The installation of Joomla and Opencart usually takes hours to complete. You’ll be required to upload thousands of files to the server before you can even start the installation. To save time, you can upload a single tar file and untar it using the build in Cron management on the Web Hosting Control Panel.

Here’s how to use cron to untar files

1) Save the following lines as a new file and upload to the cgi-bin folder. Update the path accordingly. Change the file permission to 755.

#!/usr/bin/perl
$result=`/bin/tar -xf /path/to/tar/file/file.tar.gz 2>&1`;
print "tar extraction error: $result" if $?;

2) Upload your tar file to the server.

3) Create a cron job (select “perl” and 5 minutes as the min)

4) The extracting process will start after five minutes. Once the task has been completed, remove the cron job to prevent re-extracting every five minutes, and you’re done!

Using cron to untar files

Sample cron entry

Most of the Blackberries sold on the market come with the Blackberry Internet Service (BIS). What’s so special about it? Well, Blackberry devices, unlike other phones, are integrated with its Push Mail technology through BIS. New emails, contact numbers and calendars are pushed to your mobile phone automatically, as soon as it arrives into your mailbox. Through BIS, your emails will also be scanned from viruses.

“The BlackBerry Internet Service, or BIS, allows BlackBerry users to access the Internet and POP3/IMAP/Outlook Web Access email accounts without connecting through a BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES). The service is usually provisioned through your mobile phone service provider, though Research In Motion (RIM) (BlackBerry’s developer) actually runs the service. This service uses RIM’s proprietary push technology (in contrast with SyncML-based push technologies such as Funambol) to the BlackBerry devices over cellular carriers; BIS retrieves email from mail servers via POP3 or IMAP is done via polling.”

Using BIS, you can integrate your phone with no more than 10 POP or IMAP accounts. To begin, please choose your Telco from Blackberry’s main website. For more setup guidelines, check this out.

When you’re asked, “What is your Mail Server?” enter imap.emailsrvr.com, running on port 143. Your outgoing mail server is smtp.emailsrvr.com, running on port 587. The username is your full email address.

For those Blackberry owners without a BIS plan, you can download a third party email client called Tiggitmail. This software is not free.

If you wish to learn more about the BIS plan, check this out:

Maxis Blackberry Internet Service

Maxis Blackberry Internet Service

Celcom Blackberry Biz Plan

Celcom Blackberry Biz Plan

Related Post:
Blackberry without BIS BES is nothing!

Nokia email

Most Nokia phones allow you to access your mailbox on the go. You’ll find it extremely useful when you need to sneak peek into your Inbox when you’re out of the office without your notebook. In general, setting up the email function in your Nokia phone is pretty straight forward. It usually starts from the Mail Settings options.

For those with POP and IMAP support, choose IMAP.

- Incoming mail server: imap.emailsrvr.com (port 143)
- Outgoing mail server: smtp.emailsrvr.com (port 587)
- Username: your email address
- Your SMTP requires authentication.
- SMTP’s Authentication are the same as your incoming server

For those with only POP support, change imap.emailsrvr.com to pop.emailsrvr.com, and change port from 143 to 110.

Tips:

1. Uncheck ‘Leave a copy of email…’ in your email client. By doing this, your Nokia messenger will only show your new email messages which you have yet to download to your email client.

2. To verify if your password is correct, try it out using the Webmail. If you’ve lost your password, send a password reset request to us via our Contact Us form.

3. Emails sent through your Nokia phone will only appear in the Sent box of the Webmail if you’re using IMAP.

4. International roaming for 3G is possible when you’re abroad. Since Nokia Messenger only downloads the header by default, it requires a minimum bandwidth and you should not expect to pay much.

We’re definitely not a cPanel fan, yet, you find them bundled in with most of the web hosting packages available on the market. To web hosting providers, cPanel makes their lives easier. It claims to manage all settings under one root, which is by the customer themselves.

cPanel's dashboard

The default view of cPanel's FTP

Is this really what a customer would want? If you find cPanel too complicated, like we do, check out the control panel that comes with our web hosting package.

1.com.my - Dashboard with subtle yet comprehensive design

1.com.my - Each site's directories are defined clearly

How to Use Web Hosting Control Panel?

Ok, time for some tech speak! Many ISPs are blocking the outbound SMTP port 25. It allows ISPs to block spam sent out through their networks, but it tends to “punish” those who innocently need to send stuff through e-mail servers, rather than those belonging to their ISP.

The port 25 is chosen by default

In a nutshell, here are some of the possible scenarios that you might encounter when using port 25:

1. Sending an email from your Outlook Express or Outlook (assuming you’ve configured the email client to use the default port 25 for your SMTP server)

2. Submitting a web form (assuming the back-end was done using a SMTP method)

3. Using Groupmail to deliver email newsletter (assuming the Groupmail is configured to use port 25)

In short, your emails will be blocked and the worst thing is, they’re usually dropped without any returned error messages or notices to the sender. To overcome this issue, we’ve setup an alternate port. You can use port 8025 or port 587 instead of port 25.

TM’s SMTP Nightmare!

