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StickBoy says... |
Under KangaWeb's terms and conditions, it is your responsibility to check that orders are valid before setting them up. The purpose of checking orders is to ensure that anonymous people are not given access to our servers, and to ensure that access is not given to someone who will breach our terms and conditions.
In certain circumstances, this may mean that you will have to ignore orders which do not appear to be appropriate. In the web hosting industry, the threat from hackers and spammers is significant and very real, so every effort must be taken to ensure that they do not gain access to our servers. A hacker or spammer can have an adverse effect on your other customers, and letting them through tends to be a waste of money, as their web site will be removed immediately and set up fees will have been needlessly incurred.
When you receive a new web site order, it is important that it is thoroughly checked before setting it up. Although there is no single way to determine whether a web site is safe to set up, there are a number of characteristics that you can check which will substantially lower the chances of setting up a bad web site.
Certain people will sign up for a web site specifically to get shell access (via telnet or secure shell) to a server, so that they can then use that server as a starting point to launch attacks on other computers on the Internet. It is a good idea to screen web hosting packages which provide telnet/SSH access more closely than normal, as these tend to be higher risk web sites. This said, it is still important to closely review orders which do not provide telnet/SSH access.
There are online resources that can assist you in checking new orders. If the name and/or address details included in the new order look suspicious, you may wish to verify them by using an online phone book. Similarly, for questionable business names, there are online facilities that allow you to search for a business name to ensure that it is a registered business.
Closely inspecting payments is another good method of verifying new orders. Requiring payments be made in advance of the web site being set up greatly helps to reduce the number of false orders you receive. As well as this, many of the online third party payment gateways provide payment checking services such as address-based verification, checking of credit card security codes and other fraud detection measures which can assist in screening orders.
For even further verification, you may consider requiring some form of identification before setting up a web site, or contacting new customers by phone and confirming their details before the web site is set up.
Finally, the IP address of the person who submitted the order can be a great source of information. Using an online tool (such as the "whois lookup" at http://www.arin.net) can give you an idea of the country of origin of the IP address. If this whois tool tells you that the IP address is allocated to "RIPE.NET" or "APNIC.NET", you should go to the relevant site (http://www.ripe.net or http://www.apnic.net) to complete the whois lookup process. If the country listed in the whois lookup does not match the country the customer specified in the order form, there is a good chance that you should not set up this web site. For example, if the order form claims to be from a person located in the United Kingdom, but the IP address is Indonesian, it is likely that the web site should not be set up.
In cases where the order does not look legitimate, we highly recommend that you simply ignore the order rather than contacting the customer. This will tend to discourage the person from making further sign up attempts, whereas writing to them will probably just tip them off about your screening processes, and will enable them to more easily circumvent your checking procedures in the future.
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StickBoy says... |
Once you have checked the new web site order and are satisfied that it is legitimate, you can submit it to KangaWeb for processing via Order Express at my.kangaweb.com.
Domain names for your customers' web sites can be registered through the registrar of your choice. Once the new domain has been registered, you will need to arrange to have it transferred to the primary and secondary name servers supplied to you when the new web site was created. Please note that the name servers can vary from web site to web site, so you will need to make sure that you transfer the domain to the name servers provided when the web site was created.
KangaWeb provides its own domain name registration service, which enables you to register .com, .net and .org domains. You can access this via the Reseller Tasks section of my.kangaweb.com. If you choose to use this registration service, the domain name is automatically transferred to the correct name servers for that web site, and you will not need to carry out this step yourself.
Please note that you must place your order for domains through my.kangaweb.com. If you go directly to http://register.kangaweb.com our systems will not recognize that you are a reseller, so you will be charged a higher price and/or your registration request may not be processed.
When registering a new domain name, it is important to ensure that the "admin" contact email address is set to a working email address. If the username and/or password details for the domain are lost, they can only be sent to the email address listed as the admin contact. For this reason, you may even consider putting your own email address as the admin contact.
If you choose to register your domain through the KangaWeb domain registration service, we will never contact your customer directly. When their domain comes due for renewal, you will be sent a reminder 30 days and 7 days before the renewal date. This message will contain instructions on how to make the payment to renew the domain.
If the domain is not renewed promptly, it may be the case that our parent registrar will automatically send an email to the contacts on record for the domain. Unfortunately, we are not able to stop this from happening, but can assure you that KangaWeb is not mentioned in the message. Such a message would be addressed from renewal@linuxengine.net, and if a customer were to reply to this address, they would get an automatic response telling them to contact their web host for help with domain renewals.
When you place an order for a new domain via KangaWeb's registration service, you will be given instructions on how to make your payment. Once you have completed the registration process, the domain will appear on the web within 24 - 48 hours.
