Planned for 11.34 Webmail Icon in cPanel is frustrating [Case 32180]

[4u123]

I dont know if this has been a problem on previous versions of cpanel because we havent used the default cpanel skins until now but this is a really serious annoyance...

In the default profile, if you enable webmail, when the customer clicks the webmail icon - it automatically logs them into the cpanel user mail account - which most customers never use and frankly in my opinion shouldnt even exist.

This causes all kinds of confusion because the customers dont realise that they have to logout and then log back in with a different account.

If the default profile is updated to remove "webmail" - webmail is disabled totally! The customer cant go to domain/webmail at all.

The ideal scenario would be for the webmail icon to be disabled in cpanel yet the customer can still login to domain/webmail and be prompted for their login.

It amazes me that cpanel think that the current functionality is what our customers want.

[Infopro]

Maybe I misunderstand the post, or maybe you don't understand the system. Not sure.

...it automatically logs them into the cpanel user mail account - which most customers never use and frankly in my opinion shouldnt even exist.

This default mail account is for system mail. You setup your own main email account(s) as you wish. All system mail is forwarded to that email account you setup as your official "contact Email" on account. In other words the system mail from server is auto forwarded to your contact email you setup.

If you used for example, a hotmail account as your main contact email, and that hotmail account expires because you have not checked it in 30 days, system mail sent to the system user (your cPanel account) stays on your account. It is not blackholed because it had no where to go.

So there is a reason for that default cPanel user mail account.

This causes all kinds of confusion because the customers dont realise that they have to logout and then log back in with a different account.

If this causes your customers all kinds of confusion not realizing they need to logout of one email to login to another, I'd hate to see them attempting to setup a website, or a shopping cart or forum. Now that can be confusing for some.

I must not understand your problem...

[4u123]

I'm not talking about the contact email address for mailbox quota / bandwidth warnings etc. I'm talking about the default (catch all mailbox).

[4u123]

If the customer needs to be sent "system mail" like mailbox quota messages etc the email address they enter for contact is used. This shouldnt have any effect on the default catch all mailbox.

If you used for example, a hotmail account as your main contact email, and that hotmail account expires because you have not checked it in 30 days, system mail sent to the system user (your cPanel account) stays on your account. It is not blackholed because it had no where to go.

I have no idea what you are trying to say with that. I can only think of two things...

1. You are suggesting that the customer's contact address they enter fails over to the default cpanel mailbox if mail cant be delivered there. If you are suggesting that then its just not true.

2. You set up your catch all address to forward all undelivered mail to a hotmail account.

Bad idea!

If this causes your customers all kinds of confusion not realizing they need to logout of one email to login to another, I'd hate to see them attempting to setup a website, or a shopping cart or forum. Now that can be confusing for some.

Its very clear how easy customers could be confused by this..

1. The cpanel "default mailbox" login is the cpanel username and password but all other accounts use the full domain name. This causes confusion.

2. The webmail icon should give them the option to login - not log them in automatically to an account they are not likely ever to use.

The fact is that this extra account is simply not needed. ALL other control panel systems do not have this in place.

I must not understand your problem...

I think what you (and cpanel) dont understand is the difference between what is practical and useful for the customer and what is a confusing anoyyance for both them and for those who support them.

[jack01]

I know I'm digging this old post up, but IMHO its for a good reason. And bear in mind that although the following does sound like (or is) a rant, I really do appreciate how much the cPanel folks have put into improving and refining cpanel/WHM to be the fine application it is today - my hat comes off there...

However, now for the rant:

My question is, how on earth did this feature make it into 11.24 ?! 4u123 is absolutely right, I mean how can it possibly be seen as a reasonable design feature to place the most visible and obvious Webmail icon (in x3 anyway) on the cpanel home page that only allows the user to log in to the default mailbox? We have had far too many support tickets, phone calls and emails about this silly issue. We, like many other hosts, disable the default catch-all address by default, and barely any clients use the default cpanel username mailbox (<1%).

If that Webmail icon is to remain, it MUST lead to a choice of which email account to log in to, instead of automatically expecting the default cpanel user mailbox. Otherwise get rid of it or at very very least give us admins an option to disable it.

Although I feel sure that my (and 4u123's) suggestion is basic common sense, if I have some kind of blind spot as to any good reason there could be for the current set up, then please someone enlighten us.

End rant.

[4u123]

I'm very surprised that there havent been more people commenting on this and I remain completely confused as to why cpanel have continued to include such an illogical feature.

Surely the correct behaviour is to provide a standard webmail login so the customer can choose to login to whichever mailbox they want to?

Regardless of the behaviour of this icon, there should at the very least, be a check box in the profile list to remove it from the interface. We can remove all the other ones, so why not that one?

If we have the ability to hide the "default mailbox" from other parts of the interface, whats the point in doing that if there is an icon we cant hide, that logs them into the default mailbox automatically?

This isnt a simple functionality issue, its a massive oversight that needs rectifying. This cannot be the intended behaviour, it just doesnt make sense.

