The Future is Now: Our New Client Area and Site Tools Are Going Live
Table of Contents
Nearly three years ago, we made the decision to develop new interfaces to improve the way our clients build and manage their websites and hosting on SiteGround. Now, we’re ready to share the results of all the hard work and show you the new features and designs our team has built.
This process has been highly rewarding, but not without its challenges. We hired 20+ new people, including React developers, QAs, and others, and restructured several core teams in the company to meet the needs of this project. Now that we’re near the end, we feel proud of our work, relieved that it came together, and excited to announce it to the world!
As of today, hosting clients who sign up for our service will be using the new interfaces. This excludes, for the time being, Cloud and Dedicated Server accounts, special partnership orders, and our Italian and Spanish-speaking clients.
Current customers who are using cPanel and the old User Area will be gradually switched to the new interfaces starting in September.
Read on to find out more about the most exciting improvements we are introducing and how they can help you manage your sites more easily.
Better UX With Advanced Technologies
The new interfaces make site management easier and more efficient. Built using REACT as a single-page application, they are faster to work with and totally mobile-friendly, allowing you to manage your site and hosting through any device.
Our beta testers shared extremely positive feedback on the new UX (user experience) and noted that the new interfaces are a huge leap ahead in terms of usability and functionality.
One of the paradoxes of digital product interfaces is that more features and tools can create more confusion. Without smart design, many users can feel overwhelmed figuring out where to click and which tool to use in order to achieve their goal.
That is why we paid a lot of attention to the simplicity of our interfaces and tools. We reorganized our Site Tools around themes and topics such as speed, security, and more so that it’s faster to find exactly what you need.
Most of our Site Tools perform a task in a single click. For example, you can create FTP users, MySQL databases, and more in seconds. We also set up helpful prompts and information on every page and for every tool, so that you can immediately access a walk-through on how to get a task done without navigating away.
Site-Centric Philosophy And New Features
The biggest change we are introducing, however, is not just a new user experience, it’s a change of philosophy in our management tools. We have shifted from focusing on the hosting account to prioritizing the individual website.
Now, each website is a unit central to all processes and operations in the new interfaces. The hosting plan has become a simple placeholder for one or multiple websites and each site has its own set of Site Tools independent of the others in the same account.
That shift was guided by the needs of our clients. We know that what our customers actually need is to build and manage a site, not to play around with hosting, and we’ve designed our interfaces with this in mind.
This new philosophy allows us to significantly improve the user experience for both single-site owners and how agencies and clients work together since they often manage multiple sites with larger teams. Take a look at how:
Easier Site Creation and Onboarding Process
A significant portion of our clients are single-site users. They are small business owners, growing e-commerce shops, professionals, or bloggers. Their need for easier and faster onboarding has been one of the top priorities when reworking our interfaces.
We have re-imagined the site setup process to be more intuitive so you can get your site up and running fast, whether you’re installing WordPress, Joomla, Magento or another app or migrating an existing project.
Smart Collaboration Tools for Agencies and Freelance Designers and Developers
We also added new features that help designers, developers, and agencies collaborate more easily with their clients. We received many inquiries from our agency clients over the last few years and we’re pleased to deliver tools to help you improve your workflow and take on more clients.
- Easily ship sites to clients. With our new setup, you can start your client’s site under your own hosting account and once ready, ship it to them with a click. Use the built-in option in the new Client Area to easily transfer ownership of that site to your client while adding your recommendation for a hosting plan and additional services in the process.
- Easily collaborate on different projects. If your clients are hosted on a GrowBig plan or higher at SiteGround, they can add you as a collaborator through their Client Area. This will allow you to access their site’s Site Tools and even post tickets without logging into the owner’s Account. Alternatively, if you are working on a project with a team, you can provide your colleagues with their own collaborators’ access to your site.
- Give your clients white-label access to the site’s Site Tools. If your business model requires you to remain the owner of your client’s hosting accounts, you can still allow them to access their Site Tools without the SiteGround branding altogether. This is especially convenient if you offer a package deal that combines site management and hosting. This feature is available for sites hosted on GoGeek plans and higher.
One of the best features is that you can do all three of the above without managing multiple logins. Get access to all the client sites that you own or collaborate on with a single login to your own SiteGround Client Area.
Why We Built Our Own Set Of Site Management Tools
To achieve our vision for a new user experience, we developed a whole new set of tools for your sites. Our new Site Tools are site-specific and will replace the cPanel, which is a hosting account-based software.
We know that the switch to our new Site Tools is a big, and possibly scary, change for some of our clients. Many of you started using our services precisely because we’ve been using cPanel all these years, while others simply got used to it and don’t like change.
We assure you, launching a custom set of tools wasn’t decided on a whim, and below we’ve shared the reasons why we chose to create Site Tools:
- We needed to move away from addon sites, as this concept created certain limitations for our users and their site management options. In the cPanel setup, you have one primary site and subordinate addon sites, which do not get exactly the same functionality. From now on, with our Site Tools, all sites are equal!
- We needed our own implementation of Access Control, so that our new sub-user roles (collaborators and white label sub-clients) can have the desired access levels.
- We want to add new functionality more easily. We have a long history of adding new tools in the cPanel interface to address our unique clients’ needs, such as: WordPress Autoupdates, staging, Let’s Encrypt integration, and more. Now, it will be easier to add similar tools because we will not have to comply with a third-party framework. Maintenance and upgrades to these tools will also be easier.
To make the transition smoother, we made sure our new Site Tools included all the functionality you need to manage your site. You should be able to do almost everything you’re used to doing, except now with a brand new user experience. Since we developed the Site Tools for the specific needs of our clients, they make your site management even more intuitive. We believe that with the new setup, it will be much easier to understand what you are working on, which database relates to which site, how to execute certain tasks and more.
What About Existing Clients Using The Current Setup?
Clients using the old interfaces will be gradually switched to the new interfaces starting in September 2019. We will be using an automated script that transforms all existing add-ons into separate sites while properly moving all sites, email, and other information. We will notify you by email of the switch schedule so you don’t get caught by surprise.
In the meantime, we know that many of you will be curious and may be eager to switch to the new interfaces so we offer the following ways to get acquainted with the new tools:
- Watch the video featuring the new Client Area and Site Tools;
- Try a demo of the new Client Area and Site Tools;
- Attend our webinar that we will hold next month (a separate invitation will be sent over email to those subscribed for SiteGround news).
Comments ( 281 )
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Alex Lp
during the transition to the new interface, will there be downtimes for the websites i have in the old cPanel platform??
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No downtime is expected during the transition.
Emilio
I can't communicate with any type of help, no chat, no phone number nothing, I have been looking to start my site and can't I want to cancel and my money back and this is the only way I know to try and get someone.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hi Emillio, You can reach out our support team from the Help Center -> Contact Us (https://my.siteground.com/support/contact). Select your issue and you will see Ticket, Chat and Phone options to reach out to us!
Josh Rime
Looks absolutely gorgeous and intuitive! Huge props to the staff at Siteground for making yet another big innovative step towards a modern hosting setup. For a long time have felt it was a bit trickier than needed to get to the file manager.
Renee
Not at all! Rather simple, indeed!
Fernando Saling
Wow! It's great!
Fernando Saling
I suggest having the option to turn off "Statistics". I don't use it and if I do, I prefer some "analytics".
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for your feedback :)
Kevin
This new client area looks promising. I hope SiteGround will have a new logo to match this intuitive redesign of the entire SiteGround's front-end and back-end site.
Jubau
Very interesting, wow wow! you guys did an outstanding job!
Marcus
Sounds promising. :-) Which functions and/or services exactly won't be available in the new client area and site tools?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
With the new interfaces and tools we're not limiting but providing even more flexibility and functionality. I don't think there will be something you will be missing!
Chris
Sigh... Not to be critical Hristo, but instead of a canned response, could you please elaborate on the question Marcus asked? For some of us, the devil is in the details and details are all that matter. Don't get me wrong, so far I like what I see and there is *very much* to like, but replies that steer clear of providing answers to direct questions annoy me and wreak of surprise. As one of the minority users in your customer base that provide top-to-bottom website and application services to clients the question is quite simple. Is there anything being removed (that I'm used to quickly implementing in cPanel now) that will hinder me from managing client sites? Do keep in mind, I'm one of those fine-grain types and the vast majority of my clients want me to handle everything from setting up their hosting, email, sites, applications, updates, and maintenance thereof. I'm truly not overly concerned about it, I just hate surprises ;-) Thanks!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Well, it was not a canned resposne for sure. With the new interfaces we are not removing but adding functionality for our customers. We are changing things and actually it should be easier for people like you, who manage more than one website to manage them. I don't want to do a tool-by-tool comparissons because we're switching from account to site-centric product and it would be comparing oranges to apples. For example, in cPanel you have Addon slots, while now, you don't need that tool - each site gets its own Site Tools even though it's under the same account with others. So, I would be technicaly true if I say "we're removing the addons tool" but still it would really misleading :)
Zaffy
You do say in your blog entry "You should be able to do almost everything you’re used to doing, except now with a brand new user experience." That "almost" literally means some cpanel futures won't be available. Which are those? You must realize, many of us bought your hosting knowing Cpanel and its features were included. So we must know exactly what falls in the "almost" category.
ict
I wonder why zappy did not get any reply after asking specifically what features are included in the "almost" category. I also want to know because these shift always have lots of bells and whistles during "marketing phase" but when it goes technical, ratio-ing what features that "new has" against what the old has is sometimes being forgotten and the implementer just stick to the word "new and improved" hiding the fact that the only new is the interface but the features behind it is less than what it was, I just hope this is not the case here, cPanel should be the basis here. If you are bringing all cPanel features in an intuitive interface, then hey, THAT is GREAT! let's have it. but if you are making an intuitive interface to hide other features that we need from default cPanel, HEY WAIT! at least let us choose if we want your new interface or not.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am avoiding direct comparisons because we’re making changes in the product that go way beyond a simple redesign. This said, there is no functionality that we are sacrificing, no functionality removed from. Again, I will use the sample above - yes, we have removed the Addon domains tool but the functionality is there because you now get separate Site Tools for each website under your account. Everything, that we used to offer in terms of functionality, control, features is there. I really hope we fall in the “THAT is GREAT” category :)
foong
Hi, I want to know how to change domain name? I could not find the "Change Primary Domain name" in this new interface.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It is a tool we have not yet launched, but we are working on it. It should go live this or next week latest.
Lawrence
I've been evaluating SiteGround thinking of switching to it. This is interesting news. Having done some pretty interesting DNS changes in Cpanel, I'm curious if the SG team has set all that up with this new interface - for setting up things like GSuite, Office 365, etc. I took a look at the support docs, but it appears most don't address this and that it is all still referencing Cpanel as the default method of operation for all hosting/domain changes. I am hoping (assuming?) that SG has a crack documentation staff hard at work at getting support docs up to date before the launch. Can anyone at SG comment on this?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Right now we're in transition phase - not all of our customers are on the new interfaces and that's why we need to maintain documentation for both. You can check the new info at https://my.siteground.com/support/kb and https://my.siteground.com/support/tutorials. We will soon migrate all documentation into one place and add more info for each of the new tools. As for your other question - flexibility and the ability to get most of our servers were amongst the main reasons to start developing our own set of account management tools. It will be much easier for us to build more integrations and app-speciffic services when we build them on top of our own software. Check out our blog (which is to be redesigned shortly too) for more info regarding Gsuite and other integrations soon!
Sasha
So if I decide to move to a new hosting, will it be as easy as migrating from one cpanel account to another?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You have access to all your data so you will be able to migrate to a different host. At this point, however, we can't provide a cPanel-compatible archive of your account and you will have to transfer files, databases and emails manually.
Lawrence
Also, the demo link just goes to "https://ua.siteground.com/login.htm" and doesn't provide us any method of a dummy login to try and check it out. Or is that only for existing SG customers?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The demo is just for existing customers so they can check the changes we've introduced to our service. If you already have an account with us, once logging to your User Area you will see a button to activate the account. All new customers are signed for the new interfaces and site tools.
Heather
Taking away cpanel huh? I'm extremely disappointed and don't understand the point. You are taking away control from developers to make clients happy. What about softaculous? What about php my admin? What about changing php versions? What about advanced mail functions? I saw the demo and did not see anything much at all....this is suppose to replace cpanel? is this new panel going to make my wordpress sites faster?? because sg optimizer is still not as efficient as wp rocket. I just don't know what to do now. I've been a great customer for about 6 or more years and have referred soooo many clients and have a lot of client sites on the server. I don't know what I'm suppose to do if this ends up being a disaster. Are we still going to get EVERY functionally cpanel gave us?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I understand why you worry but really, you should not :) Check out the demo of the new Client Area and Site Tools and you will see for yourself that all of the above mentioned functionality is there plus much more. Actually, we've added a lot of new functionality specifically for people who manage multiple sites and refer customers to us. cPanel has been a great foundation of our company for many years but it's a 3rd-party software. Building the hosting management software ourselves, we can make it work best on our infrastructure, on our setup, on our servers. Doing this we're improving a lot of services, so yes, your sites should work faster and better on our new platform. As to the SG Optimizer it works much better than any other optimization plugin including WP Rocket on SiteGround servers. If you're not getting that result, I am sure there's a misconfiguration somewhere. Please, post a ticket in the SG Optimizer support forum and I will look into it :)
Heather Wood
Will this make our sites more secure from hackers than they currently are?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am positive that it will. For example, if a website in addon slot gets compromised, all sites under the same account are. Now, each site gets its own Site Tools and that can't happen.
