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

[Infopro]

You have to register. Whether you are the host or the end user. You have to register. There is nothing sent to anyone the day this hits your servers that I know of. On by default sounds troublesome. It's enabled as in you can see it, thats it, AFAIK.

And of course instead of registering, cPanel says they'll provide us with an off switch that you can use.


Has anyone in this thread contacted anyone at a hosting company that already has this not only enabled, but active and are using it with some sort of results they could tell you about? I mean, aside from who ever cPanel mentioned in the press release. Has any of you contacted any one company and asked them about it?

If yes, can you share some of that with us?

 

[tank]

You have to register as the host???? The server has to register??? I am very confused...

Anyways with UH-Matt first big disappointment with Cpanel as well. I really want to see some of these questions answered.

 

[Kent Brockman]

You have to register as the host???? The server has to register??? I am very confused...

Your customers has to register. Your host is kinda automatically registered when Attracta is installed. Take a look to the code in the installer and the scripts it generates. Attracta assigns a "serverId" to your server and that and your admin email will serve to communicate whenever your customers pay a subscription. I didn't had time to look more in depth, but although I see a loop to scan all the hosted domains, emails and resellers, I think that is only used to install the menues on every cPanel account.

I have to say, the code used is extremely clean and tidy. Very proffesional.

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?

My apologies if I'm promoting an intense debate. The point was: to point out that the directory of listed websites which have used the promoted traffic building service is plenty of dead websites, which at the end of the day, may be harmful to your reputation with Google.

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've seen your captures, good one to illustrate the service. I don't understand why Attracta have not a demo or screenshotsin their webs like others' do. That would likely convince others to accept the service.
I personally tested the free service and it's not for me, nor our customers, as we already provide that.

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 also love and trust in cPanel, it's the better software all around. But this move... it's an uncommon one. I'd rather prefer a deal with Cloud Flare to accelerate everybody's websites with a great CDN service.

 

[tank]

Thanks for the clarification, thats is what I thought. Forced into it against my will.

Cloud flare now thats an interesting idea.

 

[myusername]

cPanel doesn't earn any revenue share on this deal.

Why do you continue to insult our intelligence? What DO you get, if it is not revenue? You would not be so adamant about ramming this down our throats if there was not something going on behind the scenes. cPanel has never done this before and with good reason, so something changed.

Clearly the new management at cPanel has lost focus of why people chose cPanel in the first place over the other panels available, and why cPanel was able to grow and (as of now) remains as the market leader. cPanel used to listen to customer feedback. Sounds like they are deafened by the cash register at this point.

This post:
http://forums.cpanel.net/f133/attracta-become-new-feature-cpanel-whm-q-264422-p4.html#post1107091
Says it basically doesn't matter what we think, we are getting it anyways. It sounds like this will be the first in many upcoming disappointments to to come, and we can expect additional 3rd party brands to appear.

Question:
So when it it is turned on by default, and a host doesn't notice this, and those customers see a brand new icon and click on it and then are converted into Attracta customers, who gets that commission?

Would that be cPanel by any chance? Or does the cPanel license owner get that commission automatically if no affiliate account is found? Or does Attracta get that 100% on anything that they upsell before we sign up as affiliates to the service?

From what is being said, Attracta would get 100% of that, but I think we all know that is very unlikely given the investment by cPanel to add this "feature."

Something doesn't add up. I think the term for that would be JDLR.

This is basically free, highly targeted advertising for Attracta, in front of millions of eyeballs, and the host is the one who gets to pay for this advertising in the form of cPanel license fees. Unless they know about this feature, and unless they have opted out.

I think most of us find the "you can just turn it off" argument incredibly weak. I have to turn ON just about everything I want in cPanel. What changed?

Please explain how that is fair to your customers who pay license fees directly or indirectly to cPanel why they are obligated to advertise for a company they may know nothing about. Also how can I have my logo and link in cPanel set to on by default? Our affiliate program pays much better than Attracta does.

Thank you.

 

[Jones]

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.

Agreed.

It is clear that cPanel is getting something from this useless script.

There are many things to do like enabling mod_ruid2 in Release version, etc... and why bother 3rd party script to be included but not others?

What is so special for this script?

Burn it!

Sooner or later, people will stop using cPanel.

 

[Jay M]

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

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.

Thanks for those details, it appears it has changed quite significantly since we used it last year.

 

[lostmind]

Note that you can't cancel your account once you are a paid member without emailing [email protected].

That seems a bit odd considering everything else is so hands off.

I also foresee any clients who DO signup for this will be asking ME for refunds when they realise they were billed another period because clicking the "cancel account" button doesn't cancel your PAID SERVICE with Attracta. Just your FREE ACCOUNT.

