Helm - Yes or No?

Y

Yash

Bass
Read this announcement first:
http://support.jodohost.com/showthread.php?p=3283#post3283

I wanted to know how many customers would be in favor of switching to Helm. Helm has alot of features that most customers here require:

1) CF DSN creation (directly from CP)
2) Better stats and webmail software.
3) Deploying ASP/ASP.NET apps in sub domains
4) Permission manager for MS SQL databases

Additionally, with Helm, we would migrate to Windows 2003. We are considering have Urchin 5 statistics available as well to our customers.

The thing with Helm however is that we'd require your support in the switch-over process. There won't be any migration scripts here. We'll be manually recreating the accounts on the Helm servers. You'd have to shift your files. We'd however provide assistance with shifting databases and big sites.

There would be no changes in the plans. Infact, you'd see many feature additions.

Let me know what you think
 
Hi Yash-

I'm not familiar with Helm at all. However better webmail, .Net apps in sub-domains, any additional SQL support, and further FTP control sounds like a winner to me. If we're getting all of that and not sacrificing anything, then a couple weeks of waiting is a small price to pay IMO. I just signed up with Jodohost last month and only have a small site so a manual switch-over is no big deal to me.

Good luck!
 
Sounds good to me. I do have one question though. By "FTP Sub Accounts", do you mean I'd have the ability to create more than one FTP account, and give each one of them access to only specific folders? If so, that would be a VERY useful feature.

By the way, approximately how long will the new domain setup be down? I've only been with jodohost for about a month, but everything has been great so far. However, I do expect to register a new domain in the near future, so I need to know about how long it'll be before that feature is available again.

Thanks,
Ryan
 
Heml looks good to me.... except the statistics page looks kind of limited. Do you get more stats than what are shown in that online demo? Otherwise it looks like it has everything I could ever want.

Do you think we'll get some IMAP email out of this Yash? :)
 
Yash said:
Read this announcement first:
http://support.jodohost.com/showthread.php?p=3283#post3283

I wanted to know how many customers would be in favor of switching to Helm. Helm has alot of features that most customers here require:

1) CF DSN creation (directly from CP)
2) Better stats and webmail software.
3) Deploying ASP/ASP.NET apps in sub domains
4) Permission manager for MS SQL databases
Click to expand...

I blew a gasket when I got the announcment this morning but have since calmed down and recognize good administrative and business sense for what it is, rather than demanding the unprovidable.

As a CF guy I'm all for the improvements to the CF and SQL Server settings. I was about to email you with the code to create CF DSN's outside of the control pannel. Will this shift also relieve the issue between the ColdFusion servers and SQL Servers?

As for us "redeploying" our own sites, will there be a provision for that in our monthly bandwidth allotment? I have what I consider to be a "large" photo gallery site for my daughter and uploading it took me the better part of a day on cablemodem running 3-5 simultaneous threads.

Thanks again for the service, glad I had a chance to calm down.

Hatton
 
Helm looks nice. I have had some experience with CPanel and I really didn't like it. It also looks like it might be easier to setup reseller accounts and I would be real interested at that. Anyway, I am in no rush to add any domains anyway so do all the changes you want.
 
I have some experience migrating from W2K/IIS5 to W2K3/IIS6 with .NET. It's not very easy considering what MS has done to lock-down W2K3. I know this is fairly new stuff so if you need some questions answered during the upgrade, I'd be glad to help out.
-Dave
 
WineIsGood said:
I have some experience migrating from W2K/IIS5 to W2K3/IIS6 with .NET. It's not very easy considering what MS has done to lock-down W2K3. I know this is fairly new stuff so if you need some questions answered during the upgrade, I'd be glad to help out.
-Dave
Click to expand...

Well I have already voiced my frustrations with the limits of Hsphere.
1) cannot automate ftp accounts on windows
2) cannot set web applications (mostly for .net)
3) horrible webmail
4) cannot change file and/or folder permissions (but was supposed to be added in next websphere)

The things that I do like about Hsphere is that it lets me automate pretty much anything else. If I ever had to deal with a webhost in the future I will make sure that they provide a decent control panel that allows pretty much what Hsphere gives us now with hopefully the additional features I have mentioned above.

I would hate if we lose features that I am already used to. I will check out the demos..just wanted to give my 2 cents.
 
mrb061982 said:
Sounds good to me. I do have one question though. By "FTP Sub Accounts", do you mean I'd have the ability to create more than one FTP account, and give each one of them access to only specific folders? If so, that would be a VERY useful feature.