[cPanelDavidG]

If we have the ability to hide the "default mailbox" from other parts of the interface, whats the point in doing that if there is an icon we cant hide, that logs them into the default mailbox automatically?

I'm able to successfully hide every icon in the cPanel interface on my test server using Feature Manager.

If you wish to disable this for all users on the server such that it cannot be re-enabled by resellers, uncheck "Webmail" in the "disabled" feature list. If this is not functioning for you, please let our technical analysts take a look at your server to determining why this is happening: http://tickets.cPanel.net/submit

If you prefer to keep this icon visible but change its functionality in the meantime, simply edit the HTML for this page via the branding editor.

[4u123]

Hi David,

In May 2007 when I originally created this thread, unchecking webmail in the feature list did not simply disable the webmail icon in the cpanel interface. Unless I'm completely mistaken, uncheckig the option caused the whole webmail feature to be disabled.

From what I can tell, it now works fine - I just unchecked the option, logged into cpanel and although the webmail icon is no longer in the mail section, the webmail icons do appear in the "Email Accounts" section and I can use webmail fine at the standard login, which is exactly what I want.

So after all this time it would appear that this problem no longer exists! Which is excellent! I'm updating all our servers right now! Thanks for the update.

Oh, one final thing.. Can you explain what is a "disabled" feature list? On our servers I can edit the default list which is the only one we use. I understand we can create different lists for use with different plans but I cant see a "disabled" list.

[cpanelinfoseeker]

From the WHM Feature list page in my WHM:

"If you disable a feature in the "disabled" feature it will be disabled in every users' cPanel. Unlike the "default" feature list no other feature list will be able to override this and grant the feature. If you don't want anyone to be able to turn this feature on at all, disable it in this list."

If the list does not exist, then add it and it will exist!

Ron

[4u123]

Thanks Ron.

David, I recently said this...

Hi David,

In May 2007 when I originally created this thread, unchecking webmail in the feature list did not simply disable the webmail icon in the cpanel interface. Unless I'm completely mistaken, uncheckig the option caused the whole webmail feature to be disabled.

I just double checked this today and it is STILL a problem.

If you uncheck "webmail" from the feature list, it not only removes the icon from the "Email" section of cpanel, it does not allow you to use ANY of the webmail facilities. So this is a global webmail toggle - not just a toggle for the webmail icon. Yestday when I said it was working, I simply checked that I could login at http://mydomain.com/webmail - which I can - but there are no horde / squirrel / roundcube icons.

So the original problem still stands.

Just to recap...

1. There is a requirement to remove the webmail icon from the cpanel interface because for some reason, it logs the customer in using the default account mailbox details. Many cpanel hosts now "disable" the default mailbox by hiding it from the customer. The existence of the webmail icon renders the efforts to hide the default mailbox features completely useless.

2. If we uncheck webmail from the feature list, it does remove the icon but it also removes the ability to use webmail on the whole server. So we can remove the default mailbox icon and links in the cpanel interface but we cannot also remove the webmail icon without disabling webmail completely.

If the webmail icon sent the user to the standard webmail login, this would not be a problem but it automatically logs them into the default mailbox which is not desireable for those hosts that do not wish the customers to use it. This puts us in a catch 22 situation.

I hope I have clarified the situation and that you understand why this is a fundamental problem that needs rectifying.

[Metro2]

1. There is a requirement to remove the webmail icon from the cpanel interface because for some reason, it logs the customer in using the default account mailbox details. Many cpanel hosts now "disable" the default mailbox by hiding it from the customer. The existence of the webmail icon renders the efforts to hide the default mailbox features completely useless.

2. If we uncheck webmail from the feature list, it does remove the icon but it also removes the ability to use webmail on the whole server. So we can remove the default mailbox icon and links in the cpanel interface but we cannot also remove the webmail icon without disabling webmail completely.

If the webmail icon sent the user to the standard webmail login, this would not be a problem but it automatically logs them into the default mailbox which is not desireable for those hosts that do not wish the customers to use it. This puts us in a catch 22 situation.

This issue has been a thorn in my side ever since I switched to using cPanel servers about 6+ years ago, and I'm almost certain we've brought up discussion about it here in the distant past and never got anywhere with it.

Disabling the default Webmail icon in cPanel disables Webmail access all-together, which is a real bummer.

I get so many tickets from customers saying "I logged into my webmail but there's nothing there" that I have a canned response that briefly explains why and recommends that they just use /theirdomain/webmail using their email address as the username and whatever password they created for that email account.

But still this continues to be a frustration for both myself and my hosting customers.

[Metro2]

Since after all of these years this issue is still not resolved, I've opened a bugzilla entry:

http://bugzilla.cpanel.net/show_bug.cgi?id=8701

Everyone concerned with this issue, please vote, thanks!

[4u123]

cPanelDavidG

Since you have joined this discussion I would like to ask if you could please give your opinon on this issue. Do you see it as a problem as we do?

[jack01]

Well I voted, come on guys...vote.

[jack01]

Sorry, but I must BUMP this one; it really is a significant design flaw.