Author: Steve Davis

Outlook receiving but not sending [RESOLVED]

 

I am aware of the issue of outlook receiving email but not sending.

Been working on it much of the afternoon without a result so far so have escalated it to people who are smarter than me.

If it is affecting you please open a support ticket from another account if you can, that way I can keep you informed with what is happening.

[UPDATE]  This has been a tough one to crack.  Some changes were made on the server.

In outlook go into the account settings and change the outgoing SMTP server port to 465 and be sure that SSL encryption is selected – how you do that differs in each version of outlook.

Any problems, open a support ticket at https://123host.com.au

Possible service disruption

 

This coming Saturday morning (March 4th [NOT February 4th like I said in the email :o( ] ) from 0200 Eastern Australia Time there is a possibility of individual sites being down for a short period. While this is bad news, it is the prelude to some good news.

123host is growing and is moving to a brand new more powerful server with an upgraded operating system and component software. I’ll give some technical details later and not bore those that aren’t interested.

The data centre has suggested that since they are going to move sites individually and change the settings for each account one at a time, disruption will be minimal if at all. This is promising…in theory…but I know that nothing is foolproof, hence this email to give you notice.

We have investigated settings and as far as we can tell you likely won’t even notice the change except things may be faster. However if there are any problems come Saturday morning, send an email to support@123host.com.au immediately.

Tech specs of the new server – if you are interested in what it all means, do ask.

  • E3-1270v5 Latest Intel Skylake Architecture
  • 48GB DDR4 RAM
  • 4 x 2TB SATA Drives
  • Hardware RAID 10
  • 10TB Bandwidth
  • CentOS 7.x latest
  • PHP 7
  • cPanel latest

If you are one of the people who opted out of newsletters, stop reading now!

SSL

Ages ago I advised about free SSL certificates being issued to every domain. Read this https://blog.123host.net.au/123host-weeks-ahead-of-the-pack/ for my thoughts going back to September last year.

I know that some of you have moved your sites to https instead of http and I have assisted with a few of them. Unfortunately it sometimes isn’t straightforward and here is the unavoidable technical talk made as simple as possible

When using an SSL certificate, data is encrypted while transferred back and forward between the 123host server and a visitor to your site.   People may intercept your data (unlikely), but shouldn’t be able to decrypt it. Easy to understand so far?

The problem comes when within your site some content is included using http instead of https, it could be a link to a style sheet, an embedded image or something else. This results in a ‘mixed content’ warning because insecure content (http) is being included in a secure page (https). Still with me?

When there is mixed content, instead of the page having a ‘secure’ padlock

 

it is displayed as insecure.

 

 

 

 

Not only is the data not secure, there is also apparently a penalty in search engine ranking for insecure sites.

You can test your site easily. Simply use https:// instead of http:// and see what happens. If you get the padlock and secure notification jump in the air and click your heels being careful not to hurt your back. If it doesn’t work as expected you can sort it out yourself or ask for my help – and I am happy to lend a hand. But…

This is my final offer to help people switch to https for free. After April 1st I will charge $55 inc GST to help you do this no matter how simple or complex. You already have the free SSL certificate, it is now up to you.

Looking for a unique domain?

I have just added hundreds of new domain types to the list of domains to register.  You can now register domains such as MyBudget.wedding, JudySmith.photography, JoeBloggs.yoga and more – there is wide enough choice to suit just about every individual or business.

Here’s an offer to get you started; for a limited time .me domains are only $15 per year to register and then $35 per year to renew. But if you grab www.(YourName).me for up to 5 years when registering, you get the discount price for the duration.

How Very.cool is that? – and yes, this is a real URL these days.

WordPress

This won’t apply to everyone, only those of you using WordPress.

I am pretty easy going and try to be generous with my time and skills, but am going to start billing people who have problems and they haven’t listened when I advise about upgrading WordPress. There are some serious issues with older versions, several sites had content injected into them earlier this month when a security hole was discovered.

The current version of WP is 4.7.2 and upgrading is usually trivial – log into your dashboard and in the At A Glance box it will tell you the version number and generally advise if there is an upgrade available…one click will then do the job.

Here’s another ‘amnesty’ offer. If you need help upgrading ask before April 1st or you are the fool as it will cost you $55.

 

And to finish up, I have been pretty disillusioned with the unfunny stuff on facebook recently to the point where I have cut down how much I use it.  So here’s something to lift my, and hopefully your, spirits https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M1F0lBnsnkE and a compilation of Buster Keaton stunts to make you laugh https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J8XM1_rOTg

Scheduled down time

 

Server downtime completed

[UPDATE 30/12] The server is back to normal and operating well.