Djay Bustamante
For me one thing is a major 'boo': with this new cPanel, we developers can no longer access the home folder of File Manager. No more manual transfer of email since the Mail folder will no longer be accessible.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I understand that it’s easier to copy few files and folders and have your mails available to you. However, we believe that the email should be a service separate from your website. For example, you can grant access to a developer or client to that website. In cPanel, giving someone access to your home folder automatically gives them access to your entire email communication. Migrating emails through SMTP is a bit slower but not harder at all and all the major email service providers like Google Mail for example utilize it when it comes to migration.
Michelle
I am extremely disappointed too. Just realized I can no longer install Let's Encrpyt certificate without changing my client's domain nameservers on SG's new platform. Not sure why I need to destabilize email and other domain integrations rather than just changing the A record like we have always been able to do. Very tough loss for developers.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
As mentioned above, this is something that we're releasing shortly. The tool simply required more testing because Let's Encrypt is a third-party service and we wanted to rework the service completely in order to make the system scale better. Issuing certificates for domains pointed via A records will be available shortly.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We've just deployed the Let's Encrypt tool patch, you can now issue new certificates for domains pointed via A records to your account :)
Forrest
Can we opt to switch to the new dashboard sooner than September?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am afraid not. We want to make the transition as smooth as possible and without any downtime to our customers whatsoever. This requires strict schedule for the migration and a lot of monitoring while this happens.
George Nicolaou
I love everything about it. As an existing client I wish I could get it now to be honest
Jonathan
will u stull offer 24/7 live chat supprt?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, of course :)
Zaffy
When someone buys hosting, does it with the features it comes with. When we bought hosting in your company, we chose it also cause Cpanel was included. So would like to keep having Cpanel till our accounts expire. We do not know if we will continue with you or not, but we would like to keep having what we paid for when we bought our hosting for the remaining of our subscription. Is this possible?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Indeed you are right. But if your service provider does not enhance those features for a few years, you are most likely to go to a new one because they will have a better package. The good thing about solid hosts like SiteGround is that they innovate, upgrade and keep moving. Over the years we have been constantly improving services and tools and that includes the account management software that we provide to our customers. Sometimes the changes we wish to introduce are not to the liking of all our clients, but we hope you understand that we will never put you through any hassle and stress, unless we believe it will bring more benefits than losses for you. We're switching to Site Tools completely over the course of a few months, so there won't be an option to keep using cPanel until the expiration date of your account. However, there is sufficient time for us to prepare you for that switch and for you to make an educated decision whether or not you wish to stay with us using Site Tools. Did you take a look at the demo and is there anything that you miss? You could share specific details how you currently use cPanel – which tools you prefer and for what purposes so we can explain how you can do that in Site Tools.
Zaffy
Dear Reneta, thanks for your reply. First of all I have to tell you I am aware of the issues the new Cpanel company owner has caused and the huge increase of the cost since they recently announced their new pricing policy. Same company owning both Cpanel and Plesk.. and monopoly was never good for the competition. So I understand why you decided to create and use your own control panel. It is a bold move and probably a necessary one. But allow me to say, I do not think you sell it right. You should be more open and explain to your clients exactly what is going on. Because here is the thing, this move of yours will cost your clientele money, maybe less than keep paying absurb prices to cpanel, but still me and my clients we will have to spend extra time and money to get adjusted to your new system. I will have to train my people and the clients to the new control panel. And that is the good case scenario, because there is the "let's move to another hosting" one that will cost even more. And I am afraid to say, none of my clients so far has been impressed by your new Control Panel, to the point of accepting it. "Why to use this instead of cpanel? It is not worth the trouble" is a question I have listened way too many times the last few days. Of course I inform them about the whole Cpanel ownership issue and the pricing spiking etc etc. So at least they know why they have to do it and pay for it. Maybe you should do the same with your clients as well? Because for Shared Hosting there are still plenty of cheap alternatives out there, still with cpanel on. And you will lose clients that will go to other companies only to soon see their hosting pricing spike in the near future.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Zaffy, I apologize for the delay, I somehow overlooked your comment yesterday. Regarding cPanel, I wish we were so farsighted to see in the future, but it was just a lucky coincidence for us. When we started reworking the interfaces, we didn’t know there would be such changes in their pricing. That is why I prefer not to use the cPanel pricing as an argument in favor of the change – it is simply not true. I am sorry to hear that your clients are not impressed with the new interfaces. If they perceive our service as just another cheap, expendable hosting, then of course, they will only see trouble in this interface switch. But if you and your clients believe that SiteGround aims to offer something much above the average service on the market at a reasonable price, which I assure you is what we do, then maybe staying with us is the less pricey decision.
Cody
Something came up recently that was annoying with the new interface. I had a new client sign up with hosting two days ago. They used their existing domain name when signing up. With Cpanel this is no issue as I could still use the cpanel name to go to their website and start building without pointing their existing DNS record to Siteground until it was ready. But I found without CPanel there is no longer an ability to access the server URL at all. Huge bummer. No matter I thought, I would create a website on a temporary domain name you guys now offer in the interface and then simply switch out the domain name to the real domain name when I point the A Record to Siteground. I was told by your support team that i could not do this and that you guys 'need to be involved to transition the temporary domain website I am building to the live domain'. Why? That is a big limitation as I don't want to have to work with support to take a website live? Is there something I'm missing here as this is a very common thing I'll need to do each time I have a client use you guys for hosting.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Using the temporary server URL is generally bad practice. If you're switching domains in the app configuration using the temporary domain is much better option. As for your second comment - you're absolutelly right. It's inconvenient to have to post a ticket about it. That's why we've added this functionality to the Client Area and you will be able to change the site's domain with a few clicks. The tool has passed QA so I believe it will be available next week.
Cody Sharp
Thanks for the reply Hristo. I'm glad to hear you guys have something in the works that will make this process more seamless. And for the server URL, most times I'm only doing it for an hour or so as I build out all of our websites on a different SGround account and move things over using All in One WP Migration and then change the A Record for their domain once finished. Anyway, glad to hear that it will be even simpler soon.
Frank
I guess the new interface is build on top of CPanel? Or have you made a complete inhouse alternative?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
No, it is completely different software built by us. Check out the blog post for more details!
Jorge Armando Candia Lola
En hora buena, por los cambios. Mi consulta, es referente al soporte. - Cuento con un servidor personal y administro el de la empresa . Ambos con ustedes. Mi consulta es sobre el Soporte Técnico. Extraño el Chat de Soporte, que uso actualmente en otros servidores. Con ustedes, las pocas veces que tengo un percance el tema de mandar ticket y esperar una ayuda o respuesta es tedioso. Es algo que me gustaría que mejoren. - Un Chat de Soporte online Saludos. *Si cuentan con chat de soporte, en el tiempo que estoy no lo ubico o no se donde este.
Wilkins Morales
Hola Jorge, Efectivamente, disponemos de chat en vivo las 24 horas a través del area de usuario. Puedes acceder al chat desde la pestaña Support, en la parte inferior en la sección "Request assistance from our team", pulsa en "here" para mostrar la lista de temas en los que podemos ayudarte. Aquí solo tendrás que seleccionar una de las opciones y el sistema te proporcionará la opción de iniciar un chat tras una pequeña descripción de la incidencia o consulta que deseas realizar. ¡Un saludo!
IVAN PJANO
To speed the truth as a customer of Cloud plan, which has near 100 cPanel accounts which i have all given to mine clients to login, I am bit afraid how this will work and how will mine clients react on this big change when they realize they are losing cPanel which has plenty of video tutorials over the web. Will we get some white-labeled tutorials so we can put on our site to help clients? Basically whats the point of white-labeling your panel when all clients will sooner or later realize we are using your custom panel. One question for the end, how will clients login to their white-labeled panel, will there be any custom url or not? Best regards Hristo and truly hope this will not disrupt mine business.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Your clients will notice that they do not log in cPanel anymore, but they won’t have any idea who’s behind your new interfaces as they are quite generic and make no reference to SiteGround. The new login link is brand-less and quite generic as well. In Site Tools there is a Help module (top right, in the header) with pinned articles, which is available on every page. All articles in this module are white-label – they don’t mention SiteGround, but explain how to work with the tools on the page without reference whose the service provider. If you have any specific content format that might be helpful, please share and we’ll try to deliver in the next months before the switch of your accounts.
Kelly Grace
You had me at, "We know that what our customers actually need is to build and manage a site, not to play around with hosting, and we’ve designed our interfaces with this in mind." As a non-developer I'm excited for anything that makes the UX streamlined, intuitive and less stressful. Sounds like you Apple-fied The Client Area resulting in a sleeker, sexier and more powerful offering. Can't wait to try it out. Thanks to the team for focusing on what the customer really needs. We love it when you do that!!!
MaAnna
What about metrics like AWStats and meters to see bandwidth, CPU, Memory, and I/O usage? As someone who provides security and performance services I need those metrics to see what is actually hitting the site and to run down resource intensive plugins and bot hits. cPanel provided a way to see those things over longer periods of time so I could see the trends. Since SG has a hard ceiling on overages, we need a way to see the issue and then proof that it has been fixed.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Indeed, when reworking our stats interfaces we wanted them to be more useful and friendly for the heavy users who are likely to exceed some of the account limits (CPU and executions being the most essential ones). In your Client area for every hosting account you will see web space used, number of inodes, CPU seconds used, and program executions. In cPanel we no longer provide I/O stats for shared accounts, so we weren't planning on offering that in Site Tools either. Awstats data is parsed in Site Tools > Statistics > Traffic with a new interface.
Harriet
The demo makes it look simpler and easier, but where are the AWStats and CPU, Memory, and I/O usage. And since the demo is a blank site, we can't see how most of the new features work because they are empty. Do you expect to add more features in the future? It would be nice to let your customers participate in a survey to see what we want in the new interface.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
In your Client area you will see your account stats such as web space used, number of inodes, program executions per day, and CPU seconds per day. Awstats data is available in the Site Tools > Stats for each site. Yes, we aim to add more features and we are most likely going to ask about that in our end-of-year survey, but you could also tell us which features you need here :)
Lisa
Looks good. Will I be able to see my site stats in this interface? Like CPU, Memory, I/O usage and AWStats?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
In your Client area you will see your account stats such as web space used, number of inodes, program executions per day, and CPU seconds per day. Awstats data is available in the Site Tools > Stats for each site. Regarding I/O - have you been using the 1H tools in cPanel? We discontinued that tool in cPanel a few months ago so I am not sure how you access that data.
Lisa
I would like it back! Any plans to put that tool back into this new interface? If not, how else can I get that data?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hello Lisa, As Reneta pointed out the I/O stats tool was discontinued some time ago. We would love to discuss adding such information but I want to be sure we’re on the same page here because that info wasn’t particularly useful or vastly used to be honest. Could you elaborate on the exact information you need?
Colin Anthony
We have a GoGeeK account and use the SIteground Service to host all of our Joomla sites I assume that all of the Joomla tools and Joomla related items in cPanel will be present in the new UI by September?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Colin, in full honesty, we have been talking for a while about removing the Joomla tools from cPanel (and not provide them in Site Tools either). We are seeing a solid drop in their overall usage and as you can imagine maintenance of these tools takes its toll. We don't have a date when to discontinue them, as we were discussing if we can provide alternatives to users, but we'll surely update you once we have a solid action plan.
Mike Schmidt
I am a Joomla site developer and host Joomla sites on your platform, and have been doing so for over 5 years. I especially did so because of the CPanel integration. Now it looks like you are going to be phasing out support for Joomla in favor of Wordpress. I would like to make a suggestion for SG consideration. Because there are a lot of us hosting customers who are 99% Joomla and 1% Wordpress at this time, (occasionally we accommodate a Wordpress customer if we can't convenience them to go with Joomla), why don't you consider allowing Joomla users to continue to utilize CPanel, (for a nominal add-on fee), rather than deciding NOT TO extend the functionality to your new Site Tools. I have been watching the slow decline of support for Joomla over the last year or so at SG in favor of Wordpress, so I was almost expecting something like this to happen.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Mike, What you call “phasing out” of the support for Joomla is partially correct way to put it - our core Joomla service and support are not affected in any way. We only aim to discontinue the maintenance of the peripheral tools we have added on top (such as staging). The decline in the number of Joomla clients leads to a decline in the usage of these tools, which regardless how little that usage is still require a heavy and ongoing maintenance. The decision regarding some of our Joomla tools is not associated to the switch to Site Tools and is not done in favor of WordPress or any other CMS either. It naturally follows the life cycle of Joomla itself. As I said we see a drop in the number of Joomla users on our platform, which corresponds to the drop in Joomla searches and overall interest in the software. The reason the two somehow coincided is because when we were evaluating the list of tools we needed to deliver in Site Tools, we have seen the stats with the usage of the Joomla tools and we realized it looked really bad. Site Tools on the other hand is a stepping stones for the development of our service in the future and keeping cPanel is not an option.