Can't decide where I stand on this. So far, I'm not really seeing the benefit and seeing a lot of downsides.

What's our rev share work out too? $1/m perhaps? So 1 support ticket per year per client who signs up and we are in a loss position.

 

[jdhf99]

+1 for not enabling by default. I can already see the tickets coming in about needing help with Attracta services. I'll agree to be happy with this change if we're able to bill for any extra support burden this software brings on us.

Also I see mention of it making modifications to Apache or such, we use Litespeed on all of our servers. I won't be a happy person if this breaks Litespeed or any of the other custom stuff we have setup on our systems. It blows my mind that we're going to have to have someone sit here and monitor each cPanel update ready to immediately disable this 'feature'.

If cPanel really wants the best for their customers I would suggest a poll \ survey emailed to all license holders to see what everyone thinks. I only stumbled upon this from a WHT thread I randomly browsed to. Irate would not nearly describe my mood if I found out this randomly appeared in all my cPanel installs one day. How many people are just going to have this pop up on them? What are you guys doing to make everyone aware of this oncoming train wreck?

 

[Infopro]

Wow. Some serious attacks in this thread. Some of them down right uninformed and offensive. Whats up with that? You know, you trust, you love and you make money, using cPanel software. In mine and many other peoples opinion it is the best web hosting software. They go and add a new feature that could help your users get more traffic, but, because its an outside service all of a sudden cPanel is the bad guy? Why the quick turn on cPanel by some of you like this, I don't get it.

Why do you continue to insult our intelligence? What DO you get, if it is not revenue? You would not be so adamant about ramming this down our throats if there was not something going on behind the scenes. cPanel has never done this before and with good reason, so something changed.

Clearly the new management at cPanel has lost focus of why people chose cPanel in the first place over the other panels available, and why cPanel was able to grow and (as of now) remains as the market leader. cPanel used to listen to customer feedback. Sounds like they are deafened by the cash register at this point.

You complain about being insulted and then start firing off insults? There is no new management at cPanel that I'm aware of. No one is ramming anything anywhere. To frame this like that is just insulting and incorrect.

I'm not sure about you, but most all of us are here, and using cPanel proudly, to put money in OUR cash registers. Why should cPanel be held to some higher standard than how you and I run our own businesses?

They offer us a damn fine product, I believe you already know this. This new feature adds more value to that. It adds more value to my hosting packages.

You insult us all with these types of comments and I for one don't appreciate being insulted, either. Just like you.

This post:
http://forums.cpanel.net/f133/attracta-become-new-feature-cpanel-whm-q-264422-p4.html#post1107091
Says it basically doesn't matter what we think, we are getting it anyways. It sounds like this will be the first in many upcoming disappointments to to come, and we can expect additional 3rd party brands to appear.

Let's try and keep this thread on topic please. You're looking for what you think or assume is coming next which is not helpful here I don't think. That thread you link to, is this very thread, and it doesn't "basically" say that for me when I read the first post here in this thread.

Question:
So when it it is turned on by default, and a host doesn't notice this, and those customers see a brand new icon and click on it and then are converted into Attracta customers, who gets that commission?

Would that be cPanel by any chance? Or does the cPanel license owner get that commission automatically if no affiliate account is found? Or does Attracta get that 100% on anything that they upsell before we sign up as affiliates to the service?

From what is being said, Attracta would get 100% of that, but I think we all know that is very unlikely given the investment by cPanel to add this "feature."

Something doesn't add up. I think the term for that would be JDLR.

I can't answer this question properly, but your comments sound like you just don't trust cPanel, all of a sudden, for adding new features to their product. JDLR, indeed. Your post that is.

If you don't register your host account, you'd get no commission, of course. I don't have to be an Attracta expert to understand that. Your users do not have to sign up, you don't have to sign up, you can disable the software. I'm not sure where this confusion stems from but this is not exactly new news that Attacta was coming.

Troy McCasland | cPanel Video Site
Episode 23: Attracta at Hostingcon 2011 | cPanel Podcast
cPanel Conference 2011 - cPanel Inc.
cPanel Announces Bundling of SEO Tools by Attracta - cPanel Inc.

What's news here is, the time for this to happen, has arrived. In all fairness though, I think like others in this thread, I didn't pay too much attention to it as news came and went over the past year on it. Why bother, it sounded like a good idea then, it does even more now that I've seen it for myself. I for one am not shocked in any way about this news. cPanel did not just wake up last week and spring this on anyone.

