And there is a big difference.

Strongboxxx is a one-time charge instead of monthly rebilling. If you want to pay $600/year for proxypass that is up to you. I don't if i can get a similar product for like $100 one time charge.

Also, i want to add that the installation of strongboxxx took a while but everything is working fine now and Ray was also very quick answering my questions afterwards.

the statement a "couple of days" is what worries me

a couple of days of my members not getting access to my site or of not having protection if the guys installing it turn it off while they figure things out is very worrying :(

You are right, I much prefer a one time charge over a monthly fee...and strongboxxx updates are only $25 or so....

Ray has emailed back and they said they are going to attempt the installation tomorrow

So how about that user / pass to look around. ;)

Say you're running 10 sites on a server. How does the pricing compare? Is it $600/year for proxypass and $1,000/yr for strongboxxx?

It would be $700 for strongboxxx (according to his pricing page) one time charge

Of course if you have a lot of sites a low rebilling amount makes sense if they secure your entire server(s). In my case with only 3 sites i went for the one time charge.

That would be ok if you are just starting out or running a very small site but having your members shut out for several hours is like the kiss of death to an established business. Also, its only the latest version of Strongbox that works on large load balanced sites where as ProxyPass has run on huge sites for years.

I agree with you but I am sure Jace case is an exception.

Nobody has been locked out on my site when they were installing it.

Exactly, every minute is important. Days to wait are pure nonsense. That could mean so many chargebacks that it could put a company out of business.

Mine were locked out for about 8 hours one Saturday about two years ago.

Disappointing to see that it's still happening.

Just to clarify, they emailed me at 7am saying the install was done, I woke up at around 12:30-1:00pm and found that the members area was screwy and wasn't accessible...at around 3:25pm it was disabled and I was told that they would reinstall on monday from scratch

luckily I am just building this site back again, so it isn't getting tons of joins every day yet, in fact that day we hadn't had a new join....and fortunately it was at a time of day that wasn't a high traffic time for the site

all in all it could have been worse, but things like this should not happen from professional companies

I just added you...I am 102893553

I have just sent notice to Ray and AWW that I would like a refund and my installation cancelled

The good people at Too Much Media are installing Sparta for me tomorrow morning..I expect that to go without a hitch because unlike other companies out there, Too Much Media actually cares about their customers

I was just told aout this thread by one of the Strongboxxx Customer.

Jace, as I said in the email, the permissions was changed to
the .htapasswd file, so it cannot be read by Strongboxxx anymore.
It cannot be read by anybody. Or that file was moved.
We do not have SSH access to your server to check it.

Even if we will have deinstalled Strongboxxx, .htapasswd will not be read
due to that, and your members will not be ale to log in neither.
I have kindly requested you to contact your admins
or provide us with root access so that we could get it ALL fixed for you FREE.

Ray has a bullet proof reputation as well as Strongboxxx, he IS NOT
even THINK aout dropping the support of it, as you said, and
that is a pity that you decided to move that to forums instead of
allowing us to carefully work that out.

Ray is busy preparing his 3d version. And we are helping him with
support and installs.

If we were "the idiots", who have installed Strongboxxx, we have
CREFULLY TESTED all things and that all WORKED.

We do not take responcibility of a sudden permission changes
and other manipulations which can be done by Client or his/their
admins. That is where server-side changes may take place.

I am now working with Ray on getting this issue resolved. I really have no interest in working with anything you touch again.

But please let me state this. From the moment I signed up and paid for Strtongboxxx to the moment that you all said it was installed, NOTHING on my server was touched....period

I had my sys admin check it out, and I had one independant party check it out, nothing was wrong on my end

the problem was obviously because someone tried to install it to members/ instead of the members. subdomain

I am the paying customer, and when you leave MY fucking members area down for 8 hours WHILE I SLEEP...you are in the wrong, not me

I was asleep at 2 am Friday night,and I wokr up at 12:30pm Saturday...everything worked fine when I feel asleep, nothing worked when I awoke, and it hadn't been since 7am....and I just can't believe that you all can't own up to your mistake

not one person is apologizing for an error made by you all, no one...and THAT is what pisses me off the most

and just out of curiosity, what is this .htapasswd? I know what a htpasswd file is, and I thought that was what you all were referring to, but now you have said .htapasswd at least 6 times in all our emails, so you have me really curious

and you are right, RAY has a bullet proof rep, and I have said that numerous times....AWW on the other hand, does not, and it shows more with every minute

here is a screenshot of my stats from the hours of 7am-3pm on Saturday the 11th...if you all installed it correctly and everything was working while I slept, why are there so many error 500 internal server errors?

http://www.tabithastoybox.net/tmp/stats.jpg

I was asleep from 2am until noon...and all this was done while I slept...and NO ONE touched my server, i can post logs to verify that too if you like

I just want everyone to know, and i will post this in the main forum later

I have been emailing Ray back and forth, and he is apparently now handling my installation, and it appears as though everything has gone smoothly

I would suggest anyone that is wanting Strongboxxx installed to hit up Ray personally and request his guidance with everything. He was very pleasant and patient, even when I was frantic and cursing every other word...LOL

i dont know much about strongboxxx... but i do know that the #1 rule is never let anybody EVER have access to your server.