[UPDATE 0630 28/12] When you are beholden to 3rd parties you are at their mercy.  Unfortunately when the data centre built the 123host server they wired the hard drives incorrectly so that a specific drive wasn’t in the reported location.  This led to the drive that was reported as faulty and then replaced not being the actual faulty drive…sigh.

The wiring has been rectified, however it means that the faulty drive is still in the server and is scheduled to be replaced at 0200 on 29/12.

Hardware failures happen, but this has been an unfortunate series of events at the worst time of the year.  I sincerely apologise for any hassle, hopefully the late night servers outages have minimised any impact.

[UPDATE 0510 28/12] The hard drive has been successfully replaced.  Now the server has to replicate the working drive to the new one so there is a constant real time copy.  This is putting a bit of a strain on the machine but it is all up and running.

[UPDATE 0630 27/12]

Sigh…It seems I was given innacurate information and the hard drive hasn’t been replaced yet.  I have requested it be done at 0200 AEST tomorrow.  The server will be down for approximately 30 minutes and then a little slow for the next 6 to 12 hours while all the data is replicated from the existing drive to the new one.  Being the holidays makes it tricky scheduling this sort of thing due to staffing, but the upside is that it is a quiet time for server activity too.

[UPDATE 0640 26/12] The data has now copied onto the new drive and that process has completed, the server is back to full operational state.

The technician will be back to check this again tomorrow to do maintenance to ensure all is in order. This will require shutting down the server briefly, but as far as we can see the data has rebuilt onto the new drive that was put into the machine yesterday.

We’re 50% of the way there through this maintenance and all looks healthy so far.

[UPDATE 0910] You do understand that I am not in the data centre and working on this, right?  I have been advised that this morning’s efforts have been concentrating on getting to the source of the issue and they have.  The hard drive is now returning a status of failed but there is a second hard drive which, as I said in the original post, has everything mirrored and is designed to kick into action if the other fails – it worked!  There is now a physical replacement of the failed device scheduled for 0200hrs AEST 25/12/2016

[UPDATE 0700] It hasn’t been quite as straightforward as expected, but I understand that the job has been done.  The server may reboot once or twice this morning.  Until this, it had been up for about 120 days straight.

I’ll leave the status as ‘underway’ until I have confirmation it is complete.

There has been some minor hiccups on the server over the last week or so.  Investigations have finally revealed that a hard drive may have some problems.  Of course it happens a couple of days before Christmas when staffing is limited 🙁

The hard drive is going to be replaced. This will not affect data at all, there is a mirrored hard drive that makes copies in real-time as well as nightly backups.

However it will mean up to 30 minutes of server down time.  I am arranging this to happen at 0200 tonight if possible or at 0200 some other night in the next few days.

I apologise for any hassle, but it is important to do preventative maintenance.

Scheduled Maintenance

 

Any websites that use mySQL database (this includes all WordPress sites) will experience an outage during a 2 hour window from 2AM Australian Eastern Standard Time on Saturday 8th October.

Powered by MariaDB

Many WordPress users are seeing warnings from various plugins about the mySQL version being out of date.  This upgrade will resolve this issue.  Don’t worry if you don’t know what this means, but I will be switching the database software from mySQL to MariaDB which should see many improvements.  If you are interested in some geek speak read this https://mariadb.com/blog/why-should-you-migrate-mysql-mariadb

I apologise for the interruption, but upgrades are necessary for both performance and security reasons, some can’t be done without downtime.  I have deliberately chosen what is a ‘quiet’ time for the server.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

123host – weeks ahead of the pack

 

I have been banging on about SSL certificates here and here and it turns out I was quite prescient.

In January 2017 Google is shifting the balance of internet security and the Chrome browser will report http:// websites as being not secure compared to https:// websites, it is likely all browsers will follow suit. You can read the Google blog post here

I am not going to go too deeply into SSL certificates and what it all means, you can read this if you are interested – but do note that their business model is now broken as SSL certificates are free – for everyone.

The good news is that if your hosting is with 123host you already have a free SSL certificate installed and you have https:// available whether you are using it or not.

Go ahead and try your domain but put https:// in front of it instead. There should be no error or warnings unless the domain is less than 24 hours old – certificates are checked and issued every night.  You’ll see a padlock next to the url

SSL enabled URL

So what do you do next? If you are using WordPress go into the dashboard and change the URL from http:// to https:// in two places there.  If the links in your blog have been constructed properly it should all just work.

