Attracta to become new feature in cPanel & WHM (Q & A)

[altomarketing2]

I think that 99 % of cpanel customer NEVER use this forum, so they will realize about Attracta when some final customer notice it.

I also think that Cpanel will have huge complains if Attracta appers in all our cpanels without any permission.

SEO is not like Blackberry Fastmail, is a totally different kind of service, because millions of little webhosters, especially the small majority, provided as an additional service to their customers.

In my opinion Cpanel should add by default all related to Webhosting to the panel, not all related to Internet.

 

[PPNSteve]

The best way to demo Attracta is login as root..
[cut]

Attracta provides a FREE XML Sitemap creation and submission to Google, Yahoo, Bing and Ask for up to 1,000 pages. It does do Sitemap indexes and mobile sitemaps but not video Sitemaps, yet.

Turbo Traffic 20 and Turbo Traffic 100 paid subscriptions provide automated creation and submission monthly and weekly for sites up to 100,000 pages, plus link building.

Others have posted comments about Google and Yoast having FREE Sitemap generators that do the same thing - fact or fiction, you decide, see View attachment 9591

So one of my hosted forums, with almost 7 mil posts, won't even be scratched by this XML site map generator.
(the FREE vBseo tools DOES generate a fully indexed and complete site map for this site, all nicely gzipped)

What other features and tools is offered to make this worthwhile for OUR clients?
Auto keyword generator based on site content?
Proper descriptions for each and every page also based on that pages content?
SEO friendly link / URL generation for those sites that don't yet have it?
etc..
I don't think so.

Also, as we provide a limited SEO experience for most of our clients, we'd have to INSIST this feature, when added to cPanel by default, is DISABLED and opt-in only.

 

[TroyMcCasland]

So one of my hosted forums, with almost 7 mil posts, won't even be scratched by this XML site map generator.

Also, as we provide a limited SEO experience for most of our clients, we'd have to INSIST this feature, when added to cPanel by default, is DISABLED and opt-in only.

Attracta can easily create large Sitemaps on a case by case basis at the request of customers. Attracta has a number of customers with Sitemaps of over a million pages.

Hosts have the option of disabling features of Attracta that conflict with their current offerings.

 

[tank]

Aron thank you for shedding light on the issue. So tell me if I am wrong here. I am reading between the lines with what is not being said.

Cpanel is making money because the default option is set to on for cpanel servers. Is this in the contract..."Attracta must be set to on". Again I might be way off but Cpanel is making money by forcing all of the cpanel hosts to have attracta on initially. You wrote a very nice article but did not directly address the overwhelming demand of the community.

Why make the default on? Really I think Cpanel was offered a deal too good to pass up at our expense. Who pays the bills for cpanel. Attract or the Cpanel hosts? I was suggest keeping that in mind because the cpanel community offeres awesome customer support. I have a feeling this deal between attract and Cpanel is from the top and that is why no one is addressing the concerns.

I will happy contribute money i making a script to disable this in my servers.

@Troy
I give you props for posting here, but at the same time you guys can't have been surprised at the response you got for all of this. Not enough transparency on any of this and yet we are being told it will be implemented. Also my last post your response was kind of pathetic to be honest. During that entire post about SEO that I made, you cleverly and politically did not engage me directly in anything that I said. I am not stupid, nor are any of the other cpanel people here. Please don't patronize me by telling me the sitemaps are important to websites. My guess is two things.

A. you think we are dumb here.
B. You don't have a full working knowledge of SEO.

You post above still does not directly deal with....."why make this a default option?" I have already expressed my opinion and to be honest I have new view of attracta. This company does not care about the entire cpanel community, they only care that the default is "on" . If this goes through I will be sure to let people know that attracta cares only about the money as priority number one.

 

[Kent Brockman]

Aaron, I have two questions that are the sum up of several non answered questions posted in this thread:

1) If we disable Attracta once, may future cPanel upgrades force it to be enabled again? Please confirm.
2) If something bad happens, i.e. Attracta's servers are hacked and our personal data and sitemap data is hijacked, who will be responsible for that?


