Separate monitoring of domains

Discussion in 'Pre-sales questions' started by Marc, Apr 6, 2010.

  1. Marc

    Marc Guest

    I am looking for apropriate hosting for a DotNetNuke portal with currently two separate domains. Your service seems to offer everything I was looking for. On a Win2003 server, Khmer localization of DotNetNuke is not possible, basicaly because the OS does not recognize km-KH locale.

    I am glad with the attention you give to backup and restore of thwe database. I hope that process goes as smoothly as promised.

    I expect at least one of them (a university that is working on eLearning) may exceed the limits of the hosting plan. This raises the question of separate monitoring of the monthly usage of bandwidth. This would allow me to charge the domain owner accordingly.

    How much do you charge for extra bandwidth?

    Do you have any suggestions how each domain administrator could administer his own email accounts within limits smaller than the limits of the subscription plan?
     
  2. Marc

    Marc Guest

    Some questions still open.

    I have found the answer on the cost of additional bandwidth in an old thread in this forum: the ultimate plan. (My problem is that I have no idea of the expected usage, once the sites become fully operational and eLearning modules are offered to the students.)

    But the other questions remain:

    (1) Is there a way to measure the bandwidth usage of multiple domains within one site separately?

    (2) How are email accounts managed? Can each domain have a share of the email accounts?
    Can the admins of the domains manage their own accounts?

    I'd like to know before I make a decission about moving the portal to Winhost: I will have to do some explaining to the owners and may have to develop solutions if one of these problems cannot be addressed.
     
  3. Ray

    Ray

    No. Because each domain pointer will resolve to one Site Account, all bandwidth usage will be displayed under one report and is consolidated under one account.

    You can manage each POP account via its webmail, and each Site account will have one email administrator which is the postmaster account.
     
  4. Guest

    Guest Guest

    (1) should be no problem, since I may be able to get that information from the raw logfiles. I understood (from other postings in your forum, correct me if I'm wrong) that I can manage the IIS - so I can ensure the fields I need are enabled. And I can download the logfiles. But I may have to write some code to collect the totals from the logfile. I may add some other interesting stats (referers, search engine stats etc...) for the domain admins.

    (2) is not 100% clear. I overlooked "Email alias for domain pointers" in your specification of the plans, but I think that is the answer on my question about different email domains.

    But you speak of pop accounts and site accounts. "Pop accounts" I read as individual user accounts (can be accessed by pop or webmail) - so each user can manage his own account.

    "Site accounts" - I try to keep the term "site" for the complete DotNetNuke installation and "domain" for each domain that is referred to the site. DNN will then sort out what to show based on the header information. I thus have three levels of management:

    - user account management: each user account manages his own settings (I think that was what you meant with pop account)
    - domain admin account: can add/delete users for his/her domain
    - site account: postmaster for all domains. Should be able to set limits on number of accounts available and disk space available for each domain.

    If there is no domain postmaster but the site postmaster manages all users, then I may have to write my own interface for domain admins. If on the other hand, the domain admins manage their own user accounts, can I set/modify limits on accounts/disk space for each domain?

    The websites (domains) currently use smartermail, but management is done through the Helm control panel. I have no idea how the Smartermail management works besides through Helm.
     
  5. Ray

    Ray

    First lets define the phrase Site Account. This is a phrase we use ourselvs (Winhost). As you know, when you sign up for an account, you get what is known as a control panel account. This account lets you log into the control panel and pay for the hosting service.

    The Site Account is a subset of the control panel account where you can upload your web pages. It will have its own root, its own application pool, and email account. An email account is anything that creates an Inbox on the email server and carries a domain name of "@mydomain.com", as an example.

    Within each control panel account you can have 1 or 10 Site Account.

    A domain pointer is not a Site Account. It does not have its own web space, root folder, application pool, or email account where it has an Inbox on the email server that reads "@domainpointer.com".

    A domain pointer is nothing more then an email address that redirects email to the Site Account email. As an example, you have a site account "mydomain.com". You have an email address "[email protected]". You setup a domain pointer "domainpointer.com" on "mydomain.com". You send an email to "[email protected]". "[email protected]" does not capture or store the email, but redirects it to "[email protected]".

    The postmaster account is the administrator account. If you want to set email quotas to other POP accounts such as [email protected], and [email protected] you will do it through [email protected]
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 14, 2015
  6. Marc

    Marc Guest

    Just to make sure...

    The semantics still confuse me... I am sorry for being so slow in understanding.

    Say I have 3 domains:

    khmersupport.com (a domain to give support to the other domains)
    domainA.edu
    domainB.com

    Let's limit the discussion to smartermail. The issues with the website are solved. It's smartermail that still is not completely clear.

    I can assign email to [email protected], [email protected] etc., [email protected], [email protected] and khmersupport.com - I will get postmaster(at)khmersupport.com and may need three more: admin, support and forums @khmersupport.com for administrative purposes.

