Cactus-Mall Webmasters Forum - Discussion Forum

Web form module (no replies)

Callum — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 18:06:22 +0000

Hi all,
I must create a contact module, for a site, a little particular: the site propose services that are assigned to professionals chosen by the site administrator.
It would have to work this way: the customer write on a site and an email arrive to the administrator; he decides which professional assign the work to ( and send him the contact).
From that moment the professional and customer comunicates only by the site and on the site must stay the archive of the emails
that they exchange (visible to the administrator).
What I would like is that the professional and the customer comunicate only by the mail to the site, no need to use username and password: it must be the site that manages coded mailboxes that are assigned to them but they don't have to be in contact in others ways and don't have to ask anything else to the customer.
Does anyone of you know if there is a cms or script already ready or similar to this that I can modifiy?
Thank you for your suggestions

__________________
Never seen promotional corporate gifts like these! (geschenke ideen on german or regalo originales on espanol), scoala

Content management systems (1 reply)

cactusmall — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 15:03:52 +0000

People on the BCSS are quite keep to extract some high quality articles which have been posted to the Forum and put them into another system so that they are more readily available than buried amongst a lot of Forum ephemera. I thinks this a good idea and suggested perhaps a Wiki format might be a good possibility, others have suggested a simple content management system. Any comments, experience or views on a suitable package would be welcome.

MySQL and the max_user_connections (no replies)

yann — Mon, 03 Mar 2008 20:10:19 +0000

Hello,

Did you already got an error message stating that the maximum number of connections has been reached? And then the PHP script exits, stating that it could not connect to the database.

So solve this, I just increased the value of the MySQL configuration parameter from 25 to 50. That's a server wide parameter, so everybody benefits.

Please tell me if you encounter the error message described above, we can increase it again if needed.

Thanks and best regards
Yann Cochard
[www.cactuspro.com]

Two computers (no replies)

cactusmall — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 17:39:48 +0000

A bit off topic but worth commenting on. A couple of weeks ago I got our fifth computer operational on our network and I now have two systems sitting on my desk side by side. I am already wondering how I ever managed with one system. It is so useful being able to see multiple systems at once. Although it is supposedly possible to have lots of windows on a single screen the space and other restrictions result in constant switching from one application to another. I also used to find some operations really slowed the systems down too much by the time you had two or three operations running in the background I am now even thinking of adding a third screen. Suzanne calls it my dealing room system. My biggest bugbear is trying to use the wrong mouse sometimes.

A good way to filter spam: gmail (no replies)

yann — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 13:31:01 +0000

Hello,

I tried many ways to filter out spam. The best one I found is using Google Mail:
I created an account in gmail, which checks my mail by pop from the cactus-mall server.
All messages are automaticaly spam-filtered, and the quality is very good.
Then I use my classic email client to check my mail at the gmail server and to download it on my computer.
That's one new step, but it's really worth it.

Subdomain (3 replies)

ralf — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 21:30:55 +0000

I want to use a subdomain to access a discussion board, so that typing "dkgboard.domain.de" (assuming that "domain.de" is my main domain) in the browser leads directly to the board. Setting up a subdomain in cpanel is very easy via the "Subdomains" button. The virtual path "dkgboard.domain.de" is redirected to a subdirectory in the home directory on the disk (in this example initially set to "home/public_html/dkgboard" ). Installing the discussion board to the subdomain also works.
But accessing the installed board via "dkgboard.domain.de" fails. I suppose that there must be a DNS entry for the subdomain resolving. As I use the cactus mall nameservers (in this case everydns nameservers are used) I can't set up the DNS entry myself.
To verify that the installation of the board has been successful, I tried to access the board via the relative path (in my example domain.de/dkgboard/), which works...
Is there a possibility to set up DNS entries to resolve subdomains?

Greylisted mails (5 replies)

ralf — Sun, 02 Mar 2008 18:23:55 +0000

We have had some problems with greylisted mails. As far as I understand, this method is used to sort out spam: When a mail is received and the comination of sender IP, sender email address and receiver email address is unknown (= not in the whitelist), the mail will be rejected an the sender will be informed. Then the mailserver will send the mail again after a specified delay time. The second attempt then should be successful, as it is assumed, that spammers won't retry sending the same mail again.
So far the theory as I understand it. But in the last weeks I heard of several mails, that could not be delivered. Here is the mail header of one of the returned mails (I changed the real email address to "" ):

> This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.
>
> A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
> recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
>
>
> SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT
TO::
> host smtp.kiv.de [195.226.81.250]: 451 4.7.1 Greylisting in progress,
please come back later:
> retry timeout exceeded

It seems that the greylisting process did not work properly.