Mike Schmidt
Reneta, In your above description you have this statement under the section entitled "Easier Site Creation And Onboarding Process" "A significant portion of our clients are single-site users. They are small business owners, growing ecommerce shops, professionals, or bloggers. Their need for easier and faster onboarding has been one of the top priorities when reworking our interfaces. We have re-imagined the site setup process to be more intuitive so you can get your site up and running fast, whether you’re installing WordPress, Joomla, Magento or another app or migrating an existing project." You included Joomla here... Is it going to be covered ?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Yes, the easy onboarding process is available to Joomla users as well.
Joan Margau
This looks like a great interface change and will make things easier. One question; will I be able still access my websites from inside SiteGround I'm used to accessing websites from inside SiteGround > My Accounts > Go to Admin Panel. I'm on a GrowBig account. Suggestion: add to the demo video an example of what we're currently using before the update to how it translates so we can see it before we implement Activate Demo. Nothing is worse than not being able to access a website when you need to asap. I also manage client websites and they of course have access to their SiteGround Account. When I direct them to this Demo Video they will be 'lost.'
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
From your SiteGround account (Client area), you will still see a list of all your hosting plans (menu item: Services > Hosting) and another list of all your sites (menu item: Websites). From the Websites’ list you will be able to access the Site Tools of each site. So if you have 3 sites in your current GrowBig account for example, all the three will be listed in the Website list and each will have a link to its Site Tools. From the Site Tools panel, you can also quickly switch among the 3 (there is a drop down in the header). Your GrowBig account will be listed in the Services list and you can manage its renewal, cancellation, account stats, etc. from there. Thank you for the suggestion regarding the video! We do aim to provide a video for existing clients highlighting the main differences before and after switch.
Phaedrus
How will awstats be implemented in the new system?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We use Awstats as a data parser and will provide the same information available in it only with a new interface - traffic stats, split by audiences, sources, behaviour, technology and more.
ict
Simple question. Will it have all cPanel features only presented in a different way? if not, I hope you are not planing to "force" this to all your customers.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Yes and no. There will be no addons and we won't use Softaculous any more so there's the NO part. Script installation is automated through Softaculous Remote, but through our own interfaces and all addons will be converted into independent sites with their own Site Tools. We aimed to provide a solution for everything else in a certain shape or form – file management, email service, MySQL and Postgre, FTP, cron jobs, stats, etc. In case we missed something important, we'll certainly add it. Anything specific that you are worried about? If you activate the demo, you will be able to see what exactly is available.
Heather Wood
What about all the tools that have been installed WITH softaculous? For instance Invoice Ninja? Our software that we have been using won't be affected will they? A lot of us use backend intranet software and more beyond just hosting 'websites'.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Any software that you have already installed on your accounts will keep working without any problems :)
Mark Krynsky
Hi Reneta, I'm playing with the demo and I don't see the clone functionality from Softaculous in the new interface. That is a feature that I have used. Will it be available in the new interface?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
It currently isn't, but we are looking into it as part of the conversation regarding a CMS-agnostinc staging environment. We'll keep you posted on that and how we'll approach it shortly.
Pete Clark
I don't see cron anywhere. Am I missing it?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The tool is in Devs -> Cron jobs. If you're looking for a certain tool, I'd recommend the tool finder (ctrl+k), it's super useful!
Danny
Hey Guys! I checked out the demo for the new layout and I love it. You did an incredible job! I'd like to make some content/tutorials on the new dashboard. Do you know when it will actually be live? I'm ready to make the transition any time :)
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We are very happy that you like it :) We aim to start switching clients to the new interfaces in September, but that switch will be rolling over a few months until we convert everyone. Once we have a schedule, we'll start contacting you to announce the switch dates.
Sakthi
I would like to opt-in my account for this transition. I really like the interface. Is it possible to make a transition for my account prior to others. I'm not saying c-panel is bad. c-panel is good for everyone. But with this new interface, I can able to manage individuals sites with their own SIte-tools. and also can able to provide access to my client or developer to that single website alone. (which is great). I really needed these new features, which are all lacked in shared web hosting so far. This is a great initiative by Siteground Team. This is why, when It comes to Wordpress (I prefer siteground rather than any other hosting company) .
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Very happy to see that you find the new features useful ☺ I wish we could offer the option to switch you sooner, but we are currently testing the automated scripts that will do the job and can’t make any promises yet. We’ll keep you posted though!
Richard
cPanel/WHM is out-dated and too old skool for me. Glad to see this transition!
Jim
1. It wasn't broken. 2. We already have "site-level control". The current interface is exactly what I look for and expect in a hosting account - it's what I chose.
Taki
Great news. Look good Thank you guys
Nyssa The Hobbit
I'm glad to see this! I've heard about cPanel increasing its prices and what that could do to hosting fees. I look forward to checking out the new Site Tools.
Ahmad Wali
It is more complicated, reaching support/live chat requires answering too many useless questions. There should be a choice to customers, if they need cPanel or new panel. cPanel is used by everyone and is the norm. For us, it is not very helpful where we have 300+ clients and recommending them to migrate to Siteground. What does it makes it better than cPanel? If it is too good, why other web hosting companies don't switch to their own systems?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Writing your own client interfaces is not an easy task. Depending on the complexity of the processes they have to service, it may take a few months to a few years to produce such software. That is why many hosts choose to start their business using cPanel and as cPanel is a solid and functional software they stay with it over the years. Yet, there are many others who don’t use cPanel but develop their own solutions. Their reasons are the same as ours – better control over the platform and more flexibility to add new features. Every web host decides what kind of software will be available on their platform. We have taken the decision to discontinue using cPanel as we do not wish to conform with their framework any more. Our Site Tools are better serving the needs of our platform and it is easier and faster to navigate and complete tasks on our servers with them. Did you have the chance to activate the demo? If yes, is there anything that you consider to be “harder” or more complicated than you are used to? Your clients cannot be convinced that working with Site Tools will be easier for them, unless you are convinced in that. So let me know if there is anything specific that you are worried about, which we can walk you through and maybe simplify further? As to the support, you actually get access to the Help Center from every page of our interfaces so it should be quicker to get assistance. The rest of the flow has not been changed – when you type your question, we suggest quick answers and then we direct you to the best resolution channel based on your inquiry. It is the same as in the old User area, just doing it through a new interface.
Zaffy
Cpanel has been bought by a new company, the same owning Plesk. And they raised their prices to the sky. This is what monopoly does. More hosting companies will follow Siteground's way if they want to survive. Cause the new Cpanel prices are absurd. So you will soon have 2 choices: pay much more money for cpanel, or use a custom control panel.
Colin Anthony
Hi I posted on Friday but my post has disappeared? I asked what the schedule was for "Joomla" based customers. We are a GoGeek customer and I notice that there are no tools for Joomla on the demo. It is bias towards Wordpress. Can you confirm that all the existing Joomla tools and functionality that we purchased will be present by the time the switch over occurs?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hi Colin, your comment is published and I answered it yesterday. Unfortunately, with not so good news for Joomla users. Please refer to my previous reply.
Richard
How will this affect reseller accounts? I notice that at the moment you’re not presently able to sign up for a reseller account - any updates on when this will be live again as I know a couple of colleagues who are interested in signing up?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
At the moment clients interested in reselling our services could consider our GoGeek plan (or cloud servers) where they can create multiple sites, add users to sites, and offer white-label hosting service. We are not sure yet for how long the signups will be suspended.
Heather
What about our credits we already purchased with reseller accounts? Will we get refunds on those? How will I know when client's account is expiring and he needs to pay me for hosting?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Existing resellers with outstanding credits will keep using them as until now, you shouldn’t worry about that. Again for existing resellers you will know when your accounts expire – same way as until now. My previous reply regarding the reseller program referred to new reseller signups only. And yes, with GoGeek or cloud plans you won’t know when your site expires, but we’ll display a creation date of the site. Expiration date will depend on your billing model. It’s just a different reselling model that we would like to test through new clients only.
Antonio BW
What about the cPanel Transfer tool?, will be compatible with the proprietary software of siteground? What happens if I need to move out from siteground to another Hosting Company with cPanel, the transfer will work?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We have not placed any limitations on transfers away from SiteGround, but there is no tool that could convert your SiteGround account into cPanel-compatible account. You need to back up all your sites and export them as stand alone accounts. We aim to write automations for that, but I cannot guarantee that they will be available any time soon for our clients to use.
J. A. Stubbs
When I try to access my cpanel, Siteground's link hangs; and does not respond. How do I reach cpanel until you install your new system?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, open a ticket in your Help Desk, my collegues from the support team will check your case and help you out!
Zach S
Let me first say, I appreciate the hard work on the new system, it seems much faster, based on React. And obviously looks worlds better. However, as developers, we suggest this platform to hundreds of clients and use it daily so we have some expectations and a very specific functional workflow, which is why we love Siteground. We were able to test, stage, and launch apps quickly. Everyone knows CPanel, we always knew what we were getting. You mentioned that features wouldn't be removed, just changed or moved, which is great if that were completely true. However, in practice, there are some things that have been removed or at least aren't working right now, I'll report them here if it helps: - Cannot generate a free SSL certificate for a sub-domain, if the top level domain is not pointed to the server yet. Which is common practice when we are prepping and testing site before a server move or launch. (I'm aware we could use your temporary domain feature but there are tech reasons why we don't and I can explain if you email me) - Can't use the 'Database Wizard' which creates the database, user, password all in one step for MySQL. This isn't a big deal, more of an annoyance. - Cannot change the name of the database any longer. I know you can add a label, but the actual name is auto-generated and can't be customized from what I can see. We have use cases where this is needed or at least will cause a big hassle if we can't. - I thought there was an Email Deliverability function previously, but maybe I am wrong about that one. It was to punch in an email and get a report of whether the server has received emails with that address and the status (delivered locally, failed, etc) That's all for now, solid work overall.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Thanks for the feedback ☺ Regarding the Let’s Encrypt SSL for sub-domains you are right and we are working on it - very soon you will be able to install it on subdomains where the primary domain’s NS are not yet moved. Regarding the database creation and the wizard – we aimed to shorten the process to the absolute minimum (click and create without any input). We even cut the password input field as a way to further speed up the creation with the added benefit of increasing the overall password strength level. Also, instead of guiding you through steps, on the success screen we feature the recommended next step. Database names are auto-generated to avoid system conflicts – the name being the unique identifier of the database. Can you tell us a bit more about the case where you need to change the database names so we can think of a solution? I assume you talk about a tool called “Track delivery” in cPanel. In our cPanel we have never shown that tool (I think it’s a relatively new addition) and we don’t have it in the roadmap for Site Tools. What we have is enabled Delivery Status Notifications, which means that you can set your mail client to return messages if the email has been read by the recipient. Many mail clients have that and could be a healthy alternative.
Heather
I personally change the database naming convention table all the time. I notice the auto installer use wp prefixes for creating databases (for wordpress) which I believe to be a security risk because it's the common generic one used. I change that prefix to something else to help with security hardening.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
I checked with the tech team regarding the table prefix - they will make it random. Thanks :)
Zach S
Appreciate the reply, and look forward to the SSL issuance improvement, that honestly was the biggest thing holding us back in our normal workflow. I would really say this is a priority as we've had to contact your chat/support probably 4 or 5 times now in the last week to install SSL certificates, so it's going to be wasting everyone's time. They've been installing sslforfree.com on our sites, which doesn't auto renew and we'd have to manually renew every 3 months. Times this by hundreds of websites and you can see our problem. Something that took 0 minutes before now takes 15 - 20 minutes per website. RE: Database Names - The use case where we had this is in applications that we've built locally that use the database name in the code, custom apps. We can predict what the database name will be on cpanel (username_ourname) when we push the files live so it is nice to be able to 'set it and forget it'. Not a huge deal, it's a rare case. RE: Email Delivery - You're probably right, I see this on some cpanels, but maybe you didn't have it before either. It's a cool feature that we would use, so I'll throw my vote in for that.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Just to clarify, the Let's Encrypt implementation has always been a tool, built by us. However, we took the chance to rework it when we launched Site Tools and the new Client Area, thus the delay. I think we're right now the biggest Let's Encrypt certificate issuer in the world and as such we're very close to a number of rate limits they have in place. In order to avoid such problems in the future we had to come up with a pretty complex system behind the scenes which unfortunately we couldn't finish before the launch. However, it will be available very soon and hopefully all those issues will become thing of the past. Thanks for your other recommendations too, we will most definitely look into that tool and include it in our email service improvement roadmap if it can fit the overall picture naturally. As for database name, at this point we prefer not to allow custom naming in an effort to improve the security level of our customers accounts. Unfortunately, it comes with a bit of an inconvenience in cases like the one you've mentioned.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Quick Update: We've just deployed the Let's Encrypt tool patch, you can now issue new certificates for domains pointed via A records to your account :)
Stef
Hi SG Team, your amazing job looks to give a really good new interface. I have 2 questions about it : - You mentionned Let's Encrypt managment but I did not find anything about that in the ddemo, did I miss something ? - Cpanel, Softaculous (that I am really not a user) weighs a big weight on each new hosting I'm crating. Will this new interface be a little lighter ?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
You can find the Let’s Encrypt SSLs in Site Tools > Security > SSL Manager and from there you choose the domain and type of SSL you wish to install (Let’s Encrypt Standard and Wildcard being the first 2 options in the drop down). We will no longer use Softaculous, but we have an Applications manager interface (powered by Softaculous Remote in the backend) from where you can install automatically applications (and log into their admin panels or delete them). You can find it in Site Tools > Site section > App Manager. We surely tried to make it simpler and we'll appreciate any feedback once you get to try it :)
Damian
Upon first look it looks like a very wordpress focussed move. Will Joomla be just as supported?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Damian. When redesigning the interfaces we weren’t aiming to make them WordPress-specific, but CMS-agnostic and generic enough for even inexperienced users who are not sure what kind of software they want to use to be able to get onboard easily. That being said, given that the majority of our clients at the moment are WP users, there are some special conveniences that we have provisioned for them (mostly shortcuts to WordPress tools from the Client area and Site Tools). All other CMS-s are supported the same way as before. You can easily choose to install your preferred CMS upon site creation or from the App manager in Site Tools and then manage it from the App manager. For Joomla specifically there are changes indeed. However, these changes are not associated with the new Site Tools, but rather with the overall Joomla usage drop we see over the last years. We plan on discontinuing the staging and auto-update tools from cPanel (and Site Tools accordingly) as they are heavy to be maintained, but we are still discussing if we could provide any alternative solutions. We'll keep you posted once we have a solid action plan.
