Understanding how basic DNS system works is helpful when troubleshooting your site's issues or deciding how to configure your domain

There are some important points that need to be understood

Definitions:
DNS – domain name system used to translate host names to IP address
DNS zone – is a text record that contains IP address to host name translations
address-to-name translation – a line of text in the DNS zone that tells at what IP address and a host is located

1. A DNS zone is the record that contains all IP address-to-name translations.
2. Name servers are where DNZ zone is stored.

Normally, when you register a domain you have two options:

1. Point your domain to your web hosting company's name servers and let them manage the zone for you
2. Use your domain registrar and create a zone there and manage everything from the registrar's end

IMAP allows you to read your messages on the server without “popping” them to your computer like offered with POP accounts. The advantage is that all messages and folder will remain in tact in your Gmail account

1. Log in to your Gmail account
2. Click on Settings link at the top and then on the Forwarding and POP/IMAP link. This will bring you to configuration screen.
3. Under IMAP Access: section make sure Enable IMAP is checked
4. Follow the “Configuration instructions” link to configure your mail client like Outlook, Thunderbird, iPhone

To prevent your domain being blacklisted or blocked by email providers the following steps should be taken.

Steps to follow

1. Make sure you have SPF (sender policy framework) and Domain Keys enabled for your domain(s). This can be done from you hosting control panel. From the control panel click on the “Email Authentication” icon. From the next screen you will be able to enable both SPF and Domain Keys for your domain(s).

Here's a good article on SPF records at Wikipedia – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sender_Policy_Framework
Here's an articles on Domain Keys – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DomainKeys_Identified_Mail

2. If you are going to set up email lists on your account. Make sure they are “clean”. What we mean by that is the emails on your list should be from people who voluntarily agreed to receive emails from you. Make sure your unsubscribe process is easy and there's an unsubscribe link in every email.
3. Always use a double-opt-in sign up process. Which is basically asking the same question twice to make user your recipients understand that they will be receiving an email from you and not make any mistakes.

Other smart options

1. Separate your emails from your site. Either get a dedicated IP address that will only be used for emails or get another web hosting package that you will only use for emails.
2. Use another domain for emails. For example if you have domain.com register and use email-domain.com This way all your email communications will be separate from your site
3. Use a service to send emails out like Constant Contact. This way your domain will be well protected and you can also easily manage your list through them.
4. Sign up for a Gmail account and map it to your domain to send emails that way. We have a hosting package and instructions on how to do that

Importing a database from a shell:

If you already have a dump of the database you wish to import on a server, then run from your terminal window command to import it:

mysql -u username -ppassword database_name < dump.sql

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Backup all available databases:

Run from your terminal window to get dump of all databases:

mysqldump -u username -ppassword -all-databases > dump.sql

Please note, that all databases in the example above will be dumped as a single file.

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How to fix – MediaWiki Error creating thumbnail: Unable to run external programs in safe mode

This issue happens when Image Magic is enabled. The easiest way to fix it, is to find your LocalSetting.php file and comment out the following lines:

# $wgUseImageMagick = true;

# $wgImageMagickConvertCommand = “/usr/bin/convert”;

Commenting out the “wgUseImageMagic” line will enable thumbnails for the newly uploaded images. Nice and simple!