TCH-Dick

Well, part of my new job duties are to get feedback from our customers and what better place to start than here. So lets hear it, what would you like to see at TCH? Additions of services, removal, improvements, something your not happy with? Lets hear it. You can either post here or e-mail me directly (my address is in my signature). My goal is to help make what I think is already the best host around even better.

Congratulations Bruce

It is a recent addition to cPanel. Open File Manager and select a .html file. Click on Html Editor in the menu on the upper left hand corner.

If you dont use Microsoft FrontPage to maintain your site you dont need them. They can be un installed by going to cpanel and uninstalling FrontPage extensions.

Thanks everyone it's not just great employees that make TCH so good, it's the great customers as well. Thanks for the support and the well wishes, if any of you need anything you know how to find me Also thanks to Bill and Patty, I wouldnt be where I am without your support. Congrats Rob, but no birthday suits please!!!

The difference is people are not likely to manually forward SPAM to their AOL accounts. The problem is not forwarding legit e-mail to AOL. It is forwarding SPAM to AOL. AOL's filter doesnt look at the original sender and marks our server as the original sender. when you have several 1000 people with forwards that send all of their SPAM to AOL, AOL thinks that SPAM originates from TCH.

Thats correct, you can still send e-mail to AOL and you can still open an e-mail and click on forward and forward it to an AOL user. This only affects the automated forwards that people can set up in cpanel.

To everyone saying we should have given more notice, we would have loved to. If we could have put it off a week it would have been great. Simple fact of the matter is we have been putting it off and tryinf to deal with the huge amounts of SPAM complaints, investigating them, removeing forwards for people and letting them know they are being tagged as a spammer because of them, telling them how they can use forwards and NOT get tagged as spammers, only to have them re activate the forwards as soon as we are finished talking. I personally deal with the SPAM complaints, sometimes as many as 300+ a day. What most people dont understand is AOL doesnt blacklist the domain the complaints are from, they blacklist the IP address of the server. Add to this that AOL doesnt use any of the blacklists like sorbs, spamcop etc. They create their own with their own set of rules. We have been back and forth with AOL for at least the almost 2 years I have been here and its a never ending cycle. Out of all of the blacklists that any given server can be put on, AOL is by far the worst.

All forwards will still work in cPanel, including AOL forwards. However, our servers will be set up to automaticly delete any AOLforwards that are set up. Mike

Due to the increase in SPAM complaints and AOL's automated SPAM filter not being able to determine what is SPAM and what is a forward, effective Tuesday @ 5am EST TCH will no longer allow forwards from TCH accounts to AOL accounts. We have tried every solution possible both on our end and working with AOL, but have been unable to come to an acceptable solution. Forwards to AOL/AIM accounts result in the majority of automated complaints we recieve from AOL, each of these complaints then has to be researched to determine what is and what isnt SPAM. Often times a server is blacklisted by AOL due to the automated SPAM filter not being able to determine if an e-mail originated from TCH or was simply forwarded from a TCH account. Fighting SPAM and keeping our servers off of any blacklists is a never ending battle. We understand that some of our customers wont be very happy with this choice but we feel it is in the best interest of TCH and our servers, and will help us to continue to provide the best service we possibly can. Thank you for your continued support

