WHC: A new Client Area is coming! (1 Viewing)

MapleDots said:

Another bug

Trying to remove an old payment method in the new panel throws up an error.

I will leave it there instead of going to the old panel so you can diagnose it.

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I just tried this, it displayed an error for me but still worked. Can you see if your cards are updated and let me know which one you were looking to remove?

I was trying to remove the non default one but I don't mind it being there to test if it works.

I just tried again and it would not remove the payment, it again gave an error and I was NOT trying to remove the default payment.

I could understand the error if one removes the default payment.

Anyways, no worries, I will try again in a month. No need to escalate, it's not hurting anything being there.

FM said:

Yes, this hasn't been fixed yet, but is still on our list.

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Just making sure, and I'll shut up about it now and just use the Old System until further notice.

DomainRecap said:

Just making sure, and I'll shut up about it now and just use the Old System until further notice.

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Don't shut up - I appreciate the reminder and the help in general.

Hey Frank. I was just playing around in the new client area.

The one thing I cannot stand from any UI is when you can't right click a link to open in a new window, any attempts to manage a domain opens it in the same window. So I have to keep going back and forth from the domain list to the domain management page. And when I go back, I lose where I was in the list. Infuriating to say the least.

Right clicking on the domain name should be an efficient way to open the domain management page in a new window. This would allow me to fairly quickly open a bunch of tabs, one for each domain, and they can all load in the background while I start working on the first one. Then I just close each tab when I'm done, and my original window is undisturbed, the way I left it, sorted the way I wanted it, etc... This way I know exactly where I left off and can resume at that point.

Does that make sense? I think I made the same complaint about the old interface and your guys fixed it, but apparently they didn't remember the lesson.

Anyone else find this a problem, or is it just me?

rlm said:

Hey Frank. I was just playing around in the new client area.

The one thing I cannot stand from any UI is when you can't right click a link to open in a new window, any attempts to manage a domain opens it in the same window. So I have to keep going back and forth from the domain list to the domain management page. And when I go back, I lose where I was in the list. Infuriating to say the least.

Right clicking on the domain name should be an efficient way to open the domain management page in a new window. This would allow me to fairly quickly open a bunch of tabs, one for each domain, and they can all load in the background while I start working on the first one. Then I just close each tab when I'm done, and my original window is undisturbed, the way I left it, sorted the way I wanted it, etc... This way I know exactly where I left off and can resume at that point.

Does that make sense? I think I made the same complaint about the old interface and your guys fixed it, but apparently they didn't remember the lesson.

Anyone else find this a problem, or is it just me?

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I am experiencing the same thing and know EXACTLY what you are saying.

rlm said:

The one thing I cannot stand from any UI is when you can't right click a link to open in a new window, any attempts to manage a domain opens it in the same window. So I have to keep going back and forth from the domain list to the domain management page. And when I go back, I lose where I was in the list. Infuriating to say the least.

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Thank you for the feedback; I'll see what we can do about this.

rlm said:

The one thing I cannot stand from any UI is when you can't right click a link to open in a new window, any attempts to manage a domain opens it in the same window. So I have to keep going back and forth from the domain list to the domain management page. And when I go back, I lose where I was in the list. Infuriating to say the least.

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Hi @rlm :

This should be fixed now, but it might require a hard refresh before it works for you.

EDITED: PS: It doesn't seem to work with CTRL left click, but we're looking into that, too.

Bug report:
On the domain transfer page, when pasting a list of domains into the text box, I kept getting errors. It turns out there was some white-space at the end of the lines after the cut-and-paste. For any text-input boxes such as this, when expecting any important data like usernames/passwords/domain-names/authcodes/etc... your programmers should be in the habit of stripping off whitespace from the front or back of any input lines to avoid those kinds of nearly invisible cut-and-paste problems. Also note that the error message from the transfer page simply said "enter a valid domain" or something vague like that. So out of a big list of domains pasted in, just one space at the end of one line would prevent any of it from being processed. Ideally an error message would return back what the problem line is too.

Also - weirdly, it doesn't ask me for the auth code when requesting an incoming domain transfer - it takes me to the payment page first. Is that normal?

rlm said:

Also - weirdly, it doesn't ask me for the auth code when requesting an incoming domain transfer - it takes me to the payment page first. Is that normal?

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For me, I've always had to pay the bill before you can use any transfer codes.

If you screw up a domain and only find out after you paid, just get Support to fix it.