I was at the cPanel Conference when this was announced and I sat in on Troy's wonderful Lightning talk that year as well. This is not new news that Attracta was coming down the pipe to us.

This is basically free, highly targeted advertising for Attracta, in front of millions of eyeballs, and the host is the one who gets to pay for this advertising in the form of cPanel license fees. Unless they know about this feature, and unless they have opted out.

I think most of us find the "you can just turn it off" argument incredibly weak. I have to turn ON just about everything I want in cPanel. What changed?

What's incredibly weak? You do not have to turn ON just about everything as you state, in cPanel. We, you and I turn OFF things not needed or wanted on every new server we roll out. I know I do. Services, features, of course we turn things off we don't want to be used. This is no different, so your comment here isn't exactly correct, IMO. Do you disagree?

Please explain how that is fair to your customers who pay license fees directly or indirectly to cPanel why they are obligated to advertise for a company they may know nothing about. Also how can I have my logo and link in cPanel set to on by default? Our affiliate program pays much better than Attracta does.

I don't want your logo in my users control panel. I have no idea what you sell with your affiliate program but if its hosting, why would anyone want your hosting link in their cPanel? The feature cPanel is adding that was announced last year is useful for website owners who already have hosting. With you, and me. So your affiliate link doesn't make any sense in my cPanel. This new feature, does make sense to me. (and I hope, money!)

Please explain how its fair for you to attack cPanel in several posts here now for adding features to their software? Yes you and I pay for cPanel software, but its still, cPanel software.

Thank you.

Thank you for taking the time to get in on this thread, its important that we all get a chance to have a say I think. But do us all a favor and please and try to keep this thread on a more professional level.

I'm just a mod on these forums, but my task here is to try and help keep these forums civil. I've been here for many years, like you, and have come to place my full support and respect in cPanel the product, and cPanel the company.

Let's talk about Attracta, why we like it or don't. Who's going to disable, or not. But please don't think that this thread was started for a few users to come by and kick cPanel around and insult us users that will take advantage of this feature. These forums, like your own forums, have guidelines.

As a lowly moderator here that helps keep these forums free of spam and problematic users for you, and your users too, I simply ask that you try and keep this civil and professional.

Most all of the valid questions have been answered. Some of them several times. I'm quite sure that cPanel will be happy to answer any other valid questions that arise from this thread, too.

Questions toward the Attracta product on how it works and so on, might be better asked of Attracta. Here in this thread works I guess, Troy visits these forums regularly, but picking up the phone and speaking directly to Attracta might be better.

 

[tank]

I'm not sure about you, but most all of us are here, and using cPanel proudly, to put money in OUR cash registers. Why should cPanel be held to some higher standard than how you and I run our own businesses?

They offer us a damn fine product, I believe you already know this. This new feature adds more value to that. It adds more value to my hosting packages.

You insult us all with these types of comments and I for one don't appreciate being insulted, either. Just like you.

Infopro please only speak for yourself in this case. I say this kindly you don't speak for the entire cpanel community.Frankly I am happy that people are getting upset and making a scene. This post is 6 pages long because certain questions are not being answered. The VP of cpanel and Troy do not post here anymore recently because their is not way for them to win. They are completely in the wrong in this. They are going about attracta in all the wrong ways.

Just to clairy... I use cpanel to put money in my register AND to offer the best hosting experience to my client.

 

[dhabets]

You know this would all be solved if Attracta and cPanel just came clean about what information is sent to them about our clients before and after they sign up. They already clarified that they (=cPanel) do get money from this being on, so I'm assuming their monetary award is based on the number of installed units.

Regardless, there would be a lot less anger and confusion if cPanel or Attracta were pro-active and addressed our privacy and service concerns.

 

[Infopro]

Just to clairy... I use cpanel to put money in my register AND to offer the best hosting experience to my client.

So, we agree on that then.

Why don't you list your specific questions all in one post. Whats not been answered that you need answers to should be listed as questions not comments.

I don't speak, was not speaking for anyone but myself. You've misread my comments or I've worded them wrong, my apologies either way.

 

[dhabets]

Why don't you list your specific questions all in one post. Whats not been answered that you need answers to should be listed as questions not comments.

