[Solved] Possibly Misleading Email

[Krydos]

Having received permission from djbob to create a second account on johnny http://www.helionet.org/index/index.php?s=...ost&p=65405 I went ahead and did just that. The email I received reads as follows:

Dear krydos1,

 

Your hosting account at HelioHost has been added to the creation queue. Here is your account information:

Username: krydos1 (note: case sensitive!)

Password: ***

Domain: krydos1.heliohost.org

Control Panel URL: http://krydos1.heliohost.org/cpanel

 

Please note that it will take up to 24 hours before you can log in, and up to 48 hours before your website is up and running. Also note that your account will be automatically pruned if you do not log in to your control panel for a period of one month.

 

If you would like to check the status of your account in the creation queue, please visit http://www.heliohost.org/scripts/status.php?username=krydos1.

 

Regards,

HelioHost Staff

I've often wondered why so many new accounts run into the issue of using user.heliohost.org/cpanel to log in and then get confused when their accounts end up getting suspended because that login doesn't reset their 30 day timer. (Maybe I'm just confused, but I'm pretty sure that login doesn't reset the timer because admins always suggest logging in through the homepage.)

 

Anyways, just thought I'd mention it here. It's not very often that someone as spammy as I am creates a second account so I thought I should mention it here quick before it slipped my mind. Changing that link in the account creation email might reduce the number of suspended accounts and work that the admins need to do on these forums to solve the problems created from it. We all know there are quite enough suspended/queued account issues lately anyways without this adding to it.

[jje]

Yeah, we probably should change that...

 

This support request is being escalated to our root admin.

[Piotr GRD]

This issue has been mentioned already by rvt 2 months ago:

http://www.helionet.org/index/index.php?s=...ost&p=61236

However his solution was to change redirection instead of link in email.

I'm not sure if it was fixed and then reverted back (if still occur) or something else happend and cause further issues.

 

[jje]

HelioHost Homepage = phpcp

cpanel.Domain = phpcp

Domain/cpanel = phpcp

Domain:2082 = phpcp

Server:2082 = phpcp

 

Maybe it's no problem, but in the forums we suggest everyone uses the Heliohost homepage.

[Krydos]

This issue has been mentioned already by rvt 2 months ago:

Doesn't surprise me. There are literally only a handful of people in the entire world at any given moment that are truly doing "something that has never been done before" and they are all located at the cutting edges of science. Oddly enough a lot of times when someone makes an amazing breakthrough or invents something unique another person independently arrives at the same invention or conclusion. Two historically famous examples that come to mind are the invention of the automobile and the creation of the branch of mathematics known today as Calculus.

However his solution was to change redirection instead of link in email.

I'm not sure if it was fixed and then reverted back (if still occur) or something else happend and cause further issues.

Yeah, I guess if Domain/cpanel didn't reset the suspension timer but when someone tried to access cpanel that way it just redirected you to a login that would reset the suspension timer it would work. Seems a little more complicated than changing the link in the email to me though.

Maybe it's no problem, but in the forums we suggest everyone uses the Heliohost homepage.

Yeah, I'm not even sure if the domain/cpanel login is even a problem. Perhaps ANY of the many ways to login to cpanel will keep your account from being suspended. Just thought I'd mention it here because I've gotten the impression that the preferred way to login is not what is listed in the sign up email.

[Byron]

HelioHost Homepage = phpcp

cpanel.Domain = phpcp

Domain/cpanel = phpcp

Domain:2082 = phpcp

Server:2082 = phpcp

 

There shouldn't be any problems. Like jje posted, they all go to the same place. If you'll look at the source code at your cpanel, you'll see inside of an iframe, the renew script with your username.

 

You can also see where it goes through this handy dandy tool.

 

http://byrondallas.heliohost.org/php/tools/curl_get_info.php

 

 

 

[Ashoat]

Yeah they all go to the same place so it should be okay.

[Krydos]

Yeah they all go to the same place so it should be okay.

That's good to know. I just wanted to mention it in case it was an issue.

[Piotr GRD]

While being on a subject...

 

 

(...) If you'll look at the source code at your cpanel, you'll see inside of an iframe, the renew script with your username. (...)

 

So do I understand you correctly?

You actually need to access the source of that iframe and not the login process to the cPanel itself?

 

 

[Guest Geoff]

That's correct.

[jje]

Yup. There is a tiny iframe which points to renew.php?request=cpanel&username=USER or something like that. It only works for the php or phpcp version since we can't retrieve the username from the HTML field.

[Ashoat]

To be honest, I probably ought to make it an AJAX request or a 0x0 image or something. The iframe solution is so hacky...

[Byron]

To be honest, I probably ought to make it an AJAX request or a 0x0 image or something. The iframe solution is so hacky...

 

Here's an image script that I've used several times in the past to grab info on some of my pages. It creates a 1x1 transparent gif:

 

<?php
# your script here

# make a 1x1 transparent .gif
header("Expires: Mon, 26 Jul 1997 05:00:00 GMT");
header("Last-Modified: " . gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s") . " GMT");
header("Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate");
header("Cache-Control: post-check=0, pre-check=0", false);
header("Pragma: no-cache");
header("Content-type: image/gif");
$im = @imagecreate(1, 1);
$background_color = imagecolorallocate($im, 255, 0, 0);
imagecolortransparent($im, $background_color); 
imagegif($im);
imagedestroy($im);
?>

[Piotr GRD]

If it works - keep it. Does it matter if this will be iframe, image or any other *external* file loaded? With AJAX requests you would also have to warn every user that javascript *needs* to be turned on in the browser. Some people may also have browsers set (which is not that rare! - this is setting for security reasons) to not execute javascripts from different domain than they are on so while being on ie. example.com:2082/frontend/x3/index.phpcp javascript/AJAX request from heliohost.org may be not loaded for them (and again, it's usually silent error in the browser).

 

If this would be process included in the cPanel - then it's different story.

 

 

 

I may be wrong, but my theory is that some people's accounts are suspended because the script does not load for them, even if they're login to cPanel. Look how often heliohost main page and forums times out for you or loads very slowly. It's intermittent but one may have "bad luck" and while being logged in in cPanel the mentioned script actually does not load. And either if it will be iframe, image or whatever - it will be silent error in the browser, so user is not aware that this time he/she logged in the cPanel for nothing, it was useless and will not prolong the account.

[jje]

Yeah, maybe we could just keep the IFRAME since it works