Written by our very own TCH-Thomas How to install the Coppermine Photo Gallery Coppermine is a multi-purpose fully-featured and integrated web picture gallery script Before we begin This tutorial assumes you know how to set permissions in ftp (chmod) and how to set up databases in cpanel. If you don´t know how to do this, please see these instructions: Flash tutorial on how to set up databases How to set permissions We use Coppermine Photo Gallery version 1.3.2 in this tutorial. Coppermine Photo Gallery can also handle videos, but we will concentrate on photos in this tutorial. Step 1 - Download and unzip - Download cpg1.3.2.zip (or the latest version) at http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/. - Unzip the archive preserving the directory structure on your own computer. Step 2 - Mysql setup - Log in to your cpanel. - Find "Manage Mysql" and click it. - Create a new database (name it gallery) and either create a new user or add an existing user to this database. If you don´t know how to setup a new database & user, please see the Before we begin section above. - Log out from cpanel. Step 3 - Upload and install - With your favorite ftp program, log in to your ftp-account and create a folder named "gallery" inside your public_html folder. - Open the newly created folder "gallery". - Upload all folders and files (albums, bridge and so on) from the coppermine folder to gallery (Do not rename any of these subfolders or files). - When everything is uploaded, chmod the following folders to 777: albums albums/userpics albums/edit include - Now you are done with the ftp so open your webbroweser and run the installationscript (http://******/gallery/install.php). Step 4 - Running the installscript When you have loaded the installationscript, it will tell you if there are any errors with your permission settings. If there are any, you must correct them before continuing. Assuming there are no permission errors, you will see a page saying "Welcome to Coppermine installation". This page have 3 areas: 1) Your admin account Here you will need to create your first user. Enter the desired username and password in to the fields. 2) Your MySQL configuration Here you enter the information you entered in Step 2 - Mysql setup. MySQL Host: localhost MySQL Database Name: cpanelname_gallery MySQL Username: cpanelname_username MySQL Password: MySQL password MySQL table prefix: cpg132_ 3) ImageMagick ImageMagick path: Leave this field BLANK for now. Save it and log in. Step 4 - Settings & Customization If not already logged in, please log in to your gallery using the following url: ******/gallery/index.php and when logged in, click the "Config" button. On the configuration page you will se alot of settings, which most can be left as they are, but you should atleast enter the information for these 4 fields: Gallery name Gallery description Gallery administrator email It is also time to enter the Imagemagick path: /usr/local/bin/ (Near the end of the page) Coppermine Photo Gallery already includes 10 themes but there is nothing that says you can not create your own theme or modify an existing one. There is also several other ones available for download at the Coppermine website. Step 5 - Uploading photos To upload you photos, please do as following: - Click on "Categories". - In field "Category title" enter the desired name for the category (Required). - In field " Category description" enter a desired description (Optional). - Click Update/Create category. - Click Albums. - Scroll down until you see "New" and click it. - In the empty field just above "Apply...", please enter your desired "Album name". - Click "Apply modifications". - Please click "Upload file" near the top of page. - You will now see a page with 2 upload areas. The first one is for uploading photos from your own computer and the other is for uploading from the web. In this tutorial we upload from the computer. - Click add files (or what it says in your language). - Find your photo on your computer and then click "Continue". - If the upload was successfull, you will see a page saying "Successful Uploads # uploads were successful.". - Click "Continue" to have the photos placed in to the albums you created before. - Choose which album to place the photos in. - Enter File title, File description and Keywords if you want.. - Click "Continue" until you are taken back to your gallery index. This is just a brief tutorial to get you started. For more tutorials please see http://coppermine.sourceforge.net/tutorial/index.php and don´t forget that the zip-file itself contains alot of documentation. Have fun.

I'm not sure about the menu, but the other two are easy to fix. You already have CSS ids assigned so just add the following to your CSS. >#header_and_text { text-align:left; } #footer { font-size:11px; text-align:center; }

I've checked the site several times on more than one machine. I have been reworking the site for a couple of weeks now and I use FireFox. Everything checks out OK, so I'm not sure what the issue is. Please go to the following link using FireFox and make sure that both movies load. If they do not both load then you are going to have trouble seeing flash on some sites. http://www.macromedia.com/shockwave/welcome/

Welcome to the Family and if you need anything just let us know.

I will not mention any names, but I did some searching and it appears your host has been banned from several forums for his advertising tactics. As of last month he has been offering his company for sale. I will send you a PM to let you see what I have found. If you would like you can open an account with us and give it a try. If you decide to stay with us and your host comes back online, then you can have the Help Desk try to do a cPanel to cPanel transfer. We do offer a 30 Day Money Back Guarantee so you would not be locked into anything. Also if you prepay for a year then you get one month free. I you wish luck with whatever you decide and Welcome to TotalChoice Hosting.

View the TotalChoice Web Hosting Help Site Page on WordPress! Thanks to TCH-Bruce for writing these instructions.