Sam Adams
I use the Joomla tools 'staging' feature extensively. Reneta stated it will be discontinued and a replacement is only in the discussion stage. Please take this vote/request to make it easy and quick (1-click!) to replicate a site for testing purposes. This would seem to be CMS-agnostic, as said elsewhere, and not tied to Joomla.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
That would be my dream as a product person :), but we have discussed that internally before and the bottom line of such conversations is that we would create a very raw product that would not do much good to anyone. Unfortunately, even though CMS’s seem to have a lot of similarities they also have inconvenient differences that make it difficult to create a homogenous flow for all of them. Creating a staging solution (where in some cases the application needs to be reconfigured) is very challenging because different CMS apps have specific set of configurations that must be taken into consideration when building a staging tool like ours. I have not given up on the idea though and we'll surely keep thinking about it.
Jim
I've checked out the demo. It seems that you're trying hard to make this new thing as easy and as useful as cPanel, but you're not there yet. You have a way to go before it's as user friendly as what we already have, which makes me wonder why you feel a need to reinvent the wheel. Having to switch between sites - especially when using File Manager - is a real step backwards in my estimation. The best praise I can give after checking out the demo is this: It's not awful. It's not cPanel, but it's not awful. I've been happy with Siteground since switching over a couple of years ago, but I am very disappointed with this move - it feels like something EIG would do.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Jim, Thanks for your feedback, it’s really appreciated! When we started rebuilding our product and interfaces, we had and still have to balance between what the technology dictates, following the principles of human interaction and what goals our customers are after. I understand that you like cPanel’s interface and the way it’s organised - people prefer to follow established routines and patterns in the way we interact with products. For example I can’t stand the fact that in my wife’s Mini Cooper air ducts turn clockwise to open and counter-clockwise to close. We wanted to make it better for people who manage more than one website and still keep it easy with those with only one installation. Yes, it is easier to access File Manager once and click around all your addons but the new interface has its advantages because: 1. You have separate Site Tools for each site. If you want to hand over ownership to someone or even ask for help from a dev, you can just give them access to that particular site and not to all of your data within that account. 2. You don’t have to worry about document root folders anymore. If you use the top left dropdown while on the File Manager page, you will be redirected to the same page for your other installation. That might be easier than finding where did you set that particular addon domain. I have 17 domains on my GoGeek, trust me when I tell you I understand what you’re saying. Lastly, I can argue that that’s quite the opposite of what a company driven by its shareholders would do! We’re doing an innovation and building a completely new product in the name of better performance and user experience. Just give it some time, I am sure after a week you won’t even think about switching back to the old interfaces, tools and the way data is structured :)
Sean H
Looks very interesting! Bring it on :-) I've been shopping around for a VPS for the prime reason of being able to manage the files, websites, emails etc separately, and not in the same tree. I am no longer shopping, I think I'll be staying put in my GoGeek. I know how certain changes can make people nervous, especially ones this big, it's human nature, as we are creatures of habit. With that said, I don't think SG took this decision lightly, having invested what I'm sure is a monumental amount of time and money in this. It also seems the virtual doors are open, in that they are listening to their clients. Now I have a few random questions: Will you continue to offer WHM/cPanel on cloud servers? For those who still need/want it. I have the habit of logging into cPanel by adding port :2083 to the end of my primary domain. Can I keep doing that? What about :2096?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Sean, When we started working on this huge project, we didn’t want only to redesign an interface but actually provide our customers with a faster, safer and generally better workflow. A lot of people are using addons and despite the fact that we’ve done huge amount of custom work to isolate different accounts from one another, there’s nothing we could do for addons simply beacause of the way they are structured. By going site-centric we eliminate two problems - the inability ot easily grant full access to a single website under an account to another person and the shared environment between all addons. To answer your questions directly, we will discontinue cPanel/WHM for all our products and migrate everyone to Site Tools. However, we’re currently working in functionality to configure the accounts you can create under your cloud servers. We won’t switch our cloud accounts to Site Tools until that task is completed and fully functional but I can assure you it won’t be long. As to your other question, at this point there's no such shortcut but we're brainstorming if it would be possible to come up with one while keeping a single auth for all your sites :)
Jim
Thanks for that reply, Hristo; but I disagree. What you guys seem to be touting as a major improvement - "separate site tools" - seems more of an impediment to efficiency to me. A couple of days ago, I created an add-on, installed Wordpress, SSL, created an email account, added a forwarder and a CNAME; all in the span of about 3 or 4 minutes. Efficiency and ease of use isn't an issue with cPanel, just in my opinion. I can't give this departure from what I bought and signed up for much time to "grow on me" - my yearly hosting fees are due in just under a month so I have to decide very quickly if I'm going to live with your not too successful attempt to improve upon cPanel. Like I said earlier, it's not awful; but it's not cPanel. I don't know yet what functionalities will be missing as you guys aren't addressing those questions directly. If you're going to reinvent the wheel, you should probably at least keep it round in shape because merely making it an oval (or a square) is not an improvement even if some people say that it is. Sorry to dismiss your hard work and good intentions - but you guys are trying to fix that which isn't broken from my perspective.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am fully aware that we are in the “hypothetical” field – we announce a change and we give you a demo to try, but you are not actually working with the new tools so you can be reassured that you’ll get what you need in the new interfaces. I also understand that from where you stand some of the advantages of the new Site Tools are not visible – they are long-term opportunities without immediate positive impact on your workflow. When I say you won’t miss anything, I mean that in Site Tools there is a way to do all the things you have been doing with cPanel so far, but in a different way. That being said, there is always a corner use case that may hit the rock, but we ask you to give us that corner case (tell us about it) so we can be specific and say “you can do it that way” or “you can’t do that at all” or “we’ll make it work, but it’s not working at the moment”. One of the two main reasons we announced the change more than a month before the actual switch for existing clients was that we actually want to hear from you about “missing” tools and have the time to deliver them before we switch you. (The other reason being to give you a fair notice it’s happening.) Let me know if there is anything else we can do to help you in your decision-making process. I am available to answer any question and maybe show you how to do specific things that you need. I do hope you will renew and continue using our services :)
Bernard
Hello, I tried the demo of the new dashboard. It looks nice but what is the future of cPanel's "WordPress ToolKit"? In the demo, I can't find some tools that are very useful like "Secure Admin Panel" to make the administration panel accessible only from selected predefined IP addresses (don't want to manually edit .htaccess to do so) or "Fix Permissions" ? These tools are really handy, hope they will be included is the new dashboard as well. Thanks to confirm...
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We have kept all the functionality that you had in the WordPress Toolkit but moved things around so they are accessible in a more natural way. You can Reset Admin Password, Secure Admin Panel, Fix Permissions, Move Application and Delete Application (former Toolkit actions) directly from the Site Tools -> WordPress -> Install & Manage page. If you want to install and enforce an SSL certificate, you can do it from Site Tools -> Security -> SSL Manager. As to restricting your site to specific IPs, you can do it from Site Tools -> Security -> Protected URLs. Since we’re moving from account to site-centric management, changing the URL of your WordPress application is now part of the primary domain change functionality in your Client Area. We will make this tool available within a week!
Suanlian Tangpua
I have tested the demo today and this is my review and suggestion... 1. Very clean and minimal design - I Loved it! 2. I like the Monthly Statistics very much. 3. I wish, there will be a breadcrumb / small icon saying "one step back" it is difficult to navigate backward, the only option is to click the browser back button. 4. The button which said "Add" under extras made me nervous to click through. It looks like I am adding directly without knowing the details. But when you click, it shows the details of the products with another final add button. If the first excerpt button could be "Details" or "know more" I think it would not be confusing. 5. How to go to PhpMyAdmin? 6. Where to change the PHP version? 7. I wish everything could be there on the dashboard first-page. 8. How to create an FTP account? *I am afraid we will miss out something which is important :(
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the feedback, it’s really appreciated! Now that we’ve launched the product, we will do our best to improve it and reach the best possible user experience we can. Let me address your questions one by one so I don’t miss anything.
Every tool is directly accessible from the left column. In addition to that, we don’t have “main” pages for Site, Security, Speed and the rest of the top level items so a breadcrumb won’t be particularly useful. We will look into it further for the new Client Area. I will pass that on to our UX team and our project managers for review. Probably, a better wording is possible here. From Site Tools you can navigate to: Site -> MySQL -> phpMyAdmin From Site Tools you can navigate to: Devs -> PHP Manager -> PHP Version In Site Tools you can use the Pinned Tools functionality and actually do that. In the Client area we have thought about it, but it’s a bit different as we have too much incoherent data that needs to be structured. We’ll definitely keep working on the dashboard though and we’ll take your feedback into account. Thanks! From Site Tools you can navigate to: Site -> FTP Accounts One more thing that’s a bit of a “hidden gem” in the Site Tools - Tool Finder (Ctrl +K)! It’s great, use the shortcut, type ftp or mysql and you will get all the relevant tools!Suanlian Tangpua
Hi Hristo, Oh! you are right I didn't see that menu on the left ;-). Why is it hidden there??!! ...your fault, not mine! :D :D
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
It always is! The menu shouldn't be hidden on desktop, what's your monitor resolution if I may ask?
Suanlian Tangpua
Not from a desktop but MacBook 13 inch. I think it will be fine on my desktop 24inch.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks! We will look into it with our UX team :)
Lisa
Where has the web chat disappeared to?? The support is slow and not clear any more. Please can you fix this! We are not getting the help that we have experienced in the past.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I can assure you that our support team is handling chats and tickets fast than ever (looking at response stats) and the reason we moved things around was to make that response process better. Click on the question mark icon at the top right of the Client area or Site Tools. You will see some pinned articles which we selected to address the most common client inquiries on every page. If that information doesn’t solve your issue, you can click the link at the bottom of the help window Visit Help Center and then look for the Contact Us tab.
Michał
I'm a new customer, so the changes don't concern me much. However, I think switching current customers from September might be a little rushed. Like some people mentioned, some customers use SG to build and maintain websites for their customers. Even if all the features of cPanel can be found in the new interface, they will be "hidden" under different names and perhaps what once was in one place, will now be scattered across the panel. It'll be stressful for the customers. All that being said, I think that before the migration, there should a detailed guide on how to perform each action of each cPanel tool in the new interface. Otherwise SG might be risking losing their old and loyal customers.
Michał
*there should a detailed guide PS, customers are afraid because that's a completely new interface with a lot of unknowns. I remember there's a rule about novelty: it's great but it needs to be familiar. If you change too much, people will panic. I believe SG is doing it for the best interest of everyone, but it's a huge step so take it slow and good luck.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Thank you for your suggestion :) We do realise that the biggest challenge in this change is managing the fear of the new. We have started working on guides to help our clients get used to the "new ways" and we'll keep adding new content based on feedback like yours and any suggestion we get during the next month or so.
shreeram
how to chat
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can click on the question mark icon in the top right part of your page and then select View Help Center. From there, you can go to the Contact Us page and follow the instructions :)
Phaedrus
Will customers who contacted for cPanel be honorably refunded when cPanel is eliminated?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Clients who wish to stop using our services and are eligible for a refund will be refunded according to our Terms of Service. However, these Terms do not provision refunds due to a change of software.
Steven Adger
Will the cPanel API still be available to use after the transition?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We’re completely discontinuing cPanel so its API will no longer be available. Could you share more info on how you were using it?
Steven Adger
I have a script running on an offsite server with a dynamic ip which would use the API to update the A record of one of our subdomains. I can adapt the script to your interface with selenium if need be though.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, it's possible but you need to adjust your script. Please, email me directly at hristo.p [at] siteground.com and I will provide you with the necessary instructions!
