Publish Date: Friday, April 30, 2004
Currently, in addition to all other projects that were officially announced on our reseller hosting news page, we are also developing version 2.0 of Resellers Panel. We have decided that it is high time we implemented the suggestions we have received from many of our web hosting resellers in the past year.
We initially planned to complete the new version of our free reseller hosting program sometime in September 2003. We have fallen seriously behind schedule due to the prolonged development of the new Web Hosting Control Panel that replaced the old web hosting panel on December 12, 2003. After it became clear that the delay of version 2.0 of Resellers Panel is unavoidable and it would not be possible to implement it by the end of September 2003, we have decided to extend the deadline to the end of April 2004.
Now we know that most likely the new version of Resellers Panel will be completely finished by the end of June 2004.
What are the reasons for this long delay.
The reasons for this long delay are completely objective. We have the first program in the world, which offers web hosting reseller solutions that are not prepaid by the resellers of web hosting services unlike all other programs offered by our competitors in this segment. Due to this basic and most important reason, we had to learn many things 'on the fly' and had to consider tons of suggestions from our resellers. Some of your suggestions we were able to implement in a relatively short amount time when it was possible. We would like to mention some of the changes that we have implemented based on your suggestions.
- Meta Tags for all web hosting stores.
- 2nd tier affiliate program with 10% affiliate commission.
- the option to edit the contact information of your web hosting store.
- the option to edit menu links from the Reseller Control Panel.
- Resellers Panel promotional banner.s
- remote Domain Search Form.
- remote login form.
- extension of the money back guarantee from 10 to 15 days.
- SSL support on duoservers.com order pages.
- new mailing list, ability to run Crontab processes, multi FTP accounts, SiteStudio and FrontPage Extensions tutorials, over 3500 Perl modules.
- access and error logs, custom MX and A records, SSL certificate generation.
- SSL support on resellerspanel.com sign-up page.
- PayPal support (for buying a web hosting plan and payment of resellers� commissions).
- and many other minor improvements that are not included on this list.
Some of the suggestions that we have received were impossible to integrate into our reseller program, because it was not initially intended to support them. Thus, we had to create new web hosting software, which has nothing in common with the software currently in use, to be able to implement the reasonable suggestions that you made.
We have discussed with many of you by e-mail the innovations that had to be introduced as soon as possible. We have responded that in the next 2 to 3 months, this would be done, but as you already know, it has not happened yet.
Since the new version will be apparently delayed by a bit over 9 months after the date it was initially planned for, we feel obliged to give you the necessary information about the development of the new version and the changes that you can expect in comparison with the current version. We ask you to excuse us if we have unintentionally omitted a few details in this preview. The good thing about this is that at least you will be pleasantly surprised when you see that the new web hosting reseller program of Resellers Panel supports them.
Resellers Panel web hosting reseller program version 2.0 will include the following improvements.
- Dividing of the components and elements of each page of the web hosting store into blocks. The reseller will be able to choose among several predefined texts for each block. In this way the possibility of having two identical web hosting stores will be reduced considerably. The more predefined texts there are the more entirely different combinations could be achieved.
- All predefined texts will be optimized for search engine listing. In the past year we have gathered the necessary knowledge on what content should a website have to list among the first five results of the target keyword. Now we will share this knowledge with you.
- The option to edit the text from each block. This gives infinite possibilities to make a web hosting store unique. It practically eliminates the possibility of having identical web hosting store as it sometimes happens now.
- Placing different components according to your wishes. For example, if there are two tables side by side, you will be able to choose, which table will be for the domain search box and which will be for the Demo Accounts, for instance. Again, the possibilities for variations are huge.
- Complete freedom for determining the structure of the web hosting store: you will be able to determine the names of the directories and files; you will be able to determine the description of the hyperlinks and the ALT tabs of images and many other details of this sort.
- All pages of the web hosting store will be static, not dynamic as they are now. This is necessary for correct placement on search engine listings. Even if you use our predefined and search engine optimized texts, you will achieve guaranteed results in no less than 60 to 90 days.
