Free WHM Complete Solution License!
For reseller, VPS and dedicated clients only. Read all about it here!
To sign up for your free license you have to be in our new billing system. If you signed up after June 1, 2006 then you should definitely be there (billing area is located at client.surpasshosting.com). If you are not familiar with that area of the site, then you are likely in our old billing system. Over time we migrate everyone into the current system (such as when there are upgrades/downgrades) but for now you can open a ticket in our Accounting Division to request that your accounts be migrated into the new system. Then you will be able to sign up for your WHMCS license without issue. (The sign up script checks account validity in our current system and keeps a tidy record of your license.)
Hey, it’s a small amount of work to do for a free copy of WHMCS. Plus it helps our accounting department get you organized, while you organize your customers as well! Spring cleaning at its best!
CAPTCHA vs. Questions
Flashback to December of 2006: the Surpass forums started getting a lot of fake registrations from spam bots. They’d target one or two forums and post a few messages upon sign up. Needless to say, this was getting annoying. Nothing is worse than clicking New Posts and seeing a lot of garbage.
There are a few ways to stop the automated spam. You can have admins manually approve registrations around the clock, but that’s working harder and not smarter. Our solution came to fruition in this thread. We have a vBulletin plug-in called NoSpam! - an alternative to CAPTCHA which was found in the vBulletin.org forums. It allows you to add a simple question to the sign-up form, in the place of (or in addition to) the CAPTCHA image. Our secret question asks “What city is Surpass located in?” and the user has to type in Orlando. May will mark our sixth spam free month. This plug-in has worked 100%. I still see those slimy bots hitting the boards they used to have their way with and getting an error on the sign up page. Too bad they can’t get in. So far it seems that NoSpam! is the only permanent and no-fail method available. Not to mention easy.
Ok, it’s easy for us, but mildly inconvenient for new users. Even so we are still getting a regular rate of sign ups per day. Would it be better for our new users not to answer this question? Sure it would. The less questions during a sign up, the better. When I see that the bots haven’t been around for a few months I will remove the question, but so far they seem to be hard coded for life.
After seeing the great success of this plug in, it makes me wonder why any site uses CAPTCHA still. Obviously it was not a “firewall” for the bots we’re dealing with. It seems many sites have been using the “question” method for quite some time now. Another example of the method is called QAACK (Questions and Answers Answerable with Common Knowledge) described here; this was posted a month before the NoSpam! vB plug-in was made.
Love Nest
We’re having a contest at Surmunity that is all about sharing your love for hosting knowledge. Or make that, the MOST hosting knowledge! Three winners will be picked who have the most posts from now until May 19. (They’ll win prizes and free hosting!) The posts must be extra insightful! We’re looking for quality posts on security, site maintenance, web editors, and more. Gather your knowledge into the nest!
If you’re joining this contest, a sure fire way to win is by creating new threads about different applications (from blogs to xhtml editors) or general ideas and thoughts you have about hosting. That way you’ll spark up conversations in topics you are already familiar with. Then you’re in control! And good luck on an easy way to win hosting!
Servers and rabbits and cakes, oh my!
Rabbits (and cupcakes, system administrators, data..) are running wild around here! Guess what else is hopping? The Surpass Community! Haugland awarded two free Mint licenses to essay contest winners: jordanriane (topic: Visitor Statistics and Tracking) and twirp (topic: Software Communities).
They are surely enjoying Mint goodness right now. Many thanks go to Haugland for sponsoring the contest.
We’ve also had fun weekly contests and the winners so far have been Geoff, musicman2059, room203, Rick, CoasterBGW, Gaia, cowboy, lonelydreamer, and puckchaser. Congrats to everyone!
We also must tell you that a particular rabbit friend of ours wants to invite you to a cool party. The place is Twitter. Hop over to the site, in a rabbit like fashion, and follow us (twitter.com/surpass). It’s a fun blogging community that lets you post messages fast from your browser, IM or your cell phone. You’ll be hooked immediately, so if you’re ready for that - participate now! We promise it’s fun, otherwise we wouldn’t be so excited. And we really, really are.
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