By the way, approximately how long will the new domain setup be down? I've only been with jodohost for about a month, but everything has been great so far. However, I do expect to register a new domain in the near future, so I need to know about how long it'll be before that feature is available again.

Thanks,
Ryan
Click to expand...

Yep, that means you can add new FTP accounts for specific folders or domains.

You could add domains in 2 weeks. We are working very fast on getting these new servers up.
 
yorri said:
I would hate if we lose features that I am already used to. I will check out the demos..just wanted to give my 2 cents.
Click to expand...

You won't be losing any new features. Helm is as powerful as Hsphere. The only reason we chose HSphere to start with was because it has been used for a long time by many established hosts. But Helm is gaining in popularity so we feel comfortable with it now.
 
WineIsGood said:
I have some experience migrating from W2K/IIS5 to W2K3/IIS6 with .NET. It's not very easy considering what MS has done to lock-down W2K3. I know this is fairly new stuff so if you need some questions answered during the upgrade, I'd be glad to help out.
-Dave
Click to expand...

I understand this is going to be a little difficult from our side but I'm expecting that customers won't have to make any changes to their scripts for them to execute other IIS6, is that correct?
 
Yash said:
I understand this is going to be a little difficult from our side but I'm expecting that customers won't have to make any changes to their scripts for them to execute other IIS6, is that correct?
Click to expand...

How is bandwidth and disk space managed under Helm? Anyone know?
 
yorri said:
How is bandwidth and disk space managed under Helm? Anyone know?
Click to expand...

Don't see file permission management :( but it does allow you to edit pages with a WYSIWYG...cool.

I have been browsing through their forum and many people mention using AWSTATS which I would love to get but when I click stats in the demo it gives me 2 graphs...not AWSTATS. Can you confirm is we will have access to AWSTATS?

It also looks like we will lose the sqlenterprisemanager :( I liked that program...sure I could install it on my site but that would waste diskspace.

The domain I am looking at in the control panel doesn't seem to have frontpage extensions installed...I assume this is fully supported. I am sure some customers would be ticked of if this wasn't supported (like add, remove and repair) just like in Hsphere.

I like that it allows us to edit the dns records...probably won't need it but I love having access to as much as I can.

The mailing list feature seems to have less features but at least there is this feature.

I guess the last thing I cannot find is where we specify the SSI extensions. As long as we can use SSI then I don't care but it is nice to be able to manage the extensions within Hsphere.

I also don't see that it has webmail built in. I hope this can be supported as an add-on like AWSTATS????

Ok I'll shut up now :)
 
1) Awstats is available. We are even consider buying Urchin 5 (one of the best statistics tool available currently) www.urchin.com

2) We'd have it installed on our disk space

3) FP Extensions are definately supported. Infact, we are facing alot of problems with FP Extensions on HSphere. Hopefully we shouldn't have those sort of problems on Helm

4,5 & 6) I guess its a case where to gain something, you need to lose something. I'm sure we could do many of these things on customer request.

7) HordeMail would definately be supported
 
Yash said:
1) Awstats is available. We are even consider buying Urchin 5 (one of the best statistics tool available currently) www.urchin.com

2) We'd have it installed on our disk space

3) FP Extensions are definately supported. Infact, we are facing alot of problems with FP Extensions on HSphere. Hopefully we shouldn't have those sort of problems on Helm

4,5 & 6) I guess its a case where to gain something, you need to lose something. I'm sure we could do many of these things on customer request.

7) HordeMail would definately be supported
Click to expand...

Excellent, thanks for responding.

What does #2 refer to? The online database manager? If not, I can use client tools...just like the web interface one for certain tasks.

So, then the only thing I can think of that wasn't addressed is SSI.

..and there seems to be an issue about parent paths but I think you have to manually do that now anyway so I guess that doesn't matter.

so we might lack minor functionality but it looks like we are gaining some good features like the ftp accounts.

I wonder if their development is better than Psoft? Psoft seems to be so slow on adding things...they say on their forums that most of the lacking features will be added but then a year later it still seems they are not available.
 
Well, I used HELM with my previous hosting privider. Not a bad CP at all. This is a newer version though (or maybe my prev. provider just disabled many features). I personally not gaining anything from switching to HELM, but if you had problems because of HSPHERE, then it is good (since any problems you face, will directly affect us - customers)

Just my 2 cents :)
 
There is one issue with Helm however. No summary Disk Usage. That means we'd have to switch back to the fixed quota system for ms sql databases. So the Value package would come with a single 50MB database, silver with two 50MB databases and so on. There wouldn't be that flexibiliy where you can specify database size.

I'll leave this open for debate now. Let me know if you still think Helm is worth it.
 
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