 is too sensitive, but that’s a good problem to have).  A standard opening/closing is easy enough, and then it’s a screencast.  I’d need a few weeks to do the major how-to and then after that it could be a regular release.

In the end, I think I could easily make videos that are as good as DW’s, though perhaps not as broad…e.g., I have an iPhone to demonstrate how to setup mail, but not an Android, etc.

Still ruminating…many other things to do first :-)

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WHMCS, Part II

May 26, 2012 by

I have admit that this kind of freaked me out.

Long story short – someone woke up and found a lot of their WHMCS data missing.

Now granted, we don’t know the whole story.  The company involved might have made some mistake, they might have a script with a bug, etc.  But the as I mentioned before, WHMCS installs are going to be prime targets for hackers for the immediate future.

Here’s another thread where Aldryic from BuyVM mentions knowledge of two vulnerabilities.  WHMCS LLC is aware of them but they are apparently unfixed yet.

At the end of the day, I don’t know that WHMCS is any more insecure than anything else.  It’s like Windows in the sense that there will always be more Windows attacks that Macintosh attacks because there is a lot more Windows out there.

Still, it concerns me when WHMCS.com is repeatedly hacked from multiple vectors.  I think it was taken down four times this week, and I discovered a couple times it was down just by visiting which may be additional successful attacks.

I’m now leaning more towards using IP.Nexus, especially as Invision has now integrated domain registration into the forthcoming release of their product.

The benefits are:

  • It does most everything that WHMCS does, and the things it doesn’t do are not things that are vital to me (for example, it doesn’t support as many payment gateways but it supports the ones I want to use)
  • It doesn’t look like WHMCS, which every two-bit host uses
  • It’s integrated into forum, blog, etc.  I was poised to write a script to automate registration of users who sign up in WHMCS to a forum – not needed here
  • Free live chat, though it’s a chat room (for up to five users)…I’m not big on live chat personally.

There are some downsides:

  • In my case, I already own Board+Blog+Content +Nexus from a previous project.  If I didn’t, that’d be about $270 to buy them all (not including Blog, which isn’t really necessary).
  • On a monthly basis, I can get WHMCS for $5/month.  For those IPB products (Blog isn’t really necessary) I don’t have to pay anything since I own them, but I probably have to pay maintenance.  This is not required, but it gives you upgrade rights, support, antispam in the forum, and access to the chat server (which runs on IPB’s servers).  Maintenance is by product and paid biannually – all those products work out to $12.50/month.  That’s about what WHMCS costs to license if you’re not getting it discounted by a provider, but of course you’re getting quite a bit more with IPB.
  • It’s a suite based on forum, though this is going to change.  So Nexus is a forum add-on, not a standalone.  In their new 4.0 “community suite” world, IPB will sell you Nexus standalone if you want, but that’s not possible now.  I think you can turn off the forum if you want.
  • The URLs are not as pretty.  I could run WHMCS on my.example.com, but with Nexus, you need to use something like www.example.com for IP.Content (the CMS), www.example.com/forum for the forum, and Nexus ends up as www.example.com/forum/client.  I can probably live with that – I can always create a redirect subdomain.

I do like IPB as a forum and IP.Content can be powerful, albeit complex.  However, I’ve discovered you can simply move it out of the way (create the pages from doctype to html-close) so I won’t lose anything I’ve done on site development so far.

I was planning to run my main www.example.com on pure static HTML to keep load on the VPS down.  For IPB, I was used to running it with nginx + php-fpm on a dedicated VPS.  I might still do that.  One VPS for the main site/forum/nexus/etc., and start with one VPS for customers and cpanel/WHM.

 

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WHMCS

May 23, 2012 by

As you may have read, WHMCS.com was hacked yesterday.

And…it was hacked again today.

Sheesh.

I’m just at a point where I’m working on skinning WHMCS and doing some customization.  I really like the easy of modifying templates.  I’m not as concerned about the underlying code – it’s a shopping cart/billing/support ticket system and I’ve used it enough as a customer to know it does what I want.  But I am modifying the templates to get things to look like what I want and really, it’s very nice.  Smarty templates, reasonable CSS, logical layout…so far, so good.

But the security!  Ugh!  Now I would point out that WHMCS.com being hacked is different than WHMCS itself being hacked.  The software had an exploit last fall – so did a couple others like Hostbill so it may have been more of a general “class of exploit” sort of thing.

Something interesting that was pointed out to me: the hackers stole and published the customer database.  While perhaps the immediate concern is that there are thousands of credit card numbers in circulation, a longer-term consideration is that there is a ready list of every domain and IP that WHMCS is installed on.  As soon as another vulnerability is found, you an bet hackers will swiftly cycle through every domain in the database, looking for vulnerabilities.

Sigh.

So what are the alternatives?

Hostbill: Unfortunately, they only offer a yearly license.

Blesta: After several minutes of clicking around their site, I couldn’t find anything that said they supported Paypal, Maxmind, cpanel/WHM, etc.

ClientExec: I have not really investigated this one fully, because…

…there’s also ModernBill, AWBS, WHM AutoPilot, etc.  My head hurts.

One wacky option I am lookng at is IP.Nexus.  That’s by the people who make IP.Board.  I have an IPB license and was planning to use it for the “customer forum” part of my site.  It has cpanel/WHM integration, plus Maxmind, customizable fraud rules, etc.  About the only thing missing is domain registrar integration, though they say that’s coming.

I’ve used IP.Board before and like it, though I will say that there are a couple serious negatives.  Their documentation is appalling.  They do provide some, but it’s uneven and they simply don’t get the idea that they should be providing a “getting started” guide, along with in-depth howtos for common things.  Their software is quite powerful and you can do some cool things with it, but I shouldn’t need to read through tons of php code to find out how.  I also find their product complex, which makes customization difficult.

One major hurdle to using Nexus is the structure of it.  It’s an add-on to a forum, so really people would need to register on your forum before signing up for service, which wouldn’t really work.  The forum is a nice add-on, but not every customer will even look at it.  Because of how IPB works, you’d have to have it setup like this:

  • www.example.com – main hosting company site
  • www.example.com/forum – the forum
  • www.example.com/forum/store – you can rename “store” to “clients” or whatever, but the point is that you’re a couple subdirectories down

You could do it like this:

  • www.example.com – main hosting company site running on IP.Content (another IP product)
  • www.example.com/forum – the forum
  • www.example.com/store – Nexus

However, running my main site on IP.Content would be very unattractive.  IP.Content is nice, but very complicated.  Yes, the Invision Power web site is nice, but they have full-time staff who are intimately familiar with the product.

Cost-wise, Nexus support is $35 every 6 months, or $70/year.  However, you also have to keep Board under support, which is another $50/year, so now you’re at $120/year or $10/month.  I’m getting WHMCS for $5/month from my provider.

I think I’ll probably just stick with WHMCS.

 

 

 

 

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Stock Photos

May 3, 2012 by

I’ve been working on my site, very intensely – which is why my posting rate here has slowed a bit.

I’m doing my own custom design, rather than buying a template.  In my opinion, all hosting company templates look the same and I refuse to go down that route.

So I’m working on my own design.  Man, does stock art cost a fortune…easily $3-4 per picture, assuming there are no human models.  Some pics or $100+!  I’m looking at istockphoto, dreamtime, etc.

I did make a note of sites that have free stock are.  The selection is maybe 5% of what the pay sites have, but every pic I find there saves me money.  In case anyone else would like to look:

Ah, how I long for those days when I’d be putting together a personal page and would grab anything I wanted off Google Images.  Being a business, I have to play by the rules.

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