FM said:

Hi @rlm :

This should be fixed now, but it might require a hard refresh before it works for you.

EDITED: PS: It doesn't seem to work with CTRL left click, but we're looking into that, too.

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The CTRL click to open the domain details page in a new tab should work too now

rlm said:

Bug report:
On the domain transfer page, when pasting a list of domains into the text box, I kept getting errors. It turns out there was some white-space at the end of the lines after the cut-and-paste. For any text-input boxes such as this, when expecting any important data like usernames/passwords/domain-names/authcodes/etc... your programmers should be in the habit of stripping off whitespace from the front or back of any input lines to avoid those kinds of nearly invisible cut-and-paste problems. Also note that the error message from the transfer page simply said "enter a valid domain" or something vague like that. So out of a big list of domains pasted in, just one space at the end of one line would prevent any of it from being processed. Ideally an error message would return back what the problem line is too.

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Thank you for the feedback.

We haven't made any changes to this page recently, as we are currently redefining the bulk transfer functionality, to allow for uploads of CSVs going forward.

rlm said:

Also - weirdly, it doesn't ask me for the auth code when requesting an incoming domain transfer - it takes me to the payment page first. Is that normal?

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This is part of how we have designed our orders and order form - in our case this is normal, but we will allow to enter the auth codes along with the domain in the future as well.

DomainRecap said:

For me, I've always had to pay the bill before you can use any transfer codes.

If you screw up a domain and only find out after you paid, just get Support to fix it.

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I'm curious - do you think a review screen with separate fields for the domain and auth code would help here? Or would the errors still happen?

FM said:

I'm curious - do you think a review screen with separate fields for the domain and auth code would help here? Or would the errors still happen?

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Either way is cool with me, but I do like it this way in case I'm paying for a pile of transfers before I get the transfer codes.

DomainRecap said:

Either way is cool with me, but I do like it this way in case I'm paying for a pile of transfers before I get the transfer codes.

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I meant errors like typos in the domain names.

FM said:

I meant errors like typos in the domain names.

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I know, but I think if you're gonna screw up your domain names that bad, I don't think that different input formats are really going to stop it. Either way is good for me.

I never really made an error like that but it's always something I think about when transferring.

FM said:

We haven't made any changes to this page recently, as we are currently redefining the bulk transfer functionality, to allow for uploads of CSVs going forward.

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Wasn't saying you had made changes, but, just I'm saying that it should automatically clean up the input, whitespace is irrelevant and not easily visible to the user, so they don't know what is wrong, and the lack of a useful error message compounds the problem. As always, whitespace should be trimmed from most user input to avoid the cut-and-paste issues. I see it happening all the time where people accidentally have a space before or after their username or password and they don't realize it, and the website rejects their login attempts, next thing you know they're trying to reset their password, all over a stupid misplaced space.

FM said:

This is part of how we have designed our orders and order form - in our case this is normal, but we will allow to enter the auth codes along with the domain in the future as well.

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Hm, okay, so when do the auth codes get requested? Since I'm helping out Shaun's wife, I was hoping to set up all the transfers in advance so all she had to do is go in to make payment and the orders would get executed, with nothing more to do. Also note that you're adding extra steps to what should be a more straight forward process. Everyone knows you need an auth code to transfer a domain, they're expecting to enter it, etc... So I personally find it an odd order procedure. I'm not sure I understand the logic of not taking the auth code prior to payment? You'll have collected payment, only to not be able to proceed with the order.

FM said:

I'm curious - do you think a review screen with separate fields for the domain and auth code would help here? Or would the errors still happen?

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Well, with proper handling of the input (i.e. stripping whitespace), and an appropriate error message (like a list of the invalid entries detected), then it probably wouldn't be necessary, but I think it's always a very nice option to have a page to review what you input. That's just confirmation that what you entered was indeed parsed cleanly, and with a total number of domains tallied for easy reference. I can just see the big list in a table, with a total of (for example) 25 domains at the bottom so I can say, yep, that's what I was expecting, and hit submit.

Furthermore, that gives you the opportunity to check the lock status of each domain (between the input form and the review screen). This way you can head any obvious failure points off at the pass, giving the user notice of which domains to quickly go unlock before hitting submit.