Hope everything works out for you jace.

*Subscribes*

Sir, we are doing our best from our end to keep up all the installs.
I have an admin which is dedicated to work with the Strongboxxx
installations only. That takes time to install and when the initial
requirements are not met it is hard to us to make any change because
we have a very limited access to site.

I can understand your dissapointment with that case that raised
due to miscommunication/disability to do things from our side this weekend.
And I DO APOLOGIZE that things are now ending that way.

I have refunded your order. And I guess from now on, all the
Strongboxxx installations should be made by Ray only.
That is really not fast to install Strongboxxx if ANY of the requirements
is missing.

As for the AW support. We are managing both Strongboxxx and
AW support so far. And the most of the issues we were reported and
allowed to work on were fixed correctly. AdultWebware product does not
need support at all. We have only the additional changes/fixes in the
members area/tours templates requests.
Strongboxxx neither require support, because it is working flawlessly
as well from the start on, after the installation is completed.

Strongboxxx has some server requirements which should be met,
BEFORE the install.

Ray is usually putting hot issues on top of his list. And I am glad he
is helping you out with that issue with no delays.

Thank you for the apology, I do appreciate that..I don't normally get this pissed about things, but after this long of things messing up and limited commmunication due to only being able to contact by email, well, it got very aggrevating

I do want to state though, nothing has been changed on the server since you all left it alone, and Ray was able to go in and install Strongboxxx tonight with no troubles, and it is working fine...so, whatever errors were made, where on your part, not mine or my server, and I don't like the subtle hints that I messed things up, when I didn't touch a thing

Thanks you though, I appreciate the apology

Don't know anything about AWW, but Ray and Strongbox rock. Ray is right up there with National Net on providing kick ass support.

Oh..... anyone got an ETA on the 3rd version of Strongbox that AWW was talking about above???

Jace, our apologise is as well the refund.

No parties are profiting from a single mistake being made by
the server admin who may do a mistake.

I can see now that case and I AM permitting that the issue
was caused by our admin who did a "last minute change" by
adding the admin user-pass (which you gave to us,
but which did not allow us to get in) to the htapaswd
and proaly have messed something up with it.

That is definitely our bad and my bad as of the manager who
could allowed that to happen (due to the trust to the admin,
who have not yet made any mistakes with all the help
he was providing to our company during several years).

I do apologize once more time for that mistake which was
happened and which made that issue up.

Yes he is, we just talked on the phone to make sure everything was up and running, and everything is totally cool now.

I don't want to do that though man, I don't feel comfortable not paying for something that is functioning and working properly now. Once the credit is on my card I will be sending it back through.

It was a simple mistake that ended up with a really bad result, these things happen, and you learn from them and move on

How about we don't bump this thread any more and I will post a new thread letting everyone know that everything got worked out

adultwebware - the real issue i have here isn't who made the mistake, although you blaming Jace so forcefully didn't give me a lot of confidence. the issue is that you guys aren't around. look how long it took you to jump into this thread.

i can appreciate that you're busy, but your lack of availability doesn't inspire a lot of confidence :(

i'd still buy strongbox if i could be sure ray would install it but i don't want to buy any script from someone who doesn't test it before moving on.

how else would he get the software installed

I understand the AWW installer did test it, then after testing it did "one last little thing",
adding the admin user name. That's an easy thing to do so I fully understand how
that could have happened. The result ended up being a big problem, though.
It is of course not acceptable for a site to be down all day and the AWW folks
recognize that and did what they could to make it right after they knew there
was a problem. Every programmer learns one lesson at some point- always,
always test after making any change at all, even a tiny little change,
particularly on a live system. Some of us have to learn that lesson repeatedly
before it sinks in. :) I'm sure this installer will be VERY careful about that in the
future.

The site was a little "different" in some ways, so I went ahead and did the install
yesterday. You say you'd get Strongbox if you could be sure that I handle the
install - in that case just use my order form at http://bettercgi.com/strongbox/
Contrary to some rumors I haven't sold the company or anything and I'm still
actively developing, installing, and supporting Strongbox. AWW was also reselling
it and doing some installs and support for webmasters who purchase through their
sites, including strongboxxx.com. I've been in touch with adultwebware this
morning discussing how to improve things and it may be that I'll start handling
all of the installations in my office. As many of you know, when dealing with me
personally I'll normally do a very good job, answering your questions very thoroughly
and going the extra mile to assist in ways that perhaps aren'r directly related
to Strongbox, or doing customizations, but I'm not always very quick about it
unless it's an emergency (like a site being down). AWW can be faster about
answering emails sometimes, which can be a benefit to the webmaster.
On the other hand, because I developed Strongbox and have worked with
Strongbox full time for several years, no one including AWW could be as
knowledgeable about the system as I am. Perhaps AWW and my company can
find a way for them to give webmasters the advantage of their speedy service
while making it easy to get in touch with me personally when and if that's needed.

The 979-530-1300 phone number posted is indeed correct. It rings the phone
at my desk and also my cell phone, so I can be reached at that number any time
except sometimes when I'm alseep I don't answer the phone.