Aleksey
I don't have a support tab in my user account. How can I contact support?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can click on the question mark icon in the top right part of your page and click on View Help Center. From there, you can go to the Contact Us tab, select the website you need help with, choose issue type and you will get in touch with our support team :slightly_smiling_face:
Ben
Under the new Site Tools setup, you can currently only install a LetsEncrypt certificate if the domain uses SiteGround nameservers. That's a new development because you used to be able to install a LetsEncrypt certificate if the DNS A record pointed to the SiteGround IP address. For a number of reasons, I don't want to point some client nameservers to SiteGround just so I can install the LE cert. When existing cPanel accounts are migrated to Site Tools, will the existing LE certificates continue to autorenew if the A record points to the SiteGround IP address but the nameservers point elsewhere? Thanks
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You will be able to issue LE certificates for domains pointed via A records shortly. The task for the update is in QA stage now and I expect it later this week to be live. As for your second question - yes, certificates will be renewed automatically and you won’t have to reissue them manually. At that point, HTTP verification will be already fixed so I don’t expect any issues.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Quick Update: We've just deployed the Let's Encrypt tool patch, you can now issue new certificates for domains pointed via A records to your account :)
Steven Adger
Will sub-accounts under my reseller account also change to this interface?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, we will migrate all accounts including ones issued with reseller credits to our new account management system. This said, they will receive a whitelabeled Site Tools login URL and interface.
Danny
Hristo, We've been having our DePaul University students use SiteGround for about a decade now, telling them that their experience will expose them to what managing a web hosting account is like. We say that CPanel is the industry standard, so when you learn it, you can use SiteGround or most any other of the leading webhosting firms. They get a good customer service and uptime experience at SiteGround, so I imagine you guys convert a few of them into long term customers. I can't make this same pitch to them any more. It may be that all the other firms are building their own interfaces and there no longer will be a de facto industry standard. But I just lost my main selling point for getting reluctant students to jump through the (albeit minimal) hoops of setting up a web hosting account. You guys aren't making any money (at least not right away) from my students, so this isn't going to be any huge loss for you. It's more a loss for me (who has to go find a different host now) and for them (who probably will have to pay some cash up front.) That said, I can see why SiteGround is making this move. In many ways BlueHost, DreamHost, etc. are not your primary competition anymore. Your primary competition is WIX, SquareSpace, WordPress.com, etc. And the interface you guys have created will compete much better against those guys. Your change will be fine for my own personal hosting--I know CPanel, but can easily adapt to this new interface--and once I know it well, it will be fine for my own needs. Maybe even better.
Bryce
Will the transition handle Wordfence installs ok? I know I have auto_prepend_file set in the PHP variables in order to enable the Wordfence firewall. Unfortunately I haven't figured out how to enable this firewall on the addons sites yet (I think it is because they are in subdirectories of the main site, and this confuses Wordfence)? Will the addon sites be moved into their own separate stand-alone directories? It sounds like that would make running the Wordfence firewall on all sites much easier. I also have some .htaccess rules set up for my main site to rewrite WP permalinks. I assume these will still work after the transition? Thanks.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Bryce, Addons will receive their own Site Tools which will practically elliminate all the issues you’re having with installations in subfolders. Generally, the new setup is much better for WordPress sites. As to your other question, we will migrate .htaccess rules too so I don’t expect issues there.
Mike Schmidt
I just submitted 2 comments in reply to a couple of previous Joomla suggestions and both of my comments have been removed. Why ?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
The comments were not removed but needed "approval" to be seen publicly. We do that to make sure we don't miss to reply to any comments. I have replied to both of them.
Darlene
I can't begin to express my disappointment that your company has chosen to remove the joomla tools. I'm not thrilled with the changes in general but I'm sure one can get around the new interface to deal with the removal of cpanel and of course monopolies are not something that are good for anyone in that regard. But creating two issues at once is by far the most annoying of the changes. Also couldn't find Let's Encrypt in the demo, are we loosing the automated feature?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can find the Let's Encrypt tool under the Security tab in your Site Tools. You will be able to issue new certificates with a single click and we will renew existing ones automatically. In addition, during the migration we will move all issued certificates you have in your account, so you shouldn't worry about that either.
Ian
The dashboard looks great. I like being able to develop on in my hosting area and them hand it of to theirs, although I would like more info on how this is done. One thing I would like to see changed is how the Site Scanner reports have SiteGround branding on them. I would like to brand my own reports and forward to the client. In fact, this has put me off doing this for more clients. I’m on the Go Geek plan but I’m thinking of using Manage WP for the site scans so I can use their reporting feature with my branding. I think this is missed opportunity for SiteGround and their clients.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the kind words and for bringing our attention to those mails. We will look into them with our project managers and see how to improve the reports so they are more useful :)
Joao
Why is Siteground focusing and investing on user interface improve instead of real good customer care improvement and security measures to prevent hacking? Appears that the focus is totally wrong and you should be protecting your own clients instead of focusing on nice widgets. Once you have your hosted Siteground website stolen or hacked those nice widgets will not help anyone.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Joao, As mentioned in the blog post, interface improvements and redesign is just part of the work we’ve done. Actually, I believe that Site Tools will greatly improve the overall security of your sites. It provides much better account isolation and we’re introducing a lot of measures to protect you better. For example, since now there isn’t direct access to Site Tools, once you enable Two-facetor authentication in your profile, all sites under your accounts will be better protected by it. However, security is not a single action or improvement but a constant process and we can cover just our part of it, so you will still have to use strong passwords, enable two-factor authentication, update your applications and plugins and generally follow good security practices.
Kylie
Any idea when this functionality will be available to Cloud hosting customers? I've just signed up with the intention of migrating 80 or so sites across from my current reseller web host. Wondering if I should wait until this new interface is available before doing all of that work.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Kyle, We can currently activate (upon request) cloud accounts in the new Client area, which will give you the opportunity to create unlimited sites on the cloud and assign collaborators and (white-label) clients to these sites, but we are not fully ready with the functionality that allows you to create resource packages on the cloud and a more detailed cloud stats (other than what we offer on shared plans). A safe bet to launch the needed functionality for cloud users and start activating cloud plans in the new interfaces should be some time in October. If you feel you can live without these features we can activate an account for you manually even now.
Chip Burris
So, Will, there be better site copy and staging tools? Similar to what softaculous does? Currently, you only have the staging tool which of course does not do anywhere near enough. For example, I see no way of doing dev>staging>prod Often I also use a base WP installation create a staging on another domain then set the staging to be live. There is a ton of other features that are needed for just basic dev. You say you are trying to support the single-site users which are fine. If you don't have what we need can we get a refund if we paid in advance?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Our top priority at the moment is to map the functionality that we have in the old interfaces in the new ones. The type of staging that you talk about (dev>staging>prod ) has never been offered as part of our services. At this point, our tool goes from staging to production (staging > prod). We are planning on providing a more sophisticated workflow for developers, but that will not happen in the next few months. To be honest, using Softaculous in such a way is a workaround itself and with the introduction of Site Tools and the way we're structuring our hosting environment, you won't be able to use it the way you have. That said, in Site Tools I can recommend you to do the following: 1. Setup a base / template / framework website, name it the way you prefer. 2. Create as many staging copies of it as you need for your new projects. 3. Once the site is done, start a new website and use the SiteGround migrator to move your staging copy site for that particular customer to a new instance. That's again a workaround but I think it's still clean and easy option to accomplish your task.
julian paredes
Hi, I recently purchased a website and I was wondering if you can help me with the installation of a new template that I purchase at ThemeForest
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can order a template installation from the help center (https://my.siteground.com/support/contact) -> Advanced Technical Help -> Template Installation :)
Lissa
The support documentation is out of date now, and I can't seem to find any information on how to view hidden files in the file manager. Are all hidden files now shown, or are there steps to do so? I can't figure it out.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
The new documentation is located at the new Help Center - https://my.siteground.com/support/kb. We maintain two sets of documentation because we haven't migrated all our customers to Site Tools yet. As to your question all dot files are now visible through the File Manager without further actions needed.
Rene
When are you going to completely drop Joomla. I would like a timeline so I can move all of my websites.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We are not going to drop Joomla. The service will remain the same. We are simply considering what to do with tools that have very little usage such as the Joomla staging tool. Once we have a clear time frame for any change, we’ll send an email to all affected users. We cannot do so right now as we are in the process of discussing alternatives and there is no clear decision taken yet.
Rene
Disappointed with your company as I have been a long time supporter of SiteGround. Without Staging for Joomla your hosting is close to useless. Now I have to find another hosting provider. Please give a timeframe when the staging is dropped so that I and many other customers can prepare to move our sites to another host.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
As I mentioned in my reply to your previous post - we cannot give you a time frame right now as we are discussing the action plan, but we aim to do that shortly and give you as early notice as possible if we decide to drop the tool.
ICT
I heard that "we can't give you a time frame" sometime in one of my support ticket with SG about 3 years ago for simple drag and drop uploader feature that was long been in cPanel but never made it out of SiteGround interface. Take note. "It never made it out". Simple drag and drop feature. Now they said they have "better than Cpanel". I am just giving RENE the possibility of how long that phrase can take. I am still not fan of changing something that was built through years of experience by someone "NEW" as far as control panel experience is concern and market themselves as the "BETTER" one. I said it once and I will say it again. Give us the ability to choose if we want your "NEW" interface or not. Do not force us! If it is really better, we will move. But let us decide. On our own time.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
The drag and drop feature that you refer to – is it in the file manager of cPanel? If yes, it didn’t make it because some of the newer cPanel themes and updates actually break our in-house built tools and we have to be selective which changes to deploy and which to skip (part of the inconveniences we want to resolve with our in-house built interfaces). Regarding the “better than” part – we say our product is better than the current solution because we believe it is, otherwise why go through this painful change management process? It is the better option for our business because it will let us evolve faster and give you more and more features sooner. We cannot give you a choice between cPanel and Site Tools because this means we have to maintain two completely different products and platforms. The cPanel one won’t have any of the new features we added (access control for example), nor the ones we plan to add. Also, the cPanel setup will keep lagging behind in performance due to the planned platform enhancements (which again can only be applied on the new setup). There is a lot of business logic and technical debt that we are juggling with, but eventually, we want to run a platform that is easier to evolve and is better for our clients.
Edgar
Thats why im with you, guys, looks awesome and easy to use.
Frank
I guess I'm old school. I feel if it ain't broke then don't fix it. The simplicity of cPanel is one of its great features. Everything you could want on a single page laid out by category. An add-on domain was super simple. Now it looks like some multi-page wizard? I figure cPanel licensing is probably driving this change. I can't see putting this much effort into something to just change the layout. Like anything new, I'm sure I'll get used to it.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I totally understand your point of you but I really hope that the benefits will outweighs the added stress and potential issues caused by the changes. The web evolves and grows on paces faster than ever. In order to remain on the edge of new technology and provide fast, secure and stable service that meets the demand of modern apps and sites in general, that was a step we had to do. Changes in cPanel’s license is really pure coincidence, we’ve been working on this for almost three years.
Sudhakar
Just now i have seen Demo of new client area, the User interface is excellent and all features are available in same place. so its very to use the handle the all features. i am also waiting this new client area for existing clients. So we are all moving to new school. congrats and thank you to the team of Siteground.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the kind words!
Brian
If you decide to remove the staging site and push to live tools for Joomla users could you replace it with a development site where things like extension updates, new layouts and templates could be tested prior to implementing these on the live site? This would be useful even if the push to live tool was lost.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
I am taking a note on this one and we'll add it to the discussion. Thanks!
Silver
I can't believe this. Avid siteground supporter and user. Recommend it to all my clients, and use it personally. However this move is simplifying cpanel and making it look like a kids toy you'd normally get with a rubbish host. I don't believe all features will remain and I certainly feel, for the first time ever, that this is not a good update from siteground. Do we get an option to keep our current cpanel? If not, I'll, very sadly, be looking at moving to a new host. Something I never thought I'd say. Gutted.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello Silver, I realize many advanced users feel suspicious of what may look as a “simplified” interface, but a simple interface does not necessarily mean simple in features. Our goal was indeed to make it friendly as a look and feel, but never wanted to deprive our clients from any of the tools they actually need and use. Before starting work on the project, we have analyzed what tasks our users execute and how and made sure we offer a solution for all of them with the new interfaces. Even if there are some corner cases we have not covered, we will quickly patch them once we get an alert from our clients. Is there anything you noticed missing? Unfortunately, keeping cPanel after all clients get migrated to the new interfaces will not be possible. I just replied to ICT why not.
Ted
I host many clients on Siteground and use Couldflare for their nameservers. Will this new platform break their Let's Encrypt SSL if using Cloudflare for their nameservers going forward?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Existing certificates will be renewed automatically, so you shouldn't worry about that. We're almost ready with the update for the tool that will allow new LE certificates to be issued using HTTP authentication.