And note that accepting the auth code on each line next to the domain should be easy-peasy too, with no need for a strict csv format. That's what regular expressions are for. So if the user enters both a domain and/or an auth code on a line, regardless of the separator or quotes, or whatever, a good regex can parse it, I'll send you the code if you like, but honestly, any decent programmer should know exactly how to do that, and if they don't, they need to learn regex as its one of the most useful things to ever master in programming. Its actually a very strict set of conditions on what characters can be in a domain name or in an authcode, so it makes parsing the good stuff easy, and ignoring all the useless stuff easier. I'll send you the code if necessary.

This is also similar to a request I have in with @bmetal, to accept auth codes at the same time as the domain. Currently they only accept the domains in the initial list, then they have a review page with an input field next to each domain where you paste in the auth code. I'd like to see the input page accept the domain & auth code, separated by nearly anything (space, tab, comma, colon, pipe, etc) on each line. Then the review page would be identical to it currently is, but with the authcodes pre-populated, just so you can eyeball all of it before you hit "submit". Thankfully I just email my list to @bmetal when my list is long and he handles it directly, no cutting and pasting involved. But I still feel guilty for bugging him, so the form fixes could eliminate that guilt. Same for @bmetal, I'll help with the coding if that's any issue. REGEX is a programmer's best friend.

I know as domainers we're unusual in that when I'm transferring domains in, I'm not just transferring one. Its dozens or hundreds or at times, even thousands. Pasting each auth code in one-at-a-time is excruciating. Login sessions will expire before I can paste that many in. So I prepare my lists in advance, as I'd imagine many domainers do, either in a spreadsheet or text file, then paste the completed list into the domain transfer form.

rlm said:

Wasn't saying you had made changes, but, just I'm saying that it should automatically clean up the input, whitespace is irrelevant

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I was trying to say that changes to the page are overdue

rlm said:

Hm, okay, so when do the auth codes get requested?

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Currently, it's after the order has been accepted, there will be some changes to the flow as well.

rlm said:

Furthermore, that gives you the opportunity to check the lock status of each domain (between the input form and the review screen).

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The Domain Transfer Assitant, as it's called, does that already, but only after the auth codes have been collected, which is currently still a separate screen.

This is great and timely feedback - I've been transferring a bunch of domains to WHC myself and thus have lived through the process. I'll take all of this feed into consideration for the enhancements. Of course, cleaning up the list of domains itself is a first easy fix.

FM said:

I was trying to say that changes to the page are overdue


Currently, it's after the order has been accepted, there will be some changes to the flow as well.


The Domain Transfer Assitant, as it's called, does that already, but only after the auth codes have been collected, which is currently still a separate screen.

This is great and timely feedback - I've been transferring a bunch of domains to WHC myself and thus have lived through the process. I'll take all of this feed into consideration for the enhancements. Of course, cleaning up the list of domains itself is a first easy fix

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Sounds good, yep, just trying to help smooth out processes, although I'm sure it sounds critical, its always meant to be for improvement. I'd simply say nothing if I didn't want to help.

Next issue: After a bunch of back and forth comparing the billing areas between the old & new interfaces, here are some observations.

1. the back-end system would generate invoices for renewals some 6 weeks before the domains expire.

2. The old Billing UI nicely listed the invoices, ordered by due date (the expiry date). Pretty straight forward and informative.

2. The new UI takes those same invoices and says in a warning box at the top of the billing section:

So my first thought was, wtf? These are on auto-renew and there is a CC on file!! How can they be overdue??

However, today, after taking the time to compare between the two interfaces, I see that based on the old UI, that these are not actually overdue, nor even due, not for more than a month.

Furthermore, I'm assuming that these auto-renewal invoices will automatically be charged for the renewals on the actual expiry date, is that correct? So there was no need to panic after all?

The new billing UI doesn't even list the actual due dates like the old UI did, and thus, it appears that the new interface made an intentional choice to freak people out by stating that invoices are overdue long before they're actually even due. Personally, this seems misleading - and it did kinda freak me out when I saw it too, completely unnecessarily.

rlm said:

Furthermore, I'm assuming that these auto-renewal invoices will automatically be charged for the renewals on the actual expiry date, is that correct? So there was no need to panic after all?

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Thank you for the detailed feedback, I will take this to the team.

1. Bills for domains set to auto-renew are generated 45 days before the expiry date
2. charged 5 days before the expiry date
3. For most .CAs the auto-renewal is executed 2 days before the expiry date
4. All other TLDs are renewed when the invoice is charged, 5 days before the expiry date.