HostingCubes - Updates

Lee

Fuck you China!

That about sums about my overall feelings right at this moment in time.

So, for the last two weeks I have been in a fight, a war more like against the flood of Chinese abuse and applications for my free hosting service. A total of 1,624 accounts have been created in Blesta, fuck you too Blesta! How they managed it I have no idea, perhaps it was my setup of the software.

Anyway, the whole event spurred me on to complete and release my own custom hosting panel which is now done, albeit every time I look something else is added.

The new site has been built from the ground up, everything is automated and managed on the site, no more 3rd party software, I even removed Wordpress and built my own blog. Completely integrated with the DirectAdmin API. Also built a support system, so it's all there.

The new site puts in place several measures to prevent abuse, so far working very well, with accounts being rejected and deleted automatically, no genuine sign-ups are being caught in the cull.

The backend now makes hosting applications far simpler, with no Blesta to worry about and the system doing everything I want, nothing I don't it makes a significant difference.

Blesta remains in place for now as I am not intending to force migrate users. So any existing users that still wish to use Blesta can, no new user signups will be allowed on Blesta. Support will be far slower than before on there as my focus is on the new site and dealing with support tickets there.

Unfortunately, the mass signup of accounts and trying to clear them all out of Blesta meant some genuine accounts got caught up in the deletion script I created, however, it did not delete files as such as it checked disk usage and other elements. So some users were deleted that were not intended to be.

I can only apologise for this but it was a complete mess. Something I have added to the new panel is a 'safe' tag for users that I know, members here, on LET and so on. If you sign up at the new site and open a ticket to let me know who you are then I can create a new account for you as well as marking you as safe which means no risk of deletion without me contacting you first if there is an issue.

Questions? Let me know.

Apologies to all the people who have messaged here and in other places, I have just been so busy sorting this shit all out that I have not had time to get back to everyone. Honestly, the best way to actually speak to me now is to sign up on the new site and open a ticket.

p.s - Yes the design is shit, I am not a designer, it's functional for now.

deank

@Lee said:
Fuck you China!

Sums up my recent feelings about China and your kid img looks oddly similar to @LadyDoc's.

WSS

@Lee said:
Questions? Let me know.

1600 accounts. Time to deadpool, or sell!

Lee

@deank said: your kid img looks oddly similar to @LadyDoc's.

Who? It's just a licenced image from Themeforest I got years ago and never used, until now.

deank

I guess it was the same artist then. @LadyDoc was HostDoc or Dochost, I forgot which.

Ympker

I like the "Auf Wiedersehen" sign for the post about account cancellation reasons. Nicely done

Lee

Honestly, I used to think China and India were the worst for abusing anything but all of the users from India are amongst the nicest people using the service.

Lee

Also, thanks again to the members here and on LET who did bug checking for me, appreciated.

Lee

To those asking, yes, I may open-source the completed control panel, give me time, it's not fully complete yet!

InceptionHosting

Yes its almost like the people designing these control panels dont listen to their own customer base eh.

I had to stop using telephone verification of accounts a few years beck because the credits were costing more than the services as there was no way to prevent the same nob from trying 500 times, and they sure did, over and over and over and over again.

Lee

I felt so sorry for the person that emailed me asking why their account had been cancelled, they paid a company in China $10 for one of my free accounts, recurring monthly... He got 6 Days to use it before I cancelled it. A bit gullible paying that much, but not the point.

seriesn

Yo! My man! Share some screenshot of the sexy panel, so we can drool over it!

Lee

Soon (tm)

Neoon

Congrats, the invasion has been declined.
I had such thing before, some youtube vid's got a few thousand clicks and hell broke lose.

Sticks, Stones, Bad Words & DDoS, everything was on the table.
But I have not been defeated, same as you, congrats.

Lee

@Neoon said: Sticks, Stones, Bad Words & DDoS, everything was on the table.