KangaWeb will never contact your customers directly, and will endeavor to remain completely anonymous to them. This has an impact on the way billing works. KangaWeb will not bill your customers for their web sites directly, so it is up to you to bill your clients yourself.
As mentioned previously, it is a good idea to ensure that you are paid in advance for any service you provide. That is, when setting up domain names or web sites, adding features to web sites, or any other such service which attracts a charge, you should receive payment from your customer before carrying out the requested action. This ensures that you are not left to foot the bill for an action that your customer refuses to pay for.
If a customer does not make their payment by the due date, you may decide to disable their site until payment is received. This is called suspending their site, and can be carried out via the Reseller Tasks section of my.kangaweb.com. Please note that full charges for the web site will still apply until the web site is actually canceled.
Your billing cycle starts on the day that you order your first web site, and a new cycle begins at the same day of each subsequent month. You will be sent an invoice for your web sites one week before the invoice is due. Each invoice will be due within a few days of your billing cycle start date.
All fees are payable in advance, which means that your monthly invoice will contain charges for the upcoming month. Please also note that all fees are non-refundable unless exceptional circumstances apply.
Rather than sending individual invoices for each of your web sites, a combined invoice is sent each month which contains the amount owing for all of your web sites. When you create a new web site, the setup fee is charged immediately and is added to your next invoice. To bring the new web site's billing schedule into line with your other web sites, an extra pro-rata amount is also charged. This amount covers the hosting period from the setup date up to and including the last day of the current cycle.
If you cancel a web site after the next billing cycle's invoice has been issued, but before that cycle has started, the current invoice will not be re-issued, but the amount payable for the next month for the canceled web site will be automatically credited on your next invoice.
For example, suppose you are a reseller with the web sites a.com, b.com, and c.com. If your next billing cycle begins on the 2nd of February, you will be sent an invoice approximately one week before this date containing the amounts owing for each of these web sites. If on the 29th of January you decide to cancel the web site b.com, you would pay the full amount stated on the invoice already issued, and the amount overpaid on the invoice for b.com will be refunded on the following invoice for the period starting on the 2nd of March.
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StickBoy says... |
A detailed example of how the billing system works is available in appendix A.
As a reseller, a key part of your role is to provide support for your customers, but KangaWeb's support team are always happy to help with questions you are unsure how to answer.
KangaWeb's support team are able to offer assistance for issues relating to the services provided directly by KangaWeb. Matters such as web page design and scripting assistance are outside the scope of support that we are able to provide. Of course, if you feel that you are able to provide support to your customers for these sorts of issues, then you are most welcome to do so, and the KangaWeb support team are always more than happy to answer any questions you have relating to KangaWeb services.
The fastest way to answer customer questions is to check the extensive documentation that is available via the Tech Support Wizard. Most day-to-day issues are explained there as are many of the more uncommon questions you will be asked.
If you are unable to find an answer in the Tech Support Wizard, KangaWeb's support team will be more than happy to answer your questions. If the Tech Support Wizard does not answer your question, you will be directed to our Support Request Form which you can use to contact us.
When writing to the support team, it is best to provide full details of the problem. The following sorts of information may be useful in diagnosing the problem:
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StickBoy says... |
If your client has not told you something that you feel might be useful in diagnosing their problem, it is often worth asking them for the information in advance of submitting your Support Request Form. Having the information ready ensures that your questions are answered quickly. You'll soon get a feel for what information is needed to answer certain questions, and will be able to query your clients in advance.
Finally, information provided at my.kangaweb.com can give you a better idea of what is causing your customers' problems. The "Reports" section of Reseller Tasks, and the Site Toolkit contain tools which diagnose and in some cases fix common problems and provide detailed explanations.
As a KangaWeb reseller you can choose to give your customers access to our Short Message Service (SMS) facilities. These rare facilities will make your web hosting packages more attractive and will allow your customers to:
There is a small charge for each SMS sent. That is, each SMS consumes one "SMS credit". Our SMS prices are extremely competitive. Each account comes with a small allocation of free SMS credits for testing purposes. However once these free credits are used up your customers will need to purchase further SMS credits.
As a reseller, you will need to purchase SMS credits on behalf of your customers. This creates an additional source of revenue for you. We sell SMS credits to you at a deeply discounted price, and you can charge your customers whatever price you think the market will bear. Our recommended SMS prices are available on our site.
If you would like to offer these SMS facilities to your customers, please follow these steps:
There are some very important points to note about this process.
At KangaWeb we aim to provide innovative facilities to help you succeed in the web hosting business. We hope you are able to incorporate these useful SMS facilities into your service.