Did anybody have similar problems? Does anybody know a solution? Do the mailservers of this system send the emails a second time when an email is greylisted?

Regard,
Ralf

Two useful tools (no replies)

cactusmall — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 16:48:18 +0000

I have found the Email delivery route icon in cpanel very useful on occasions when I not sure if an email box is valid or active.

Even more useful for webmasters and managers are the tools at:

[www.dnsstuff.com]

every available checking tool you could ever want.

Blogs (no replies)

cactusmall — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:22:12 +0000

The usefulness of a Blog was bought home to me when we suffered the downtime caused by Navisite and the subsequent complex migration process.

As the Blog was off the server it gave me a channel which I could use to tell customers what was going on and the progress we were making with the transfer.

There is Blog software available one the new server, I have not tried it yet. Anyone out there who has looked at it yet? I have given most local club sites access to several MySQL databases, so if any of your members would like to try it you are welcome to explore the possibilities and report back to us.

Migrating from PHP 4 to PHP 5; why and how? (3 replies)

yann — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 09:05:47 +0000

Hello,

By default, the server is using PHP 4, but did you know that it is possible to configure your account to use PHP 5?
Exact versions are: 4.4.7 and 5.2.5.

It is important to migrate soon (in 2008!), because:
1. PHP 4 development ended in december 2007, only security updates are done now... until 8/8/8. That's only a few months left.
2. Almost all PHP scripts and programs are now tested only on PHP 5. They usually work on PHP 4, but nothing is guaranteed. Just one example: the forum you are using right now (Phorum), indicates on its main page: "Phorum Recommends PHP 5.2 or greater" (and follow the link "What about PHP4?" to read more).

Now, to migrate, there are 2 things:
1. configuring your account is easy: that's one line to put in one file:
edit the file .htaccess (create it if it does not exists), and put this line:
AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php
Then place this file in your root directory, where you have your main index file (in www or public_html). This will work only when you access your site from the main url, such as www.example.com. It will NOT WORK when accessing it via [www.cactus-mall.net]
2. BUT the tricky part is first to validate that all your pages are PHP 4 compatible, AND ALSO work with register_globals at OFF. This last point may be the hardest to archive if you maintain your own PHP code since PHP 3 or early PHP 4. There are many many tutorials and documentations on the web on how to do this.

I am currently in the progress of migrating my site (http://www.cactuspro.com/). As I have written almost 30.000 lines of code, it is a huge task. To do this, I first migrated the tools I use at home to develop my site to PHP 5 with register globals at ON. I had no surprise there: everything was working fine. Then I switched register globals at OFF... and I realised it would take me hours. The work could begin, and I almost finished now.
So: test first at home on your own Apache / PHP 5, to make your code work both on the current PHP 4 with register globals at ON and PHP 5 with register globals at OFF. Then you can switch on the server.

Regards,
Yann
PS : PHP 6 is under development, and should be released this year.

Site specific searches. (no replies)

cactusmall — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 15:36:57 +0000

Site specific search engines

In the early days on our Alabanza server we had soemthing called webglimpse. One of the features it allowed was setting up a list of websites over which a search could be made. It had a bad disadvantage that the spidering was not automatic and had to be manually triggered anytime significant changes were made. It also became very slow if more than a few large websites were in the list to be included.

Over the last few years I had replaced some of these searches with a Google offering which you could select to scan one of three sites or the whole www. Others were replaced with a search based on htDig software. This was updated automatically but each separate search configuration needed a home site to host the configuration and store the index files.

On the new server I looked for something better. Fortunately Google have a new offering which is exactly what I wanted. All the indexes and configuration files are held on Google servers but the results are presented on a page on your own domain so can conform to your domain style. I have already several of these customised seraches set up.

The first one searches all the cactus and succulent related domains on the Cactus-Mall server. This is now available from the front page of the Cactus-Mall as well as elsewhere. I am looking at extending this to advertisers on the CSPM. Please contact me if you want to be considered for inclusion.