Nowadays, in the tech-savvy era, more people have familiarized themselves with the world-wide-web (WWW) and thus, having online social networks like the popular one – Facebook is nothing to be surprised. And now, more and more people uses a blog to start an online business. A blog is a type of website, usually maintained by an individual with regular entries of commentary, descriptions of events, or other material such as graphics or video. A simple blog that dedicates useful and meaningful information, of course with interesting graphics of a particular product, will draw the attention from viewers.

So when your business expands, you might consider to get a personalized domain name, like www.yourname.com, and started to worry that current viewers might not be aware of that the owner had moved to a new website. Now, Blogspot plays the important role here. It is able to redirect users accessing the initial blog to the new website address specified of the owner.

Blogspot Setting

Go to your blogspot admin page, Click Settings > Publishing > Custom Domain. Now, user will be prompted 2 choices, if you choose to purchase it from blogspot, no CNAME record needed to be set up; while purchasing it from third party, CNAME need to be set. Both of these redirection are done at no cost unlike other Content Management System.

Just a quick share. The usage of the .my domain name is increasing. Even organizations like MyNIC are using domainregistry.my instead of domainregistry.com.my. Well, basically most companies have now decided to publish .my as the official domain name, instead of .com.my. Obviously, the trend is picking up. We estimate more and more companies will be doing so. If you happen to have a domain name registred under .com.my, we believe that it is good to secure the .my version as well. For example, if you happen to have irishotel.com.my, it is good to register and secure the name irishotel.my.

The registration fee for the .my domain name is only RM120 a year. You can do a name search at http://whois.domainregistry.my/. If it returns ‘..does not exist in database’, the name is available. Then, let us know, we can register the domain name for you, or you can order online.

There’s certainly a risk that someone might take the name from you. In that case, you can file a dispute case to MYNIC’s Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy (MYDRP), if you can prove that the person holding the name has bad faith and that it is an infringement ofm your trademark. Bear in mind that the case usually takes up to 6 months to resolve and may cost you more than RM5,000 on the legal fees alone.

Order .my domain name now!

Aiktern, network specialist from Waysoft

In a recent case, one of our customers informed us that they’ve been experiencing duplicate emails and timeout problems. Their connection to our mail server was also extremely slow. We took immediate action to set up a test and confirm that the problem cannot be solved off-site. Though we suspected that the problem was largely due to their network problems, saying “No” to a customer isn’t how we like to do things.

Within a day, we arranged to have Aiktern, a friend and network specialist, attend to our customer in Johor. The on-site investigation was performed and all aspects of the network were checked. A summary of findings was compiled and shared with the customer.

This is how we like to deal with our customer’s email problems, after all, that is our main business!

If you’ve ever come across a corporate blog with an address like companyname.blogspot.com, your first impression might be that it’s way too casual or even unprofessional. But, if you have a professional blog hosted on one of those services, how do you overcome it? Well, first of all, you’ve got to register a domain name for yourself, eg. companyname.com; and now, for the fun part – the tweak!

Ask your service provider to mask or cloak the website address so that no matter where your visitor clicks within the page to navigate, it will still show your domain name: www.companyname.com. It’s really easy, and you only have to pay RM55 a year for the domain name. That’s it.

Now you’ve got to choose wisely between the Content Management Systems. Let’s look at the two most popular blog platforms, Blogger and WordPress. Blogger (aka Blogspot) doesn’t charge you when you’re pointing to your registered domain name, whereas WordPress may charge you USD$9.97 per year, per domain for its domain mapping service.

For blogger (aka Blogspot)
1. Go to www.blogger.com and login
2. Click the tab above Settings > Publishing
3. Switch to “custom domain”
4. Enter your domain name

For WordPress
1. Go to username.wordpress.com/wp-admin and login
2. Click the tab Settings > Domains
3. Enter your domain URL

To learn more about this, please click on the respective links below:
For Blogger (aka Blogspot) users
For WordPress users

Attention WordPress users, this is worth a read. One of our web hosting customers enabled the “all in one SEO pack plugins” in his WordPress account and got this error message:

“Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted (tried to allocate 491520 bytes)”

Always ready to lend our customers a helping hand, we informed him that he could try to increase the allowed memory size limit via:

1. htaccess e.g. (php_value memory_limit 64M).
2. wp-config.php e.g. (define(‘WP_MEMORY_LIMIT’, ’64MB’);)

Technical jargon aside, there’s a happy ending, and here’s what the customer told us

A kid was looking at the Great Orion Nebula

“Thanks for the quick reply. I have tried the first method and it works like a champ! You’re superb. It also solves the problems that have bugged me for so long. There were some “sub dashboard” at the dashboard that wouldn’t load properly. After I increased the memory limit to 64M, everything just works now. Previously I thought it could be due to the confliction among the plugins. Thank you very much,” said Robin of Astronomy Notes.

You’re very welcome!

By default, 14-day nightly backups of email messages are bundled with our email hosting services.  Daily snapshot backups are stored in a top tier cloud storage system where restorations from the past 14 days can be obtained directly from the control panel.

14-days nightly backup

Existing Problems

1) Backup does not cover messages which have been downloaded via email clients, in the event the email client does not leave a copy of messages in the server.