And this one make me ask one more question, to Troy and Aaron, please I urge both to answer this:
As you may surely know, having detailed sitemap info about zillions of websites make your servers a nice target for hackers because obtaining access to that info may provide personal info, full access and a easy way to hack millions of websites. I don't want to know what security measures has Attracta in place. What I want is you to confirm us who will be liable in case Attracta suffer a theft of information? cPanel or Attracta?

Well, I found this in your terms and conditions:

ATTRACTA™ AND ITS AFFILIATES WILL NOT BE LIABLE UNDER ANY THEORY OF LAW, FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, PUNITIVE, OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, INCLUDING, BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF PROFITS, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, AND/OR LOSS OF INFORMATION OR DATA. SOME JURISDICTIONS DO NOT ALLOW THE EXCLUSION OR LIMITATION OF INCIDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES, SO THE ABOVE LIMITATIONS AND EXCLUSIONS MAY NOT APPLY TO YOU. NOTWITHSTANDING ANYTHING TO THE CONTRARY CONTAINED HEREIN, ATTRACTA™'S MAXIMUM AGGREGATE LIABILITY TO YOU FOR ANY CAUSES WHATSOEVER, AND REGARDLESS OF THE FORM OF ACTION, WILL AT ALL TIMES BE LIMITED TO THE GREATER OF (i) THE AMOUNT PAID, IF ANY, BY YOU TO ATTRACTA™ FOR THE ATTRACTA™ SERVICE IN THE 12 MONTHS PRIOR TO THE ACTION GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY OR (ii) ONE HUNDRED DOLLARS ($100.00).

If I understood, Attracta is not hereby liable for any loss caused to the customers. That includes the possibility of information theft in case one of your servers were hacked.

Please offer some clarification: as Attracta is bundled inside cPanel, I and surely all others sysadmins want to know, what level of access to the files will have the Attracta apps over the scanned websites?

Sorry if we insist in this, but if Attracta is so awesome, I'll want to enjoy its services and have enough trust that I won't adquire an issue that make us lose time with support tickets. I KNOW that cPanel surely evaluated well all the conditions, but those results should be shared here more broadly to convince us to not disable Attracta features.

 

[dhabets]

What if a client signs up for attracta before we get a chance to disable it; do they lose access to their service?

 

[BianchiDude]

How can I ensure Attracta is not enabled?

I'd like to turn that off now, so I don't have to worry about it in the future.

Can this be done by the command line?

TIA

 

[dhabets]

Please answer this: what data about our clients (resellers, shared, etc.) is sent to Attracta before and after they chose the premium service.

Aggregating data without permission (like I think you do) wouldn't be allowed under a lot of privacy laws.

 

[Jay M]

Great. As you have obviously tested the app, can you certify if it install any kind of daemon, service, cron task, etc, that a sysadmin should be aware of?

Not that I can recall.

We only removed it due to my concerns raised earlier in this thread, as it didn't meet Australian laws at that time.

 

[dhabets]

Can you clarify this "auto-inclusion of JavaScript code for AdDollars and Attracta AppStore Apps". So customers pages are altered on the fly?

 

[DaveL]

I understand why some of the concerns about all new cPanel features are raised, but consider the benefits of having Attracta resident by default. You can argue that not all website owners need site maps (I guess?), but know that millions of site owners want them and have already started using Attracta services prior to the cPanel announcement (last year).

In response to the guy suggesting that he plans on switching to a cPanel competitor, I'm sure cPanel will understand, but know that their most popular competitor also has Attracta integrated.

It's just where the industry is heading guys; the last decade of price competition forces us to improve our vertical revenue per web hosting customer because we sure can't charge $49.95/mo. for 500MB of space any more. Some people choose to sell domains, SSL certs, etc. to make up the difference, which all have to be manually integrated into a billing system or shopping cart, but with Attracta as part of cPanel, you get a new revenue generation engine that's (for lack of a better term) plug-n-play (and free for you) and in no way alters your customers' experience (unless they Choose to use any of the Attracta tools or purchase related apps, in which case you make money for literally doing nothing).

