ip/~username/ will no longer be supported. ****UPDATE****

[GatorBrent]

****** UPDATE ************

We have decided to turn ip/~username/ back on. We will be performing daily apache audits to monitor for cheaters.

Rule one. Any sites using ip/~username/ as the path to download files will be terminated. I think we can all agree there is no reason to use ip/~useranme/ to download files. The cheaters aren't using tons of bandwidth from page views...

Rule number two. ip/~username/ is only meant to be a temp address for testing purposes. Anyone with excessive ip/~username/ usage will be terminated. Excessive usage means many differnet ips visiting the ip/~username/ a day. Excessive usage = 20+ differnet ips in a day.

Rule three. Sites are never allowed to create their sites with linking to urls with ip/~username/ Violaters will be terminated.


If we find a reseller to ever knowingly allow cheaters, or telling users how to cheat they shall be fined and terminated.


Reason for the change....

We worked a deal out with the datacenter. They will now be providing us with weekly bandwidth reports on the lines. This will help us know what servers need to be watched more cloesly. (before they only billed us at the end of month for banwidth overage without any notification)


We are very understanding so please do not be scared off by all the terminating listed above. Only seriouos violaters will be dealth with, normal testing use is not something to worry about.

Thoughts and opinons everyone.... Thanks

***** END OF UPDATE **********

__________________________________________________ ___
ip/~username/ will no longer be supported. We were forced to disable this feature….

When someone visits a site through the ip/~username/ the bandwidth used doesn't count towards their limit, and there is no practical way to trace who is using it.

Many users have been taking advantage of this bandwidth trick to avoid using their own bandwidth. It has become such a serious issue some users have even used thousands of gigs bandwidth a month over their limit.

From now on the only way you are able to visit your site will be by going through your domain name. For many this won't be a big deal, but for some such as resellers it means new users won't be able to access their site until their domain has prorogated. We are extremely sorry to have to remove this feature, but we are left with no choice. If cpanel ever corrects this security issue we will be sure to allow it again.

Once again sorry.

[reselleradam]

Even though it seems like a good decision now, this will affect resellers dramatically.

It is hard to move somebody over to your hosting when they need to have a seemless transition.

Being able to create email accounts and upload data before the domain propigates is crucial to successfully moving to new hosting, this is why I picked HostGator.

Please re-think your decision as it hurts all of us who are resellers.

If there is another way to do this, you should think of it and soon as I know of 2 different accounts that I may not be able to resell to now because of this issue.

[jdsalr]

Once again, as in all areas of life...everybody gets punished because there are a few who break the rules. :x

Why not punish those who are in violation? Maybe charge them for the extra bandwidth THEY have used. I'm sure you know who the repeat violators are.

[GatorBrent]

You still are able to use ftp, and cpanel with the ip. You just won't be able to view the site using it. As mentioned in the last post there really is no way to know who does it. The bandwidth usage doesn't show up anywhere in our root whm. Changing dns only takes 24 hours so it's not as drastic as it may seem. For those that can't switch without viewing their site before dns proprogates we can make exceptions for and give them two days to view their site using the ip.

Originally Posted by reselleradam

Even though it seems like a good decision now, this will affect resellers dramatically.

It is hard to move somebody over to your hosting when they need to have a seemless transition.

Being able to create email accounts and upload data before the domain propigates is crucial to successfully moving to new hosting, this is why I picked HostGator.

Please re-think your decision as it hurts all of us who are resellers.

If there is another way to do this, you should think of it and soon as I know of 2 different accounts that I may not be able to resell to now because of this issue.

[reselleradam]

I guess that it is OK as long as a user can access IP/cpanel and FTP to set up their site. I thought that all pre-setup ability would be lost.

Thanks for the clarification.

As for the loss of the IP/~username, I agree with the previous post, why not just charge the offenders. If they hit IP/~username and you know they are exceeding bandwidth, why not just charge the reseller who hosts them?

Maybe a solution is to allow for IP/~username for just a certain amount of time, then disable it??

Long Live HostGator

[novelmedia]

I can understand the motive behind the change, however, I don't agree with this move by hostgator.

