Release Notes

Hosting Controller's long awaited new release is now in final stages of beta testing. It includes a much improved version of the plan manager, billing system, feature enhancements and many improvements listed below.

Enhancements in functionality:

Plan Manager:

1. Comprehensive plan manager completely redone supporting quota system in addition to many others.
2. Ability for resellers to create own plans
3. Plan switching from one plan to other.
4. Plan instance enable/disable. This features enable/disables all the sites in plan instance.
5. Introduction of concept of credit limit and running balance to allow or disallow users to pull new plan instances.
6. Ability for reseller to import host plans and start selling them instantly as their own.
7. Ability to show/hide plan to a special user group.
8. Comprehensive searching feature.
9. Ability to purchase host plans.
10. Ability to sell plan to customer.
11. Refer to help manual for the details of features.

Payment/Billing Manager:

1. Comprehensive invoicing and billing.
2. Multiple currency support. Host and reseller can set their own currencies. Please note that you can set your own currency and charge user in your currency but currency is dealt in US dollar at back-end. Hosting Controller fetches latest exchange rates from Yahoo.com each night, calculates the currency equivalent in USD and sends this amount to payment gateway for charging. Refer to help manual for details.
3. Ability to turn ON/OFF invoices for individual or all users. Invoice e-mails can also be disabled.
4. Availability of 'Auth Only' and 'Charge' options when setting up payment gateway. Also, ability to delete a payment gateway once it is set.
5. Much enhanced interface.

1. Provision of reverse zone file creation and PTR record maintenance.
2. Zone transfer is now restricted. Zone transfer is allowed only to servers listed on the Name Servers tab.

Security:

1. Change of database connection from ODBC to OLEDB on physical path. Hosting Controller no longer uses ODBC DSN connection for database access.
2. Denied access to "NT Web Hosting Controller" registry keys. No one except Administrators can read this key to obtain critical information such as HC install path.
3. Inserted security in COMs so that they can only be called from the master HC installation path. Hosting Controller scripts can no longer be called from other locations.
4. Server side checking of all user input made sure. Passive form submissions blocked. Continuos updates will be made available with service packs.
5. Improvements in forgot password routines to disallow misuse. Now a link is sent to user's email address instead of immediate password change. Password is changed when user clicks on this link.
6. HC admin login made more secure which now does not totally depend on DB flags.
   

Other Features:

1. New version and service pack alert for HostAdmin.
2. Useful server stats on user login.
3. Fully customizable hosting auto signup using XSLs. Auto-Signup is now more advance and intelligent.
4. Autosignup for any number of different resellers.
5. Much enhanced and redone user interface.
6. Totally redone and enhanced help files
7. Context sensitive help at many places. This work is under progress and will be shipped by part in service packs.
8. New disk quota management feature. This feature is dependent on Disk Quota Service and is capable of monitoring assigned disk quotas. It can be configured to send alert e-mails, ICQ messages or SMS to customer and hosts when disk quota limit reaches danger level. More enhancements will be in service packs.
9. Hosting Controller now runs on port 8077 (default) in addition to virtual directory setup. This port can be changed on setup time. This feature eliminates various problems associated with virtual directories and provides universal for control panel as http://domain.com:8077. This is a test setup and if feedback is positive, the virtual directory setup will be removed permanently.
10. Ability of resellers to specify custom name for control panel virtual directory '/admin'. This can be set from Preferences->IIS Settings.
11. Support for creation of HC database on remote SQL Server.
12. Backup and restore of SQL databases to/from remote servers.
13. Improved error handling frame work with appropriate error messages and numbers in some sections. These error numbers will will be searchable in knowledgebase for detail and solution. This work is under progress and will be shipped by part in service packs.
14. Enhancements in ticketing system to pre-populate ticket info as much as available. Refer to help manual for details.
15. Change of user login method to allow OS level logging and reporting in event viewer. Now failed login attempts will be logged in event viewer for admin review. This feature can be disabled from Preferences->General Settings.
16. Replacement of JMail with internal HCSMTP Service. This is a very reliable and advance service with the capability of direct mail delivery, therefore HC mails are no longer dependent on any SMTP server for mail sending. Refer to help manual for detail.
17. Partially supported skins. Complete set of skins will be available in service packs.
18. Improved installer keeping XMail totally separate from HC. XMail installer with updated binaries (version 1.10) and updated web interface (version 2.02). XMail WAI now supports multiple languages with enhanced features.
19. Creation of temporary virtual directory in case of Name based hosting for instant access. You can now define any website as temporary host for new account signups. Hosting Controller will create a virtual directory in that site pointing to new customer website, allowing them to view their website even before DNS propagates.
20. extensive user preferences. Greater control over control panel features.
21. Completely redone import from previous versions.
22. Checking of Administrators account SID and assigning 'AdvWebAdmin' to SID 500 which is always Administrators group. This has solved the functional problems on servers where locale is not English.
23. MS DNS path is now automatically detected and populated in HC settings.
24. Automatic backup of HC database on uninstall. The default database backup location is c:\temp.
25. Now IP of IPLess (name-based) domain is automatically set by getting the list of IPs from NIC card and assuming the first IP as IPLess IP.
26. Addition of 'User Name' and 'Password' option in SQL UNC path setting for UNC users.
27. Now each reseller can setup a list of default documents from Preferences->IIS Settings.
28. Provided user creation option on the same website creation form.
29. Allowed host to change HC logo and hyperlink on top left corner.
30. These and many more exciting features...............