So why not give it a shot? If you feel that customers don't get any value after using it or if you feel that Attracta is somehow impeding your ability to generate extra revenue per customer, as a previous poster mentioned, you can simply remove it via a cron-based script. Getting angry with either company seems a little short-sighted.
(You can argue that I'm biased, and you'd be right, but no more so than the RedHat engineer that tells you Linux is the best option for server-based web hosting.. because.. it is)

-David Lindahl

 

[AaronPhillips]

At the onset of this partnership, cPanel evaluated the current revenue share program Attracta has in place currently. We felt that it was important for cPanel as a company to make sure all Hosting Providers that took advantage of this new Feature received a comparable revenue payout that the many current Attracta partners where provided.

On our end, we didn't want to take anything away from that 10% recurring revenue and in the end we were able to work out different model with Attracta to insure this was the case.

I will be reviewing some of the other questions that have been answered and providing a more detailed response later today or in the morning.

 

[dhabets]

but consider the benefits of having Attracta resident by default

The fundamental problem is that it's turned on by default and sends data about our customers to a 3rd party we have no relationship with. If that isn't a privacy concern in your books, then you will never understand what the issue is.

I have nothing against the attracta service as long as I can opt-in and have control about what gets sent to them. Right now, it's opt-out and (as far as I know) email, domain, cPanel user info is sent to attracta.

Let's put it this way, would you send me your client list (email, domain) and allow me to contact them with other offers? Probably not.

 

[Kent Brockman]

Let's put it this way, would you send me your client list (email, domain) and allow me to contact them with other offers? Probably not.

Unless you give him a delicious revenue share incentive. 10% will suffice?

I recently started to do Wordpress installs security audits and hardening, and am willing to share 20% of revenue with all that providers who recommend me and get customers hiring me. I only need the login to Wordpress and to the FTP to make your site bulletproof. It's understandable if you don't trust me because you don't know me. But I can refer about 50 Wordpress bloggers that do their everyday job happily and where security is not a concern anymore.

So why not give it a shot? If you feel that customers don't get any value after using it or if you feel that Attracta is somehow impeding your ability to generate extra revenue per customer, as a previous poster mentioned, you can simply remove it via a cron-based script. Getting angry with either company seems a little short-sighted.

Hello David, the problem here is not that we are against such a cool service. The issue is that all seems to be mysterious and obscure. The Attracta's website has no uninstall steps published, they don't share what data will be automatically sent to Attracta servers once the plugin is installed. And the fact of being opt-out but not opt-in, is what makes it really disturbing. The posibility of obtaining a sweet revenue share shouldn't be enough to look the other way and open our arms to a third party. Attracta is not Google If ignore security concerns is being short-sighted, well, I am proud to be.

The only thing we ask, is that cPanel and/or Attracta provide PLEASE more technical information.

BTW, I will set our firewall to detect access to/from the Attracta's IP to monitor what's going on.

 

[Kent Brockman]

This should do it (this was the process as of a couple of months ago):

rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/Attracta
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/bin/attractaadmin
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/bin/attractawrap
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x3/dynamicui/dynamicui_attracta*
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/Attracta
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/rebuild_sprites

I've noticed they updated the webpage and added the new code to uninstall the full script:
Attracta - Partner Program

perl /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/Attracta/Scripts/remove_attracta_cron.cgi
perl /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/Attracta/Scripts/remove_apache_module.pl
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/base/3rdparty/Attracta
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/Cpanel/Attracta
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/3rdparty/Attracta/
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot/cgi/addon_attracta.cgi
rm -rf /usr/local/cpanel/whostmgr/docroot/cgi/Attracta/
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/base/frontend/x3/dynamicui/dynamicui_attracta_*
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/rebuild_sprites >/dev/null 2>&1
rm -f /usr/local/cpanel/hooks/rvskinindex/showTable
/usr/local/cpanel/bin/register_hooks >/dev/null 2>&1

This shows that:

• They install a cron task, obviously, to manage sitemap scheduled creation.
• They have compatibility with rvskin.
• They install an apache module... I'd like and explanation on what is it for. It's just to be able to scan webpages? or has to do with AdDollars code inclusion? Some clarification will be nice.

