Monday, October 15, 2018

Web Hosting

Best WordPress Backup Solution – Akeeba

20 June 2018
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Akeeba, WAMP, Web Hosting, WordPress

I have used Akeeba for years for Joomla and made moving and backup up sites so easy. I started purchasing the Pro version so I could exclude various directories and back up to Amazon Web Services. With the use of a Cron Job my sites were taking care of themselves.

I was so glad to see Akeeba make their backup solution for WordPress. The best part was the way it ran the 3 SQL statements you need for updating the permalinks automatically. Although this was best solution I had used for backing up and moving a WordPress site it didn’t always work. Sometimes it would never finish running the SQL permalink updates and the site wouldn’t complete the move. In addition, the plugin would tell me I had an update available, but when I tried to automatically update it the site was breaking. I would end up with a blank white website.

Well this latest version of Akeeba Backup / Kickstart software is working really well. When ever I have moved a site the Permalinks update works well, and the latest version updates through the plugin manager without a hitch. I would highly recommend this software to anyone. The pro version is totally worth it.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Joomla Site Clean Up Tools

12 June 2018
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Filezilla, Joomla, MySQL, Security, Web Hosting

Here is a list of “Tools of the Trade” according to Ben Martin at Sucuri Security.

  • Filezilla (FTP Client)
  • NoScript (Script Blocker)
  • VirtualBox (Virtualization Tool)
  • ublock Origin (Ad Blocker)
  • PHPMyAdmin or Adminer (Database Management)
  • User Agent Switcher
  • Support Forums (ie: https://forum.joomla.org)
  • OSSEC HIDS (Server Monitoring)
  • SSH / BASH connection

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

Disable or turn off Akeeba Backup Before Updating Joomla

5 May 2017
Grimey
1 Comment
Categories: Akeeba, Joomla Extension, Joomla Update, Web Hosting

I needed to update to Joomla 3.7 and every time I did it ran an Akeeba backup. I already ran the back up before I started, so I just wanted to update the Joomla core.

You can do this by go into the Administrative area >> Extensions  >> and Plug-ins. Look for “System – Backup on update” and uncheck it.

This article helped me solve this.

https://www.akeebabackup.com/support/akeeba-backup-3x/Ticket/22374-disable-backup-before-updating-joomla.html

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

WordPress requesting FTP credentials when trying to update a plugin.

23 March 2017
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Web Hosting, WordPress

A took over an infected WordPress site. I had Sucuri clean the malware. The hosting was a mess. There were three WordPress installs in this hosting account, but only one was the site. It took a while to figure which one was the live site.

While trying to update core I got the following.

The following article helped me shed some light on the situation.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/640409/can-i-install-update-wordpress-plugins-without-providing-ftp-access

I was going to change the permission, but Sucuri wasn’t finished scrubbing the malware. If I can remember I will post my results.

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

[Solved] – Not Getting Emails From Website or This sender failed our fraud detection checks and may not be who they appear to be

13 December 2016
Grimey
3 Comments
Categories: email, Joomla, Office 365, Web Hosting

This issue started with website owner stopped getting emails from a recently moved website. Domain name is with Network Solutions, Hosting is with Godaddy, and email is through Office 365.  The issue only happened when the email address it was going to was within the same domain. For example “john.doe@somewhere.com” wasn’t getting email from the website with the domain “somewhere.com”.

The answered lied with the Office 365 SPF setting. I had the add the ip address to SPF record in Network Solutions.

spf_record_1

This got the email to be delivered to the client; however, there was a warning in the email.

This sender failed our fraud detection checks and may not be who they appear to be.

I contacted Office 365 tech support. They had me add the Godaddy smtp server as well as the IP address. We used a website http://www.spfwizard.net and build the SPF txt file.

spf_record_2

The final SPF entry:  v=spf1 mx ip4:000.000.000.000 a:spf.protection.outlook.com include:smtp.sercureserver.net

The IP address isn’t 000.000.000.000 of course. Just use the IP of the hosted website.

I sure hope this helps someone else out there….

Correction:

Turns out the top method isn’t what I needed although I don’t think it is bad to have. What I needed to do is the following:

  1. Go into the Godaddy Webhosting CPanel.
  2. Go down to “Email”.
  3. Click on MX Entry.
  4. Remove old MX Record which comes standard with new hosting.
  5. Add your Office 365 MX Record.
  6. Change to “Remote Mail Exchanger”

Cross your fingers….

Solved – Office 365 / Outook.com Not Receiving Emails From Website Form

2 December 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Chronoforms, email, Joomla, Office 365, Web Hosting

Finished a site that is on Godaddy hosting, Domain is with Network Solution, and the Email is with Microsoft Office 365 Online.  The issue was the customer wasn’t receiving emails from the forms on the site.

The form would send to any email address except the clients email address. I contacted Microsoft and got wonderful help.

The fix was to use their “@theirdomain.onmicrosoft.com” email address and not the alias.

Microsoft told me it took them 3 days to determine this fix.

I really hope this helps someone else out there….

 

 

How To Fix Attacked .htaccess File On Godaddy Shared Hosting

8 November 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Programming, Security, Web Hosting, Website Security

Got a call from a client about website not coming up. If you searched for the site in a search engine and clicked on any link to the site you got a page about a missing PHP file.  This site is a static HTML site.

I opened the .htaccess file and saw redirects to the PHP file that didn’t exist. I cleared out the .htaccess file and when you click on the search link the site came up fine.

I contacted Godaddy looking for help, but they don’t deal with .htaccess files. You are on your own. They do offer SiteLock to protect the site.

I used the following links advice and to change the name of the .htaccess file and the contents of the file rewrite the name back to all lower case.

https://perishablepress.com/improve-site-security-by-protecting-htaccess-files/

My final .htaccess file containted the following

<Files ~"^.*\.([Hh][Tt][Aa])">
order allow,deny 
deny from all 
satisfy all 
</Files>

In addition, i changed the password for the FTP access. Next step is to use Sucuri. I know they can protect this site.

I hope this helps me and helps someone else out there…

 

Joomla Security Check Extension – trying this one out

3 October 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Joomla, Security, Web Hosting

Got an email from Joomshine about security. I have had a couple of Joomla sites get attacked, and really want not have to deal with lack of faith that the site is attacker proof.

I downloaded this plugin “Securitycheck”, and I am going to take it for a test run. I will let you know how it goes.  Here is the link.

https://extensions.joomla.org/extension/securitycheck

I hope this helps someone else out there…

 

White Label CMS – Brand WordPress CMS as your own

8 September 2016
Grimey
No comments
Categories: Web Hosting, WordPress

There is some much to learn and know about the various CMS systems out there. While working on a customers WordPress site I noticed how well the site was branded by the company that built it. I was Word-Im-Pressed for sure.

The plug-in was White Label CMS.

They also used Manuals Plug-in. This plug-in has a bunch of video tutorials to show administrators how to do different functions in WordPress. Here is a link to their site.

www.videousermanuals.com

 

I hope this helps someone else out there…