Author: Admin

Downgrading your server

In some cases, when you need to re-plan or your site isn’t getting the traffic you wanted you decide to downgrade the server to lessen the expense. Downgrading is not automatic. It will be a process of migration.

Here are the steps:
1. You will need to create first your new server from your dashboard.

dashboard > create server

2. Once the new server is ready you can request the migration by submitting a support ticket.

3. After the migration has been completed you can then destroy the old server from your dashboard.

dashboard > manage > system > destroy

Understanding Server Uptime and Proactive Response with Cloud Monitoring

We monitor your server 24×7 with proactive response to issues. Our staffs are on stand-by to take necessary actions in case your server becomes unresponsive.

Our Cloud Monitoring has global location including US, Europe, Asia and Australia. Your sites and servers are checked by multiple nodes to minimize false positive result.

If your server becomes unresponsive, our technical team ensures that your server gets restarted/rebooted.

By default our monitoring checks your server every minute with with 2 probe servers verification before it sets the alert. The estimated time before alert is 15 minutes.

Server Keeps Crashing:
If your server continuously crashing within a day we will investigate the issue and notify you. The maximum automatic reboot within a day is five(5). If the issue is out of our scope you will need to fix it first. Until then the proactive response is disabled. If the issue is within the network or server, we can automatically fix it and update you for information about the issue.

Limitations:
There are issues beyond our control.

  1. Issue with bandwidth provider/carrier.
  2. You have internet (ISP) issues.
  3. Hardware failure – we automatically replace hardware or transfer your site/files into another machine.
  4. Site/Script issues

 

Adding a cron jobs

To add a cron job login to your hosting panel using the “admin“.

user > (youruser) > login as > cron

You will need to set the minute, hour, day, month, and day of week.

  • min (0 – 59)
  • hour (0 – 23)
  • day of month (1 – 31)
  • month (1 – 12)
  • day of week (0 – 6) (where 0 is Sunday and 6 is Saturday)

Example Time:

Every minute = * * * * *
Every hour at 15 minute = 15 * * * *
Every day at 11:15pm = 15 23 * * *
Every 4 hours at 5 minute = 5 */4 * * *
Every 15th of the month = 0 0 15 * *
Every Sunday of the week = 0 0 * * 0

The full path of your app should be
/home/your_username/web/your_domain.com/public_html/

Example command:
php /home/your_username/web/domain.com/public_html/cron.php

Suspended and Cancelled Servers

Here are possible reasons why your servers are suspended and cancelled:

  1. Delinquent or Unpaid balance
  2. DDoS
  3. Overloading server due to very high resource usage (CPU/Disk IO)
  4. Violation of terms
  5. You have initiated the server destroy.

Suspended servers are just server on offline mode. Once the issues or unpaid balance has been resolved we will put your server back online.

Cancelled servers are destroyed servers. We give 5 days grace period for unpaid balances before we initiate the destroy. Once the server has been destroyed it will be provisioned for others to use.

The offsite backups will also be destroyed.

We will not be able to restore your site with a new server. You will need to start from scratch.

Important:

You can get our FTP Repo services to store your backup files in case you are out of budget and wanted to cancel your server.

You can get the FTP Repo service from the client dashboard under “Other Services”. Once you have the FTP Repo you can submit a ticket to transfer your backups.

Hosted Email Solutions for Your Mailboxes

Although you can host your emails on your server, we recommend hosted email solutions such as google apps, zoho mail (free plan available) or other email service providers.

Benefits of using hosted email solutions:

  1. Reduce server load
  2. Better anti-spam system
  3. Better deliverability rate (IP reputation)
  4. More robust features
  5. Better and user-friendly interface design
  6. Lessen security risk due to email viruses 

Here are some Hosted Email service providers:

  • Zoho – http://www.zoho.com/mail/
  • Google Apps – http://www.google.com/enterprise/apps/business/

 

Use Cloud Base SMTP Service for Transactional Emails

Although you can use your server to send transactional emails such as notifications, password reset and others, we recommend using cloud base SMTP service providers.

Cloud Base SMTP Service advantage:
– send millions of emails
– faster email delivery
– higher deliverability rate
– IP reputation
– Domain reputation
– lessen the chance of being blocked by email providers

Some reasons why Email providers may block your mail:

  • IP reputation
  • Spammy messages
  • Domain reputation
  • Incorrect SPF or missing DKIM
  • You have been marked as spam by recipient or by anti-spam organizations

We recommend using our SMTP Services.

Cazaratech SMTP Services

Use Cases:

– Transactional emails like welcome messages, email verification, password reset, purchase confirmation, invoices and other emails that is sent by your site.
– Your own Newsletter system.

