Sebastian

Well, please disregard my last, utterly mindless post! The address where the extra output is sent to is defined in the cron jop panel of cpanel. And once it's removed, the unnecessary mails stoppend dropping in…

Did that and now I know the limits. Now I wanted to use a cron job set up in cpanel to run a script every minute that would work off the list of recipients over a couple of hours — be free to tell me if you can think of a better approach! (Speaking of which: is there a way to dynamically add and remove cron jobs?) Strangely, the cron daemon sends me an extra email notification everytime it runs (to an address of which I don't even know where it is defined). How do I switch this off? I don't want to receive hundreds of mails every week just telling me that the cron job is actually doing its job!

Hi Everyone! For some months I've been using a simple PHP script to iterate through an ever growing list of recipients (now over 1000) for a newsletter, that's being sent weekly from one of my clients' site. Beginning October some or all recipients stopped receiving the newsletter. My questions: Has there been imposed a new artificial limit as to how many mails may been sent at a given time? Has the list grown into a preexisting limitation? What would be a work around / What is the best practice? Right now my script sends all the mails individually using the regular address field. While developing I also experimented sending all mails at once using the BCC header, but decided it would cause problems with spam filters. Would this practice have an impact on my ability to send mass mails? Thank you for your help! Sebastian Note: I just thought I'd mention that migrating to a tool as Dada Mail, as was suggested in several cases on this forum, is out of the question since the newsletter generation is tightly integrated with the site's own CMS. I would really need to now the facts (server configurations / limitations) that would enable me to adapt my own solution.

Thanks for the reply! And if you can live with this necessary evil, so can I! I was a little concerned with creating a security breach by setting permissions like that and thereby breaking some rule that I didn't know about, but should have. So I wanted to make sure I was doing things "the right way". Thanks again, Sebastian

For some time I've been wondering: What is the recommended way to make a directory writable for PHP? On my localhost, I set www as the owner of the directory and myself as the group. This way I don't have to grant access everyone. With my sites hosted on TCH I don't think I'm able to work like that — at least my FTP client doesn't offer a way to change the owner and/or group of a file/directory. Also, www doesn't seem to be part of the defaolt group either, as I only get writing permission when granting writing access to everyone. But setting permissions like (writable for everyone) doesn't strike me as advisable… So where's the mojo? Sebastian

Security is, of course, a most vital concern. But, as they evolve, technologies inherently become more vulnerable. (As do organisms for that matter — a jellyfish can't die of pneumonia.) So, in order for the candidate to survive, the newly gained strengths must outweigh the newly gained weaknesses. More practically: Apple uses WebDAV extensively. I'm sure they are a security aware company. How do they do it? This is surely a most sensible approach! On the other hand, not allowing for gradual transitions bears the possibility of stagnation, as every so little modification becomes a gigantic undertaking and therefore often tends to be better left alone. How, for example, will you ever upgrade to PHP5 this way? (Or will you just not?) But I am going too far! I don't have any experience running a commercial web server, and thus no qualification questioning the way you run yours. Please, accept my apology if I have unduly criticized you, as I realize I am over my head here. My initial post was not intended to conjure up a discussion about your policies and as I said there: I am generally a very satisfied customer of yours! I may, at times, be too easily enthusiastic about new technologies. I just like to see good things get better and, as everybody else, would love to have my cake and eat it.

Well, this doesn't look promising at all either! It seems like all the exits are blocked. That's bad! One would think though that at least newly set up servers could be WebDAV enabled. But apparently that's not the case. Anyway, I hope TCH has a strategy to accommodate new technologies and necessities in the future — even if they're not just plug & play Thank you all for this exchange!

What about the HTTPS/WebDAV part?

When I googled for "allow SFTP without shell access" I found the following discussion thread, which, to me, seemed pretty knowledgable: SSH - sftp without shell access What I got out of it was: it's possible though difficult. On the other hand I found the HTTPS/WebDAV solution it mentions quite intriguing! To my knowledge this pair offers similar features to SFTP and you get them free of SSH-headaches. Wouldn't that be a solution?!

Sure, that's the case. But it does so with the help of metafiles it stores on the server and your localhost — not exactly elegant! And besides, Dreamweaver is quite an expensive and bloated piece of sofware — for a FTP client, at least

This topic has been around for at least since 2003. It's obviously of some interest to a number of people. The technology seems tried and true. Using cPanel for secure transfer is no feasible alternative. Still support for this protocol has never been added. Given the usual speed and flexibility I have come to know from the TCH techies, there must be a serious reason why. Yet, in this forum, I haven't come across it. Being generally a very satisfied customer of TCH's, I have to all the more wonder why… My case for SFTP: Besides the obvious advantages over plain FTP on the security frontier, SFTP supports the 'CHMOD UTIME' command, allowing clients to adjust the modification date of uploaded files — by default the date of upload — to reflect the files modification date on the local host. Apart from greatly facilitating the manual comparison of file versions, this inconspicuous little feature is used by some clients as the natural basis for file syncing/mirroring services. This is so practical it makes my want to scream! Actually the 'CHMOD UTIME' command is also supported by some FTP servers, but unfortunately not by the one deployed at TCH. So, to kill two rabbits with on rock (Portuguese), hit two flies with one flap (German) and [fill in the corresponding English idiom], let's get SFTP, whatcha say?!?!

The forum's subtitle suggests otherwise: Also: it is practically empty. Could it be that with TCH's service there is really nothing left to be desired?!

I must confess that I find the structure of this whole forum quite confusing. It's true that I don't come here very often, and thus am not as familiar with it as some of you may be. I come here mostly to find out if certain technical issues are being/have been discussed, when I encounter one that tech-support cannot solve, because it is out of their jurisdiction. And then it takes me longer to find the right place for the particular issue than in any other forum I repeatedly visit. Maybe that's because this forum is so huge embraces a far greater variety of topics than most others — with which, of course, there's nothing wrong… But I think a tighter structure would be helpfull. My suggestion: All topics that have to do directly with the services TCH provides go on one heap, all that relate to aspects of using these services (web design, web development, etc…) on another and all the rest ('What's your favorite pet?' and 'Do you think Linus Torvalds will be the next Bill Gates?') on a third heap. Then, I think, it would be helpfull to separate the discussions from the announcements (and maybe consider moving the latter out of the forum or in a separate one altogether). Well, I don't know… I haven't spend a lot of time analyzing the forums current contents, but I am sure that streamlining its structure would be a big plus!

Where is the place to post suggestions/requests regarding TCH hosting services? I mean a place to suggest future support for certain technologies/extensions/protocolls currently not awailable from TCH. Thank you! -Sebastian

I have no permission to edit my post?! Oh well, I was just going to add that I really liked my work place :sigh:, but that I might be moved to swop it with the one with the fantastic mountain view half way up the thread, if you put in one of those sandwiches