Excellent support but... (a newbie's tale)

[ImpInaBox]

... boy was it needed!

I've just set up a reseller account after hearing good things about eUKHost on various reviews. So far I'm pleased tech support has worked so well because almost nothing in this system has worked out of the box.

1. WHM. Having roamed the system wondering where the newbie documentation was I resorted to support chat and they pointed me to some flash demos. These didn't help much - I'm new here remember - I don't want details about installing Mambo, I want a 10,000ft overview and some sort of site guide. But the demo did seem to indicate that I needed to create some accounts before doing anything else. Back to WHM but there's no option to create an account. What's more the demo showed a whole lot more 2nd level menu items than I have. Back to support, explain the problem and Ralf goes away for a minute then comes back an announces that he's fixed it. Sure enough I now have a whole bunch of new menu items and I can create an account! Whoopee!

2. WHM again. The account needs a 'package'. OK - I choose something from a menu of red and green bits - alarmed slightly that it appears I'll only be able to create 3 accounts before I run out of disk space and bandwidth. Ah - back in flash demo land I see that I can create my own packages and edit the disk and bandwidth quotas to reduce the waste - just click on the 'package' item in the WHM menu. Actually no - my WHM has no 'package' item in the menu. Back to support chat, explain this and Ralf goes away for a minute or two and then announces it's all fixed. I log off and on again and 'packages' have mysteriously appeared in my WHM window. (Do you see a pattern emerging?)

3. WHM again. Rather than create a load of new packages willy nilly I decide I'll edit one that's already there - to keep the place tidy and make sure I don't miss anything out. Packages - Edit packages - hmm - I've got the scroll bar from a list box in the middle of my window but no list box to go with it. No packages to select and edit. Back to support - I'm getting to know Ralf quite well by now! It seems I can't edit existing packages and because I've not created any new packages there's nothing to edit. How about nice error mesage to tell me I can't edit system packages - only those I create myself??? Jeez - if I wrote software like this I'd starve!

Some success next - I create a bunch of packages (makes the red and green list untidy but what the hell), I manage to get a domain up and running - neatly packaged and accounted.

CPanel: Next I thought I should sort out FTP and email - that's not in WHM - it's in cpanel - but where is cpanel? In another reseller system I use you get to that from the equivalent of WHM - but not here. Eventually I stumble on a link to my new website that brings forth a cpanel login. I carefully note the URL (I'm getting wise to this now!) and discover it's the IP address of the server - or of my corner of it anyway. Wey hey - cpanel seems relatively logical and I set up FTP and a mail box, upload some files and send an email!

Stats: One of the reasons I moved here was that my previous reseller host made it nigh on impossible to get sensible webalizer stats because I couldn't edit the webalizer config file to tell it to ignore internal referrals. I want to know how visitors got to my site not that they got to page two having been pointed there from page one! So let's set up some stats and see what we've got here. Right - cpanel - stats - webalizer... 'No domains using webalizer have been found'! More blind roaming - look at 'features' - do I need to set up a list of features? Seems unlikely but I do it anyway and learn that I was right - I didn't need to! Still no stats. Oh well - it's getting late now but I wonder if Ralf is still there. He's not but I explain about the missing stats to Ronnie... who disappears for a couple of minutes and then comes back and anounces that he's fixed it. Aagghhhh!

Does EVERYTHING need tech support to fettle it before it will work? Will I have to go thru this with every domain I want to host?

[eUKhost.com]

Mike !

It seems that you are using WHM / cPanel for the first time and your frustration on the first day can be easily understood. You will probably not need to contact support team for months when you manage to under WHM and cPanel. Features enabled / disabled by Ralf and Ronnie were done from your WHM panel only, but you haven't been there till now so you will need to keep some patience before you become master of WHM.

We are here to help you and you are most welcome to contact our support team and ask them to sort out things for you. They will fix things for you, but in the end you should ask them to explain what they did as that will help you to understand things for your future requirements.

Spend some time with the WHM and cPanel demo / flash tutorials on weekend and you will start feeling comfortable within 2 - 3 days. We have staff members available on livechat 24x7, so you can contact them on weekend as well.

[ImpInaBox]

It's heartening to hear that all the fettling was done via the WHM panel - there's hope that, one day, I'll figure out how to do such things for myself. But I stand by my point that you desperately, desperately need some newbie documentation to help people get started. It's like trying to find your way round a new strange city with just a street map - you need some sort of grand plan pointing out where the supermarkets, hospitals, dentists, cinemas, parks etc can be found. I expected a learning curve but not a cliff.

But as I say, I'm relieved to hear that there is hope. As always I'll stick with it; I hate to be beaten!

[Jack]

Originally Posted by ImpInaBox

It's heartening to hear that all the fettling was done via the WHM panel - there's hope that, one day, I'll figure out how to do such things for myself. But I stand by my point that you desperately, desperately need some newbie documentation to help people get started. It's like trying to find your way round a new strange city with just a street map - you need some sort of grand plan pointing out where the supermarkets, hospitals, dentists, cinemas, parks etc can be found. I expected a learning curve but not a cliff.

But as I say, I'm relieved to hear that there is hope. As always I'll stick with it; I hate to be beaten!

I am not sure if you have gone through our Flash tutorials. If not , please check the links below:-

WHM Tutorials | WHM Configuration | WHM Reseller cPanel Web Hosting Service

cPanel Tutorials | cPanel Tutorial | cPanel Web Hosting in UK

[Lance]

impinabox,

your probably not alone, we were new to cpanel once and was exactly the same, I dare say many others were too... once you do find your way around it you will see how good it is... the intial configuration is the most daunting...

You`ll find alot of help here in the forums, simply ask away any questions, someone somewhere will be able to answer you.. support at EUK is excellent, you have made a good choice

Lance

[eUKhost.com]

Hi Mike !

You can either refer our Flash Tutorials from UK Web Hosting Support | cPanel Plesk osCommerce Site Builder Joomla Mambo Tutorials or you can check following URL's for WHM / cPanel documentation :-

cPanel - WebHost Manager Documentation

cPanel - cPanel 11 Documentation : Introduction

another option to find what you want is search with following string in google :-

site:.eukhost.com "your question"

example :- site:.eukhost.com getting started with cpanel - Google Search

[jabba08]

Originally Posted by Lance

impinabox,

your probably not alone, we were new to cpanel once and was exactly the same, I dare say many others were too... once you do find your way around it you will see how good it is... the intial configuration is the most daunting...

You`ll find alot of help here in the forums, simply ask away any questions, someone somewhere will be able to answer you.. support at EUK is excellent, you have made a good choice

Lance

Agreed. Cpanel is the best, bar none, once you get used to it. Its design is miles ahead of the competition.