If you have a custom website of some sort simply start using https:// instead.  Again it should all work assuming it has been built properly.

If you are having any problems with https:// on your site open a ticket and the security gnomes will go into action.

Don’t ignore this. If you do, after January 2017 people will see something like this if they visit your site in Chrome.


Google error message

If you don’t act now and need my help in 2017 I will charge for any work done.  How’s that for forcing the issue :o)

Free SSL for everyone!

 

https

If you recall a few months ago I announced Free SSL certificates now available.  This was pretty cool, Lets Encrypt started making SSL certificates available for free.  This is huge, the sale of SSL has been big business for a long time, way overpriced.  As often happens, someone has come along and disrupted the model and it has collapsed.

Now free SSL certificates are becoming the norm.  So much so that an upgrade to the 123host server happening as I write this, is automatically applying a free certificate for every single domain.  Even yours!

What does this mean?  Why SSL?  To find out you can read this article.

So what do you need to do to have your site use the certificate that is available?  Just use https:// instead of http:// and you will see a green padlock appear in the address bar, like this

SSL

If you are using WordPress you can make this the default URL by going into the dashboard > Settings and change the URL in two places by just putting the s in there and making it https://

wpurl

Easy Peasy.

If you aren’t using WordPress and you need some help, open a support ticket https://support.123host.com.au – did you see what I did there?

More bandwidth

 

At 123host we are firm believers in sharing the wealth.

After enough months on the new server to understand usage patterns we have decided there is more than enough bandwidth to share and still have some left over.

Basic hosting bandwidth has been increased from 30Gb to 100gb per month.

Advanced hosting has been increased from 50Gb to 500Gb per month

That should cover most of you ;o)

Vote 123host

 
For those of you not in Australia, today is election day here. To all Australians I urge you to vote wisely, vote early, vote often. For me it was easy to choose 1st and 2nd preferences and then I had to decide who I loathed least…in descending order.  Don’t ya’ love democracy?

If you haven’t voted, here are the latest 123host announcements and electoral policies.

When elected, 123host promises to continue to follow up the handful of ‘something is a bit slow’ reports promptly. We will also rapidly discover that for a couple of days the network was running on half duplex before it was reset to full duplex.

As part of our new communications policy we will also explain the difference between half duplex and full duplex by likening it to using a 2 way radio Vs a phone – you can skip this paragraph if you don’t want your brain to bleed. Half duplex conversation only goes in one direction at a time, that is what happens on a radio – you talk, you release the button, you listen. Repeat. Full duplex is like a phone, you can talk back and forward without having to wait for the other end to finish…that is sometimes called a political debate.

123host has always been a strong supporter of backups and our policies have continually reminded you, our appreciated supporters, of the value of backups. In recent times we have been requested by constituents to rescue them when something has gone wrong. By increasing the expenditure on backups we promise to continue to provide regular backups and to keep them offsite.

Unlike other candidates 123host is always transparent and tells the truth, so here are our two technical policy paragraphs about backups. There are three levels carried out – daily, weekly and monthly. Just how it sounds, that is how often a backup is carried out and then over-written. A monthly backup is done at the beginning of each month, similarly one is done at the beginning of each week. If you suddenly realise you need something you accidentally deleted a couple of weeks ago, these are your saviours. Then there is a daily backup enabling a restore from any of the last 7 days.

If you are running as an independent and have your own policy statement that includes personal backups, be like 123host and keep your backups off the main server. The whole idea is to have them available if something goes horribly wrong e.g. The Shooters Party wins the election. It is pointless having your backups on the original computer if it has been burned, stolen or shot at by the new Prime Minister.

I want you to hear from our Minister for Security, that’s me. I’m not talking about the security of our major political donors, we will always look after them. No, I want to address the security of the traffic to and from your website. If you aren’t collecting sensitive information or orders for products this may not interest you, but it is worth reading.

SSL certificates (Secure Socket Layer) provide encryption between the browser and the server to theoretically stop snooping on the data going back and forth. I say ‘theoretically’ because there is nothing that is 100% secure. The URL becomes https:// instead of http:// and there is usually a padlock icon in the address bar like this SSLYou can read about SSL here  – note the prices for their SSL certificates.

