Network Issues and Announcements

[Hexosphere]

Being fairly new to the forums, I've been perusing a lot of the posts between the various forums, and looking at the feedback, i'd suggest that a much needed feature that web hosting uk seem to be lacking is some form of announcement of Technical Issues

Here are some references;

IP Routing

Server Down

Sites Down

Now, whilst I can understand that not all issues affect everyone, the second one listed above, was due to a power distribution problem, which obviously has the potential to affect a vast amount of clients, and whilst some of them won't venture into forums, means that they'll not see the above post, and therefore be non the wiser. With the second one, I have experienced a problem like this recently, in that eventually, we migrated the data from one vps node to another (and I was grateful for the support I received), though still not fully sure why the vps in question was dropping off the face of the sky, as it appeared more of a routing issue as the server in question had been up the whole time we were experiencing getting to it.

There's a vast amount of posts that I've read that may not even have been posted had there been some form of announcement listing, I'm not sure what type of helpdesk software your running, but with most software, it shouldn't be too difficult to include a major issues ticket and then pull information from the sql db via a php page, something like www.webhosting.uk.com/noc or noc.webhosting.uk.com, which would allow people to see issues that are currently active, and ongoing, and save a lot of grief with angry customers that cannot find out what's going on.

Honesty is the best policy, as someone once said. Customers can appreciate that problems exist, and it's not the problem that gets them irate and irritated, it's not being able to find out what's going on, when it's going on, and whilst I can say that there is the possibility of speaking to the live support, or phoning, the onus is on us, the customers to find out if a problem exists, and then chase up what's being done about it. WHMCS even includes the ability to post network issues (though since your not using the support part of it, it probably wouldn't be useful for you), but it shows that it's something that webhosting customers look for, as it's built into a major league Webhosting Management and Client System.

I used to work for an IT helpdesk, with the various levels of support, first, second, third line. They used Heat, as a call logging application, and no I'm not suggesting moving over to Heat, just merely the way that major issues can be announced on it, which then gives anyone logged into the support system a heads up as to Major ongoing outages, and in which even the first line techs can read a call update that states there's a major outage that's currently being served by one of the third line techs.

Sorry if the post seems a little ranty, it's not meant to, just merely a suggestion of a way to find out about major issues that may effect more than one customer. Not only would this offer piece of mind to existing customers, it would also add re-assurance for anyone that wanted to become a customer, ie they'd be able to check any issues that have occurred and the response times to those issues.

Hexo

[Dan]

Hi Hexosphere,

I have submitted this to the feedback department. Hopefully somebody will take a look at this asap

[Administrator]

Hi Hexo,

We appreciate your valuable suggestion and something similar will be implemented next week. Our management team was busy with couple of new products we are planning to launch, but we will give top priority to your suggestion next week.

[Dan]

Originally Posted by Administrator

Hi Hexo,

We appreciate your valuable suggestion and something similar will be implemented next week. Our management team was busy with couple of new products we are planning to launch, but we will give top priority to your suggestion next week.

Excellent news

[Hexosphere]

Originally Posted by Administrator

Hi Hexo,

We appreciate your valuable suggestion and something similar will be implemented next week. Our management team was busy with couple of new products we are planning to launch, but we will give top priority to your suggestion next week.

Sounds good, i'll look forward to seeing what you have planned

[Hexosphere]

Is there any more news on this one?

Looks like people are still looking for a feature like this

Regards

HexoSphere

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by Hexosphere

Is there any more news on this one?

Looks like people are still looking for a feature like this

Regards

HexoSphere

Hi Hexo,

We will be switching our VPS hosting and Shared hosting service on Cloud Computing solution in next 7 - 8 days. Once this is done then we will work on a customized interface for customers where you will be able to see the status of your server or website.

We have trained all our support staff to send email notifications to respective customers if their server goes through any sort of trouble. You will be notified through email if incase your server goes down for any reason.

[Hexosphere]

Originally Posted by Administrator

Hi Hexo,

We will be switching our VPS hosting and Shared hosting service on Cloud Computing solution in next 7 - 8 days. Once this is done then we will work on a customized interface for customers where you will be able to see the status of your server or website.

We have trained all our support staff to send email notifications to respective customers if their server goes through any sort of trouble. You will be notified through email if incase your server goes down for any reason.

Sounds like a good deal of work, and btw i wasn't trying to imply that you weren't taking interest, rather the contrary, i know that these things take time in rolling out lol (now i sound like i know what I'm talking about <lol>)

I know not a lot about what an end user expects, i've seen far too many times on a first hand basis lol - who said this webhosting business was all it was cracked up to be lol

[Administrator]

Hi Hexo,

My major concern is security of our servers and we won't like to display information of our servers to all our customers. We tried such thing in past and helped the hackers more than it helped the customers.

We will need to make this solution 100% secure if we decide to implement something similar in coming few months.

[Hexosphere]

Originally Posted by Administrator

Hi Hexo,

My major concern is security of our servers and we won't like to display information of our servers to all our customers. We tried such thing in past and helped the hackers more than it helped the customers.

We will need to make this solution 100% secure if we decide to implement something similar in coming few months.

Sure thing I can understand that, one mans trash is another mans gold and all that. I see that you're using whmcs for your billing client, could you not build upon the already secure environment.

Just of the top of my head - not sure on the easyness to implement.

You could create a secondary table in the db to hold specifics with regards to network issues. Then with a simple query which checks the users 'package', and if it matches said criteria, another query to check which 'server' they're on, and use the template system to display and issues that effect them on a per account level, upon logging in. You could even provide a link to it for network issues, but it would require the client to login before they could view it.

[Administrator]

Originally Posted by Hexosphere

Sure thing I can understand that, one mans trash is another mans gold and all that. I see that you're using whmcs for your billing client, could you not build upon the already secure environment.

Just of the top of my head - not sure on the easyness to implement.

You could create a secondary table in the db to hold specifics with regards to network issues. Then with a simple query which checks the users 'package', and if it matches said criteria, another query to check which 'server' they're on, and use the template system to display and issues that effect them on a per account level, upon logging in. You could even provide a link to it for network issues, but it would require the client to login before they could view it.

Hi Gavin,

This can be easily done, but this wil overload our main server which hosts our Billing system. Our CRO is coming up with a better solution. I will check with him and let you know the ETA for what he is coming up with.