Some code must be added to webpages in order to appear here?
Dating Customers
I've clicked on the links for abour 20 websites listed there, and 5/10 was offline or sold to a dns parking:
/http://tucholloonline.com/
/http://mygadgetreview.org/
/http://jamminjapan.com/
/http://palintv.com/
/http://honha8.com/ (a vietnam website? what value may add to the list?)

Please check what's listed, since appearing in a list with traffic links to dead websites may harm Google Rank.

As for the free services per se, I've tested Attracta today in a Wordpress blog we remotely manage, hosted in Hostgator. I've found that the free services include:

• sitemap generation and sending to Google,
• check if website appears on Google,
• check if Google is blacklisting your site,
• setup a Google Webmasters account and retrieve site info
• add website to the link traffic directory, which we have seen above that it's plenty of drop dead websites
• setup Facebook page and Twitter account for your website.

All these services are good ones for newbies or people who can't hire a SEO company or know nothing about SEO.
But as we already provide these services, I want to know if every future cPanel update will install and enable Attracta every time, or once I disable it in my box, it will remain that way. Post-update scripts may be written, right? Please cPanel staff confirm this.

And one last note: all the Attracta pages are served in english. As cPanel offers their service to host all around the world and this service is intended for newbie end users, if you want to install Attracta enabled by default, please provide first the more commonly used languages.

 

[BianchiDude]

Is there away to opt out of this in manage2?

Not only is this application, unneeded and unwanted, but it also seems like it may violate the privacy policy I have with my users, and possibly our security policy as well, based upon what I've read in this thread.

 

[bear]

I'm not the first to say it, but please don't make this opt out by default. I don't agree to share any data with third parties like this, and have no inclination to offer it in either case. Make it so we must opt in, not out, like every other offering in there (Fantastico, RVskins, etc).

If Cpanel needs some vertical revenue, post ads on your site for competing control panels and services. That's basically what you're doing to hosts that offer these services by foisting this on us without initial choice.

 

[Infopro]

...
I've clicked on the links for abour 20 websites listed there, and 5/10 was offline or sold to a dns parking:
/http://tucholloonline.com/
/http://mygadgetreview.org/
/http://jamminjapan.com/
/http://palintv.com/
/http://honha8.com/ (a vietnam website? what value may add to the list?)
...

I'm not sure why you'd bother to post these links to this thread, but I've disabled them. No need to link to sites you think shouldn't be there, here. You know?

As for the free services per se, I've tested Attracta today in a Wordpress blog we remotely manage, hosted in Hostgator. I've found that the free services include:

I'm with you Kent Brockman, I wanted to see this for myself too. What I saw I took screenshots of and I plan on posting them this afternoon sometime.

I wish we could narrow this topic down some if possible. The what if this? and what if that?s just muddy the water here for me personally.

What if I make money and provide my users with more tools so they can too? I know the answer, rhetorical. I'm moving to the beach.

I can't help myself but want to comment on this though:

I want to know if every future cPanel update will install and enable Attracta every time, or once I disable it in my box, it will remain that way.

cPanel does not own your server, you do, AFAIK. I can't speak to your question directly of course, but I can tell you cPanel looks out for us. They look out for me. cPanel makes me look good to my users.

Always have and I trust they are looking out for me right now, too.

I'll post up these pics here in a few minutes.

 

[Infopro]

The thread with pictures is posted over here with a fancy thread title. :p

A Closer Look at Attracta - Infopro's Edition

 

[UH-Matt]

The "on by default" is our first major disappointment with cPanel.

It's fine to integrate 3rd party apps, but having them on by default IS forcing them on people. Bad move, sad times.