At 123host we are going forward with 3 word slogans and the next one is “Free SSL certificates” – we will not enter into any discussion on whether that is really an abbreviated 5 word slogan. Yes, each and every 123hosted citizen is now entitled to a free SSL certificate. In your cpanel area under Security you will see our new department called ‘Let’s Encrypt SSL’, no appointment needed. If you get stuck, open a support ticket – no cash donations required.

Longer term 123host voters have all received election material explaining that we have changed allegiances and have formed a coalition with a new domain wholesaler. The amalgamation will take about a year all up, and has been quite a pain in the proverbial. But we shall persist with what we know is good and decent and right. So when and if you receive an email with an EPP code (the password) for your domain, please promptly forward it to support@123host.com.au. You will then receive a ballot paper asking if you approve the domain transfer, in this plebiscite (as in the possible upcoming ‘real’ plebiscite) vote YES to approve. The 123host party will monitor the situation closely and stay in close communication with people affected.

Finally, 123host has always been the party of great customer service but we have had to take a tough love policy recently with people who have failed to keep their party membership up to date. When an invoice is 14 days overdue your service is suspended. We are a compassionate party so your service will be unsuspended for a week and you’ll receive a gentle reminder – no thugs in our party. If there hasn’t been a payment or something worked out the next suspension will stick. You receive another reminder, gently but eerily threatening that if it it isn’t all sorted out in a few days, everything will be deleted. We don’t like having to do that, but we do also understand that sometimes projects don’t quite work out.

If you need time to pay or something is going wrong, speak to the party leadership. We are a party for the people.
Thank you for listening citizen.
Steve
Leader and benign dictator at 123host.com.au

Rounding up MIA emails

 

If you think using WordPress is complex, I invite you to join me behind the scenes running a web server.  Actually you can get a glimpse by logging into cpanel.YourDomain.com.au and seeing the extensive list of things you can break.

The way some things are set up is pretty arcane and I am going to explain one of them and how to fix it.

Your account has what is known as a system mail account.  The email address is (YourAccount)@hostname.123host.com.au and system emails often end up in this mailbox.

The problem is that it is the black sheep of mail boxes.  Most people don’t even know it exists and hardly anyone ever checks it.  It usually only contains bounce messages and system notifications that while boring, are pretty important for you if you want to keep your site running smoothly.  Imagine not receiving bounce email messages…you would never know that your emails from your website aren’t getting delivered.  I have found system mail accounts with literally thousands of notifications, the first one I saw explained the problem the person was contacting me about.

Enough theory, what you are going to learn is how to forward those system emails to a real email address.  Ready?

You need your cpanel login for this.  It was in the initial welcome email, you know, the one you should have kept safe.  If you can’t find it, open a support ticket and I will send it to you.

Once in cpanel, do not be daunted by all the offerings and don’t mess with what you don’t understand, you can break the whole internet…well your bit of it anyway.

Head down to the Email section and click on Default Address

default-section

This is where it might get confusing, so take your time.  If this is what your screen looks like, with it forwarding to your system account, we need to fix that.


default-systemIf the screen looks like this, you might also want to change it.  Any emails are being bounced, you will never see them and they may be useful

default-discard

This is where you do your good work.  We are going to tell the server to send all email to another address if it doesn’t have a matching mailbox or forwarder already.  You need to do it for each domain separately.

default-forward

Now there is one minor thing about this that could become a major thing.  I’ll tell you a story about the heady early days of my interwebs experience.

I discovered this “Default Address” thingy and realised that it meant Any.Email.Address@MyDomain.com would get to me.  This was fantastic, or so I thought.  If I gave my email address to the hairdresser it would be hair-chick@MyDomain.com.  When I sent my email address to my mum it was ILoveSteve@MyDomain.com.  It was cute, it was fun. But like cute, fun puppies things soon get out of hand.

I started getting spam on some of these email addresses.  I started getting spam on email addresses I hadn’t given to anyone – remember that any and every email address would get to me.  Eventually I had to wean people off those fancy emails and stop the fun and games.

This may not happen to you, I tend to work that bleeding edge where people say “what can possibly go wrong?”.

Use the them wisely Grasshopper and no one will know about your new powers.

If you have any questions or need some help, open a support ticket.

 

Free SSL certificates now available

 

There is a lot of great free stuff on the web.   Free, as in you don’t have to pay for it.

WordPress is free.  Facebook is free.  Skype is free.  And now SSL certificates are free.

If you are buying hosting or already have hosting with 123host, just ask and I will issue your domain(s) with a free SSL certificate.  SSL certificates are installed automatically on even numbered hours.