JBerg
I must admit I'm a long long time user of cPanel and love the functionality I know and count on. So I was a little disappointed when a recent client signed up for a new account and I found the new interface. Thought they signed up for the wrong account type. It does look good and seems to work fine. I haven't gone into in great detail, but if it covers all cPanel features (cron, zone editing, phpMyAdmin, etc) than it should be fine. I did notice when FTP in, I only see the public_html folder and nothing outside of that. Usually not much of a need for anything more, but nice to be able to get in there if needed. I would really like it if there was a choice to go back to the cPanel interface or an option when signing up for a new account to choose cPanel. My question is will you be rolling reseller accounts into the new interface at the same time? And does this affect dedicated server plans, can that still use cPanel? Thanks.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We are not planning on offering a cPanel setup on any of our plans. Cloud plans and Dedicated servers will be switched to using Site Tools last of all, which means in the next few months you will still be able to order a server with cPanel but eventually it will be migrated to a Site Tools setup. Reseller accounts will be switched at the same time as shared accounts as they are hosted on the same servers.
Edem
Hi, i just activated the demo client area but the page is not displaying anything
Angelina Micheva
Hi Edem, We confirmed that you had successfully activated the demo for the new Client Area and Site Tools. There has been a high volume of activations happening simultaneously and it took slightly longer for your demo account to be created. It is working normally now and you can try it when you log into the home page of your client area via the button “Access Demo”.
Flo Nelson
I'm very excited about the change, especially when I read about the tools for developers. The collaboration setup is excellent!
Eppie Anderson
I'm sure it's beautiful and very clever, but running a busy operation, it's REALLY annoying to have to make the time to learn a whole new set of tools when I chose Siteground because it offered cpanel! That time can't come out of chargeable time, so it has to come out of personal time and it adds stress!!
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Eppie, we know there will be stress from the change and we are very sorry for that, but we hope you won't have to spend too much time learning as we aimed to make the interfaces really easy. We are also preparing a guide how to execute all those tasks you used to run in cPanel in Site Tools, which will also spare you some the effort.
Mike
As a developer managing 20+ client accounts from GoGeek to Cloud I manage everything from email to PHP versions to multiple Addon sites and DNS. Your new approach seems very DIY website to me. The new UI may look pretty but some pretty fundemental functionality has gone. Apparently Home directory access is out so managing email just got a lot harder - and - most importantly no more cPanel compatibility. Not only does that mean migrating accounts in and out of SG will now be impossible, those of us with corporate clients who require it are shot. So this is no cosmetic change and those users with more complex requirements who were attracted to SG as a host for developers (Go Geek!) may be severelyu disadvantaged. And all, despite this being in the works for years, with a couple of week's notice (for those of us that got an the email alert today). My September sure just got a lot harder.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Mike, As to email and home structure, we made this change to improve account security overall (access control) and to follow best practices (specialized mail providers do not offer this service either). Transferring Email over IMAP is considered the standard so we wanted to encourage that kind of workflows. Could you share with us what else in your development workflow would be disrupted by this change so we can try to accommodate it (if possible) before we begin the migrations? What other cPanel compatibility do you require besides the export? We will provide migration automation from Site Tools to cPanel, but I cannot give you a quote when exactly yet. Last but not least, we’re working hard on migrations scripts and procedure that should move everything for you. I really hope that you will have a very relaxing September without having to reconfigure anything.
jon
I have a few email question: -Will email account transfer over or will they have to be recreated? -If they do transfer over will all current filtering and forwarding rules transfer as well? -Will it be exactly a week from the warning email to the switch?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hi Jon, our goal is to have the migration scripts move all your email and other accounts and keep the configuration settings as is (filtering, forwarding and others). Yes, we'll notify you exactly 1 week before the switch and we'll give you further instructions what to expect during and after the transfer.
Marsha
Can you speak about the testing that your system went through? I ask because in a rollout like this I'd expect a gradual migration to the new software. That would give SG time to work out any bugs. Migrating everyone within a month sounds a little risky to me. Going forward are you going to have a dedicated staff to fix bugs and make improvements? Thanks!
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
The new Client area and Site Tools have been in a long beta (since March) during which we managed to detect and fix a lot of bugs. We have also undergone security penetration tests during that time to make sure our code is solid. Since the beginning of July 2019 the new interfaces are available to all new clients and we are closely monitoring their performance. Once we were confident they were working smoothly we announced the upcoming switch of existing clients. That switch also requires heavy preparation and testing, which we are completing shortly. It will happen over a few months time, starting in the second half of September server by server. It’s a well-planned project with a high complexity that I can assure you we are not taking lightly.
Rachel
Some people (including me) are keen to get migrated to the new system asap and others to hold off for as long as possible. Is there a way to choose how quickly we get transferred to keep everyone happy? If you leave people who are unsure about it until last, they will be able to see other people's experience of it first, and any things which quite don't work as planned will be ironed out by then.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Thank you, Rachel, for the trust ☺ We aim to give you the option to get switched sooner, but we want to have the mass migration schedule and workload planned first and then organize the work around the individual switches. We’ll keep you posted.
Jim Coefield
Took a quick spin. I'm a developer that maintains total control of my clients' sites, so some of the changes are not really valuable to me, like delegating access to the client. Two major areas of concern: 1) it appears that moving to the site-centered functionality that the root path to the website will change, as an arbitrary name will be chosen. This portends to wreak havoc with my installs (mostly expressionengine) where I need an obvious and static root path. If you change the root path, then many tools on the websites will quit functioning (mostly having to do with paths for things like file uploads and file archives, etc.). If so, then I will have to go back through all the websites I maintain, discovering somehow when each is rolled to the new site tools, and figuring out what the new root path is, then updating all the paths in the application, and testing. Not fun, not efficient, and it will cost me much unrecompensed time. 2) The move to unique database and user names on creation is not good either. I hope that you will not change any already created database and user names, as that would break every application running. Assuming you won't do that, it still creates problems when the developer depends on some sort of semantic naming for the db and the user. For instance, when I go to upgrade an application, I have the database name set to include the app version i.e. mydatabase_EE359. Then to upgrade I duplicate that database with the name mydatabase_EE439. Then I archive the current app, switch the running app to the new database and run the upgrade. This allows my near instantaneous rollback in case something borks. Just allowing a label on the database is useless, as I will constantly have to refer to my documentation to cross reference which db is which. And when I go into phpmyadmin, the lable doesn't carry over, so I don't easily know which db is which, again necessitating cross-references to my docs. This process carries a much higher risk of dev error, and inadvertent mistakes. I understand the desire to increase security, but that can be done by doing something like having a 2 piece db name -- the first part you create, and the second part I append. So it would look like this: slkj5i34KK_myappend459. In any case, if your goal was intuitive use of the tools, your creation of the database tool, and integration with phpmyadmin has missed the mark. It will cause inadvertent errors, time delays verifying and cross-referencing your database name with my associated use, and lack of semantic and intuitive use in phpmyadmin. The lack of the ability to do a semantic append to a user also will cause problems, similar to above. Please reconsider your approach here and add in functionality to append a string to the end of your random/unique database and user names. Otherwise you are working against your stated goals. And clarify how you will approach the root path to app issue I brought up. Thanks, -jim
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Jim, Thanks for the time and effort to provide us with this valuable feedback. To address your questions, we’ve been working hard to migrate our existing customers as painless as possible. This includes database names, which will remain intact. Regarding paths, we will automatically update all paths that we detect to the correct ones. Ideally, you should only check all your websites after the migration and they will be working just fine :) As to new database creation, most apps and projects use those in a config file just once. As to the labeling issue, we are looking into changes that could resolve the PhpMyAdmin and other inconveniences. For the moment, though, making such inadvertent errors should not be a problem because you will have a separate Site Tools installation for each website you have, so you won’t have a single account with dozens of databases there.
Jim Coefield
Hristo, regarding databases, it is multiple databases per site that I'm concerned about, as I stage app updates. I still believe that allowing the dev to append a string to the random database name site tools chooses is a far better solution. I and other web devs always strive to maintain a semantic project to assist with efficient workflow. The database and user name stridency to unique, random strings without ability to append breaks that. As to the root paths, I still don't see how the root path will remain consistent in the various sites when a collated hosting setup is broken up into individual sites. The paths have to be modified, or you won't be able to accomplish this. And when the path is modified externally, references to the path within config files and app routines will be broken. So I don't see how the site will be "working just fine" after it is migrated. The forward-facing presentation may still function correctly, but content and development tasks in the control panel that are dependent upon a path defined prior to migration will be broken. thanks, -jim
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We’re working hard to come up with migration scripts that will take care of every case we have thought of. That includes paths in all account files. As to database names, there are limitations in the length of their names, but nothing is set in stone and since you raised the naming issue we are discussing how to tackle it. Definitely looking to make it better.
Jim Coefield
Thanks for the encouraging reply about databasing (and hopefully users) naming conventions. And it would be good for your migration scripts to document in an easily accessible location things like root paths, ip addresses, and any other critical information. One of the nice things about cPanel was the quick glance at all the different stats and parameters in the sidebar. Having that sort of information all together is convenient and beneficial. My concern about migration scripts is that, for instance, the root path is a variable that is contained both within the ExpressionEngine database for reference by a variety of tools and scripts, and also is hard wired into some config files. I would hope that migration scripts wouldn't modify an apps database, or config file. And a timely email to the developer (owner of the hosting account) as to when the migration is to occur, and upon completion would be most desirable. It is paramount for the developer to test out their sites asap post-migration before a client who only manages content might discover problems. thanks again, -jim
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the recommendation, we're already showing some info in the dashboard but we will consider adding more when we discuss UX improvements :)
atmos
A couple of questions - Is this change still Cpanel or now a bespoke hosting service? Is there still a way to migrate off siteground to another host using a Cpanel migration? - One of the main features I tend to use is support chat to request changes or report urgent issues but its always hidden away on the current dashboard, is there an easy place to access with new dashboard? (I'm not interested in being pushed to help articles or raising tickets as its usually quicker to resolve over chat)
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Site Tools is completely different system that we’ve been working on for almost three years. At this point you can’t migrate using the cPanel account export / import functionality. Once we finish migrating our accounts, we will look into adding this functionality but I can’t give you an ETA right now. As to your other question, after login, you can go directly to https://my.siteground.com/support/contact and get support right away. You have to be logged in though.
Stephen
If the demo site is anything like the final product, I'm so disappointed. Some of the features of cPanel are missing such as Addon Domains, FTP Session Control and SSH Shell Access to name a few. Why is it so fluffy and dumbed down? I sincerely hope this isn't what the final product is and none of the functionality is lost. Point and click and losing control of what I can do is exactly why I moved away from my previous host.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Stephen, Addon domains are removed because with the new structure, you have a separate Site Tools for each domain which is great security improvement and much cleaner way to host your sites under the same account. SSH is there too, under the Devs section. I would recommend you to use the Ctrl+K combination for tool finder - it really makes it super fast to go right to the tool you need. Lastly, the FTP Session Control is one of the very few tools we that aren’t yet present in our new platform as functionality because it was barely used by our customers. However, we will keep improving and adding functionality to Site Tools :)
Amos
I've gone through everything in the demo, and, amazingly found all the tools I use. It definitely looks neater and less of a mess than CPanel is. Can I suggest having only SFTP as the default, rather than the non-secure FTP? All services should default to the secure versions, with the non-secure access removed in my opinion.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the kind words! As to SFTP that's a nice suggestion, once we complete the migration over the new system we will be able to fix, improve and change our tools much easier and safer so that's deffinitelly one thing we will look into!
John
Update the cpanel, even godaddy's looks better than siteground even though siteground is way better than godaddy.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We're switching to a completely new system. Check out the demo, I belive you will like the new looks of our interfaces much better than the old ones!
Jane
So... I have a lot of clients on the reseller accounts @ $45/year. It looks like this option is being phased out. Please tell me that's not the case! I need that low cost hosting and will have to transfer 30 plus clients away if this is the case.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
You will get to keep a really low price (initial and renewal) for your accounts. Each will now cost you 59.4 AUD – it’s slightly higher than the old credit price, but still much lower than our regular prices. The main difference is that you won't be buying credits any more, but you'll enjoy a fixed discount on StartUp plans.
Abhijit
At this moment SiteGround installs WordPress without security hardening. So I would like to see WordPress with security hardening feature in the new interface.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We already apply a lot of security measures on server level for our WordPress users. What would you expect in a hardened WordPress installation?