They have been posted many times, but just ignored; here's a few:

1) what data about a clients account and our server is sent to Attracta on installation of the software
2) what data is sent after the client opts in
3) what happens to the revenue share if we don't have an account with them and our client signs up
4) what happens if a client signs up before we have a chance to disable Attracta
5) what privacy agreement and terms of service do our clients have to agree to
6) who is responsible for the service and any liability arising from it
7) is it clearly disclosed that this is a 3rd party service offered by cPanel (not us)
8) why is it on by default (well reading in between the lines suggest cPanel gets paid for by install of attracta, much like malware)
9) why is the attracta rep not addressing any of the concerns, for example 1-7 above?
10) why is it only branded in English?
11) what does attracta do with the aggregated data?
12) see #11, what data is collected, how long is it held for?
13) does attracta contact our clients when they sign up for a trial? What sort of other services will attracta offer? What if these services are in competition with ours?
14) see #13, will attracta agree to a non compete clause?

etc.

the main one is, why does it need to be opt-out?.

If it was opt-in, then if they refuse to answer the 14 questions above, then I wouldn't turn it on.

 

[Kent Brockman]

Questions toward the Attracta product on how it works and so on, might be better asked of Attracta. Here in this thread works I guess, Troy visits these forums regularly, but picking up the phone and speaking directly to Attracta might be better.

Now that you mention it, something I'd like to suggest would be a support forum in the Attracta website, since I, like other hosts (how many? thousands?), live outside US and a 15 minutes long distance call is more expensive than the revenue share that we could win. And people mostly prefer a well organized forum rather than a simple contact form. That would be great.

I did some research and discover more pieces on how it works. The sitemaps are stored in a CDN with links back to the customer website. It's a nice trick to build traffic, and make attracta.com to have a great amount of pages in Google, which is what makes your site obtain a good position because is being linked from a high PR site. Good one.
https://www.google.com.ar/search?q=site:cdn.attracta.com

The problem is still internationalization. The bigger issue that puzzle me, besides the fact of enabling a plugin by default, is that this awesome plugin has no support for other countries nor other languages. Just for the record: the revenue share is being paid through Paypal, right?

 

[Infopro]

Attracta forums I believe:
https://getsatisfaction.com/attracta

Interestingly enough or maybe not, found via google.

 

[Kent Brockman]

Attracta forums I believe:
https://getsatisfaction.com/attracta

Interestingly enough or maybe not, found via google.

Thank you Infopro, you made my point. Here in Argentina, Google doesn't show that same results. Attracta simply is not present, and what I've been able to found are tons of hosting forums complying about the Attracta services, generating a very bad image of Attracta company. That's the lack of internationalization that I miss. It's a good american service, for american users. That's the main reason why Attracta plugin should come disabled: the cPanel market share is the bigger in their niche, and global, so the image we find is that Attracta is being enabled de facto no matter if it doesn't speak our language, and even worst, the support forum of the bigger worldwide SEO company cannot be found via Google from other countries!

Please guys understand my point of view, and this surely may happened to other users here who live overseas. If I try to lookup for Attracta services in Google from outside US and the only thing we find is lots of complaints in forums all around the world, the first conclusion I can take is that Attracta is snake oil. It's a pity for them.

 

[Infopro]

I made no point there at all. I dug around for it, it's not listed in the top ten results if that's what you're looking for. I was and could not find it either. But I'm good at digging too. I'll be happy to discuss google and share screencaps of results between the two of us in the lounge here if you like, but that's not what this thread is about.

When you search for news on something it's important to look at dates on those comments. Software evolves of course, some gets better, some doesn't. I'm not sticking up for Attracta support forum not showing up in results. I'm guessing that may be by design there.

I used this term in quotes "support for Attracta" seems reasonable enough don't you think?

Or how about this one, I simply searched for the term Attracta, no quotes.

Those results are the most current in the past year.

I have the exact same as you, read comments complaining about Attracta. When I checked dates they were from 2008-ish as I recall. That's not to szay there are not complaints right now either though. I found some.

Kent Brockman a question for you, what are your feeling toward HostGator? (personally I never liked the gator whats his name but thats another thread as well) I ask because as has been mentioned, they use Attracta.

Here's a forum thread on HostGator with complaints when this rolled out there. It reada much like this thread, only more directed at the Host than cPanel or even Attracta, for installing it.

But, they have it installed. That news link I posted above, show many more news announcements of others rolling it out as well. To me, that sounds like the software got better, more want to adopt it. Now we can discuss the usefulness or not, complaints or praises of this all you want, or we can look at what our peers are doing and adapt.

I choose the later personally.

One other thing that you mention is language.

It's a good american service, for american users.

I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that Attracta probably agrees with you when you say:

That's the main reason why Attracta plugin should come disabled: the cPanel market share is the bigger in their niche, and global, so the image we find is that Attracta is being enabled de facto no matter if it doesn't speak our language,

I would think they would put more resources behind a bigger market when that became possible. I know i would if I was Attracta. Even cPanel itself is still working on more languages. I'm just sayin' you know?