I don't see how this is a problem since you were able to isolate it... which means you have a way to monitor it... which means you have a way to charge those who abuse it.

Resellers like myself assist your company in selling it's services. Ok there are few who misuse this 'trick', but until now, I was unaware I could do this and unaware it didn't count on against my bandwidth. In other words, until now... it wasn't a problem we were aware of. So the amount of bandwidth it might have taken, had to be only be taken from a few.

It wouldn't suprise me to learn that somebody within your company made this 'trick' obvious to somebody who took advantage of this flaw.

Nevertheless, this is an unfair business move both to you and to your resellers.

Not Happy!

[GatorBrent]

If there was a way to track the offender’s usage cpanel would have had a fix by now. There is no easy way to track it, and any tracking would mean us spending more time going after offenders then running the business.

In a single day someone could run a 100 gigs+ of bandwidth usage and for us to keep track of it that would mean going through every server daily studying the usage logs for hours. We'd most likely end up punishing people who never even did it. Even if there was an easy way of going after those who did it, that could mean fines in the range of $1,000 to the resellers who host the users that go heavily over. We could not do that to anyone if their is no easy way for a host to monitor whos taking advantage of it, how could we expect our resellers to take responsibility.

A great tool would be for cpanel to have some type of automatic 2 day allowance before taking it away, unfortunately that hasn't happened yet so until then those who can't live without viewing their site up off the ip before dns is done, we will manually give them the 2 days allowance. We are willing to do this as we don't want you or us to lose any business as a result of this.

[GatorBrent]

Once again there is no way for us to know who is doing it. All we know is how much bandwidth is being used by the honest users, and then the datacenter tells us how much is being used on the server line itself. They don't tell us who is offending, and we have no way of knowing.

[novelmedia]

Well, thanks for you continued support. It is a nice feature, especially when you are the web designer, host, and troubleshooter for a client.

But I can understand and appriciate the fact that you are looking out for the best interest for all concerned.


thanks again.

[tso]

i agree with the decision, considering the circumstances. i think your rates and service are great and i understand that being able to offer that means needing to keep tight control of your costs.

i like your suggestion for the cpanel 2-day delay feature. has this new feature request been submitted?

i really appreciate your informing everyone openly of the situation and the reasoning behind your decision and making the issue open for discussion! many hosts would have sent a cold email, case closed.

best
tso

[flak]

Is there any way you could at least enable it for the first day or two a new account is created? It's kind of hard to put my site together when I can't see what I'm doing.

[GatorBrent]

Lets do a worst case scenario.....
Everyone will have ftp access before their dns prorogates. So everyone would be able to upload their entire site along with the index page. Once the dns is done prorogating their site will load because they would have already had their index page uploaded.
What might not load is a mysql database or a cgi script. Their site is never down just the mysql or single script isn't loading. The dns changes have been made by this time meaning they would be able to trouble shoot the cgi or mysql problem live in their browser and have it fixed in a quick and efficient manner without ever having any site downtime, only database or cgi script downtime. (which would be minimal) And would only happen if they did by chance messup on the database or script restore.
On the other hand ....
If we continue to allow the ip someone on your reseller hosting could join you upload tons of warez files such as windows, adobe and more the same day they join. They then distribute the ip/ useranme to all of the download sites they know. The server then gets hit with a barage of people dowloading serious warez. Enough to use 100's a gigs in a day worth of bandwidth before anyone would even know it's happening. So many downloads could be taking place the server would slowly come to a halt before anyone realized what was happening. (We've dealt with this multiple times in the past from dos attacks and some from mass download hits to a file)
So not only would we or the reseller who ran up the huge bandwidth usage have to eat the bill, but we could be facing lawsuits from microsoft or even worse they call up the datacenter and have the server is impounded within minutes for serving illegal content. This might seem far fetched, but I have had a few friend hosts business have been destroyed from pratically the same type of scenario.

[Tom]

I perfer the minor annoyance of losing the ~username to my, in affect, paying for the bandwidth lost to the cheaters. For us resellers it no big deal to ftp a site for a new domain so it's there waiting. Plug the leak!

Hi

First of all I can't blame you for terminating the ~user option, given the jerks who abuse it and this action will shake the tree and the rotten apples will fall out.

