Author: nick

ftp – I uploaded changes to my site, but they are not displaying online

If uploaded correctly, changes made to your website will display immediately. There is not a waiting period for the server to display your changes (i.e. – the server does not cache anything). The only thing you may need to do is click the refresh button in your web browser in order for it to reload and display your new pages.

If you are making changes to your primary domain, please make sure you uploaded your changes to the www folder in your account. Anything uploaded outside of the www folder will not display on the web. By default, your primary domain will always point to the www folder for it’s content.

If you are making changes to one of your extra domains, please make sure you uploaded your changes to the correct folder for that domain. If you are unsure which folder a domain points to, please go to the domain section of your control panel and click on the link that says “List Extra Domains”.

If you continue to have problems, please let us know the name of the file that you are trying to modify and where it is located inside of your account. Please give me a specific example of a change you made to the file so we can tell the difference between the new and old version of the file.

I am trying to delete a folder, but I keep getting the error “Can’t remove directory: Directory not empty”

By default, most ftp clients will not allow you to delete a folder unless it is empty. Most ftp clients do have an option that will allow you to “force remove” a directory though. If you cannot find this option, you will have to first delete the contents of the directory and then try deleting it again.

If you are using SSH, put -R in front of your rm command.

If you continue to experience problems, please submit a help desk request and specify the path to the directory you would like removed and support will remove it for you. Please put “delete directory” in the subject line of your request.

I have forgot my database password. How can I change it?

Question:

I’ve forgot my database password. What are my options?

Answer:

If you have forgot your database password and do not have any scripts that depend on it, you can change your password via the database section of your control panel. Just click on the link that says “Change Database Password”. Do not log-in to phpmyadmin to change your password.

However things become much more complicated if you have scripts (wordpress, joomla, drupal, etc.) that rely on the password. If you change your password it will break those scripts. Unfortunately, even server admins not have access to your existing database password (the passwords are encrypted and not easily decrypted).

The best option if your scripts depend on your password is to search the scripts for the password. If you know the location of the password this is easy. For example, wordpress stores your password in wp-config.php.

If you do not know where the password is stored, use something like the following to find it:

find . -name "*.php" -exec grep "localhost" {} ; -print
find . -name "*.inc" -exec grep "localhost" {} ; -print
find . -name "*.php" -exec grep "3306" {} ; -print
find . -name "*.inc" -exec grep "3306" {} ; -print

These search through common php file extensions and search for the strings “localhost” and “3306” which are usually close to the location of your password. You can also search for the term “password” or “pass” but will likely get a lot of false positives.

If you are not comfortable doing the above, our support staff can find your password for a one-time fee of $25. Contact support with your request.

Can I change my username?

Unfortunately, it is not possible to change your username. Usernames are very deep rooted in the system and cannot be changed.

If it is absolutely necessary that you change the username associated with your account, you can open a new account (via our homepage), transfer your files, then cancel your current account. We can make any necessary billing adjustments to make sure you do not have over lapped payments in the process.

How can I change my primary domain?

You can change your primary domain via the ‘domain’ section of your control panel. Just click on the link that says ‘Click here to change your Primary Domain’.

Warning: When changing your primary domain name, you will lose all existing email accounts and subdomains. You will need to recreate all subdomains and email accounts on your new domain.

If you still want your current domain to work, you can “park” it via the domain section of your control panel. Just click on the link that says ‘Add a parked domain’.

Please remember your_username.phpwebhosting.com will always work. There is no need to park this domain.

Note: If you get the message “That is not a valid domain or the domain is already in use” when trying to change your primary domain, this most likely means the domain is already parked on your account. In order to make a domain your primary domain, you must first remove it as a parked domain. You can remove parked domains by clicking on the ‘List Parked Domains’ link then clicking ‘delete’ next to the domain you wish to remove.

I have created a mail account, now how do I use it?

To send/receive mail from your domain, you can either set-up a local mail program (running on your computer) or use one of our webmail programs at post.phpwebhosting.com.

The most popular local mail programs are either Outlook (for Windows) or Mail (for a Mac). Most computers come with one or the other pre-installed. Here is a quick tutorial for setting up Outlook –

http://www.phpwebhosting.com/help/nick/Outlook_Set_Up.htm

If you don’t have experience using a local mail program like Outlook, I would suggest starting with one of our webmail programs. They work similar to Yahoo or Hotmail where you simply connect to them via the internet.

To use of of our webmail programs, just go to post.phpwebhosting.com and select which mail program you would like to use (UebiMiau or Nural Storm). Once you select the program, you must enter the name of the mailbox you are trying to access, the password assigned to that mail account, and your domain name. You will then get a web interface with options for sending and receiving mail.

Please see one of our other tutorials for detailed information on using our mail system.

How can we make our site secure?

Using SSL involves purchasing an SSL Certificate and installing it to your account.

A certificate is $59 per year and will match both www.yourdomain.com and yourdomain.com – many SSL providers only allow one name. Ours will cover both.

There is also a $2 monthly charge for a dedicated IP address. A dedicated IP is required for SSL to work (with any hosting company). Most Search Engine Optimization (SEO) experts also believe that a dedicated IP can improve your search engine rankings.

The first step in getting an SSL certificate is answering the following questions (required to create the cert) :

Country Name (two letter code – example: US)
State or Province Name (full name)
Locality Name (eg – city)
Organization Name (eg – company name)
Organizational Unit Name (eg – section or department – this is optional)
Secure URL (eg – secure.yourdomain.com, www.yourdomain.com, etc.)
Email Address
An optional company name (this is optional)

Note: The secure URL is the URL that the cert will work for. If you use www.yourdomain.com, we will add yourdomain.com for free.

Enter this information into a support ticket along with a statement such as “I approve the $59 yearly cert fee and $2 monthly dedicated IP fee” and we can have your cert ready in a few hours in most cases.

I’m trying to delete files created via a php application, but the files are owned by user ‘nobody’. How can I delete or modify these files?

If you run scripts through the mod_php module (the default) any files created by the scripts are owned by the system (user ‘nobody’). These files can only be deleted by your scripts (not by you through ftp). To fix, we must run a script that will chown or change owner of the files back to your username.

Please note: By default, our script will chown everything under your home directory. Some programs require some files/directories to be owned by the system and chowning these files to your username can break the application. If you know this to be true with your application, please tell us this and let us know which files/directories to manually chown.

Please put “chown request” in the subject line of your help desk request.