As I mentioned earlier:

I can take is that Attracta is snake oil. It's a pity for them.

This is an offensive comment and should be avoided, please. I am programmed to remove users who do not follow our Forum Best Practices, Rules and Guidelines. This program does not deviate from its instructions. Thanks!

 

[Kent Brockman]

Kent Brockman a question for you, what are your feeling toward HostGator? (personally I never liked the gator whats his name but thats another thread as well)[/URL].

I don't like the gator logo either. But our client liked the low prices of that hosting provider. It's a good provider with fast servers, but we nor our client feel compelled to use ANY of the value-add services they added to the control panel.

But, they have it installed. That news link I posted above, show many more news announcements of others rolling it out as well. To me, that sounds like the software got better, more want to adopt it. Now we can discuss the usefulness or not, complaints or praises of this all you want, or we can look at what our peers are doing and adapt.
I choose the later personally.

I'm ok with that statement. We've just tested the free service and it's not for us, nor our type of customers. I agree with not extending this thread besides its topic.

This is an offensive comment and should be avoided, please. I am programmed to remove users who do not follow our Forum Best Practices, Rules and Guidelines. This program does not deviate from its instructions. Thanks!

Sorry for the inconvenience. My apologies to you and everybody else who may feel offended with anything I said.



Just let me make one last and only question. This one cannot offend anybody.
Can anybody confirm that once Attracta is disabled in a server, future cPanel updates won't reinstall it and enable it back again? If not, provide, please, for those of us who disagree with this addon, a way to auto-disable it post cPanel updates to avoid having to go server by server disabling it.

 

[myusername]

If you don't register your host account, you'd get no commission, of course.

That's not the question, the question is if I don't register, and I don't know of the icon in my end user control panels, who gets the commission, and why am I paying a license fee to advertise some other company's products?

If this was a free panel then by all means put as many ads as you want in there. This would be a great addition to Enkompass for example. Something to help sustain the ongoing costs associated with supporting that panel, since it is a free panel.

cPanel is not a free panel, we pay for it. The users should have input as to if we want it displaying advertisements to third parties, or not. And that decision should be by way of opt-in, not opt-out when we discover these advertisements popping up on some nightly update.

What's news here is, the time for this to happen, has arrived. In all fairness though, I think like others in this thread, I didn't pay too much attention to it as news came and went over the past year on it. Why bother, it sounded like a good idea then, it does even more now that I've seen it for myself. I for one am not shocked in any way about this news. cPanel did not just wake up last week and spring this on anyone.

I beg to differ. I never heard about this until a few days ago when I finally got a notification, as I am sure many others did. I don't read the same publications as you, I don't attend many conferences, and this is the first communication I received from cPanel at all about it.

What's incredibly weak? You do not have to turn ON just about everything as you state, in cPanel. We, you and I turn OFF things not needed or wanted on every new server we roll out. I know I do. Services, features, of course we turn things off we don't want to be used. This is no different, so your comment here isn't exactly correct, IMO. Do you disagree?

Fine, for a new server setup yes, I can agree that it should be easy enough to disable it. With new servers, I don't want advertisements getting snuck into a nightly update. That means we have to spend time disabling on existing customer servers, VPS templates have to be rebuilt, dedicated servers need adjusted, recoding custom themes, and that is all time I don't want to spend or pay to have someone do it on my existing machines.

Since it doesn't sound like cPanel cares much about what users think, and this is going to be opt-in no matter what we say, I think a happy medium here would be to disable 3rd party advertisements from appearing in existing servers and only be enabled on fresh installs. This would alleviate many complaints since the server must be configured anyways at that time.

I don't want your logo in my users control panel.

So we agree?

We don't want ANY 3rd party logos from appearing in our panels unless we explicitly enable it. This is not about Attracta, its about cPanel putting advertisements in our panels, because at its core, that is what this is.

For transparency, we already have planned for Attracta and plan on using it. But I don't want a second Attracta icon appearing in the panel which I need to go back and remove on hundreds of servers. I choose to enable Attracta in this case, I might not choose the next, and in all cases, I don't want to have to opt-out of advertisements in our panels.

Please explain how its fair for you to attack cPanel in several posts here now for adding features to their software? Yes you and I pay for cPanel software, but its still, cPanel software.

Sorry, Attracta is not cPanel software. cPanel is used for managing web site functions for end users, on their account, on their server.

Attracta is a series of links to a third party site that does whatever it does, then asks for a fee to automate things like sitemap submission.

This is not an attack. Its a valid complaint. Forced advertisements have no place in cPanel, especially existing installations.