CogitActive
Dear Reneta and Hristo, I am one of the few single-site owners that comment on your post. I like what SiteGround is doing (or have done so far) and I want to believe this new Site Tools will not affect this. Indeed, I had the same reaction as Zaffy to the “almost” in “you should be able to do almost everything you’re used to doing”. After reading the blog post (and the 171 comments), I am still not fully reassured. Specifically, I have two concerns. #1: Domain-based WordPress Multisite installation I may not have a typical configuration, and I wonder how (and if) your “automated script” will handle any potential peculiarity (without messing things up). For instance, I do not use wildcard subdomain (and don’t want to). This also applies for my Let’s Encrypt certificates. In keeping with this configuration, how your “Site-Centric Philosophy” will display my different sites knowing they are all within the document root (i.e. no separate document root for my subdomains). #2: Backup with Softaculous Several time you have stated that “there is no functionality that we are sacrificing, no functionality removed from”. However, then you have acknowledged: “we won't use Softaculous any more”. I do like this clarification from Hristo, though: “When I say you won’t miss anything, I mean that in Site Tools there is a way to do all the things you have been doing with cPanel so far, but in a different way. That being said, there is always a corner use case that may hit the rock, but we ask you to give us that corner case (tell us about it) so we can be specific and say “you can do it that way” or “you can’t do that at all” or “we’ll make it work, but it’s not working at the moment”. Here is my “corner use case”. I am using Softaculous to create on-demand backups (not free on StartUp) as well as monthly extra backups (i.e. in addition to your daily backups) to keep locally. I know there are other ways to do that (e.g. cPanel tool, SG tool, FTP+phpMyAdmin, plugin), but Softaculous provides a very convenient (and free) way to back up both Files and Database. What is the other way – that is not one of the aforementioned tools – I can keep doing that if Softaculous is gone? While I am not that concerned with the new User Area, replacing cPanel with the new Site Tools is a titanic change to come – I hope it will not encounter any iceberg. Please, provide ASAP some documentation detailing “the main differences before and after switch” (i.e. how a cPanel task translates into a Site Tools task). I am referring to something in addition to the future kb and tutorials (that will replace the current ones). Both will be highly needed to compensate for the loss of the many cPanel tutorials. I am looking forward to attending the coming-soon webinar. Good luck. PS: There are some good comments; the one from Danny, in particular. As he said, “the interface you guys have created will compete much better against [your new competitors]”. I just hope you will not sacrifice quality over simplicity. While most people (nowadays) like the quick and easy way (e.g. one-click solution), there are still some that prefer to do things the correct way (no matter how complicated it is).
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Let me address your concerns one by one so I don't miss anything :slightly_smiling_face: 1. There are three ways to configure MS - using paths, subdomains or separate domains. Subdomains should be configured with wildcard subdomain or by manually adding all subdomains you need, separate domains should be configured using parked domains and paths don't need anything in particular. Once we migrate all parked domains and subdomains, your config and your databases, everything should work. Addon domains will be converted to separate websites under your account but you shouldn't be able to use them in MS configuration anyway since they require unique document root. Honestly, I am sure that one may come up with a way that our scripts won't handle, but our technical support will be there and prepared to help in all situations that may occur. Hopefully, you won't have to do anything, but just in case. Certificates will be migrated 1:1, since they are something, configured on our servers, I don't expect any problem at all with them. 2. We provide our own backup solution and honestly Softaculous was duplicating it. We didn't want to invest development time to remove it. Softaculous often announce different functionality that's not really part of their core idea of being a 1-click installer which is something that doesn't fit well in our ideology. In addition to that, Softaculous backups are created on the very same server where your account is located so they don't really add a lot of security. I would recommend upgrading to Grow Big where you can create instant backups which are stored on a different server and are much easier and safer to create and restore from. 3. We have full documentation for Site Tools that we will make available the upcoming week for existing customers. I agree that moving away from cPanel is huge change but we all believe it's for the best. I think that once the initial issues caused by the migration are solved, you won't want to ever get back to cPanel after a week of using our system
Phil
So, this is going to be the all new Siteground? YES, PLEASE! I used the demo a bit and I can definitely say, it's the most advanced management tool among all the ones I'm currently using from other providers – at least in terms of UI/UX. One more thing: PLEASE give us MySQL 8. It's around THREE YEARS now! And Percona Server is also available, so there is no excuse ;P
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the kind words :) I am really happy that you like our new system! As to the MySQL, we're launching all new servers with 5.7. Moving to 8 is in the road map but it is a big change having in mind the number of sites we host. We really would want to complete the migration away from cPanel before starting to work on it.
Bill
I have 11 sites on my account. I cannot find a way in the new interface to create an ftp account to access all 11 sites. Where do I find this option? Please don't tell me I will have to create 11 ftps and log into 11 ftp sesiions whenever I want to push stuff to all 11 sites.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Splitting sites into separate Site Tools instances has a lot of benefits but I am afraid that you won’t be able to access all your sites through a single FTP account. It’s a fine balance between security, access control and easy content modification. However, we appreciate that kind of feedback and use cases as they allow us to enhance the functionality based on actual client needs. We will consider how to make that more convenient.
Jim Coefield
I have to agree with Bill here. With ExpressionEngine, there is a multi-site manager, to host multiple sites with unique domain names from a single app installation. This is a convenient approach for a developer who is building multiple unique sites with unique domain names for one client, usually with linked or similar purposes. Each site and domain name has its own subdomain, but when you develop or modify the sites you often will access the subdomains for all the different sites and domains you are managing. So, like with Bill, instead of just utilizing one connection and bouncing around the subdomains doing the updates (as I do now), I'd need to maintain multiple ftp connections (sometimes 10+) to do the work. Not very efficient for either the developer or server. Maybe a master ftp account for the hosting package that allows access globally? thanks, -jim
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Master FTP account would greatly harm account isolation. There's always trade off between speed, security and convenience. In my book, two-factor authentication is the worst thing ever created by humanity but I really started appreciating it when I lost my CC and started getting texts before I manage to close it... This said, if you're managin multiple domains pointed to the same app, that's still one account and one website with multiple domains parked to it!
Anthony Wyld
Will inode allocation be impacted at all? I have a googeek account with approx 20 sites and I have hit the inode limit although nowhere near the allocated capacity in GB
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
At this point we are not updating the inode limitations for our accounts. They are not related to the size of your files but the number of files and folders you have on your account. High number of inodes can significantly increase the load on a lot of systems including backups, thus the limitation. However, that limit is set really high. I would recommend checking for temp, cache, log and other automatically created files that can increase the number of inodes you have under your account.
Pete
Honestly not a fan. I chose SiteGround because of cPanel support. I didn't even mind how long it took SiteGround to update components or the framework. The new interface simply looks clunky with extremely large buttons that take up a lot of screen real estate. If I'm on a mobile screen, that could work. There's no use case that I'd want to manage a website via a mobile screen though. Places you'd expect to see page content are pull down menus. Pretty sure I'll be looking for a new hosting provider. Reminds me pretty strongly of what happened to the UI for Windows Server 2012, when it just became difficult to use for any kind of advanced functions. I had to go back to command line to accomplish most things.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
cPanel is great tool and it has been a trusted partner for our company for many years. This said, I think our new designs are much more intuitive and easy to use. I am a bit puzzled about the second part of your comment. Is there any chance you're on a 13" laptop because we have a known bug that will be fixed soon with such screen sizes showing the mobile menu instead of the desktop one?
Jacbizer
I've been managing a client account with siteground and the new platform has a lot of restrictions.. you don't have full control to the folders and files on the root directory, you can't change email password on webmail unlike on cpanel, if you wish to migrate to other hosting provider, it is even harder specially migrating emails.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
You can move emails from one server to another through IMAP migration. Having email files accessible directly is a security risk that we want to eliminate in Site Tools. For example, if your web app gets compromised due to old plugin for example, the attacker shouldn't be able to access your emails and all the vital information there. If you look at big email providers like Google Mail for example, none would give you such type of access. As to changing your password, it's literally one-click in Site Tools. I honestly don't think that's a restriction of any sort.
Melita
Hi, I am curious. I went and activate demo! But the name of the site is not my site, it's something like newuademo.com And I am also looking for my folder, where I kept all the files, the most important thing in our website, and perhaps the only thing that I use the most. The folder is supposed to be in the File Manager, Public HTML, there are quite some folders in there. I couldn't find it as well in the demo. Is that because this is still a demo version, and so it's not actually my site??? Will my folders still be there and be functioned as before. I normally upload all these files into siteground, and then linked them to the wordpress. Will this still be the same? Very hard to get any helps from the "Question Mark" button too!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Melita, This is a demo account with demo content, once we migrate to the new platform, you will have your own content and configuration :)
Radio Rider
A+ work on the new custom dashboard! These improvements are fantastic. Way to go! I have 2 questions: 1) I have a GoGeek account with a Magento (version 1) site that runs M2E Pro with some basic e-Commerce. I have been waiting to upgrade my site to Magento (verson 2) until the initial bugs are worked out -- and recently M2E Pro released a migration tool that makes upgrading easy to version 2 of the Magento platform. So I had been planning on Q4 this year to build a brand new site based upon Magento 2, and had been wondering how it would be best to do that -- on my existing GoGeek SiteGround account, and then perform the M2E migration of products and the database using their newly released tool. It sounds as though you are considering a new staging tool for the custom dashboard -- would that include Magento 2? 2) The GoGeek account is perfect for my business needs -- except for one account limitation which is the size of the linked database. I don't have all that many products, probably only about 250 total, and I don't have very many additional extensions to Magento besides M2E Pro. Yet, I have had to go back and clear out cached data from my Magento 1 linked database due to staying under the database limit. At the same time, if I were to open up multiple Magento sites, then each would come with its own database -- so I could potentially have lots of extra database size expansion with multiple sites on the same account. So it's unusual to me that having only 1 database with 1 Magento site has such a seemingly reduced limitation to it. The next higher tier is Cloud with is like paying 3 times as much per month for SG hosting. Is there any possibility that the database limit will increase at some point, or could there be an exception for sites running just one Magento site to have a little bit extra breathing room in the database....or perhaps have a total GoGeek account database size limit instead of a 'per-site' database size limit?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
I am happy that you like our new designs! As to Magento, I am afraid there isn't much we can do. There's no way for us to move the cache into files for example, because that's the way the app works and is designed to work. Regarding Magento 2, it is very resource heavy application and even though GoGeek is a super powerful plan, hosting it on a Cloud server would be a must. As to staging options, we're still working on adding staging functionality to non-WordPress apps but I can't promise Magento 2 will be supported at this initial tool update.
Dave
I was wondering how Siteground was going to get rid of cpanel after they raised prices which stunned the IT community. It sounds like Siteground was planning this long before the cpanel price increases anyway. But nonetheless a big hit to cpanel as probably one of their largest customers. I think cpanel is going to be taking big hits everywhere as a result. So people saying they don't like the new interface or are skeptical about it and are going to go elsewhere may find that wherever they go, hosting companies are getting rid of cpanel. The best thing to do given Siteground's excellent reputation and features, is to just hang in there, figure it out and log requests for fixes or enhancements as needed.
Barry Tarlton
Thank you for updating the interface. It looks really nice. Does the new interface still allow access to the "Advanced DNS Zone Editor" ?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
In Site Tools, there's no separation between basic and advanced Zone Editor, you get all the functionality in a nice interface. You can add, remove and modify DNS records for all your domains from it.
Jason
Wow ... lots of negative feedback. I've used cPanel for 16+ years, and I've never been very fond of it. It has always looked dated and while it certainly helps to get the job done, the look and feel are just terrible. I'm not saying cPanel is bad, but I just don't enjoy the interface, even though it's comfortable (only because of years of use). I love what SG is doing ... they're providing the same (and more) level of services to manage client sites, as well as my own, and it's going to look and feel so much more friendly and inviting ... I greatly appreciate this. The ability to then add and modify services will be easier because they built it from the ground up, instead of having to wade through an external framework. THE one thing that I've never liked about SG's cPanel arrangement is that it's all subs, so if one client got access to one site, they'd have access to all sites ... which is also to say that if a hacker gains entry to one WP site, the possibility of corrupting others is high; therefore, that alone is worth it to me. I've been with SG for ~ 2.5 years now, and love the hosting, the support, and features and services, so my confidence in their desire to make this better for both devs and customers is very high. Thank you for removing the one dislike for me, and I have no doubt that this will be a great move in the long term. People complaining about cPanel need to relax a bit, and trust that if you've liked SG overall up to now, then realize their only desire is to continue to make us happy and we're in good hands. My biggest concern is that SG will become so good with hosting that another company will buy them and ruin it. Keep up the great work ... I'm ready to move over to the SG stuff now!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Thanks for the kind words! We hope that there will be a smoth transition and our new system will continue to be great :)
Naureen Amjad
Watched the demo and it looks awesome. Let's see how it goes once we move to the new interface. All the best, Siteground team :)
shivanshu
Honestly not a fan. I chose SiteGround because of cPanel support. I didn't even mind how long it took SiteGround to update components or the framework.If the demo site is anything like the final product, I'm so disappointed. Some of the features of cPanel are missing such as Addon Domains, FTP Session Control and SSH Shell Access to name a few. Why is it so fluffy and dumbed down?regards
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Although very important, cPanel was never the only thing making a good hosting company. Actually, a lot of the features and services we now provide were built by us and added to it. Yes, some tools in cPanel don't have a direct alternative in Site Tools but that's because we're not only doing a redesign of an interface but a completely new system. For example, it doesn't make sense to have addons when each separate site in your account gets its own Site Tool instance. SSH access is available on all our plans, you can check it under the Devs -> SSH section in Site Tools, you've probably missed it. As to FTP Session Control - yes, we don't have it but honestly that's far from being critical functionality and our stats show that the tool had minimal to no usage. This said, I will add this to the list of features we're discussing to add to Site Tools in our next meetings. I am sure that once you give the new service a change, you will find it much more easy to use, powerful and intuitive than the features we had before.
