Archive for the ‘Technology’ Category

Mobile Email Solutions

Wednesday, July 14th, 2010

More and more of our clients are looking to get their email while on the go… and while this may sound simple enough – collecting email from multiple locations has it’s problems.

Instead of going over all the things that can go wrong – we’ll tell you our simple yet very effective solutions:

NON-GMAIL SOLUTION:
1) Setup a separate email box on your server – e.g. mobile.you@yourdomain.com

2) Forward  a copy of email to this address - this way you get your email as usual + have a copy sent to your phone.

3) Setup email box on your phone as usual to collect – USE IMAP instead of POP3

GMAIL SOLUTION:
1) Get a Gmail account for your phone ( www.gmail.com ) – something like   “mobile.yourbiz@gmail.com”

If you have more than 1 mobile or multiple mobile users use  “mobile1.yourbiz@gmail.com” – or “mobile.user.yourbiz@gmail.com”

2) Have your email provider forward a copy of your selected email addresses to your new Gmailbox – this way you get your email as usual + have a copy send to your phone.

3)  Enable IMAP on your Gmail account ( http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=77695 )

4) Configure your mobile phone to collect your email via IMAP ( http://mail.google.com/support/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=78799 )

5) Be sure to set your REPLY TO email on your phone and also on your Gmail account to your normal business email e.g. you@yourbusiness.com.au

This is so when people reply to any email sent from gmail or your phonw it will go to your regular email box as well as being forwarded to your mobile gmail mailbox.

The benefits of this solution is you will have multiple ways to access your email  - especially if travelling abroad… so even if you can’t access your mail server – you can access your mobile email securely @ Gmail.com

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Getting Your Site Found By Search Engines

Friday, November 20th, 2009

Once your website has been built, it is not automatically indexed and found in search engines like Google, Yahoo! and Bing.

These search engines have billions of pages that need to be indexed and updated on a regular basis. They do so by periodically reviewing pages already in their page databases.

If the search engine discovers a new link to a _NEW_ page not already in their index, they schedule that new page to be reviewed for inclusion in their search results at their next update.

One way to get your website found and indexed by search engines is to have it linked to by another already indexed page or on-line business directory.

Often having your site linked to by another website will have your site reviewed quicker than by just submitting it directly to the search engines.

We list all our client websites in our local directory network www.thestreetsnetwork.com to insure client sites are found quickly by search engine spiders.

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Custom php.ini Cpanel 11 with suPHP

Wednesday, July 15th, 2009

Some hosting clients require special setups of their PHP configurations – and searching online revealed a lot of information but scattered all around various blogs / tech sites.

To help others with this configuration we’ve collected all the info here:

Here is a simple step by step to customise php.ini for a specific client domain on CPANEL 11 + suPHP enabled on APACHE 2.x

NOTE: replace ‘username’ and ‘userdomain’ with your client’s username and domain name

If you take a look at your http.conf file ( /usr/local/lib/php.ini ) you will see this in your specific domain’s VirtualHost container:

# To customize this VirtualHost use an include file at the following location
# Include “/usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/username/userdomain/*.conf”

NOTE: DO NOT EDIT THE  httpd.conf  FILE DIRECTLY – you must use the include files

NOTE: this is for Apache 2.2 – check httpd.conf for above include location reference

NOTE: do not uncomment / edit anything in httpd.conf

Create the include folder:  
[]# mkdir -p /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/username/userdomain

the -p switch creates any parent directories that do not exist

change to that directory
[]# cd /usr/local/apache/conf/userdata/std/2/username/userdomain

create suphp.conf in that folder – simply use vi text editor to create the file
[]# vi suphp.conf
in suphp.conf add

<IfModule mod_suphp.c>
suPHP_ConfigPath /etc/phpconf/username
</IfModule>

Save the file and return to command line

Now create the directory where the custom php.ini file will be stored for that user
[]# mkdir /etc/phpconf/username

copy global php.ini to /etc/phpconf/username
[]# cp -pv /usr/local/lib/php.ini /etc/phpconf/username/php.ini

edit the php.ini in /etc/phpconf/username – making directive changes as required
[]# vi /etc/phpconf/username/php.ini
save and exit

Now run /scripts/verify_vhost_includes to check the new includes are working
[]# /scripts/verify_vhost_includes

If all looks ok run /scripts/ensure_vhost_includes ––user=username  
[]# /scripts/ensure_vhost_includes ––user=username

This will restart apache as well and all should be good to go… run phpinfo();  on your domain to insure changes are reflected…

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Form Spam

Thursday, April 23rd, 2009

Lately the problem of “FORM SPAM” has been growing. Form Spam is basically junk responses arriving via online web contact and enquiry forms.

Form Spam is generated when a spammer sets up a “software bot” that crawls the internet looking for web forms – and subsequently fills it in with junk and sends it to the site owner…

Once your form has been discovered by one of these “spam bots” you will no doubt begin to receive a continual stream of junk emails from your form.

One solution to this problem is to add a “turing test” or “security code” to your web based forms. This requires the form submitter to answer a question or submit a code generally only decipherable by a human.

If you are having problems with form spam we can help. We have upgraded a number of online forms to use a security turing test.

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