- We are currently exploring the possibility to offer Windows hosting on Windows 2003 Server. In this way, we will be able to cover the full range of web hosting services form Linux hosting to .NET hosting and ASP hosting. With the addition of Windows hosting on Windows 2003 Server, Resellers Panel will be able to offer complete and universal hosting services in accordance with the needs of the potential customers of our web hosting resellers. The latest statistics of the web hosting industry show that the market share of Linux hosting is about 75% while the market share of Windows hosting is about 25%. The interesting thing here is that Windows hosting is gaining popularity and is increasing its market share slowly and gradually thanks to the latest version of the .NET package from Microsoft.
- We are also exploring the possibility of offering web design services in all web hosting stores of our resellers. Web design services will be offered through the web hosting control panel as well. This will increase the revenue of our resellers, because they will receive a 10% commission from the price of each order. You will be able to activate and deactivate this service from the resellers control panel. We are considering the possibility of making a whole reseller section devoted to providing of web design services and working on the same principle as the web hosting service, we are currently offering.
- Over 150 web templates will be offered to all web hosting customers. Resellers well be able to control this service as well and decide whether web templates will be offered in their web hosting stores and the web hosting control panel or not.
- We are also working on the addition of SSL certificate sales in all web hosting stores of our resellers. Resellers will be able to control the availability of this service as well.
- Domain names with the following extensions .co.uk, .org.uk, .ca and .de will be available for registration. This together with the multi-currency and multi-language control panel will give resellers the opportunity to target a wider range of markets on local basis.
- We are developing support for domain transfers. This service is currently available, but we do not provide a web interface for the purpose.
- Multi-language web hosting stores & multi-language web hosting control panel. In a short period of time, additional languages will be added to the web hosting control panel starting with Spanish, French and German. When the new version of Resellers panel becomes available, all web hosting stores will be translated into these languages.
- Multi-currency support. We plan to introduce support for at least two additional currencies - EUR & GBP. More currencies will be added in time.
- Telephone for sales on all web hosting stores. This service is connected to multi-currency support. It is possible that we will offer a UK phone number first and an US number later. At this point of time, we are unable to say whether customer support over the phone will be free of charge or will be available as a paid option. One thing is sure, sales phone numbers will be available first.
- 5 basic groups of web hosting plans will be available in version 2.0 of the Resellers Panel program. In each group, it will be possible to choose among several settings for each plan. For example in group 1, it will be possible to set the available disk space from 100MB to 450MB in steps of 50MB. The same applies to traffic - from 1GB to 5GB in steps of 1GB. Several predefined possibilities for the number of mailing lists and POP3 e-mail accounts will be also available. Just think about the incredible number of choices this provides. Almost every web hosting plan will have different parameters from its equivalents offered by the rest of our resellers.
- Each web hosting store will be able to offer from 1 to 5 web hosting plans.
- 6 suggestions for naming the plan will be available for each group. These 6 suggestions will have graphic equivalents in each web hosting store. We are thinking of providing you with the option of calling each plan with an arbitrary name that you like, but if you choose this option, no graphic design for the name of the plan will be available for your web hosting store, just text.
- We are considering the possibility of introducing live chat support in all web hosting stores, but currently we cannot specify when this service will be available.
- It will be possible to create a demo account with the features offered on a web hosting store, based on the ability to turn on or off certain features from the resellers control panel. Resellers will be able to choose a theme for the control panel.
- It will be possible to buy a web hosting plan directly from the demo account. This is a very good opportunity for increasing the number of sales and their ratio in principle.
- The possibility to choose a theme for the web hosting control panel of all web hosting customers of a specific web hosting store.
- Unlimited multiple web hosting stores under a single reseller account.
The basic and most important options and upgrades will be developed by June 30, 2004. According to the goals of the program additional options, services and upgrades will be introduced gradually.
Let us remind you that we are currently developing new options, features and upgrades for the new web hosting control panel that was introduced on December 12, 2003. We are adding a new option, feature or upgrade to the new web hosting control panel almost every month.
More diversity, together with text optimized for maximum performance with search engines and the opportunity to decide on the activation or deactivation of many different options, services and parameters personally - this will be the new web hosting reseller program of Resellers Panel.
