relationship between gradwell / pickaweb / phantom.hostingseries.net / cPanel

[rmla...@gmail.com]

I am not a computery person so please forgive my muddle. Please can someone explain the connection between these entities:

gradwell / pickaweb / phantom.hostingseries.net / cPanel

background:
gradwell used to run the email system of the British Computer Society. I used t access my email via the webmail.gradwell.com URL which used 'squirrel mail'. But webmail.gradwell.com now redirects to phantom.hostingseries.net:2096.

phantom.hostingseries.net:2096 has a login page with the name 'cPanel Inc.' at the bottom but no other company name.

I gather that gradwell has sold its operation to Pickaweb.

So, please can someone explain the relationships between:

gradwell / pickaweb / phantom.hostingseries.net / cPanel


thank you very much,

Robert

[Roland Perry]

In message <d365902b-f8ea-4cc2...@googlegroups.com>, at
03:44:26 on Sat, 25 Aug 2018, rmla...@gmail.com remarked:

And to add another variable, cPanel is the user interface that people
who have moved themselves from Gradwell to TSOHost (as recommended by
many ex-Gradwell customers) need to grapple with.
--
Roland Perry

[Chris S]

On Sat, 25 Aug 2018 13:10:43 +0100, Roland Perry <rol...@perry.co.uk>
wrote:

Slightly misleading as the control interface depends on which Tsohost
plan you purchase. If you choose one of their Cloud Hosting packages,
as opposed to cpanel based packages, the control panels are Tsohost
inhouse designed. Whether the latter require more or less grappling
with compared to cpanel, I couldn't possibly say.

Chris S
--
Demon Customer 1993 - 2015; Gradwell Customer 2002 - 2016; now with Zen for connectivity and Tsohost
for web/email hosting (last Gradwell hosted domains migrated October 2016).

[rmla...@gmail.com]

I don't have a lot of choice. I get my email account by being a member of the BCS so they make all the choices.

Robert

[Martin Liddle]

On 25/08/2018 13:10, Roland Perry wrote:
>
> And to add another variable, cPanel is the user interface that people
> who have moved themselves from Gradwell to TSOHost (as recommended by
> many ex-Gradwell customers) need to grapple with.

Not necessarily; TSOHost offer a choice of cPanel and their own Cloud
platform. My requirements are straightforward and I use the Cloud platform.

--
Martin Liddle, Tynemouth Computer Services
Staveley, Chesterfield, Derbyshire UK

[Roland Perry]

In message <plrlgu$5mv$2...@dont-email.me>, at 14:28:00 on Sat, 25 Aug
2018, Martin Liddle <new...@tynecomp.co.uk> remarked:

>> And to add another variable, cPanel is the user interface that
>>people who have moved themselves from Gradwell to TSOHost (as
>>recommended by many ex-Gradwell customers) need to grapple with.
>
>Not necessarily; TSOHost offer a choice of cPanel and their own Cloud
>platform. My requirements are straightforward and I use the Cloud
>platform.

The perceived stench of the Gradwell cloud offering was why I started
moving domains over to TSOHost. I wasn't about to start grappling with
*their* cloud offering.
--
Roland Perry

[Charles Lindsey]

On 25/08/18 11:44, rmla...@gmail.com wrote:
>
> I am not a computery person so please forgive my muddle. Please can someone explain the connection between these entities:
>
> gradwell / pickaweb / phantom.hostingseries.net / cPanel

Gradwell is the company we are all fed up with, who sold their hosting
business to Pickaweb (I suppose what they actually sold was their
"goodwill").

Pickaweb and hostingseries.net are effectively one entity as seen by us,
although one may be outsourcing facilities to the other.

cpanel.net produce a hosting interface that is used by many providers,
including Pickaweb. If you look at the cpanel documentation on Pickaweb,
you will find you are looking at the cpanel website, but AFAIK your
Pickaweb services are actually running on hostingseries hardware, not on
cpanel hardware.

--
Charles H. Lindsey ---------At my New Home, still doing my own
thing-----------
Tel: +44 161 488 1845 Web:
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/~chl
Email: c...@clerew.man.ac.uk Snail: 40 SK8 5BF, U.K.
PGP: 2C15F1A9 Fingerprint: 73 6D C2 51 93 A0 01 E7 65 E8 64 7E 14
A4 AB A5

[rmla...@gmail.com]

On Sunday, August 26, 2018 at 9:59:44 PM UTC+1, Charles Lindsey wrote:
> On 25/08/18 11:44, rmla...@gmail.com wrote:
> >
> > I am not a computery person so please forgive my muddle. Please can someone explain the connection between these entities:
> >
> > gradwell / pickaweb / phantom.hostingseries.net / cPanel
>
> Gradwell is the company we are all fed up with, who sold their hosting
> business to Pickaweb (I suppose what they actually sold was their
> "goodwill").
>
> Pickaweb and hostingseries.net are effectively one entity as seen by us,
> although one may be outsourcing facilities to the other.
>
> cpanel.net produce a hosting interface that is used by many providers,
> including Pickaweb. If you look at the cpanel documentation on Pickaweb,
> you will find you are looking at the cpanel website, but AFAIK your
> Pickaweb services are actually running on hostingseries hardware, not on
> cpanel hardware.

b

Thank you Charles, now I grap it fully. I have the additional complication that my email access is because I am a member of the BCS.

