Site Studio is an Absolute WRECK!

[Alan]

I think that Reseller Panel has an excellent scope of products to offer. The only exception is a real "fly on the soup":

I was able to sign up a new client who needed a website very badly. I told him that my hosting solution had a 'website builder' that allowed him to get his site up and running with a couple of clicks- without knowing any coding.

I wished I had tried this much touted Site Studio prior to marketing it as a hosting feature. It turns out that 'Studio' is a horrible refugee from the early 90's with ugly templates and an even uglier interface. But that is not the worst part!

My client had a terrible time understanding how to use Studio. I went in for him to set up the first page when, to my indignant surprise, found out there was no visual text editor.

Tech Support then told me that their Magnificent Site Studio is compatible ONLY with Internet Explorer 7 and below! I checked the date on my Linux computer and it showed that I was still in the year 2012, that I had not inadvertently traveled back to 1995.

So, now I had a client who needed a website desperately, and now way to provide him with one. Sweet!

The only solution here was to install and modify Joomla to act as a simple static site.

[clivejo]

I must say in the eight years with RSP I've never used Site Studio!! Id rather sit down and write the code in an editor than use one of those code generators!

But as you commented about it I went for a nosey. The design looks a bit old but seems to work for me in Firefox 16.0.2 on Ubuntu 12.10. The design of the websites it creates are a bit dated.

I know you use Linux, but if your client uses Windows he/she can make quite nice looking websites in Publisher or the likes. I know I've seen people downloading pages to Word and modifying them to suite then uploading! Blatent copying but it seems to work! Just enable Frontpage extensions in your control panel and see how that works out!

[Alan]

Hi clivejo,

This particular client professed to have absolutely no computer skills. So it would be unfair to "sell" a hosting account on the basis of ease of use and "a website ready in a couple of clicks" only to later tell them they have to go through technical hoops... MS Word, Frontpage, copy and paste... rinse and repeat. RP just made a liar out of me.

I'm assuming that most, if not all, my clients will be using Windows xp and above, with IE 7 and above- or better alternatives, such as Firefox, Chrome, Opera, etc. They should expect to get a website in a couple of clicks, and edit it easily, under all browsers and all operating systems.

In this case, I actually tested it in Windows XP with IE 8 and 7. Sure enough, there was no visual editor to format text under IE8, but it appeared magically with IE7. Totally unacceptable!

It should be noted that other hosting resellers have very advanced site builders that I tried using Linux and Firefox. I was very impressed by the level of sophistication and ease in which I could edit the demo page using nothing more than the browser.

RP needs to pay attention.

[clivejo]

I understand your frustration. Maybe you could make amends by submitting a refund under the 30-day guarantee?

I have personally used the site installer to install WordPress and it can be set-up to be very user friendly with static pages. It has lots of free themes and once installed very easy to add pages via the dashboard etc.

[Alan]

Offering a refund would be contrary to my goal of building a client base of happy, satisfied customers. They don't see what's behind the scenes, only my smiley face. So if I apologize for a crappy product and offer their money back, they will question why I'm selling it in the first place. So my reputation is at stake.

I already installed Joomla for them and spent a goodly amount of time getting it to look like a static website. No, not happy.

Since this incident, I've been researching other hosting resellers- and they ALL have a basic site builder that works on any browser. Some are quite impressive, with drag-and-drop elements.

[wjleong]

As I remembered, RSP did tried to build their own site studio, but they gave up for no reason.

And I read somewhere in this forum said that they are picking up again to continue for the new site studio?

[Alan]

Why bother? Concrete5 is open source, already built, and ready to be integrated.

[vlasi47gr]

If RSP does away with Site Studio, what happens to the sites that are built with it? I for one, have a few quick and dirty sites that I have designed with Site Studio. For my clients that did not want to spend much money or just to put up something quickly until their new custom site was ready.

[yav0r]

The old websites and the Site Studio in those accounts will remain intact. We will discontinue the Site studio for new accounts only and introduce the new software.

However that is yet to bee seen when and how it will happen and what software would be used. No such information is available at the moment.

[Merle.garcia]

Amazing phorum! Is your theme custom made or did you download it from somewhere? A theme like yours with a few simple tweeks would really make my phorum jump out. Please let me know where you got your design. Thank you wish you all the best

[yav0r]

its our own design, we haven't bought/downloaded it. It was designed the fit the overall design of the website.

[stephy509487]

I LIKE THIS SITE

[theLarry]

Come get him clivejo! (i was going to flag it, but it returned an error)

[Nova-Host]

Same happened to me just now. Clive, it's down to you buddy!

[doneritehosting]

That would be "An unexpected error was returned: '59844' " specifically Go Get'em Tiger lol