Great tutorial for installing WordPress written by our very own TCH-Bruce ======================================== WORDPRESS INSTALLATION INSTRUCTIONS Go to h_tp://wordpress.org and download the .zip version of Wordpress. Open and extract the contents of the .zip file to a folder on your hard drive. ======================================== CREATING A DATABASE FOR YOUR BLOG Next log into your web site control panel. If you want your blog to appear in a subdomain of your site create the subdomain now. If your blog is going to be in your root folder just create the database as described below. Select MySQL Databases Scroll to the Add DB box and enter a data base name for your blog. This can be something like "myblog" or what ever you wish and click the "Add db" button to create the file. Now scroll down to add a user. Add a user name and password that you will remember or write it down, you will need it later. Then click the "Add User" button to add the user. Now scroll to the check boxes section and select "All". In the drop down above the check boxes select the user and database you just created above. Now tap the "Add User to Db" to add the user to the data base. You are done with the control panel so you can log out. ======================================== SET YOUR WORDPRESS CONFIGURATION AND UPLOAD Now go to the folder you extracted Wordpress into. Make a copy of the wp-config-sample.php file. Rename the copy you just made wp-config.php. Open the wp-config.php file with a text editor and edit your data base information into the proper fields. For DB_NAME enter: cpanel-name_database-name-you-created For DB_USER enter: cpanel-name_user-you-created For DB_PASSWORD enter: just-the-password-you-created Leave DB_HOST unchanged Save the file and exit your editor. Now using an FTP program log into your web server and change into the folder where your blog is going to reside. If it's in the root of your web space go into the "public_html" folder. If it's going to be in a subdomain go into the "public_html/subdomain-folder". Upload all the files and folders to the web server. Once all files have been copied make sure they are all on the server. ======================================== ACCESSING WORDPRESS If you are installing to your root folder open your web browser and enter the following: h_tp://yoursite.ext/wp-admin/install.php to start the installation. If you are installing to subdomain folder open your web browser and enter the following: h_tp://yoursite.ext/subdomain/wp-admin/install.php to start the installation. Go through the steps presented. If you receive any errors you entered something wrong in the wp-config.php file. If all goes well you will be given a password to log into your new blog. WRITE IT DOWN!!! You will need it to get into your blog the first time. The install will then send you to the login page. Enter "admin" for the user name and enter the password you wrote down previously and log in. ======================================== MODIFYING YOUR PREFERENCES Once you are logged in go to the Profiles page and fill out the information. Enter a nickname, this will be displayed when you create new posts. You should also change the password here now to something you can remember. Then click Update Profile. Now select Options and configure your blog. Go through all of the options (General, Writing, Reading, Miscellaneous and Permalinks). Remember to select Update Options at the bottom of each page to get them to stick. Next set up your links and categories. If you want to allow others to post content to your blog you can add them using the Users function. ======================================== ESSENTIAL PLUGINS Before you go any further I recommend that you install at least one plugin. The plugin is Dr Dave's Spam Karma which will keep comment spam to a minimum. Follow the instructions to upload the Spam Karma files into your wp-content/plugins folder. Now log back into Wordpress and select Plugins. You should see Spam Karma listed. It is not activated yet, so activate it now. ======================================== DEFINE YOUR STYLE Almost there. You can start blogging right now if you wish but I am sure you will want to change the look of the blog. There are only two files that you need to edit. index.php controls the content. The link below is well documented document to show you the layout of this page: h_tp://weblogtoolscollection.com/b2-img/index.phps wp-layout.css controls how the content is displayed and you can read how it's arranged here: h_tp://blog.nuclearmoose.com/wp-docs/wp-layout-explained.htm A great tutorial for modifying the wp-layout.css file can be found here: h_tp://www.tamba2.org.uk/wordpress/graphicalcss/ Just edit those two files to your liking and you are done. Oh if you are currently blogging you can probably import your current blog entries into Wordpress. You can get the instructions you need here: h_tp://wiki.wordpress.org/?pagename=ImportBlog Happy Blogging

There are a lot of problems that can take hours to repair/replace (48 hours is a VERY long time though) I cant say we have never had extended downtime, but we always try and communicate with our customers and let them know whats going on. Downtime is one thing, not letting your customers know why, and what you are doing to prevent it is another.

http://www.google.com/remove.html#change_url

Theres not a whole lot to define, when people complain to their ISP about e-mail you send them from our servers, it is not your account that gets blacklisted. It is the entire server, once a server is blacklisted no one on that server can send e-mail to anyone whos ISP uses that particular blacklist. If it comes down to having the server blacklisted, or suspending an account that ppl are complaining about....the account will get suspended every time.

About the e-mail and spamming. Wether you follow the rules/laws about spamming or not, if people start to complain and the server is in danger of getting blacklisted your account would be suspended. People dont generally complain about e-mail they ask to recieve, so if they do complain that usually means they didnt ask for it and its spam. In some cases they may forget they asked for it, well if they complain its still spam.

-When I'm uploading to the FTP, do I get charged for that bandwith? Yes, all traffic is counted. -With your SSL, is it for the whole site or just one page? You can use it for the whole site if you wish, but note that it is shared SSL anything processed through it will show serverXX.totalchoicehosting.com not your domain. If you need it for the entire site, I suggest you purchse your own certificate. -Again with the SSL, Will IE recongize it with my site? Yes -With the shopping cart, does it include a way to process the payment? If not, do you recommend any places? You need to provide your own payment processing. -Is your Tech Support 24/7? Yes -What are your current acceptable payment methods? Credit card or PayPal -How long does it (average) take to authorize a account? Generally, if all of your billing information is in order, it should take between 1-12 hours to set up your account. -Do you allow Domain Names that aren't registered through you guys? Like for instance it was registered through GoDaddy.com Yes, just set you nameservers to NS1.TOTALCHOICEHOSTING.COM NS2.TOTALCHOICEHOSTING.COM -Also, with your email, what's the MAX size for each account? Do you charge for SMTP Relaying? You can set the size of the accounts to whatever you like, it all depends on the amount of space you have. You can send mail through your account at mail.******, there are limits on how many emails you an send at a time to prevent spamming.

That was caused by that echo statement not being closed properly and there are probally spaces at the end of the script, so the error was spit out for what php thought was the end of that line. (OR something like that , Am I making any sense here?)

No problem and let us know if you need anything else.

The only errors I see is should be >echo "<H1 align=center>Thank You. $_POST[FirstName]</H1>"; echo "<P align=center>We will get back to you as soon as possible with the requested information.</p>";