-----

I am a host reseller and site builder. I have some sites in dev now and have about 10 older live sites to move over to host gator.

Since I am in learning mode all the time I have to use trial and error at times to figure out my own mistakes and to learn how to use new features, software, upgrades etc....being able to access the site I am working from your servers, online, live but pre dns prop was comforting while going through this painful process.

Since jerks have now ruined this for us, this means that for transferring existing and building new sites I can only debug, update, and view my sites locally? Take the debug out if that is true.

Besides not being able to debug and do preflight on my new sites, on your servers, is it also true that I would no longer be able to get client approvals remotely as well.

Or is it that i could still use http:///000.00.00.00/~username/ to show them stuff,

just not http://www.mydomain/~user name/ ?

Two days may work for simple site transfers but I will not be able to get remote client approvals for sites in dev. as this often takes weeks with all the changes and rework new clients can have.

Workarounds that come to mind that I could do:

1. Purchase a dedicated ip from you. I would then be able to share the mock-ups and get client approvals that way. Prior to DNS prop.

2. I could set up a staging IP with subs domains for my work in progress sites. kind of lame because not as confident site will fly and have to make changes prior to going live.

Suggestions for you:
Set up some kind of "site in development state" that would auto expire unless us site developers and resellers renewed it with you on a certain time frame. This would have to be really simple for you to admin and still pretty much would increase your time spent so....I don't know if it is worth it, anyhow that is my two cents.

Suggestions, comment, solutions....

-LanceThink

HI

Ok just read worst case, after my last post and I agree with you on that.

-LanceThink

[chicks]

Besides not being able to debug and do preflight on my new sites, on your servers, is it also true that I would no longer be able to get client approvals remotely as well.

Or is it that i could still use http:///000.00.00.00/~username/ to show them stuff,

just not http://www.mydomain/~user name/ ?

Two days may work for simple site transfers but I will not be able to get remote client approvals for sites in dev. as this often takes weeks with all the changes and rework new clients can have.

Workarounds that come to mind that I could do:

1. Purchase a dedicated ip from you. I would then be able to share the mock-ups and get client approvals that way. Prior to DNS prop.

2. I could set up a staging IP with subs domains for my work in progress sites. kind of lame because not as confident site will fly and have to make changes prior to going live.

Suggestions for you:
Set up some kind of "site in development state" that would auto expire unless us site developers and resellers renewed it with you on a certain time frame. This would have to be really simple for you to admin and still pretty much would increase your time spent so....I don't know if it is worth it, anyhow that is my two cents.

As a website developer myself I totally agree with the suggestion of lancethink. Maybe it's not a bad idea at all to even set up a few servers only intended for site-developement, which can be monitored seperately.

You could give the developement-space a few real (developement)domains that could be switched easily to the cliënts domainname when it's in the final state. That way you could monitor all bandwith-usage. I'm sure the money spend on a few domainnames is much cheaper then the bandwidth that's leaking.

Finding good solutions is a key to permanent success!

[GatorBrent]

IF it's a developing website without a domain name why don't you just create a folder in one of your accounts that already has a proprogated and develop it there? Afterall it is developing and doesn't matter where it is located at....

Then when your done developing it you just download everything in the folder create the new hosting account for it and upload that folder.

I'm not a developer so if their is a complication in this that I don't see let me know!

[EchoMediaStudios]

Open letter to Gator Support--

There are other ways to calculate bandwidth besides domain name. In fact, there are better ways.

HostGator is only one service that I use. I also have accounts with Midphase, Saturn5, Invision, as well as run my own servers which I have built from scratch.

We calculate usage based on FILE PATH, as opposed to bandwidth...

http://www.customersdomain.com/~customer

http://192.168.128.100/~customer

Actually point to the same file on the server which is probably something like:

/usr/home/customer/public_html/index.html

By calculating based on file path and NOT domain, this is a fool-proof way of tracking usage.

I offer this suggestion because this change is VERY inconvenient to me as a reseller.

Clients need to have access to new sites before they go live. It's as simple as that.

In fact, it will be easier for me to find a new host than to find a work-around. All we need is a host with a good connection and cPanel installed.