Joakim
When can we expect the change to the new system for Reseller Accounts? And what will happen with remaining credits? Will it still be possible to be a reseller in the new system?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Yes, the new interfaces will be available to Resellers as well. You will be still able to use the remaining credits to buy and renew StartUp accounts as usual. But, you won't be able to buy new credit - instead of credits, you will get a fixed discount on StartUp plans. Yesterday we sent an email to all resellers with a more detailed information on the matter.
Siteground user
Hi siteground team, great job on the sitetools panel! I like it much better than the old cPanel version you had. However, a couple of questions I would like to ask: 1) Is it possible to track the Program Executions and CPU Seconds per hour instead of just per day/month? As if I remember correctly, in cPanel this would update instantly with how much you've used. But in sitetools, you need to wait until the next day to see how much CPU seconds/Program executions you've used. Can you please implement it if it's not already so you can track this usage in real time? Or at least on an hourly basis so I don't need to wait until the next day to see if my scripts are causing any kind of usage spike? As this is the only flaw I can find. 2) Do you plan to add more scripts to the autoinstaller? As unfortunately it seems many scripts are missing compared to softaculous. For example, with helpdesk scripts, things like hesk, livehelperchat, mibew messenger etc are not included. Will any scripts I install manually be compatible with sitetools if you add them to the autoinstaller later?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello, glad you like it ☺ Yes, we can add tracking of CPU seconds per hour and I am not sure how we overlooked it. I am adding it to the queue. We plan on adding scripts to the installer, but we wanted to make a survey which ones to add with priority. Which script do you need?
Siteground user
Hi Reneta, thanks for your reply. I need more customer support scripts like uvdesk, livehelperchat, mibew messenger, hesk, etc. Basically all the ones that softaculous provides. Also is it possible to make the CPU seconds and program executions update in real time like they used to do under cPanel so I don’t need to wait to see the usage? When do you think the features will be implemented?
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
In cPanel stats are not exactly real time, but they are fast. I believe in our case we take stats roughly every 5 minutes. I am waiting for the quote when we can add them and I will follow up next week when I should have the answer.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
Hello, I got a quote on the CPU seconds and program executions per hour and I am following up to my previous reply - we expect them to go live in roughly two weeks from today :)
Joel
It's looking great! I noticed the site clone feature is missing which we use heavily to launch new sites quickly from templates. Any chance it will be available before launch?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Joel, I am glad youy like the new design! The clone feature is missing because when you have separate Site Tools installation for each separate website, cloning into a subfolder won’t be very useful. We’re considering a new tool that will allow you to clone one website into another so you can create a website, set it as a template and then use it to spin off new ones but I am afraid I can’t provide you with ETA when that will be available. Meanwhile, you can setup a local environment as template and push it into new websites.
Dave Bishop
What about people using Joomla? Do you have fancy tools for us? Not everything is about WordPress.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Please, check Reneta's comments on the subject, I couldn't have explained it better.
MArk
Hristo, You said, I quote: "This said, there is no functionality that we are sacrificing, no functionality removed from." "Everything, that we used to offer in terms of functionality, control, features is there." Then, reading customer overviews: Change primary domain: "It is a tool we have not yet launched, but we are working on it. " DJAY says "For me one thing is a major 'boo': with this new cPanel, we developers can no longer access the home folder of File Manager." To which you agree! You say "As mentioned above, this is something that we're releasing shortly. The tool simply required more testing because Let's Encrypt is a third-party service" I applaud what you are doing however There are things you cannot do with this interface that you could with the old one. And there are things unsupported within this interface which you plan but have not released yet. You know everyone naturally resists change. It looks like you've launched a little bit too early? I do believe that you will sort things and this will be for the better in the end but never come to early!
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Mark, Swithching from cPanel to our own platform and software for managing our hosting product is pretty much the biggest project we’ve ever worked on. It’s not just a set of tools, it’s the actual software that manages hosting accounts and all the services we provide. We deliberately launched it for new clients while some tools were still under development or in testing phase as we did not consider them critical or high-volume tasks, but our aim has always been to have all the tools fully ready once we start migrating the existing customers. As you can see, we are doing exactly that – the domain change was released few days after that comment, Let’s Encrypt tool was updated too. Those tools that won’t be there are tools we have planned on discontinuing due to very low usage. As to the home folder, that’s really not a feature missing but a result of the different logic we have applied. It’s really not cool having all your emails accessed by attacker because you haven’t updated a WP plugin, I think you will agree with me on that. We see it as a security enhancement. One of the main reasons if not the main one of creating our own software is the flexibility and access we have. So, we can modify the tools, create new ones, fix bugs and change things much faster than before. As you said, people naturally resist change but I think that once the initial migration period is over, we will end up with dramatically better hosting product than before.
Bryce
Within the last month I can no longer make a particular change to our .htaccess file that was implemented before without issue (and removed without notifying me). Could this new interface and my inability to add a specific command to the .htaccess file be related? I had spoken with a customer service rep about this last Friday who insisted nothing was changing. Now I am reading that something has and will be permanently changed. I hope I am not coming off too antagonistic, I am sure this transition has been quite a headache, but it would be nice to have an understanding of what the "almost everything you could do in cpanel" means. I am not expecting an itemized list of unavailable tools but is there a general type or set of features you have decided to dial back access from? Such as editing our .htaccess files?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We haven't started migrating customers and generally the only things I can think of modifying your .htaccess files are the PHP version changing tool and the SG Optimizer plugin. Please, open a ticket in your Help Desk and my colleagues will assist you with that. In addition to that, .htaccess are config files for Apache, they aren't cPanel speciffic so you shouldn't worry about that. As to their modification, it's possible as usual, please check your .htaccess file permissions making sure you have writing access to that file.
Tim
WP multisite support? I have multiple domains working on the same install of WordPress via multisite. The domains have independent email accounts. How will this work with the new 'site centric' install. It seems to me like adding a 'parked domain' and taking care of the www via vhosts will work fine, but that leaves out email since it's not really a parked domain or a alternate spelling domain that's just forwarding.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, since WP Multisite is a single application it will be migrated to the main domain for your account alongside all parked domains so you shouldn't worry about this. We're only splitting addon domains into separate Site Tools instances which won't affect you. As to email, you can have accounts for all parked domains so that's not a problem too. If you prefer using subdomains in your WP MS network, that's achievable using wildcard subdomains.
M. Sturt
Question. In the absence of CPanel, are the advance tools like SSH/Shell Access, Cron Jobs, ect going to be available?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, all of those are at your dispolsal. You can check the Site Tools demo in your Client Area to make sure the tools you use most are present.
Tracy
Will we still have access to PHPAdmin? My major concern here is that, as someone else mentioned, I chose Siteground for many factors, one of which was because of cPanel and it's ease of transferring to/from hosting companies. This seems like a move to make it more difficult for people to migrant should they find they need to or their clients want to. I recently advised a client to buy Siteground hosting as it had cPanel. Their account only allows one domain so this argument of your system being better with regard to add-on domains does not really effect them so I do hope the other changes are are worth the loss of cPanel, which is widely supported. Unfortunately, my client will be launching the site just as you make the switch. Anyway, the proof is in the pudding.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Tracy, Transferring from one hosting company to another has never been easier. That’s why we offer free migration on our plans. Yet, our goal is not to make it harder because we don’t think we win anything by frustrating further people who have already decided to move away. Actually, in the roadmap we have scripts that will facilitate the transfer away from our panel to cPanel. I don’t think that cPanel should be the main reason for choosing your hosting provider as its just a tool to an end. I really hope that you will actually like working with our interfaces more than with cPanel :)
rick
can you tell me if the new interface will enable import and export of domain zone files. ? this is what is stopping me from migrating all my domains to SG Also will we be able to redirect subdomains to a specific URL?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Rick, I am afraid that this was never something we've offered. Zone migration was only part of full cPanel transfers. Although it sounds like a great service we could do, since cPanel and other standard hosting panels don't provide export of that content, it won't be possible for us to import it on our end. For existing customers, we will migrate old DNS zones to Site Tools automatically so you won't have to do that on your own. As to the redirection question, you can place a .htaccess file in your subdomain document root and redirect it to the URL you want.
Riitta
If you now have several sites in one cPanel, are they automatically moved each to its own client area or should we move each site to its’ own cPanel before you make the changes?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Riitta, Our migration scripts will take care of that. Separate cPanel accounts will be moved as websites and accounts under the new Client Area. You don't need to to anything beforehand :)
Riitta
This sounds just excellent. Will the email accounts be divided with the sites?
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Yes, email accounts will "follow" domains. If a domain has been an addon, then the domain and all emails associated with it will be migrated into a new website. If it was parked domain, they will go under the primary domain website.
WHD
As a long time Siteground supporter and promoter of your hosting to many of my clients, dropping cPanel could be the end of it for me. My latest client siteground account was put onto the new Site Tools interface and it has been a mess. Added about 10 hours of senseless troubleshooting and errors due to missing options or things just not working correctly. My usually process of migrating and launching a site, which use to take under an hour, turned into a multi-day, multi-support ticket pile of issues. If it was truly all the same functionality with a different UI, I could get used to that, but it's clearly not the same as cPanel. Don't become GoDaddy with their awful custom backend interface. Issues so far: 1) Moving/Copying Files and entire directories using the file manager was very unreliable. All the contents would not move leaving a partial transfer. Then if you try to copy the files again it gives an error because some files already exist. Instead of just prompting to overwrite or ignore existing. Only solution is to delete entire contents and start over. 2) Unable to specify or change the home directory of a subdomain. It can only be it's own dedicated folder and you then need to create htaccess redirects. 3) No longer an option to set the Mail Exchanger settings. Almost all of my clients use external email servers therefore need the mail exchanger set to "Remote Mail Exchanger". Otherwise email sent from website forms will not reach them on the same domain as it routes to itself. They claim it auto detects now, but that does not work. You have to contact the server admins and have them manually do it on the server. The Site Migrator plugin for WP works very well, but you can't specify the database name or table prefix and it assigns these senseless names that make it impossible to figure out what database goes to what site. I'm sure there are more issues, but I don't think I'm sticking around to find out. I'm up for renewall in a couple weeks and will probably move elsewhere unfortunately. cPanel is an industry standard and as someone working on 50-100 sites at various hosts, having a standard tool set is critical.
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Let me address the issues you’re experiencing one by one so I don’t miss anything: 1. Yes, that’s been already reported and we’re working on it. We will deploy the patch before we start the migration of existing customers. 2. That’s something we’ve done on purpose. Having subdomains or addon domains configured with root folders under an existing domain is not a good practice both in terms of SEO and security. Unfortunately, cPanel used to create those by default under the public_html folder making that content accessible via maindomain.com/subdomainfolder for example. Honestly, an .htaccess redirect takes a minute to setup while the benefits of having own document root outside the main one are much bigger. 3. You don’t need to do that at all anymore. Our system is smart enough to recognize whether you’re using our mail servers or external ones :slightly_smiling_face: As to the Site Migrator, that’s very valuable feedback. I will look into it and add a label to the database we create so it’s easier for you to spot it right away. This said, with a separate Site Tools for each website, there won’t be that many databases stuffed into one interface so it wouldn’t be that hard to select the right one. We monitor and address all reported bugs and issues. One of the great things about Site Tools is that it allows us to fix bugs and make changes much faster than before. Having our system, tailored for our infrastructure will allow us to provide better hosting in general and I think that’s really the most important thing.
rick
Hristo this is disappointing as I can do both of these functions in godaddy via the web interface very easily. siteground is an excellent provider and i have been waiting on these functions since learning that a new portal was coming. i cannot move all my domains to sg because of this
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
Hey Rik, I am afraid that even cPanel is not allowing DNS Zone export / import as separate functionality because there are differences in the structure between different versions. As far as I can see, this is something that GoDaddy provide for you when you want to move between their accounts. I do understand that in case you have many subdomains and other custom records that may take some time but right now you can only manually configure your zones. This said, you shouldn't feel pressured to transfer the actual domains to us, it's completely fine to keep renewing them with GoDaddy while using us for hosting :)
Ariff Firdaus
Seriously cannot wait, good job and keep it up guys!
Fernando Barrón
Hi! it´s not clear if this change actually apply for me, i'm a cloud hosting client
Hristo Pandjarov Siteground Team
We will start the migration with our shared plans. Once we finish with it, we will proceed with our Cloud accounts. I can't give you an exact date, but I believe we will start migrating Cloud accounts at the end of the year.
Goran
Hi! Is there an easy way to transfer client from Cpanel hosting to Siteground? I have a client that needs Grow Big hosting and he wants to keep emal accounts and all emails in each email account. Thanks
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
It's best if you contact support for that one. There is no easy way for clients at the moment, although we are working on scripts to do that.
Joe Oldendick
So you are basically LOCKING us in...making it harder for us to move to a different company... Good way to hold customers hostage.
Reneta Tsankova Siteground Team
We are not locking you in any way. You can still create a backup of your site(s) and move your data elsewhere without restrictions. We are simply removing the cPanel export tool. Also, there are many hosts that offer free migration and could assist you with the transfer if needed.
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