Bug Fixes

1. Fixed a bug where imported users were not getting in HCGroup.
2. Fixed bug in Serv-U user creation. Fixed several other bug associated with Serv-U including Serv-U 2.5 exception bug. Serv-U 2.5 is now officially supported again.
3. Fixed exception bug in Names4Ever domain name registration.
4. Fixed bug causing system hang on payment gateway calls.
5. Fixed a bug in plan manager where deleted resources were still visible on several places such as auto-signup.
6. Fixed bug in plan manager where issued plan instances were allowed for deletion.
7. Removed a bug where default discounts were not effective.
8. Removal of a plan resource is not allowed now if it this resource is issued to any plan.
9. Remote DNS MX record error is fixed.
10. Simple DNS on the fly zone loading on remote server.
11. Fixed a bug with MS DNS where entry to Boot file was missed when on zone creation.
12. On website deletion, HC was not removing DNS entry from Secondary DNS machine. This bug is fixed.
13. The records for the 3rd level are being written incorrectly and the serial number of the primary isn't being incremented so the secondary DNS never updates until a new record is added manually to the primary, or incremented manually. Fixed this bug.
14. Front page 2002 mail settings issue fixed. Previously the mail service in FrontPage was set as mail@user.
15. Fixed a bug where resellers see Mail Manager option in the menu even though mail server is disabled by host.
16. Fixed a bug in credit card verification routines where credit card having less than 16 digits were not allowed.
17. Fixed a bug where disabling FrontPage or Payment menu for a user disables them everyone forever.
18. Forums bugs fixed.
19. Post.Office issues solved.
20. Bug in XMail uninstall fixed.
21. Removed a bug in enable/disable domain registration (preferences). When you enable domain registrant and disable it again, its link was not removed from menu.
22. Removed a bug in SQL server database addition. The new database was added to SQL server but not displaying in control panel.
23. If reseller sets his own nameservers, it is set fine in the new domain but the domain setup mail after domain creation page shows the nameservers of the host. This is fixed.
24. Fixed a bug in disk space reporting.
25. WWW prefix is no longer allowed in website name.
26. Fixed a bug where forum were not deleted upon website deletion.
27. When a new domain is created in IceWarp the mail to any unknown users is rejected instead of being forwarded to the mail account, it is fixed.
28. These and many more small bug fixes.......
    

Hosting Controller Documentation Team
http://hostingcontroller.com