We have begun to receive a few more concerns regarding the disappearance of the autoresponders link in your control panel after the upgrade. We have received enough concerns that we have now re-enabled autoresponders in everyone’s control panel.

The points that were raised in the previous post are still valid and it should be worth mentioning that just because autoresponders are enabled by default now, does not mean that it is a good idea to use them.

We will likely revisit this later in the year. Perhaps by going through all of the accounts that do have autoresponders set up. At any rate, if you do have autoresponders set up on your account or if you are thinking about setting up autoresponders on your account, please have a read of the previous post concerning this matter and use good judgement.

We have had a few people write in with complaints regarding the new File Manager in cPanel 11. Some of the complaints range from lock ups to not being able to display your files. If you have any problems with the new File Manager, try using the Legacy File Manager.

The new File Manager has a lot of added functionality. A lot of it uses AJAX or Javascript routines to add these new functions. AJAX can make for a very nice looking interface, but it can also cause some problems.

One of the problems with the new File Manager is that it is not able to read directories that have a lot of files in it. I don’t have an exact number for what qualifies as “a lot” but I do know that this issue exists. This is just part of the problem with using AJAX and Javascript. The script is timing out before it has a chance to get a complete directory listing. I don’t really think there is much that can be done in regards to this. I am sure over time the code in the new File Manager will be updated with more efficient code and this bug may disappear.

Another issue we are seeing is that users are experiencing lock ups when using the new code editors in the new File Manager. Again, this is probably a case of the Javascript that is used to render the pages consuming too much memory or too many CPU cycles that it just causes your. You can kind of think of it this way, the prettier an interface is, the more stuff that has to be done behind the scenes to do that, meaning that there is less memory and less processing power available for you to make changes with that interface. Its a trade off. The code editor and HTML editor can be useful tools for easily adjusting your code. But if you are running a slower computer, with less RAM, and modifying a large file on your account, then the chances that the various code editors are going to work become less.

I’m not aware of any widespread issues regarding the new File Manager throughout the webhosting industry. I suspect that there are a few isolated cases here and there concerning it but nothing major.

If you experience any problems using the new File Manager then you may need to use the Legacy File Manager and you just may not be able to use the Code Editor or HTML editor.

We have received a few concerns raised over the autoresponders feature disappearing in cPanel 11 (I say concerns because they aren’t really complaints and there’s only been a handful). This was a decision that we made in removing autoresponders from the default feature set. Autoresponders are still available, you just need to request them from our support staff.

The problem with autoresponders is that they contribute to the ongoing spam problem. If you have an autoresponder set up and you receive any spam messages on your account, then you are effectively sending out spam (as in unsolicited e-mail) to some innocent person who never sent you a message in the first place. If enough of this happens, our servers will get blacklisted. This is a very short explanation of why autoresponders are a bad idea.

All that said, I do realize that just taking away autoresponders is probably not a good idea and the fact remains that there’s just no real alternative for autoresponders. However, just because there’s no alternative does not make the statements in the previous paragraph any less true. All of this is why we do enable autoresponders back onto an account if they are requested, usually with a note explaining why autoresponders are a bad idea.

I would ask that if you have autoresponders set up on your account that you take a close look at them and ask yourself if they are really necessary. Is it worth the risk of having the server blacklisted just so users can receive your autoresponder? I know a lot of users want to use autoresponders when they are vacation so that users know they are unavailable. However, because of the issues with spam, it may just be better for users that write you to not get that autoresponder and instead you just review your mail once you get back from vacation.

We will likely be addressing this issue in further detail once we have all of the servers upgraded to cPanel 11, which should happen next week. We just wanted to offer a better explanation as to why the autoresponder feature has disappeared and give you some food for thought concerning the usage of autoresponders.

Your suggestions and comments concerning this feature are always welcomed.

Scott

We are nearing the last batch of cPanel 11 upgrades. We have another batch scheduled for this coming week (July 23 through July 28) and we will probably have one more batch after that.

We have received a few e-mails raising concerns over the wide-ranging dates of schedule. We are basically giving a week’s worth of a window to upgrade the specific servers. Yesterday we sent out notices to the accounts that will be affected by next week’s upgrades. We gave the entire week as an upgrade schedule. This is about as specific as we can get. We don’t know how many servers we will get upgraded in a particular day. It depends on how many other issues we are having to take into consideration for that day. The upgrades are a priority, but not necessarily a top priority. There’s just not that much of a change or that much that affects end users for us to make a statement like “We are upgrading your server at 9AM on July 24.” If the upgrades were that big and really affected the usability of your account, then we would make a statement like this and then when 9AM rolled around the upgrade would be our only priority, everything else would move back. But this is just not the case. The upgrades are big enough that we felt it was necessary to send out e-mail announcements, but this is just so that you would be aware of the changes and would not be caught completely off guard.  The upgrades themselves are very straightforward and just don’t really affect the functionality of your account in anyway.  When you receive one of these notices, it is meant to act as a reminder so that you won’t be alarmed when you log into your control panel and see changes.

I believe I had found and resolved a lot of the issues that were previously discussed.  I implemented a fix on the servers a couple of days ago and so far I have not noticed any problems with the fix and everything appears to be working as it should.

Throughout all of this I seemed to have identified a “bug” in the cPanel code.  I hesitate to call it a bug as it is really probably more of an oversight where the developers have one thing doing the same thing two different ways.  I have informed the developers about this.

Because all of this happened at the end of the week, I probably won’t do any more server upgrades this week.  I would have liked to have upgraded some servers this week, but I would rather that I get any bugs and wrinkles ironed out before upgrading too many servers.  I will probably do some more upgrades early next week.  Look for an e-mail tomorrow for those you that will be affected by the upgrade.

Scott