Category: Hosting

Issues sending mail to Talk Talk customers

(3rd November 2015).

I have received messages from two clients over the past two days relating to “bounce back” messages being returned from the TalkTalk network.

The messages will carry this text:

Subject: Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

  someone@talktalk.net Continue reading Issues sending mail to Talk Talk customers

Using MailPoet

The following is of interest if your site has a newsletter application built in called Mail Poet.

If you have an email address list containing more than 70 subscribers for your newsletter please do take care with the last step before you send out your newsletter. Generally speaking shared hosting providers do not like bulk mailing applications running in their hosting. They use a variety of methods to detect mail being sent from the hosting which includes monitoring the volume per second/ minute and the number of error messages received such as “recipient account does not exist”.  Continue reading Using MailPoet

Housekeeping

I have been around all of the sites I am hosting over the past 28 days and backed them all up and retained a local copy. All of the sites now have a new plugin installed called UpDraftPlus, this is a premium plugin which automates the back up of websites.

I mentioned this a few months back, I have now installed it everywhere. The plugin can be located under Settings and UpDraftPlus Backups.

It is possible to create an instant backup, however all sites should be backing themselves up and retaining the last 6 weeks’ worth of backups automatically. Bear in mind that if you have a large site, this will take up a lot of your hosting space. So in some cases you may have fewer than 6 backups.

If anyone is close to the limits I have extended the space at no extra cost.

Using Dropbox

In a few cases I have also set up Dropbox for new websites so that they back themselves up and keep a copy of the website somewhere else other than the hosting. It is free to open a DropBox account and you can use it for up to 2GB worth of space. If you are interested in having your site backed up to an independent location please let me know.

Helping yourself

Continue reading Housekeeping

Some sites may be slow or intermittent

Reported at 16:00hrs on 10th of September 2015.

I have been working on some sites in one of the hosting locations I use. I have noticed slow and intermittent performance today. If you have a website created over the past 5 months then it is possible you are affected by slow and intermittent performance from one of the servers from around 11am today.

I have contacted the support desk, (several times) and they are looking into the issue.  I will keep an eye on it over the next day or two. I expect this will be resolved within the next 4 hours.

– Mark

Understanding how to use this site

I have added a page under the main menu that shows you how to use this site. There are currently over 350 news/ self help/ information items on the site with hints and tips and 34 fixed pages. I realised that some of you visiting here may not be aware they are there because they cannot be located directly through the main menu.

They are news posts that are accessed through the news and alerts page. Each is categorised according to the content in the page and it’s relevance.

To help you get as much information as possible from the information on this site please see this page for more an explanation of how the site works. How to use this site. 

For clients of Wingrove-Media

If you have recently been working with me, and I have developed a site for you, or I am hosting your site you can sign up to a monthly newsletter using the form below:

After clicking Subscribe please check your email account and confirm your subscription

Please note that if you are not recognised as a client you will not be added to the mailing list. Most general articles on this site are freely available to everyone, I have made this available in the same spirit of many other developers who wish to help people, if only in thanks to those that have helped me in the past when I first started. The purpose of the content in this site is primarily targeted at my client base who have a specific implementation or are using specific services to support their website and email. 

Please check the sidebar for a list of articles, or search the site for something using the methods described in the sidebar. There is a category cloud in the side bar which is used to categorise posts. You can use this to narrow down your search.

Who owns your domain name?

I am not trying to be alarmist here, be assured that despite reading this below; if I set up your domain name for your organisation then you own it. However problems can occur, so I have several examples I have given below to illustrate them, and what happened as a result.

The following article largely applies to .co.uk and .org.uk domain names. I have had direct experience in these cases, ICANN controls other domain names like .com. They will have similar processes in place.

It is possible to look up your domain name using a “whois” service. For .org.uk and .co.uk, these are managed by Nominet. You can go to this page, enter your domain name and see what is recorded about it.

http://www.nominet.org.uk/whois

I generally take out domain names for new clients using one of two accounts. The majority are held with my registrar uk2.net, and I am the registrant. Because I have an account with uk2.net my details are automatically entered against the domain names. However I can edit some of the fields on request.

Why is this important?

The person that holds your domain name, also controls where DNS is located, this is the service that connects a user looking for www.mysite.co.uk to the right web server. It also affects mail as well. So in the wrong hands, you can end up in trouble if you are not careful. Your mail could suddenly turn off along with your website.

 

Case 1: The registrant passes away

While replacing and moving an existing site I needed access to the domain name. Continue reading Who owns your domain name?

Check your site from time to time

About 10 days ago WordPress released a new upgrade to the WordPress framework. Everyone has an auto-update mechanism that should check for updates to plugins and the WordPress core every day. If a new version of code is detected then the site is automatically moved to maintenance mode (generally for less than 30 seconds), the site is then upgraded and made public again. This happens several times a week because each element or building block on your website is maintained by the authors independently.

The reason I have set it up this way is because there are frequent updates to fix bugs and vulnerabilities. It is essential to always be running the latest code on your site.

Last week I was made aware of one site that had “disappeared”. The admin side of the site was still present and functioning, but the users view of the site was a blank screen. I have seen two other cases like this.

Check your site

Do check your sites from time to time to make sure they are running. Once a month/ 6 weeks use your contact form to make sure that is working too. Continue reading Check your site from time to time

How to set up an Out of Office Email responder

I have added a tutorial under Email in the main menu which covers the steps you need to take to configure an out of office email responder. It is not very difficult to do, and will ease the administrative burden when people are out of the office.

I have indicated to some groups that this feature is not possible in the hosting we are using, it turns out it is. The only issue is that it is not seemlessly integrated with Outlook and MS Exchange Server which is possibly where you may have come across it before.

Go to this page to learn about how it works, and how to set it up. This article is password protected.

Hosting Costs for Charities

Over the years I have been doing this I have placed some sites into 3rd party hosting, and moved some sites from 3rd party hosting into my hosting (this is not an advert for my hosting btw). Hosting tends to be quite similar wherever you go, but occasionally you come across a company that does it all differently.  In this particular case I am going to refer to 1and1.co.uk. I have worked with one client and reduced their annual hosting and email charges with 1and1 from well over £200 per year to around £60 some years ago.

Paying over the top

I have come across another today. This is a small regional charity, going through difficult times like many others out there, so every penny counts. This group are not hosting with me currently; I offered to replace a website for them and place it in their hosting (not knowing who it was at the time). Continue reading Hosting Costs for Charities

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