Looking for some beta testers for our new OpenVZ control panel.

[KuJoe]

I posted this request in another thread but I don't think it got much exposure so I'm posting an open request here. Basically I'm looking for 10 people who will login to the control panel (located in WHMCS) and use it for the next few days and then provide some feedback. You'll get a small VPS to play with so feel free to give that a workout also (brownie points for whoever hits their bandwidth limit first).

In addition to the free VPS to play with, once the testing is over we'll provide the testers with a coupon for a discounted OpenVZ VPS in any of our locations (including a DDOS protected VPS in CNServers) which will use our new panel.

I'm trying to get a code audit done but for now, beta testers are our best option until that happens. As with all beta testing, there are no guarantees so expect possible outages while we push updates or other testers abuse the node (the test node is just a small KVM VPS so resources and performance will be limited).

If you're interested, just send me a PM and I'll reply with a link to order your free VPS. Thanks!

EDIT: I hope this is in the right section. It is a request and beta testing is a service but if it's not, a mod is welcome to move it to where they think it would fit better.

 

[KuJoe]

I'm heading to bed now so any new orders for the test VPSs will have to wait until I can activate them tomorrow. Thanks for all of the interest so far.

 

[dcdan]

From our experience I can tell that the best beta testing you can do is in house by involving your own staff.

The issue is two-fold. First of all, no one wants to work for free

Second issue is more important, usually the kind of "free" feedback you are getting has little to do with actual issues and is usually confusing at best, which results in todo lists bloating quickly with tasks that have no significant relation to stability and have little to no effect on user experience.

Once all bugs are ironed out internally, then I would invite someone who knows about VPS to do the actual testing. Proper testing goes like this: tell the person to do specific tasks, for example, "Reload OS", "Imagine you broke SSH, restore access via control panel", etc. Of course, you tape everything. Repeat this with at least 3-5 people. Then analyze footage.

In our case, after we did that, issues we thought were important suddenly became non-existent. Instead, our "todo" list filled with completely different fixes and features.

There’s one downside to this approach though, the todo list will fill with stuff that is often quite difficult to change/fix. But those would be the things that actually matter to end users.

 

[KuJoe]

We had the panel in private testing for over 3 months but the problem we faced was that between the 2 of us, only one was trying to break it (me) but if I knew how to break it I would have coded a fix for it so I need somebody who isn't me to try to break it. My partner tried all of the buttons and tasks and looked for bugs, typos, and anything that would be confusing (essentially he was testing usability from a client's point of view).


Since my PHP knowledge is not very good, I was hoping people with more knowledge could test it out and try to break it or perform tasks we never considered.


We'be received some great feedback so far and I fixed about half a dozen different bugs so far and even added some new code to make automation better.

 

[SilentDimension]

I submitted a PM but haven't heard back from ya.

 

[KuJoe]

I've been making quite a few changes today and fixed some bugs and changed some features based on the feedback we've received so far.

I did notice one thing while testing today that is bothering me though, if I leave the graphs visible on the page then it causes a warning because they aren't being served with HTTPS (and they will not be) so my thoughts are making links to the bandwidth and load graphs instead of displaying them on the page. Thoughts?

I submitted a PM but haven't heard back from ya.

I don't think there are any spots left but if the remaining 4 people don't sign up by tomorrow I'll send you a link to sign up.

 

[wlanboy]

It is a well done plugin.

And it was fun to play with a 32 MB RAM vps again.

Second issue is more important, usually the kind of "free" feedback you are getting has little to do with actual issues and is usually confusing at best, which results in todo lists bloating quickly with tasks that have no significant relation to stability and have little to no effect on user experience.

At least you said usually.

Whenever I asked for some suggestions/oppinions in this place I got what I wanted:

Clear statements of people knowing their stuff.

 

[dcdan]

I agree that vpsboard is remarkably different from other places in a good way, and I hope it stays the same.

But getting really good feedback on forums is quite rare, at least that was our experience. Granted, I haven't tried asking for help here, maybe I should give it a try.

 

[wlanboy]

I agree that vpsboard is remarkably different from other places in a good way, and I hope it stays the same.

Maybe you should start a discussion on Operating a VPS Business and ask other providers (that did allready beta tests) to suggest members that did a good job at beta testing.

 

[Chris Worley]

Interested... Very much so. I've worked for several Web hosts as tech support and quality assurance, so his sound fun

Sent from my SCH-I545 using Tapatalk

 

[Chris Worley]

I'm heading to bed now so any new orders for the test VPSs will have to wait until I can activate them tomorrow. Thanks for all of the interest so far.

I'm heading to bed now so any new orders for the test VPSs will have to wait until I can activate them tomorrow. Thanks for all of the interest so far. /]

[email protected]

 

[clarity]

In addition to the free VPS to play with, once the testing is over we'll provide the testers with a coupon for a discounted OpenVZ VPS in any of our locations (including a DDOS protected VPS in CNServers) which will use our new panel.

Are you done with testing? Are the testers going to get a coupon code? I missed out on the other one, and I am grasping at straws here.

 

[KuJoe]

Thanks for bumping this @, I'll send out an e-mail right now with a promo code.

 

[clarity]

Thanks for the email about the discount! Got me a new VPS!