The second one I have set up is for BCSS sites. It currently includes all the BCSS pages, National, Zone and Branch hosted on the Cactus-Mall server and a few hosted elsewhere. Please contact me if you have pages which you think I should include. You can also have the code to put such a search box on your own site.

htDig and webglimpse searches are now completely obsolete, but there are still some of the old sytle Google searches around which will probably be replaced in due course.

A few comments on user preferences (no replies)

cactusmall — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 18:45:10 +0000

One of the things you may want to do is to change your cPanel password to one you prefer. Please try and keep these fairly strong as we don't want to expose our systems to hackers. The passwords can be up to twelve characters long and can contain upper or lower case letters, numbers and even some symbol characters.

Contact info. Please update this if needed. It will have the email address I have for you from the old server. If the email box is blank it would be very useful if you could fill one in. From here you can also elect or not to receive warning messages if you are near the limits of your disk space or transfer on the account.

Change style. The cPanel has a whole lot of different styles. You can select different ones from the default if you prefer one of the others.

The style is also influenced by the language selection. There are quite a lot of different languages which you can switch to. The languages offered are also different according to which 'skin' I select for the cpanel style. I note that the current skin most people are set to use does not include Italian. I think I can find one that will offer this but have not yet had time to fully investigate.

Mailing Lists (no replies)

cactusmall — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:55:27 +0000

The mailing list system on the Alabanza server was tricky to set up and very awkward to maintain.

The new system has built in a programme called Mailman which runs under a programming system called Python. I use this for both the Customer mailing list system for the Cactus-Mall and for the BCSS Announce system.

It has highly customisable controls and excellent subscriber facilities which are easily set up and maintained. It also has archiving facilities. It is particularly set up to be able to run mailing list discussion groups like cacti_etc. I particular like the ways it tracks bounces and can therefore alert me to people who may have changed their email address.

If you want a mail list system purely to send out large numbers of newsletter or catalogues, then the Php mailing list system installable from Fantastico may suit you more. It stores the user information in a MySQL database and can be configured to run on a cron system, sending out small batches at a time to spread the load on the server.

Talking of this load, I have much better control of the overall server mail sytems and can see how many messages are in the message queue. At any one time it is between 5,000 and 10,000. Part of the reason for this high number is that many external mail systems at any one time might not be working or be overloaded and the messages have to wait until the receipients say they are ready to receive them. However by far the largest number result from spam messages being rejected.

Stats packages (no replies)

cactusmall — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:34:58 +0000

There are three different stats packages running on the new server.

When I set up the domains on the new server I mostly enabled awstats, but user are at liberty to switch to one of the other two if they wish.

I would like if possible to make some of these stats available to non systems mangers, ie. without having the domain password. Does anyone no of an easy way of doing this?

BCSS Website (no replies)

cactusmall — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:29:04 +0000

There has been a fair bit of discussion on the BCSS Forum about updates and redesign. I haven't been able to keep up with all the discussion because of pressure of work. Since the server migration was complete I have done a bit of tidying up and updating and some more of this is needed.

Once this is completed I think the next stage will have to be a complete documentation of what the BCSS internet systems are, how they fit together, who does what etc. This is not only needed for a viable discussion on development but is needed for my job description for the BCSS and arrangement of backup and contingency plans should I not be available.

File Manager system (2 replies)

cactusmall — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 21:30:05 +0000

The File manager system is very much more elaborate than the one on the Alabanza server. I have tested it it occasional uploads and advised a few people to use it when they don't have a proper FTP programme for uploads which I still regard as essential for serious use.

One of our users was trying to use Internet Explorer to upload to a subdomain. The wretched programme kept on changing the proper log on address to something which it consider correct which of course then failed. I did get it to work ok with Firefox but even so a browser is not ideal for FTP operations.

Bob Smoley tried to use the editor within this File Manager system to change html files on the server. It didn't exactly work - has anyone experience of using this?

Mail system (no replies)

cactusmall — Thu, 07 Feb 2008 18:15:43 +0000

After being used to the mail box system on the Alabanza server I was at first a bit confused by the cPanel system. Initially I set up mail boxes for all users, even those that had mail forwarded to their local boxes.
It is not necessary to do this unless you want to retain mail on the server as well as forward it. A simple forward is all that is needed if mail is not to be retained on the server.

The need to log on to mailboxes with a username xxxx@cactus-mall.com instead of just xxxx has probably caused more support queries than any other single item. I have used the Squirrel webmail system to read mail on the server. It works ok but is probably a bit lightweight for any except casula use.