Re: [cobalt-users] Siteadmin at Raq3

[Jeff Lasman <jblists@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

At 07:59 AM 1/9/00  Mid America wrote:

> I may have what you are saying wrong but RAQ2 Has three levels of
> administration.   First one is you the owner of the box.  Which is located
> at http://www.yourcompany.com/admin   this allows you to do anything
> including set up users and sites.

Okay, that's what I use.  I sure don't give out this information.  Still 
with me?

> The next one is
> http://www.therecompany/siteadmin    This allows the customers to add the
> users for there site and it also allows  for them to add emails and aliases.
> When you set up the site you determine disk space for the site and how many
> users view stats and all that stuff.

This is for the site owner.  But if I set up the site owner as site 
administrator he can also do dumb things (dumb = things I don't want him to 
do) like create system-users.

Maybe you don't understand this, but if your site administrator at 
<www.joe-blow.com> sets up a user named "joe" at his site; something like 
an email of "joe@xxxxxxxxxxxx" no one else can set up a user named Joe.  So 
when Bob Smith, over at <www.howdy-doody.com> wants to set up an account 
for his uncle Joe, say "joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" he can't, and I get a support 
call.  I have to tell Bob that he can't use "joe" because another one of my 
customers already has, but he can use "joe2" and alias that so his uncle 
can still get mail at "joe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx" even though he has to log into 
"joe2" to get his mail.

Does that sound complicated?  Good.  Now you can see why I don't want to 
have to do it.

The way I solve the problem is everyone gets a login I tell them, which has 
nothing to do with their email address.

So that first Joe gets something like "c0101701" (which is meaningful to me 
but meaningless to my client) as his login name, "ez5brNVH" as his initial 
password (which I generate using a password generation program and which 
I'd like for the client to be able to change), his email address, which is 
"joe@xxxxxxxxxxxx".

The second Joe gets something similar.

And we give them a template making it easy to figure it out, something like:

  Your email-server  :  mail.us.com
  Your email-login   :  c0101701
  Your email password:  ez5brNVH
  Your email address :  joe@xxxxxxxxxxxx

Simple.  But if our site-owner ever figures out we're on a RaQ2, he can 
really mess things up for us.

Sure, only if he's got an administrative account, you say.  True.

But if he doesn't have an administrative account, then he can't use FTP to 
upload his site, then all he can do is upload to his own personal area 
(which we don't even want him to have).

> Third is the user themselves
> http://www.therecompanyname.com/personal/  This allows the user to change
> passwed and forward mail to somewhere else this is a great way to do things
> wish I could have designed it myself.


This I don't mind.  I'd like to keep this if at all possible, but without 
allowing the customer any personal website space.

Well, if you want to give your customers (many of whom understand 
absolutely nothing) all that control, while reducing your chance for extra 
income at the same time, increasing your service costs in the process, all 
power to you.

But it's not what I want to do.

Right now I solve the problem by not giving out any information about this 
being a RaQ, but it's easy enough to figure it out; there's got to be a 
better way.

Jeff

--
Jeff Lasman, nobaloney.net
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