Advantages of using SMTP services:

  1. High delivery rate
  2. Fast email delivery
  3. Higher rate limiting
  4. Reduce server load
  5. Prevent your server ip from blacklisting
  6. Prevent your server from being abused by spammers
  7. Prevent your email from blacklisting
  8. Predictable Pricing

Features:

  1. Real time stats
  2. Email logs
  3. Monthly reports
  4. Spam Filtering
  5. Hourly send rate limit
  6. SSL / TLS
  7. Daily bounce limit
  8. Overage Protection

Adding the SMTP Service

1. You can add SMTP service from the client dashboard under
Manage Services > Add Service > SMTP Services
2. Add your Sending Domains
Manage Mail > SMTP Accounts > Sending Domains
3. Add the DNS records
Manage Mail > SMTP Accounts
4. Add SMTP Users
Manage Mail > SMTP Accounts >Manage SMTP Users

Some Reasons Why Site or Server Goes Down

Sometimes you may notice that your site crashes at a specific time or day.

You can follow the steps here to try to resolve the issues.

These are some reasons which causes the issue.

1. Search engine bots
– These bots can crash your server due to too many simultaneous connections to your site. The good news is that it means your site is getting high traffic that’s why search engine bots are crawling it.

Here’s what you can do and all of these are optional as the crawling may only take a few days to go back into a normal crawl rate:
a. You can lower down the crawl rate on google or bing webmaster tools.
b. Lessen the links on your homepage.

2. Spam bots
– This is a common cause of intermittent down time. You should use some of the anti-spam features (eg. akismet, recaptcha, cloudflare).

3. Real User Traffic Spike
– Your site has too many concurrent users on at a specific time than the average traffic that your server can handle. You can upgrade your server if you want users to stay happy any time of the day even during traffic spikes.

4. Your site is under DOS / DDOS attack
– This is a common problem of most big sites. A Denial-of-service attack (DoS) or Distributed Denial-of-service attack (DDoS) is an attempt to make your server or network unavailable or unreachable to your users. This is done by hackers or competitors.

5. Heavy addons
– Some addons use a lot of server resources. You should contact the addon developer on how to optimize the plugin.

6. Firewall Block
– You are triggering a firewall rule which is causing your IP to be blocked by the server. Usually this is multiple failed login attempts. Or you triggered a modsec rule when you try to copy/paste a text/content from your text editor which includes so much HTML codes or some PHP codes. The firewall will block you as it will suspect a hack attempt.

7. Very long process of function/feature or cron jobs
– Your site executes a very long process. Some plugins causes a very long process or you executed a command/feature in your site that takes too long. This can also be bulk process like sending too many newsletter, invites or some cron jobs.

Optimizing Your Social Network Site for Better Performance

The default installation of the PHPFox script is optimized to work on most servers or hosting. However, there are still other configurations to make performance better.

Here are some articles for site optimization:

  1. Pretty URLs or Short URLs
  2. Turning off Log Site Activity
  3. Caching feed and other settings/content
  4. Limiting your custom profile feeds
  5. Disable unused modules
  6. Don’t install plugins you don’t need
  7. Limit the use of 3rd party widgets

SSL Certificate

Secure your website data with SSL certificates.

We offer two options.

  1. Free SSL
  2. Commercial SSL

Free SSL

Login to Hosting Panel using “admin” user:

http://your_server_ip:8083

user > (web/ftp user) > login as (webuser) > web > yourdomain.com > edit

Check “SSL Support”

Click “Lets Encrypt Support”

Then hit “Save” button.

Commercial SSL

1. Certificate Signing Request (CSR)

Before you can generate an SSL certificate you will need the CSR from the server.

You can generate the CSR in your WHM or Web Panel or you can request to us by submitting a ticket.

Login to Hosting Panel using “admin” user:

http://your_server_ip:8083

user > webuser > login as webuser > web > yourdomain.com > edit

Check “SSL Support”

Click “Generate CSR”

Important:
Please save the CSR and SSL Key in your computer. The key is needed when installing the SSL certificate.

If you wish for us to do it for your please submit the following info:

  • Country Name (2 letter code):
  • State or Province Name (full name):
  • Locality Name (eg, city):
  • Organization Name (eg, company):
  • Organizational Unit Name (eg, section):
  • Email Address :
  • Domain:

2. SSL certificate

Once you have the CSR you will be able to generate the SSL from your SSL provider/reseller or certificate authority.

To install your SSL certificate in your web panel:

user > webuser > login as websuer > web > yourdomain.com > edit

Check “SSL support” and fill up the required fields (SSL certificate, SSL Key, SSL bundle)

You can also purchase the SSL certificate from us.

Make sure you have enough credits/funds if you wish to purchase the SSL certificate from us. It will be deducted from your account.

To purchase SSL certificate from us please go to your account dashboard and select from “Other Services”.

After purchase please submit a ticket with the following info:

  • SSL Product (eg. PositiveSSL):
  • Company Name:
  • Phone Number:
  • Address:
  • City:
  • State/Province:
  • Zip/Postal Code:
  • Country:
  • Approver Email (preferred emails are “[email protected]”, “[email protected]”):

NOTE: Usually the certificate authority requires “[email protected]” for the Approver email. You will need to have access to this email.

3. Verification from your approver email.

You will receive a verification/confimation from the certificate authority to your approver email.

After you have verified/confirm the approver email, the SSL certificate package file will be sent to your email.