Hosting Customer Forums

Hi. This is my first post here although I am a Siterollout reseller for over 1.5 year.
My problem is this. When I created any new account, using WHM, I was able to test my pages using a url like this: http://server15.e-webhost.info/~username
Actually I am still able to use this feature on server15 whilst I cannot use it on server17 on which .
I placed a question on the Helpdesk to find out that this is a new policy that Siterollout started in order to fight this feature's abuse. It is an abuse since siterollout offer their servers for domains hosting nad not for simple storage...
But this is causing me problems since I am a developer and I need to have access to my new accounts before setting them online. This is also causing problems when I want to transfer an existing website from another server. How can I be suer that the site works ok when I can't access it's pages?
I share this post for two reasons. Firstly I want to know if anyone has found a way to solve this issue, and secondly, I want all of you that agree with me that this is an important feature to post so in order to have siterollout to enable it again.

Thanx in advance,
Achilles

Hi Achilles,

We have a few customers who have requested this feature as well, but we're sorry as we have no intention of enabling this feature at this moment in time due to the abuse issues which resulted from having this enabled in the past.

Our advice would be to get your own VPS or dedicated server where you can enable this functionality at your own discretion.

:-)
Thanx for your reply.
With no intention to insult you I have to say that your advise seems more of a way to earn more money.
Of course having a VPS would solve many of my problems... but what I'm asking you to do is something that is:
1. Easy,
2. Much much much helpful to ALL of your clients, and I mean your real clients, not the abusers,
3. lastly, this is something that should be considered as a basic feature.
I mean, suppose that I have a client with an old site on some other server, and I want to build his new site on your server. How am I supposed to do that without access to the server? How can I show him the progress of the job without access? Apart from using an temporary folder on another account, the only solution would be to have an under construction page (having changed the dns settings) for all the time of the developing.

Anyway, thanks for your reply.
Looking forward to see that you changed your mind.

Hi,

Firstly, in the same way as a website could be displayed at http://ServerIP/~username to show the webpages, anyone can also display the website at http://www.resellerdomain.com/clientfolder

Secondly, DNS propagation nowadays can be as fast as half an hour in some locations, and so a domain can be changed back and forth quite easily to resolve from one server to another.

Thirdly, we cannot accomodate everyone's wishes on shared servers as we take into account the greater good for all on the server instead of the individual. Hence we cannot please everyone and have to make decisions of what features to enable and what to disable on our servers. Unfortunately in this case, the mod_userdir functionality is a feature we have chosen to disable.

Lastly, of course a VPS is a more expensive solution if you want a specific environment and specific features. It takes us time and resources to support VPS clients, as it is basically another full server which if managed has to be constantly supported and monitored. A VPS is a luxury compared to a shared or reseller account, and so obviously there is an extra price to pay if opting for one.

That's as much as we can say on the issue, so please either accept the status quo with regards to your reseller account, or upgrade to a VPS or dedicated server.