Yup, all of that, probably didn't help that I taunted them as I refused to give in. Even when someone emailed me suggesting I would get a commission on their sales of my service. I resisted, good offer though, 22.5%

vpsgeek3333

Most, if not all free services have higher abuse ratio unfortunately. But Kudos to you for not giving up & your determination to keep providing the service. And yeah I would like to know how Blesta is a culprit in signup abuse? Do you believe having WHMCS in place of Blesta could have prevented it?

lentro

@vpsgeek3333 said:
Most, if not all free services have higher abuse ratio unfortunately. But Kudos to you for not giving up & your determination to keep providing the service. And yeah I would like to know how Blesta is a culprit in signup abuse? Do you believe having WHMCS in place of Blesta could have prevented it?

A proper fraud prevention system on either billing system should help. I'm not sure if OP had any particular circumstances, but something like FraudLabsPro should block orders from VPNs, blacklisted IPs, addresses that do not match IP address locations, etc, which should represent like 90% of fraud orders.

seriesn

@lentro said:

@vpsgeek3333 said:
Most, if not all free services have higher abuse ratio unfortunately. But Kudos to you for not giving up & your determination to keep providing the service. And yeah I would like to know how Blesta is a culprit in signup abuse? Do you believe having WHMCS in place of Blesta could have prevented it?

A proper fraud prevention system on either billing system should help. I'm not sure if OP had any particular circumstances, but something like FraudLabsPro should block orders from VPNs, blacklisted IPs, addresses that do not match IP address locations, etc, which should represent like 90% of fraud orders.

There's a reason why our default fraud protection setup is extremely high.

Anything free gets and will get abused. Limiting stock and strongly monitoring fraud with a direct termination for breaking tos has helped us keeping things clean and sane.

But @Lee you are actually tempting me to sign up just to see your masterpiece!

Mason

@Lee said:
Even when someone emailed me suggesting I would get a commission on their sales of my service. I resisted, good offer though, 22.5%

That's some flawless, big-brain logic right there.

With that said, I'm proud to announce I'll be selling LowEndSpirit accounts for the low, low price of $2/mo. (don't worry, Ant, I'll pass along 25% of the proceeds minus taxes). Tell your friends.

seriesn

@Mason said:

@Lee said:
Even when someone emailed me suggesting I would get a commission on their sales of my service. I resisted, good offer though, 22.5%

That's some flawless, big-brain logic right there.

With that said, I'm proud to announce I'll be selling LowEndSpirit accounts for the low, low price of $2/mo. (don't worry, Ant, I'll pass along 25% of the proceeds minus taxes). Tell your friends.

Pretty sure, that is how shilling works too

BlaZe

I have signed up, let me know if you need any guinea pigs to test your panel.

Lee

For reference I was using FraudLabs, stock was limited and so on, was not preventing account creations though. Makes no difference now, in a better place.

@BlaZe said:
I have signed up, let me know if you need any guinea pigs to test your panel.

Always welcome.

flips

.> @Lee said:

@deank said: your kid img looks oddly similar to @LadyDoc's.

Who? It's just a licenced image from Themeforest I got years ago and never used, until now.

@deank said:
I guess it was the same artist then. @LadyDoc was HostDoc or Dochost, I forgot which.

Hmm, maybe(?):

vimalware

That image is going to turn me into one of those antivaxxers.

elliotc

I have a sense that a keyboard army are coming to sue you racist.

flips

Afraid I might have derailed this thread ...
Anyways, the site looks good, excited for a new a lean panel.

AlSwearengen

@Lee said:
I felt so sorry for the person that emailed me asking why their account had been cancelled, they paid a company in China $10 for one of my free accounts, recurring monthly... He got 6 Days to use it before I cancelled it. A bit gullible paying that much, but not the point.

When installing open source software, it's becoming more common to explicitly state the software is free and if you paid for it, you've been scammed. Being able to alert the user they were scammed sooner so they can try and get their money back might help to prevent future reselling.