So, I would remind the great folks at HostGator (who have been excellent) that it is their responsibility to find solutions for their problems. Forcing your customers to make changes and be inconvenienced is not the right way to do business.

I welcome all e-mails to discuss further.

Best,

--AJ Gentile
President, Echo Media Studios, Inc.
ajgentile@echoms.com

[mantis]

I have to say this change is a bit of an inconvenience. You have a ToS agreement, mebbe you could revise that to correct the issue. The day or two cutoff sounds like an ok idea.
For all the people who have been misusing bandwidth I'm sure there are more who never use up all of theirs, myself included right now, and I don't see anyone rushing to calculate all of that for a refund.
If the offenders are costing you that much dump their service, but it's unfair to throw everyone else off. Remember you do as well as we do. My last 2 webhosts died because of similar situations. But it wasn't the bandwidth that did it. It was the inconveniences that built up because the companies became more focused with the abusers than the bulk of the customers. In both instances most of the customers pulled out from the hosts and in less than a week they were out of business leaving me searching for a new host at 1 am and having to explain all sorts of pain to my clients the next day. Both my previous hosts were great, and up till that point I had no complaints.

For the love of christmas get this fixed and stay in business. :lol:

Best of Luck,
Nate
Mantis Design Studio/Royal River Graphics

[tso]

Originally Posted by mantis

For all the people who have been misusing bandwidth I'm sure there are more who never use up all of theirs, myself included right now, and I don't see anyone rushing to calculate all of that for a refund.
If the offenders are costing you that much dump their service, but it's unfair to throw everyone else off.

hi

no data provider could possibly provide refunds for unused bandwidth. this would be like a wireless phone company reimbursing customers for unused minutes, or a landlord reimbursing a tenant for days they weren't home.

as for dumping offenders, the whole crux of the problem is that gator does not at present have any way to determine who the offenders are...

tso

[GatorBrent]

nevermind spoke to soon doesn't seem to work... still looking.

[EchoMediaStudios]

I've got my fingers crossed that you guys will have this worked out!

We love Gator... but when I have to apologize to my customers, the love fades quickly.

Looking forward to the solution...

--AJ

[flak]

Is there any way I could modify my hosts file to see what i'm doing?

[GatorBrent]

****** UPDATE ************

We have decided to turn ip/~username/ back on. We will be performing daily apache audits to monitor for cheaters.

Rule one. Any sites using ip/~username/ as the path to download files will be terminated. I think we can all agree there is no reason to use ip/~useranme/ to download files. The cheaters aren't using tons of bandwidth from page views...

Rule number two. ip/~username/ is only meant to be a temp address for testing purposes. Anyone with excessive ip/~username/ usage will be terminated. Excessive usage means many differnet ips visiting the ip/~username/ a day. Excessive usage = 20+ differnet ips in a day.

Rule three. Sites are never allowed to create their sites with linking to urls with ip/~username/ Violaters will be terminated.


If we find a reseller to ever knowingly allow cheaters, or telling users how to cheat they shall be fined and terminated.


Reason for the change....

We worked a deal out with the datacenter. They will now be providing us with weekly bandwidth reports on the lines. This will help us know what servers need to be watched more cloesly. (before they only billed us at the end of month for banwidth overage without any notification)


We are very understanding so please do not be scared off by all the terminating listed above. Only seriouos violaters will be dealth with, normal testing use is not something to worry about.

Thoughts and opinons everyone.... Thanks

***** END OF UPDATE **********

[abstraktMedia]

I think thats fair enough....and to the exploiters "DOOM ON YOU!!!!!!!!!!!"

Excessive usage means many differnet ips visiting the ip/~username/ a day. Excessive usage = 20+ differnet ips in a day.


This one is a bit tricky becuse there will be new user who will be excited to upload files and to tell their friends to visit their page which could become more tan 20ip's a day....we can only hope that the DNS change will be quick enough

I for sure am going to tell my users not to send links to IP/~username to their friends..just to upload files and wait with the "come friends see my site" until DNS change...

hope you'll get the *******S...and when you do ..TAKE THEIR MONEY..not just to cut them off....

PS..isn't there anything that people from cPanel/WHM can do about this??a patch or something....