Customer Signup

Signing Up Users

Requirements: Signups are possible only under plans available for signup!

This document introduces two ways of signing up users in H-Sphere:
- from the admin control panel
- "from the street".

The registration "from the street" can be performed by the customer from your website, without admin's interaction. The registration from the admin control panel goes through exactly the same steps, but can be performed only by the administrator.

Signing Users from Admin Control Panel

Signup from the admin control panel is also the one and only way to create accounts that are unavailable "from the street", regardless of whether they are tagged available or unavailable for signup, for instance admin and technical support accounts.

To sign up a new user from the admin control panel:

1. Select Signup in the Signup menu:

   

2. On the page that shows, click Select next to the plan for the new account:

   

   If the list doesn't offer desirable plan, check if it is available for signup.

3. Signup Wizard page appears. Go through the Signup Wizard. Click arrows in the lower right corner of the page to proceed signup.
   • Enter your contact info in the form that shows (name, e-mail, address, etc.).
   • Select payment type in the drop-down box (credit card, check, online payments) or trial hosting.
   • If you have the Tax Exemption option enabled in the Taxes submenu of the Settings menu, you may enter the valid VAT code to set tax exemption mode for your account.
   • Enter payment information: credit card numbers, expiry date and etc. - for credit cards; address where the bills will be sent - for checks.
   • Enter username and password for this account.
   • Choose the type of domain you want to sign up with (or sign up without domain).
   • Agree to charges if any and complete the creation of account.

   When you are through with the Signup Wizard, account will be either created or assigned for activation.

Signing Up Users From the Street

To allow users to sign up directly from your website, instead of entering your H-Sphere start page, you should to put signup links on your own page.

To allow signing up users "from the street", make sure that:
- plan is available for signups;
- Plan has full access.

To find out what URL starts signup wizard for a particular plan:

1. Go to the list of your plans in the Plans menu -> Manage.
2. At the bottom of the page, click Signup Links and the list of links that launch signup "from the street" will appear.
   Note: To retrieve a link to a specific plan, click the "lens" icon to the left of a plan's title and copy it from the address line.
3. Once you have signup links for plans, publish them on your website and allow users to go directly to the SignUp wizard of the chosen plan.

In case if any errors occur during user signup, H-Sphere places the account into the moderation section. Read about signup errors in the Moderating accounts guide.

Moderating User Signups

The following signups are moderated:

• Check payment signups regardless of Signup Guard or any other settings
• Web payment signups: WorldPay, PayPal, 2CheckOut, and GestPay networks depending on the Signup Guard settings
• Credit card payment signups are moderated when Moderated CC Signup is enabled in Settings -> Payment Settings -> Merchant Gateway. If it is disabled, account moderation is based on the Signup Guard rules
• Failed signups that returned errors:
  • Signups that experienced H-Sphere system errors. Such accounts will be placed into the regular Moderated Signup section, so you can activate the account after the problem is fixed.
  • Credit card signups that experienced errors with processing centers. Such accounts are placed into the "Signups failed for unknown reason" section in the Moderated Signup submenu.
    
    To see the error log, go to Reports -> Charge Log and from the drop-down box choose Failed transaction result.
  • Signups that failed due to other technical problems.
• Trial signups are moderated if Signup Guard in the Settings menu is configured to put trial signups on moderation

Even if a signup fails, the user is still allowed to complete the registration procedure. The potential customer is notified of the temporary problems and the signup request lands in the moderate section.

Email Notifications

In case of moderation, account owners receive two email notifications:

1. The first one is sent at signup completion and states that account will soon be activated.
2. The second one is sent upon activation stating that the account has been registered and can be accessed by the user.

Activating Or Rejecting Signups

To activate or reject activation of an account:

1. Select Moderate in the Signup menu. The list of accounts awaiting moderation shows:



2. Click the name of the account and check customer details in the signup info thoroughly.
3. Scroll down to the Moderation actions section and click Create or Delete at the bottom of the page:

If you delete an account, it can't be restored. In some cases accounts won't activate even after clicking Create and system will show the reason why it happened.

Changing Details of Moderated Accounts

When an account gets to the Moderate signup section, you can change details of an account before it gets created, including:

• Contact Info: click the Edit button in the Contact Info section.
• Billing Info: click the Edit button in the Billing Info section.
• Domain name: click the Edit button in the Other Signup Information section.
• Control Panel Password: click the Change button in the Other Signup Information section.
• Hosting plan within its compatibility group:
  1. Scroll down to the Plan name and billing period section.

  

  2. Click the Edit icon next to the plan name and the following page shows:

  

  3. Chose a new plan from a drop-down box and click Save.
  4. On the page that appears, chose a new billing period for this plan and click Save.
  5. Make sure to click Save to save changes.

Moderated Credit Card Signup

When the attempts to use stolen credit cards become frequent, the online processing center may close or suspend your account. To prevent this, you can switch to the moderated credit card signup mode and manually check each credit card, including its authenticity, address info, and other details, before allowing to create the account and charging the registration fee.

To enable moderated credit card signup, select Merchant Gateway in the Settings -> Payment Settings menu. On the page that appears, switch on Moderated CC signup:

Signup Guard Settings

Creating moderation rules

Once configured, this utility decides if the new account will be created right away or will be placed into the awaiting moderation list on the SIGNUP->Moderate page with appropriate comments/warnings.

