vangrieg

Hey, did my previous advice help? Basically, mod_expires is an Apache module that allows to tell browsers not to bother checking if the files have been modified or not until a certain date.

Wow. I did submit a help desk support ticket, and 40 minutes later mod_expires was installed on my server. Am I dreaming or is this real??? Rock Sign

True, but look: you can set some code for IE5+, for example, lower versions will just ignore it because it's inside the comment tags!

There's a much better way to solve your problem described here, for example. Browser detection should be avoided, IMO, whenever possible. First of all, it's not that easy to detect all browsers. Second, you may run into problems with new versions. Third, people who access you site from, say, a smartphone may have a browser your script doesn't know. Write standards-compliant pages, use hacks for outdated IE5-, and you should be fine.

So far I'm really happy I found you guys. Thumbs Up

I think you should be fine with 644.

Subj. I have tons of images on my site, and tried to set expiration time in .htaccess, but it doesn't work, and phpinfo() shows that this module is not installed. Without such directives, there's just too much traffic wasted. Any advice on what I should do?

It's easy, as a matter of fact, just a little confusing. - The first digit shows the privileges for you, the Owner. - The second one - for Group (you may simply disregard this one and set it the same as the third one). - The third one - for Guest, that is, anybody else but you. Now, - read priviliges (it means that users can see the file) have the value of 4. - Write privileges (can create a new file or modify and existing one) - 2. - Execute (can run a script) - 1. Now let's say you have an HTML page and you want be able to modify it, but don't want anybody else to touch it, except for viewing in their browsers. What do you do? - Owner = Read + Write = 4 + 2 = 6. - Group = Guest = Read = 4. So you want 644. Another example - you have a file you want to be accessible to you only. - Owner = Read + Write = 6. - Group = Guest = nothing = 0. So you want 600.

That's what I do. I'm not the only one who creates files though, my visitors do so as well using the scripts I wrote, there's a guestbook and picture uploads. Generally, I back up important files locally every other day. However, my previous host was hacked when I was out of town for the New Year's vacation, using lousy dial-up, and not having much time for this stuff. Result - I lost about a month's worth of information and my host is TCH now. If they'd kept the backups on a separate server like you guys I wouldn't have left them.

Generally, your permissions should be as low as possible. Yes, there are security risks associated with giving guests write/execute privileges. However, many of these risks aren't all that easy to exploit and require special knowledge. The answer to your question is a complicated one. If you have a static site with just HTML pages, the best thing to do will be giving full rights to the Owner and read-only to Group and Guest. If you have scripts like a guestbook, for example, it's a different story and the answer is "it depends". In order for your script to function, it has to have write privileges to some directories and files. If you upload these files via ftp, and the attributes are set to 700, for example, the script won't be able to modify them. If the files are created by the script itself, you are all set (but there's a chance that you yourself won't be able to modify/delete those files via ftp, as the script (so-called "nobody") will be the owner. As a rule, your .htaccess files shouldn't have anything higher than 700, and all important files that contain passwords should be located in areas unavailable through www. (Anything below your public_html directory may be accessed, so put your password files one level higher). Also, don't give obvious names to files, but that's just common sense.

Sure. Did I sound like I was complaining or something?

Personal backups are a great thing and not hard to do, but bandwidth costs money, unfortunately. So it's all about trade-offs, as usual.

Actually, this is beginning to bother me in a weird way. When things seem too good to be true, it usually means that there's something important and bad hiding out there unnoticed. But I still can't find anything. I'm paranoid, I know. Rock Sign

My previous hosting company was using Linux, it didn't help them much. They were attacked three times in a row within two weeks, and after the final attack all information was lost, including my site. The good thing is that I started looking for a different place to host my site, and found TCH, which seems to be much better than I could have expected. However, the difference is that my previous hoster kept backups on the same server as the sites backed up. When the server was destroyed, so were the backups. Here at TCH they say that they keep backups on remote servers (somebody even said they keep them on different data centers, if I'm not mistaken). If this is true (and I don't have any reasons to suspect it isn't), we are in good shape. If they are as good in applying patches to Apache/Linux in a timely manner, we should be cool.

And this one was quick. I put the server number in the "Server name" field, was that the correct place? Thanks!

I'll do it, I just don't like to disturb busy people with stupid stuff like this and hoped that somebody would find a simple solution. I tried to check all the manuals I have but couldn't find anything on the issue. I'll modify the PHP script to avoid this in the future, but I wonder how nobody got into a situation like this before... Thanks for you reply!

Hi all. I have a strange problem. I have a script that uploads files. Somebody uploaded a photo with an apostrophe in the filename. The php script escaped it with a reverse slash. Result - I have a file I cannot delete, rename or move. Neither with an ftp client nor via CPanel. The filename looks like this: newyear\'04.jpg. When I try to rename it with an ftp client, it complains about an "illegal name". CPanel says "file not found". Hm. Anybody knows what to do? Thanks!

Thanks again!

Er, no, they are not pointing at you, the site in question isn't here, not yet at least. I have a different site hosted with you guys. Does it matter? Can I use the transfer feature without having an account with you? Sure. I was wondering about the rule.

Hehe, this only compares to their attempt to file an antitrust complaint against Nokia for developing Symbian - but that was quite a while ago. Thanks, I had fun reading this.

TCH-Rob, thanks, this sounds good! I'll most probably do it as soon as I get in touch with other interested parties involved. You guys are great, just in case nobody told you before. Just one more question: what happens with the DNS records during the transfer process? Will they be active and working?

Ouch... Yes, the information is correct. I can't see how it will help me though... Well, they say that I have to contact them every time I want to change anything. Sometimes it takes a few days for them to react. My major concern though is that I suspect they can just disappear one day with my domain. I have other domains for which I have password and all, and it feels so much better. By the way, can I transfer a domain name to you, for example? Will you charge for the transfer and will I have a password to access domain settings?

Thanks for your reply, Scott. No, I don't have access to the account, that's the problem. I cannot change DNS servers for that domain. This is exactly one of the reasons why I don't want to work with them. On the other hand, I don't want to lose the name...

I have a followup question to this. Suppose I have a domain registered in my name. Unfortunately, it is registered via a hosting company (which is not a registrar, but rather a wholesale buyer from bulkregister.com). I seriously don't want this company to handle my domain name (I suspect they can disappear any day, plus they don't give me acces to domain info, no password, I can't change DNS servers myself, etc. etc.). So I want to stop paying them. Now, my question is this. During this grace period, can I change registrars?

It's a little off-topic, but could you elaborate please? How is it best? It's the first time I use it and I'm very unimpressed so far. It doesn't seem to show more information than, say, Webalizer. But its browser detection part, unlike Webalizer's, is awful. It misidentifies Safari and Konqueror as Mozilla and cannot properly detect Opera with default ID setting, showing it as MSIE.