Spinland

Here's another example, just now. Gave up on addtoany and tried to upgrade another one:

I might add that after I enter the FTP information and get the "transferring data..." line at the bottom, the process takes a crazy long amount of time before the failure message, considering the small amount of data involved--like there is some sort of hanging network connection and things are possibly timing out.

This has been going on since I started the blog back in June, and I've finally concluded there simply must be something wrong, this can't be normal. Whenever I try to upgrade Wordpress or a plug-in automatically, the normal outcome is a failure to copy some file or another, and a failure of the operation. Today I tried to upgrade addtoany and the failure caused the plugin to stop being recognized and multiple attempts to re-install have failed. Here is a typical error message (though the file name will vary): I don't see as how this can be a permissions issue, because sometimes if I re-attempt the automatic install three or four times it will finally work. Again, this happens both when I try to upgrade the blog, itself, or any plugins. I don't believe it has ever worked right the first time around. This can't be normal; what could be the problem? My hostname is spinland.biz and the blog is at spinrants.spinland.biz Mark

On the last line, there should be a newline after Zeus. The RewriteRule part has to be on its own line.

The bad flag errors are troublesome. I wonder whether extra end-of-line characters or something got inserted in the copy/paste process? I pasted that code in from the .htaccess file I use on all my sites and I've never seen that error in my logs. Hmm.

I hate being the bearer of bad news, but .htaccess blocking will only work if the offender uses the software in default mode. Programs like HTTrack can easily be configured to announce themselves as legitimate browsers, which gets right past the block. That being said, if you'd like to block a host of "bad bots" including HTTrack that aren't stealthed in that manner, you can add this code to your .htaccess file: ># Block Bad Bots RewriteEngine On RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^BlackWidow [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Bot\ mailto:craftbot@yahoo.com [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ChinaClaw [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Custo [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^DISCo [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Download\ Demon [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^eCatch [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EirGrabber [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailSiphon [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EmailWolf [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Express\ WebPictures [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ExtractorPro [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^EyeNetIE [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^FlashGet [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetRight [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GetWeb! [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go!Zilla [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Go-Ahead-Got-It [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^GrabNet [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Grafula [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^HMView [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} HTTrack [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Stripper [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Image\ Sucker [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} Indy\ Library [NC,OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^InterGET [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Internet\ Ninja [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JetCar [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^JOC\ Web\ Spider [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^larbin [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^LeechFTP [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mass\ Downloader [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^MIDown\ tool [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Mister\ PiX [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Navroad [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NearSite [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetAnts [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetSpider [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Net\ Vampire [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^NetZIP [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Octopus [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Explorer [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Offline\ Navigator [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^PageGrabber [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Papa\ Foto [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pavuk [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^pcBrowser [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^RealDownload [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^ReGet [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SiteSnagger [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SmartDownload [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperBot [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^SuperHTTP [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Surfbot [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^tAkeOut [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Teleport\ Pro [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^VoidEYE [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Image\ Collector [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Web\ Sucker [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebAuto [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebCopier [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebFetch [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebGo\ IS [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebLeacher [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebReaper [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebSauger [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ eXtractor [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Website\ Quester [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebStripper [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebWhacker [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WebZIP [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Wget [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Widow [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^WWWOFFLE [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Xaldon\ WebSpider [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} ^Zeus RewriteRule ^.* - [F,L] Hope it helps.

Are Server Side Include Directives (e.g. ><!--#include virtual="insertthisfile.html" --> ) supported, or should I just use PHP? Thanks!

Thanks. I've forwarded your post to her. Appreciate it!

Pardon me if this is an already-covered topic but a forum search on "dns" didn't turn anything up. I just had a client register a domain name and start a hosting plan with you. She's sent me the account id and password so I can log in and configure it for her and set up her web pages...but it's been so long since I started fresh I've forgotten: does she (or I) need to do anything manually to set up DNS so the new domain can be seen, or is that already fixed up and it will auto-propagate in a few days? If it has to be manually configured, how does one get the server address without recourse to the domain name? The new domain is BrandyKegKennels.com. Thanks in advance! Spinny

TCH is, indeed, my domain registrar. I just submitted the ticket. Thanks!

Forum search turned up nothing. My domain is hosted with TotalChoice, but my e-mail is through Google Apps. In their help files they strongly suggest I set up "SPF Records" for my domain so my e-mails aren't seen by some providers as spam. Here's the relevant excerpt from the help document: Is this something that can be done and, if so, can I do it or do I need to submit a ticket? Thanks!

Just a follow-up in case anyone stumbles across this thread with the same questions I had... It works great! You get full IMAP, even across Thunderbird and the BlackBerry e-mail client (the latter just for deletes, though). Once the fine folks at TCH did the CNAME for me (took only minutes after my request) and I remembered to enable the new URL within the Google Apps cpanel, I was all set. If you want to migrate your old e-mail to the new system (and have some time to kill) it's as simple as dragging your "local folders" full of POPped mail up and dropping them onto your new account. Everything uploads onto the Google Apps server thanks to the magic of IMAP and now you have it available online from anywhere. Bear in mind your quota is just over 7GB so if you're a pack rat with your e-mail you could have issues. Many thanks for all the help and advice I got during this process, you guys rock.

