In response to feedback you gave us, if you use HostPay to process orders and manage your customers you now have access to a staging platform where you can experiment and make changes to your site without having to make them live.
The intended purpose of our staging platform is so that your customers can continue to use your existing live site while you make modifications on the staging platform. Once you are happy with your changes, you can then apply them to your live site.
Set up your staging platform
You will find a link to the set up page at the bottom of the “Customise end user Control Panel” page. This link will take you to the brand new “Install HostPay staging site”. Simply follow the instructions and click on ‘Install HostPay staging now’.
Using your staging platform
You are now ready to get started. You can choose to change the theme of your staging area and play with a new look, transfer live files across to the staging areas to start making changes to existing files, as well as view the order confirmation pages etc. Note: If you put through an order in the staging area and HostPay is not in test mode, it will be processed as a genuine order by HostPay.
You asked us for this so it would be great if yet us now how you get on with this new feature. If you have any ideas how we can improve it let us know via your reseller feedback form.
Whats with the slanted images in most of the blog posts? Looks terribly unprofessional.
Nice option to have well done 🙂
Another idea to integrate/change in hostpay would be something like:
Being able to have different packages to offer, e.g. domain, web hosting, dedicated servers but….
Not forcing the customer to either buy a domain or ask him to click on transfer your domain to us.
What happens if a customer just wants a dedicated server without a domain?
Might also be worth having a method of a customer being able to register to a hosting account without having a domain and making their account based on a sub-domain of the seller or some generic domain.
So in a way what I mean is basically have a more flexible basket/ordering system if possible.
Also if each service can be kept separated in hostpay then it would be easier for sellers to organise their pages and therefor redirect the customer to the correct item to buy (if customer wants a dedicated server, then he can choose one from the range – buy now – and goes straight into the payment process).
I hope what I tried to explain is not confusing.
Another good idea is to have the feedback (that other sellers have posted) available to resellers, so they can give thumbs up or down, then based on this, HI can implement the request?
Anyways those are just some ideas 🙂
Simon,
Sorry you don’t like them, its just a bit of styling. I like them.
Matt
David,
Thanks for the feedback on HostPay. I see what you are saying, and to be honest I genuinely don’t know if that will be posisble to implement (I’m marketing not development) but I’ll certainly make sure they know about your idea.
With regards to feedback, I wouldn’t want us to do that. We get so many great ideas (most of what we implement is based on customer feedback) that if we make them publically available it could inspire our competition to use them before we get a chance. I know some resellers complain they see the feedback system as a ‘black hole’ but I’d say about 80% of all new features come from this form. We can’t reply to them all, and we aren’t going to implement them all, but I can 100% promise they are all read and considered.
Matt
It’s is a good idea to differentiate between what is live content on a page and what is an image of a page. I’ve seen screen shots embedded in a page which look like blocks of live text with links which look as if they should be clickable. No danger of that confusion with rotated screenshots.
Back to the actual Blog:
Thanks for this, I was actually thinking about how I would do this over the past few days as I’m currently customising my templates and setting upshop. Like you read my mind!!
Greatful for this as I plan to make a quick ‘n’ dirty design and setup to get me up and running, then over the next few months play around with a better and more bespoke design/functionality.
One thing this might be in need of is some way of using it for A/B testing…
Regards,
Keith
Keith,
Let us know how you get on with your site. Be great to see it when it is 100% finished.
Matt
I think the slanted images are good styling really like it. plus cool new feature to hostpay!, been working on a redesign for my site I will now be able to test it with out going live great news 🙂
Hey Matt,
Will do, though it may be some time as I actually work full-time (non web-related) and only get the chance to update/edit when have free time.
Keith
Thanks for your reply Matt.
I understand about making the comments public.
Althought having a forum on HI would be nice, where news and comments could be posted.
Hiya Keith,
Thanks for your comments.
The idea behind being able to make sub domains under your reseller account would be the same idea on how CPanel works.
Some people could setup their blogs and so on under that space.
There are always file sharers to be dealt with of course, but these are easy to get rid of.
I know that you can do all of this manually, but thats the beauty of computers, things can be done with the touch of a button if programmed to do so.
Unfortunately I am not a programmer so the whole API thing kinda beats me and dont have money to spend on freelancers right now to do this for me either 🙁
Anyways thanks for the feedback and sorry for the late reply, i never got an email back saying that someone replied to my comment :/
feedback
No need to make this publicised, but you could show what other resellers are submitting in a ‘feedback feed’ via the RCP.
Problem is some resellers don’t have any development or web design (or hosting) background and wouldn’t think of / suggest some of the thing other, more experienced reseller suggest.
This of course doesn’t mean to say they would not want to see that feature.
Having a feed would mean all resellers could view the suggestions, perhaps even allowing resellers to vote or ‘thumbs up’ a feedback request. I think this way you (HI) would get a much better idea of what your resellers want enabling you to better prioritise new features.
Just a thought 🙂
‘Bill’
I was amazed to see this today – just what I needed! I remember asking for this and here we are.
I am a week into developing my new replacement hostpay site and can get it running quicker now without all the hassle of adding header/footer to the templates on a html page and then going through live testing.
Thank you.
Hi David, I’m not too sure on why you may need such things:
“Not forcing the customer to either buy a domain or ask him to click on transfer your domain to us”
– why would anyone want to buy a hosting package without having a Domain Name? Only reason I can think is to use the hosting package as online FTP or similair, which is against HI T&C (no file sharing, all files should be available to public)
“..making their account based on a sub-domain of the seller or some generic domain”
– can be done via creating a folder on your package, assigning sub-domain to that folder, and creating FTP user account for that folder. But I’m not too sure on HI T&C about this… or the benefit of it.
“..each service can be kept separated in hostpay then it would be easier for sellers to organise their pages and therefor redirect the customer to the correct item to buy..”
– again can be achieved, but means editing templates and creating your own pages using HI API. I have, for example, seperated all my hosting [ackages / grouped them by colour / and displayed in a easily identifiable way) please bear in mind I’m still only at the beginning stages of setting my site up.
“…Another good idea is to have the feedback (that other sellers have posted) available to resellers…”
– could be benficial as it will instantly show HI just how many customers like a specific feedback comment, without the need for HI to sift through numerous feedback forms and try to group or categorise the feedback. Something done via facebook commetns/discussions and implementing ‘Like’ buttons perhaps ??