We have just set up as an OpenSRS RSP, after having previously always
used Network Solutions (<spit>).
The OpenSRS system appears to be very nice, but it is woefully
under-documented. I strongly suggest that a 'guide for people who
used netsol previously' would be a good idea.
Our main points of confusion currently are:
* "Contact Information"
Many of the forms ask for "contact information". No explanation of
what this means is supplied. It appears to mean "information that
will be used for both admin contact and domain owner", but we are
not entirely sure about that.
* OpenSRS mistakenly assumes customers control domains
OpenSRS appear to assume that all customers know all about domain
names, and wish to control the domain, edit the nameservers, etc,
themselves. This is not the case. In practice this means that
for domain registration, domain transfers, etc, we have to register
the domain with all details set to ourselves, and then change the
domain owner to be the real owner. It may be possible to get around
this by editing the client-side scripts, but I suspect the problem
is deeper than that since, e.g. the 'Domain Order Edit Form' for
looking at pending orders provides no way of specifying the admin
contact, and I would expect this form to enable editing of all
aspects of an order.
* Domain management "profile"
No explanation of these is given, or how they work. They appear to
be linked to domain names (i.e. the same username at different domains
may be different users) but also not (sometimes the same username
at different domains may be the same user). No guidance is given as to
how to organise the profiles. I suspect that for the ISP model which
OpenSRS is assuming (where the customer is computer-literate and edits
their own domains) the ISP should register all domains with a single
profile (so they can, e.g. update the tech contact) and then create
a sub-user for the customer, but I am only guessing.
There are many other inconsistencies and confusing pages - for example,
the "Change Ownership of Domain" page in the management interface asks
for a username and password without any explanation of whether these are
a new username and password, the old username and password, what
'changing owernship' means, etc. The RSP options are spread randomly between
various badly-named pages - "emergency contact information" contains many
things which are nothing of the sort, "tech contact information" links
to a page with a different title, and no explanation is given of whether
the "tech contact" is the tech contact for the RSP, or the default tech
contact for domains registered through the RSP. The documentation goes
on at length about "RCU"s, but these are not used on the site, instead
dollar amount are used (which is much more sensible anyway). There doesn't
appear to be any information on how the contacts are used, in particular
for renewals - does OpenSRS contact someone? If so, who? When? How?
Technically, OpenSRS appears to be great. But please, get someone who
knows how to document things to (a) go through your web forms making
them intelligible and (b) write some proper documentation! I expect
someone who has been using the system for a while finds it all very
intuitive and obvious, but to a newcomer it is extremely difficult
to use (and by this I mean a newcomer to OpenSRS, not a newcomer to
managing domains).
Cheers
Jon
