Configuring an alternative SMTP port

In a lot of cases today your ISP (Internet Service Provider) will block outgoing port 25. Port 25 is used for outgoing SMTP traffic and ISPs block it to avoid SPAM that your account might send. It might seem like a good thing to do but I does cause some confusion and frustration to the end users.

A good hosting provider should run their SMTP services on a few alternative ports. One of the is port 587. Try using it in your SMTP settings and it should work great. Otherwise, you'll have to contact your provider to get that alternative port number.

When transferring your web site from Arvixe to 2by2host it's important to understand that Arvixe's backup utility is very sporadic and doesn't seem to work well. Therefore, there's no other choice but to transfer everything manually.

The whole process can be divided into 3 stages:

1. Archiving and moving the files
2. Dumping database and moving it
3. Moving emails

Archiving and moving files

Log in to your hosting cPanel which is normally located at http://your_domain/cpanel

1. Click on the “File Manager” icon. This will open the file manager.
2. Expand your home directory by clicking on the + sign next to it. This will display a list of directories within.
3. Open your public_html directory by clicking on the words “public_html”. You will see the contents of it in the right pane
4. Click “Select all” at the top and then click on the “Compress” icon.
5. On the next screen select the compression format – “Zip Archive” and the name of the archive to be saved as
6. Click the “Compress file(s)” button. This will create an archive of all your files in public_html

You can now move your archive to the new account either via FTP or by wget if you have shell access

Dumping database and moving it

1. To move your database(s) you will need to click on the “phpMyAdmin” icon in cPanel. This will launch phpMyAdmin utility
2. Select the database you're going to export by clicking on it
3. Click on the export link at the top
4. Make sure all tables are selected and the export format is set to SQL
5. Under “Save file as” section make sure “zipped” option is checked
6. Click on the “Go” button

This will start the export/download process to save the database dump onto your computer. The process will depend on how large your database is and might take some time to run. After it's finished you will have a complete dump of your database is compressed format that you can now transfer to your new account

Moving emails

You will need to manually re-create all your email accounts from your new cPanel

To save your emails from the old account configure Outlook or Thurnderbird to POP all emails locally to your computer

Later on you can synchronize them with your new accounts or just export them as Microsoft .pst files that can then be viewed with Outlook

This completes the transfer process and if transferred to us is done absolutely free of charge. Enjoy?

Is it possible to do email marketing on your server

Unfortunately we don't allow sending unlimited emails from our hosting servers. It doesn't matter, whether you have a legitimate list of emails or not. By the way, an illegal list is considered to have been obtained in the following ways:

• Purchased on the Internet
• Purchased on the CD/DVD/etc
• Data-mined from a search index
• Data-mined from a directory (web or any other)
• Anything obtained in a similar way

I have a legitimate opted-in list. How can I send emails to that?

There a lot of vendors who specialize in email marketing. We successfully tested only one of them and are still using their services. Therefore, if you have more than 100 recipients on your list, then you might be interested in using Constant Contact. We do recommend their services.

Is your SSL valid?

This certificate in fact is valid and your connection is secured. This means that all data you exchange with our server is protected and nobody except you and our server know what you do in the cPanel.

But why do I get the “untrusted” message?

It looks untrusted to third-parties authorities. This is true, because the certificate was issued by us and but not them and they just can't verify it.

Disabling that annoying SSL reminder:

In FireFox

If you see the “This Connection is Untrusted” message

1. Please click on “I understand the risks”
2. and then click on the “Add exception” button that will appear
3. Make sure the “Permanently store this exception” check-box is checked
4. Click on “Confirm this security exception”

This will add our certificate to your operating system permanently and will not warn you anymore again for that particular site

In Internet Explorer

1. Download our certificates: one, two
2. Extract the certificates from the archive to your hard disk
3. Open Internet Explorer, select Tools and Internet Options
4. Select the Content tab and click the Certificates button
5. In the new Certificates window select the Trusted Root Certification Authorities tab
6. Click Import…, Next, then select whmcertificate.crt, click Next and Finish
7. When asked if you want to import a new certificate click YES
8. Restart Internet Explorer

1. I started by downloading the wordpress .zip archive from www.wordpress.org onto my computer.
2. I created a database through the wizard in cPanel (cPanel — > Databases — > MySQL Database Wizard). I wrote down the name of the database, the username with all privileges, and the password to that database in a notes.txt file on my computer. For more on databases read his article “How to create a database in cPanel”.
3. I uploaded the zip archive through the cPanel File Manager and extracted the files from it into the desired folder. For more information about cPanel File Manager read “How to upload and extract archives using the File Manager?”
4. One of the most important questions was: Where do I install my WordPress blog? I decided to install it into a sub-directory which is a default location. To install WordPress to another folder read “How to install WordPress to the root directory”.

The folder “wordpress” was created in the root directory of the site. It contained all the files needed to install WordPress on my site.

But how could I make everything work now? I had to connect the files in my directory to the database I had earlier created. That was the step when I needed the information from my notes.txt file with the name of my database, username, and the password. The server hoste name I used was localhost, which is standard for most cases.

I opened the “wordpress” folder, selected the file wp-config-sample.php and clicked on the “edit” button at the top of File Manager.

The part underlined in red should be changed according to the details in my notes.txt file.

I filled in the information and then clicked on “Save Changes” and returned to the File Manager. There I renamed wp-config-sample.php to wp-config.php. The “Rename” button is next to the “Edit” button. It was necessary to make the configuration file active and complete the installation.

5. After that, I had to run the installation. In a new browser window I typed the address of my blog: testing.2by2host.com/wordpress then clicked “Enter”and was automatically taken to the installation page which was located at http://testing.2by2host.com/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php. Note that if the installation page didn’t open you can manually type in this part: wp-admin/install.php at the end after the folder where WordPress is being installed to.

It took a few seconds to finish the installation. I just watched the process to complete.

I wish you all the best with your own installation of WordPress blog! Believe me: once you learn how to do it manually, you will be able to install almost any script on your site.

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!

How to configure email forwarding in cPanel

This procedure is necessary when you need to forward your emails to other email accounts like Gmail, Yahoo, etc or to another account you might have on your system.

1. Log in to your control panel which is normally located at http://youdomain_name.com/cpanel
2. Click on the “Forwarders” icon in your cPanel
3. Click on the “Add Forwarder” button
4. Type in the first part of your email (everything before the @ symbol) in the “Address to Forward” field. You should see your domain name to the right of it. If you have more than one domain in your account you can select the one you need from the drop-down list
5. Next, make sure the “Forward to email address:” radio button is checked and type in the email address you are forwarding to in that field
6. Click on the “Add Forwarder” button to add this forwarder

That will enable forwarding for the email address you used