Lee

I may also look for a way to put a note in DA that nobody can remove just to state it is a free service.

LeonDynamic

You could add an icon with an external link to a web page or create a widget that Includes all the information using Evolution theme

vpsgeek3333

So I contacted one of the guys from Blesta Team & this is what he had to say on this:

I don't know the specific circumstances, but anti-fraud will stop an account from being registered if it is detected as fraud and fraud is configured correctly
So, 1600 accounts being created means no anti-fraud or anti-fraud not configured properly
or the attacker was not detected as fraudulent at all by the fraud service
Which would be rare

Lee

@Lee said: How they managed it I have no idea, perhaps it was my setup of the software.

So yeah, possibly, but not an issue for me anymore.

vyas

@lee just received the mail about migrating the account, signed up for a new one
In the process, realized that's a lot of work for you... the fraud/abuse cases were probably the tip of the proverbial iceberg

Best wishes...

Lee

Saw your account, got about 35 signups which I imagine is a crowd of migrators, all accounts have been activated.

Near shit myself when I saw all the signups . then realised it was all familiar people.

Ympker

@Lee said:
Saw your account, got about 35 signups which I imagine is a crowd of migrators, all accounts have been activated.

Near shit myself when I saw all the signups . then realised it was all familiar people.

Migration? What happened? All good?

Lee

@Ympker said:
Migration? What happened? All good?

Migration to my new custom panel, all good.

BlaZe

When can I test the hosting?

The email ID I used is sha*****@ti****.co (my 1st & last name)

Lee

@BlaZe said:
When can I test the hosting?

The email ID I used is sha*****@ti****.co (my 1st & last name)

You should be able to create a hosting account, I see your account, but no hosting request.

Lee

Everyone from here should be activated, no need to message me and if you do need anything please use the new ticket system.

Still got a few other pending requests and quite a few tickets in progress. But we are nearly there with the new system. Some stats;

WSS

Here I was hoping you'd make a text-navigation menu system, like DesQview.

vimalware

Your service saved me at least an hour in evaulating InvoiceNinja features.
I think I need to run my own instance on my Virtualmin dedi.

Lee

Sorry, that screenshot above was annoying me, had to fix the layout. Got to have a nice looking dashboard, that only I can see...

WSS

It looks like a php 3 resource monitor.

Lee

@WSS said:
It looks like a php 3 resource monitor.

Exactly the look I was going for.

Lee

Of course, now I have revealed I should probably have been dealing with those tickets than fucking about with the design...

exp3

Lee is a banker who knows how to code? Wow

seriesn

@exp3 said:
Lee is a banker who knows how to code? Wow

He is not lee! He is
HoLEEShit!

exp3

@seriesn said:

@exp3 said:
Lee is a banker who knows how to code? Wow

He is not lee! He is
HoLEEShit!

The site is really clean and simple. Very easy to navigate to. I love it. I havent seen what's inside though but from the screenshot it looks really nice too!

Lee

@exp3 said: Lee is a banker who knows how to code? Wow

Indeed, not much banking going on at the moment.

@exp3 said: The site is really clean and simple. Very easy to navigate to. I love it.

Thanks, I always prefer a simple, clean look. Inside is the same really. I am not a fan of filling up spaces with content or colour just for the sake of it.

It has turned out to be quite a big project in relation to building a new hosting panel from scratch but free hosting is so different to paid and manually trying to control things once you get over a certain size will never work.

Enjoyed it, it has been a challenge at places but it is working incredibly well. Having a custom panel and site like this makes it so much easier for plans I have to offer other services in the future.

exp3

@Lee did you make the site in wordpress and just exported it as html? Or you used a builder?

Lee

@exp3 said:
@Lee did you make the site in wordpress and just exported it as html? Or you used a builder?

Neither, I built everything using Laravel. No 3rd party software such as Wordpress used.

Lee

I am 8 away from 200 users on the new system, get your free hosting now, or else I move all services to ColoCrossing.