Wow. I swear I did a forum search on google apps and that post never came up. Thanks for the link!

Okay, tried this and the process is not making sense. Where do I set a Cname? There's nothing in the cpanel and a search on cname turns up nothing. Google doesn't list totalchoice among the services it provides help for. I can find where to set the mx addresses but that's all.

Interesting, I didn't know you could do that. Thanks for the information, I shall certainly explore that further.

I've actually been using the gmail account to host my e-mails for over a year, now. The issue I had was I did not want outgoing mail to be tagged as coming from gmail--call it vanity or something, but I'd rather have mail shown as coming from my own domain. See my response above for a high-level description of the issues I was having in the past. It appears as though I'll just have to live with the gmail address. Thanks!

I believe the problem is of my own making. Last year I set my domain-hosted e-mail account to auto forward to my gmail one, where I've started archiving all my mail. I still had to log in to my domain account periodically and delete the mail that piled up there (since it saves a local copy even when forwarding). When I got tired of doing that I learned that I could have a forwarder in place and delete the actual e-mail account so no mail would accumulate on the server, and I did just that. That means there really isn't an e-mail account to verify against when I try to set up the SMTP re-route, so naturally it fails the check. I'm going to have to live with the "on behalf of" caveat in my e-mail headers, or go back to having mail pile up on my server needing to be purged periodically. Thanks for responding!

I have my username@domainname.ext e-mail address forwarded to my gmail account, and in turn my gmail account is set up to send as though it were coming from my domain name. Spamming being what it is, that results in the actual "From" having that annoying "on behalf of" clause in it. Here's what the gmail folks recently put into place to help with that: Now, I can see another problem with allowing an external account to send mail through your SMTP server (how to know I'm not just a spammer?) but I thought I'd try it anyway. Alas, I got time outs or authentication failed messages. Attached is a screenshot of the gmail configuration panel I was using. Am I filling it out correctly for domains hosted by TCH, or is the failure related to anti-spam policies preventing this sort of thing at all? Thanks in advance! Spinny

Nope, got it wrong. That goes into an infinite loop because it tries to redirect www.spinland.biz, which everything else is being redirected to. This version seems to work: >RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^spinland.net$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.spinland.net$ RewriteRule ^.*$ "http\:\/\/www\.spinland\.biz" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^spinland.org$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.spinland.org$ RewriteRule ^.*$ "http\:\/\/www\.spinland\.biz" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^spinland.biz$ RewriteRule ^.*$ "http\:\/\/www\.spinland\.biz" [R=301,L]

Okay, I just realized there's a cpanel utility for this. I think I did it correctly, could a guru verify this is what I want? >RewriteEngine on RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^spinland.net$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.spinland.net$ RewriteRule ^.*$ "http\:\/\/www\.spinland\.biz" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^spinland.org$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.spinland.org$ RewriteRule ^.*$ "http\:\/\/www\.spinland\.biz" [R=301,L] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^spinland.biz$ [OR] RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.spinland.biz$ RewriteRule ^.*$ "http\:\/\/www\.spinland\.biz" [R=301,L]

Well, based on forum searches this would be the code to handle the "www." issue: >Options +FollowSymlinks RewriteEngine on rewritecond %{http_host} ^spinland.biz [nc] rewriterule ^(.*)$ [url="http://www.spinland.biz/$1"]http://www.spinland.biz/$1[/url] [r=301,nc] And this would be the code to handle redirecting the .org and .net addresses: >RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} !^www\.spinland\.biz$ [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ [url="http://www.spinland.biz/$1"]http://www.spinland.biz/$1[/url] [R=301,L] Where I'm lost (assuming I even got the above correct) is how do you combine those, or can you just put both sets in the .htaccess file?

I need to come up with the correct syntax for 301 re-directs to solve multiple issues. The canonical domain name I want to establish is www.spinland.biz. I know how to come up with the code for redirecting 'spinland.biz' to 'www.spinland.biz' but at the same time I need to redirect 'spinland.org,' 'www.spinland.org,' 'spinland.net,' and 'www.spinland.net.' My understanding of how the syntax works is weak enough that I'm in over my head. Could you tell me how to get all of that busy stuff worked in? Many thanks in advance. ON EDIT: I just realized the typo in the title. Should have been 301, not 310. D'oh!

I need to be able to give some folks secure FTP access for transferring some data. The process for setting it up for use with a dedicated FTP client is straightforward and I did that. My question is, is it possible to allow access via a web browser, such as using the ftp:// protocol? In some such sites in the past I've been able to drag and drop files onto my web browser to upload, but that doesn't seem to work in this case. If I set the URL to ftp://subdomain.domain I created I just get a blank screen, although via a separate menu I was able to provide password protection to the directory to guard against going there with the http:// protocol. Is there a way to set it up for web-based uploads and, if so, where could I find the how-to? Thanks in advance!

Thanks. I overlooked the forwarders icon in the CPanel menu. D'oh!

For what it's worth, you can do all of that obfuscation via a Gmail account. Don't know if that's useful to you, but I have (for example) my Blackberry mail going out via Gmail and configured to look like it came from my primary e-mail address. HTH!