In case it's remotely of interest:
THe first I knew was when the webmail.gradwell website (where I usually access my email) started automatically redirecting to phantom.hostingseries. AT first I thought it had been hacked but then I found it was probably genuine. I tried to log in but it would not accept my password. emails to pickaweb's support line were ananswered apparently because I was not using my bcs email address (which I couldn't of course as I didn't have access to my email account). Eventually I got onto the webchat at Pickaweb who helpfully told me the password to my account. Then I logged in to phantom.hostingseriesto and found my inbox sitting there but not all my other mailboxes, and also I found that incoming email were not arriving. However, I was then able to use the support email and raise tickets because I then had the bcs email working. Then I was told that the BCS have not yet moved my account to Pickaweb and that I should continue using gradwell until they do. Of course I can't use gradwell because it instantly redirects me to phantom.hostingseries. My BCS email been out of action since 23 August and it's my professional email account so IO'm not a happy bunny:-(

Robert

[David Gibson]

On 26/08/2018 21:59, Charles Lindsey wrote:
> On 25/08/18 11:44, rmla...@gmail.com wrote:
>>
>> I am not a computery person so please forgive my muddle.  Please can
>> someone explain the connection between these entities:
>>
>> gradwell / pickaweb / phantom.hostingseries.net / cPanel
>
> Gradwell is the company we are all fed up with, who sold their hosting
> business to Pickaweb (I suppose what they actually sold was their
> "goodwill").
>
> Pickaweb and hostingseries.net are effectively one entity as seen by us,
> although one may be outsourcing facilities to the other.
>
> cpanel.net produce a hosting interface that is used by many providers,
> including Pickaweb. If you look at the cpanel documentation on Pickaweb,
> you will find you are looking at the cpanel website, but AFAIK your
> Pickaweb services are actually running on hostingseries hardware, not on
> cpanel hardware.

... and in further detail...

Gradwell had a custom-written GUI for their services - it was where you
went to configure your mail-forwarding, and so on. It was clunky and buggy.

Cpanel is essentially the same thing but done properly. It provides a
GUI to the customer that is an easy-to-use alternative to the BASH
command-line interface that you would get if you logged in via SSH.

Thus, if you are a hosting provider, you might install cpanel to provide
your customers with a nice friendly GUI instead of trying to write your
own - as Gradwell did.

Linux friends of mine hate cpanel because it reminds them of Windows but
it is actually very, very good and infinitely better than Gradwell's old
control panel.


--
David Gibson

[Roger Hayter]

Except for some quite simple mail forwarding arrangements that it just
won'f do. Like forwarding everything NOS to an email address.

--

Roger Hayter

[Jim Crowther]

In uk.net.providers.gradwell, on Thu, 30 Aug 2018 09:41:20, Roger Hayter
wrote:

Do you mean setting a catch-all for a domain? It does that quite
happily for me for several domains. Each has a few routed mailboxes
plus a catch-all for any other whatever@domain forwarded to
postmaster@domain.

--
Jim Crowther

[Roger Hayter]

More specifically forwarding rather than receiving mail @domain. There
may be a way to do it but I can only see how to rewrite email to another
domain. It is academic for me as I am moving my domains to Portfast
for other reasons.
--

Roger Hayter

[Roland Perry]

In message <b6333978-cab4-48fc...@googlegroups.com>, at
14:26:40 on Sun, 26 Aug 2018, rmla...@gmail.com remarked:

> emails to pickaweb's support line were ananswered apparently because
>I was not using my bcs email address (which I couldn't of course as I
>didn't have access to my email account)

I'm getting a mixture of idiocy and gibberish from the helpline.

For example them asking me for my email domain when not only

(a) was it the one I'd sent from, but
(b) like your experience it was the only one which the chatline said
that support would reply to, because that's how they (weakly)
authenticated you as a customer.

Today: "I have trained and released the mail... can you
let us know how you are sending the emails ?"

"Webmail" was in the Title of my query, and what does "trained and
released" mean?
--
Roland Perry

[Roger Hayter]

Perhaps they are using pigeons.

--

Roger Hayter

[Roland Perry]

In message <1nud835.1k4dhlj13m9qcuN%ro...@hayter.org>, at 21:38:16 on
Thu, 30 Aug 2018, Roger Hayter <ro...@hayter.org> remarked:

>> > emails to pickaweb's support line were ananswered apparently because
>> >I was not using my bcs email address (which I couldn't of course as I
>> >didn't have access to my email account)
>>
>> I'm getting a mixture of idiocy and gibberish from the helpline.
>>
>> For example them asking me for my email domain when not only
>>
>> (a) was it the one I'd sent from, but
>> (b) like your experience it was the only one which the chatline said
>> that support would reply to, because that's how they (weakly)
>> authenticated you as a customer.
>>
>> Today: "I have trained and released the mail... can you
>> let us know how you are sending the emails ?"
>>
>> "Webmail" was in the Title of my query, and what does "trained and
>> released" mean?
>
>Perhaps they are using pigeons.

Whatever they are using it has the attention-span of a gnat.

I had two quite long discussions covering multiple issues with the
online chat, but they always dropped every issue except the most very
recent mentioned.

Both ended up with them saying "please email support", and when I sent
support a log of the chat and asked them to sort at least some of it
out, the response was simply along the lines "what did you want?" They
clearly hadn't bothered to read the log at all.

A week ago a chat ended up with me annotating 15 different questions as
the day wore on, to no avail. I really don't think it would help either
of us to open 15 separate tickets!
--
Roland Perry