Newbie Questions

Currently, you cannot limit autorespoders, forwarders, or filters.

Since WHM does not have a billing system integrated, there's no price field.

The account activation e-mail feature is relatively new, so there is no way to edit it at the moment. I anticipate that to be implemented shortly.

If you have any other questions, feel free to drop me an e-mail.

 

Would like to get an answer from coastinc as to why it is appropriate to solicit for business on every post you make. Seems since there are no moderators on this forum that normal decorum would apply. You have contact info in your signature. Why not just let it go at that?

 

I answered his questions exactly as he asked them, and typed if he had any other questions, he can feel free to contact me. Nowhere did I type signup for help, I'd be more than glad to help him with questions at no charge, all I ask is that he e-mail me.

Should I have not even answered his questions, or should I have been rude and said 'don't contact me'??

It seems you're damned if you do and damned if you don't on this board; when I don't help out, people accuse me of using this board solely for business; when I help out, people accuse me of soliciting!!!!

 

Maybe so. But for someone who has a never ending thread http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?s=&threadid=12357&highlight=coastinc
you leave yourself open for criticism. This isn't WHT. The level of discourse on this forum is generally more civil. The point is that some members don't appreciate your aggressive business tactics when they provide help without expectation of profit.

 

Sawbuck, if your post had been attached to any of the last half dozen or so replies I have seen from coastinc then I would tend to agree with your sentiment. In this case however I think that he did a respectable job of answering byrons questions.

I have not used coastinc services nor do I have a bias against them. I do not however appreciate the large number of "I have seen that before. If you would like us to look into this for you [implying at a cost] let us know" posts I have seen from them lately. I think that if you are helpful and demonstrate indepth know-how of cpanel administration while displaying a link to your commercial services, the business will come. I would leave the blatant solicitation for the ads and offers forums.

 

With your signature, you are soliciting. I am not making an accusation I am stating a fact. I do not think anyone should fault you for it, and I do not know if anyone has (I haven't trolled all your threads). Your signature line is a good place to mention your services. Some may not consider it subtle, but I don't have a problem with it. I think the key is not directly soliciting business in the body of your posts (outside of the ad forum of course).

This forum works best for me when members help members out in the open. PMs and private offers do nothing to support this forum as a support resource. I hate it when people ask a question and then reply simply "nevermind I figured it out myself". If everyone did that, then what would be the point of these forums? When you tell people that you have seen something before and ask them to contact you via email (even if the offer is for free support) you are essentially doing the same thing.

Thank you for your past support contributions on this forum and thank you in advance for your future support contributions.

 

My "I've seen this before, contact me" does not in ANY way imply cost. Maybe you 'a s s u m e' too much??

Anyway, the reason why I use that on various occassions is because of the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" problem, I've replied with solutions I thought were correct, and a million and one replies saying 'you're stupid'. This way, if they contact me, I give them my opinion and offer to look at it for them. No purchase necessary

Sorry if I sound a bit frustrated, but I am.... I don't know why there is so much off-topic discussion on this forum and then people complain about every little thing everyone else does.

This guy started this thread with 3 questions that I answered exactly, now there's a whole page of offtopic replies.

 

Huh?

What if the fields were coding errors and server crashes in the last 24 hours? Would you still be upset if they read 0? It is just information, it is not a contest.

If you really want to change it, then have your customer setup an autoresponder a forwarder and a filter (all mail functions via cpanel). You could also customize the skin (or buy a custom skin) to remove the entries altogether.

 

I am sorry that you are a target. Some people seem to get upset at the notion of self promotion. I am certain that I am not the only person who "assumes" your "email me" replies are meant to generate business. If you are willing to help people gratis, then perhaps you should mention that in your 2 line reply to balance out the 4 line ad in your signature.

Free or not free, it does not change the fact that directing people off-forum for answers hurts this forum. This forum is made up of a bunch of cpanel hosts (and the occasional cpanel user ) doing their best to help one another. It is a shame that someone would call you "stupid" for providing free support, but there are all kinds of people out there. If you are eager to help (which you certainly seem to be ), then maybe you should consider a new "undercover" profile. That way you could provide answers without having to worry about it affecting the reputation of your company. Of course then you would lose the benefit of refferals and name recognition, but you can't have it both ways.

 

Sending people to an off-site how-to is different than telling them to email you. Sometimes there are on-going discussions posted with the how-to information that would simply be impractical to post here. Linking to a how-to (something that would be available to future forum browsers) is not quite the same as only providing the solution via email now is it?

I will agree that there *are* *some* issues that are extremely unique and/or sensitive and that these types of issues may be better handled off-forum. That is not the case with the posts I was referring to above.

Yes actually there is. There is a section of these forums dedicated to advertising and promoting your services (support related or otherwise). I am sure that there are dozens of cpanel forum members that either do or are willing to offer their support for a fee. What if all of them posted "I have seen this before. If you contact my company we can help you with this" emails? I think that these forums would get pretty worthless pretty fast.

I only commented because someone else brought it up. That is not to say that I did not feel the exact same way after seeing those "email me" messages (not this particular message BTW).

Just because these forums aren't being over moderated like some, does not mean that its members shouldn't exercise some form of self-moderation. I thought that the "use me off-forum" messages were going to stop. When they continued, I felt it was important to step up and mention that they are not appreciated and explain exactly why. The line has to be drawn somewhere, it just so happens that it was drawn in a thread that really was a poor example of the practice.

Hopefully, we can all do our best to continue building these forums into a valuable support tool. My thanks go out to everyone who has contributed solutions. That includes coastinc and even sometimes you thephantom :p

 

Being the person that got the ball rolling on the off topic nature of this thread I felt it necessary to say a couple of things.
1. My apologies to byron.ph, because as SarcNBit pointed out, this thread was an inappropriate place to bring up this issue. Hopefully byron.ph has received the help he came here seeking in the first place.
2. SarcNBit imho has framed this issue correctly and I am in 100% agreement with his statements. Also appreciate the time that he has taken to be involved with this.
3. Even though I stand by my previous comments it is my intention to re-evaluate participating in this forum.

 

Don't forget me.


I was going to keep out of this, but decided to put in my 3 cents worth. (inflation you know)

First, as mentioned before, this is actually the wrong thread to get into this stuff with because coastinc did give an answer, and I see nothing wrong with advertising in the sig line since that is the main thing it's used for.

Second, I do agree that it is wrong to keep posting "email me for help" since that makes the thread useless to future viewers. There are times when it can be too complicated to help here, but not that often. I've helped a few outside of here myself.

Third, I also understand coastinc's reason for doing it that way. Sometimes if someone makes a post and there is a mistake, they get run down. Believe it or not I have made small mistakes myself. I did learn from experience the best way to post safely. Only answer a question if you are sure of the answer, and if you aren't sure of the question, ask for more details.



Now back to the original posters question:

You said "how can I setup the autoresponders/fowarders/filters then? because it looks bad in my customer's CPanel having 3 0/0 fields..".

Does the cpanel skin actually show 0/0 for the Email Forwarders, Autoresponders, and Email filters? I'm on Cpanel 9.4.1-E54 and if I use the x skin, mine just show 0's which would be perfectly normal since that just shows that there are none set up.