2) Messages sent through the email clients will not appear in the Webmail, thus will not be included in the backup.

3) Deleted messages in the Webmail will not be included in the backup in the event the users ‘Purge’ the Trash folder.

4) Backup covers only 14 days. It is not a complete archiving solution.

Available Email Archiving Options

1) Email Archiving

A full-fledge email archiving solution that comes with admin console. Securely store, search and retrieve archived messages in seconds.

Admin console’s dashboard

Retrieve archived messages via search

2) Bcc Archiving

A basic email backup solution that stores messages in a specific mailbox.

Archiving setting page

Archived messages are forwarded to a specific mailbox

Comparison Chart

*Between RM58.80 to RM99.00, depending on number of mailboxes selected

Estimated Cost

In the final discussion, we will run through several implementation strategies which customers can follow. We break down the development base on the area of expertise of the web developers. A proposal guidelines are included in the blueprint to make sure web developers who are reading it, understand what to deliver in their proposal.

Domain management safeguards brands and revenues easily and efficiently. It reduces the impact to your business as part of the Business Continuity Plan.

What is Domain Name Management?

1) Enabling secure registration, renewing, tracking and approval workflow from any location.

2) Identifying issues and opportunities through a seamlessly consolidated domain assets.

3) Domain recovery service from trusted leader in domain portfolio management

4) Prevents illicit domain abuse tactics—such as cybersquatting and domain kiting.

Glossary

Brandjacking – To hijack a brand to deceive or divert attention; often used in abusive or fraudulent activities devised for gain at the expense of the goodwill, brand equity and customer trust of actual brand owners.

Cybersquatting – The practice of abusing trademarks within the domain name system.

Domain Kiting – The process whereby domains are registered and dropped within the five-day ICANN grace period, and then registered again for another five days. Kiting a domain lets the registrant gain the benefit of ownership without ever paying for the domain.

eCommerce Content – Websites containing a specified brand that appears in visible text, hidden text, meta tags or title in conjunction with other site content that indicates online sales are being transacted on the site.

False Association – The practice of using a specified brand or trademark in web content to imply a relationship with a company or brand where none exists.

Offensive Content – Websites containing a specified brand that appears in visible text, hidden text, meta tags or title in conjunction with pornographic, online gaming or hate content.

PPC (Pay-Per-Click) – Paid placement advertising appearing on web pages. Operators of websites hosting PPC advertising derive revenue from ads that are clicked, hence the name PPC.

Phishing – Criminal use of email to divert traffic to websites in order to fraudulently acquire usernames, passwords, credit card details and other personal information. The email and websites used in these operations employ “social engineering” techniques to trick users into believing they are interacting with a business or organization that they trust.

Rock Phishing – A method of phishing first implemented by the ‘rock’ phish gang that utilizes multiple layers of redundant infrastructure to increase the difficulty of shutting down the attack. Other phishers are now using these tactics as well.

SEO Manipulation – The use of brands, slogans or trademarks located in visible text, hidden text, meta tags and title in order to manipulate search engine rankings so that the brandjacker’s site can gain a more favorable search engine placement.

Traffic Diversion – Hijacking a brand to drive web traffic to a competitive or illicit site in order to generate revenue at the expense of the rightful brand owner.

E-mailing has become the revolutionary step in how companies and organizations choose to keep their partners, friends and clients informed and up-to-date. Using e-mail solutions like GroupMail has certainly simplified the job and it is very user-friendly.

Here’s how the application can be configured, once installed on the user’s machine.

Step 1:
Open and run Group Mail from your installed machine. Go to Tools > Account Manager

Go to Tools > Account Manager

Step 2:
Click on the “New” button to start configuration. A window titled “Account Properties” as shown on the right region will appear.

Account Properties

Step 3:
Key in the information as shown below under the “User Information” tab.

Name for Account: Any Name
Name: Your Name (appear in recipient’s email)
Organization : -
Email Address : noreply@yourdomain.com (appear in the From Address)
Reply-to Address : noreply@yourdomain.com

User Information

Step 4:
Navigate the tab to “Delivery Options” and key in the information as shown below.

Delivery Options: Standard
SMTP Server: smtp.emailsrvr.com
Tick “Require Authentication”

Connections: 1
Pause every 1 message for 30 seconds

Delivery Options

Step 5:
Click on the “Setup” button for Authentication Settings

Tick: Use SMTP Authentication (outbound)
Type: AUTH-LOGIN (Default)
Username: noreply@yourdomain.com
Password: Your Password

Authentication Settings

Step 6:
Click on the “Advanced” button for Advanced Email Settings.

Key in the information as shown below:

SMTP Port: 587
POP3 Port: 110

Note: Do not tick “Server requires an SSL connection” | other settings remain default

SMTP & POP3 Advanced Email Settings

Step 7:
Click on the “OK” button on the Advanced Email Settings and start the email test by clicking “Test” button.

Specify a Test Message To: email address:

Testing Email Settings

Step 8:
Upon successful sending of the test email, the following screen will be visible stating the status as “Success!”

Email Testing Succesful