To configure moderation rules, do the following:

1. Select SignupGuard in the Settings menu.



2. On the page that appears, select which accounts will be placed in the awaiting moderation list and click Submit.
   
   • Human Checker: enable the system to check if the signup is performed by human or by robot.
     During signup user will be required to enter the validation letters:

     

   • Max Amount: - accounts will be moderated if the total price for such signup is bigger than this amount.
3. Click Submit Query.

Setting Signup Guard Blacklist

You can blacklist accounts by certain parameters: account names, email addresses, domains, IPs, countries, etc., i.e., categories included into the BlackLists section of the Signup Guard page. Accounts with parameters specified in these blacklists will be moderated after the signup.

To configure blacklists:

1. On the Signup Guard page, in the Black Lists section, choose the parameters (e.g: Countries) to be tracked during signup.
2. On the page that shows, enter the list of parameters delimited wih semicolons (;), commas (,), or line breaks:

   

   In the above example, all accounts from the countries specified in the blacklist (Afghanistan, Iraq, Lybia) will be automatically moved to the awaiting moderation section upon their signup.

   Note: You cannot set the range of IPs or use wildcard symbols for names!

3. Click Submit Query.

From now on, make sure to check the awaiting moderation list regularly. It is available on the SIGNUP -> Moderate page.

Note: SignupGuard will never reject client signup, it will place all suspicious signups into the awaiting moderation list on the SIGNUP->Moderate page.

Country Codes for the Signup Guard Blacklist

Here is the list of country codes for the Signup Guard blacklist:

Viewing Signup Info

Signup IPs

To prevent the use of fraudulent credit cards, check the IPs of the computers where signups came from against the country in the billing info. To see the signup IP:

1. Go to Moderate in the SIGNUP menu.
2. Click the account to view account info.
   In the Other signup information table REMOTE_ADDR entry shows this account signup IP:

Note: The section Other signup information also shows Domain Registration Billing and Owner Information. You can change it before account is created.

Signup Statistics

Signup statistics includes data about accounts created and deleted by each admin. Signups "from the street" are not included into this statistics, they can be viewed in Signup reports.

To view signup statistics:

1. Choose Stats from the Signup menu. The following page will show:



2. Click the underlined number in the Live accounts column to display details on these accounts.
3. Click the underlined columns' captions to sort the entries.

The Export link under the chart enables you to save the chart data in *.csv format that is supported by numerous spreadsheet and database programs. Commas are used as delimiters.

Trial Hosting

Introduction to Trial Hosting

Trial registration allows users to sign up and evaluate a full featured account for a set number of days (trial period) without being charged the fees to be paid for account setup and activity during the trial period if they decide to continue hosting with you. Trial registration can be enabled in any pay plan. Upon trial period expiry, the trial account automatically gets suspended.

To continue hosting with your company, a trial account's owner needs to become a pay user. If a trial account's owner becomes a check-pay user by the time his trial account has been suspended, resume their account, because it doesn't get automatically resumed, as opposed to credit card paid accounts.

Important: If a trial user happens to enter his valid credit card info, he will be immediately charged.

Managing Trial Accounts

You can configure your system to automatically:
      - warn trial account owners of approaching trial period expiry and account suspension;
      - warn owners of suspended trial accounts of probable account deletion;
      - delete suspended trial account.

To enable any of the above options:

1. Go to Settings -> Managing Trials.
2. Select the corresponding option checkbox:

3. Set the option timing.
4. Click Save.

To edit the corresponding warning/notification message:

1. Click the Edit icon next to the selected checkbox.
2. Follow instructions on how to edit mail messages to users.

Enabling Trial Registration

To enable trial hosting for an individual plan, do the following:

1. Select Manage in the Plans menu and click the plan name to start the plan edit wizard:

   

2. On the page that appears, scroll down to the last section and select Trial as the Billing Type.
3. In the Duration field, enter the days of the trial period. If you leave the field empty, the duration of the trial period will be set to zero, and all accounts under trial registration will be suspended immediately after signup. Usually trial period does not exceed one month.
4. In the Credit Limit field, enter the maximum negative balance you want to allow for one trial user. Trial Credit Limit is the maximum amount of credit a trial user can run up acquiring paid resources. If you leave the field empty, the Trial Credit Limit is set to zero, and users can acquire only free resources. For trial periods of up to one month, this amount is usually set to slightly exceed the initial registration payment plus the recurrent fee for one payment period to disallow free use of extra resources. If you set Trial Credit higher, trial users will be able to acquire more resources than it is offered with the standard plan configuration. For trial period of more than a month, you need to set a higher credit limit to ensure that the trial account has enough balance to pay subsequent recurrent fees.
5. Scroll down to the bottom of the form. Check the Don't change resources prices and click Next.

Grouping Trial Plans

To ensure correct transition from one plan to another, you should always group plans based on their compatibility, so plans with the same settings belong to the same group. Don't group plans of different nature (for example Windows and Linux hosting), as this will lead to unexpected results. A very common mistake is to create dedicated Unix and Win2000 trial plans and put them in a separate trial plans group. On the one hand, this will not allow trial users to switch to pay plans, as they are in a different group. On the other hand, when switching from Win2000 Trial to Unix trial, a user will lose the settings that are unavailable under Unix plan, such as ASP and ODBC service.