    Since you say [email protected] redirects to postmaster(at)khmersupport.com, can I therefore conclude that [email protected] also redirects [email protected] or is user1 only an account on domainA.edu? I hope the last option is the case, but I need clarity.

    Can [email protected] create email accounts for domainB.com? Since you say [email protected] is redirected to [email protected], I would conclude the answer is 'yes' though I would hope the answer to be 'no'.

    The first question is important: if I can make [email protected] and [email protected], then there is no problem. If however I this is not possible, I may need to purchase access to another mail server and that will make a difference on the quotation I am making for the updated service. (This quotation is due after Khmer New Year, i.e. by the 19th of this month. Next week has three days official holiday and the rest of the week, nobody shows up at work, that's tradition)

    The second question is less important, I am sure I can find a workaround. It will mot be as professional as giving each admin (from domainA and domainB) access to a postmaster account, but I have no doubt I can make a feasible workaround. I hope there is a way to hook into smartermail.
     
  7. Ray

    Ray

    No, you are misunderstanding what a domain pointer alias is.

    Now, I'm assuming that domainA.edu and domainB.com points to khmersupport.com. That will make domainA.edu and domainB.com domain pointers. Domain pointers will never have email on Smartermail.

    What domainA.edu and domainB.com will do is forward the emails to khmersupport.com. Domains domainA.edu and domainB.com have no inbox, no email account, no email storage, they are simply pointing emails to khmersupport.com.
     
  8. Marc

    Marc Guest

    Got it... but...

    You were right, I misunderstood. Thank you for warning me.

    So if I understand it clearly, there will be no mail.domainA.edu and no account [email protected]. The rector would have to connect for mail to mail.khmersupport.com and his email would be sent as [email protected].

    In this case, I would have to look for additional mailboxes - maybe on another mail server if you cannot provide that.

    I know you will suggest opening up 3 accounts (and more to come), one for each domain. I have different reasons for not wanting to do so.

    (1) domainA.edu, domainB.com and khmersupport.com currently share the same database. I have not yet tried to share one database for 3 instances of DNN, but I doubt this is a wise thing to do. khmersupport.com shares the database as well, but it does not yet hold much contents, so it would be easy to rebuild elswhere.

    The sites are not complete yet. The university portal is building contents, domainB.com has just started. But registration of domainB.com (actually a domainB.com.kh) will only happen after the quotation is accepted. The content is currently created under an alias domainB.domainA.edu.kh.

    (2) domainA.edu is bilingual: Khmer and English. DomainB.com is one-language only: Khmer. Both share the same resource files for localization of DNN. That means that translations, made by one domain is shared with all domains. khmersupport.com is the support site that coordinates translations.

    (3) There are obvious advantages to having both domains share one site on your server. Say I use basic plan for both (in the beginning) and I give both a bandwidth of 20 GB - when domainA.edu would use 30 MB, but domainB.com only 10 MB (khmersupport isn't expected to generate much traffic) - I would still stay in my Basic plan. [The meaning of those figures is still very abstract to me. 50 GB per month sounds like an aweful amount.]

    If email is the only obstacle to effective use of one of your sites, then maybe I should look elswhere for email hosting. In this case, I would keep the email of domainA.edu.kh withWinhost. It currently contains an odd 20 accounts, may grow over time when all administrative and academic staff learn to use ICT, but will never go over 100. Students are supposed to find their own email account (@ yahoo, hotmail, gmail, live or whatever)

    Also, I have some low-traffic websites, currently merely web presence really. I could move them at no cost to the site or at the cost at rewriting for DNN. Some don't need email accounts at all, most Cambodians use yahoo for everything. You can't imagine the trouble I have to get the university staff use the @domainA.edu.kh domain. They'll learn, but they adapt so slowly.

    So...
    For domainB.com, I will have to find another email host. (You wouldn't have a special deal on that, would you?). Will never need more than 10 accounts, but we should find something a little generous with the storage capacity. It's the website of a scientific publication in Khmer and I have no idea of its growth capacity. We're starting from zero now.

    khmersupport.com still is an open question then. It will have only 4 or 5 accounts, mostly used for receiving automated messages from DNN or one of its modules and for writing system messages to portal admins or users of the support forum)

    Maybe, I should look into setting up a pop3 server locally. I don't need the webmail part, I'll teach them to use live mail (I already do. All computers in the university have live mail installed) that has some of the advantages of Outlook (like multiple accounts) with some of webmail (use on multiple computers or platforms)

    I've never done it, but I had never setup an IIS server before or a SQL server, and yet, they are currently running off my desktop now. Even after my previous host installed DotNet 3.5 on his Windows2003 server, DNN could not be localized for km-KH (i.e. Khmer). By moving to my own desktop under Win7 and IIS 7.5, I was able to build both sites in Khmer and work on localization. Finding a hosting solution at affordable price was a problem - until I discovered you.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Oct 14, 2015
  9. Ray

    Ray

    Yes, for what you are trying to accomplish you will need to find an email hosting provider. Unfortunately we have no partnership with any other hosting provider so we cannot offer any discounts.
     

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