Small Packages: Frequently Asked Questions

Dealing With Referrer Spam

In the last year referrer spam has been increasingly common. The target of the spammers are those people who publish their stats and/or referrers on their web sites, the spammers hope that by getting their links on those pages they will increase their visibility on search engines. Regardless of whether we do or don't publish our referrers we all get hit by referrer spam.

There is a way of combatting referrer spam using the .htaccess file. Basically what you need to do is create a list of referrers that are banned from your site. You can edit your .htaccess file using the File Manager in cPanel.

]]> Log into cPanel and click File Manager, which will open in a new window. You will see something like this: (click to see a larger version)

Next, click on the folder next to public_html - this will open the public_html folder (if you click on the name you will only get a list of options for the folder) and you will see the following:

If you don't have an existing .htaccess file I will tell you how to create one near the end. Assuming you do, this time you need to click on the name of the .htaccess file and you will see some options appear in the top, right-hand side of the File Manager screen:

Click on Edit File. If you already have something in there you need to copy and past it into notepad and save it somewhere safe.

You need to add the following to the bottom of your .htaccess file:

The section in bold needs to be one, unbroken line otherwise you will get server errors when you try to view your site. It's best if you copy and paste into notepad (make sure word wrap is off) and get that long line right, then copy it into the file edit screen in cPanel. As you can see, it looks like there is a hard return after SetEnvIfNoCase Referer and before BadReferrer but there isn't, they are spaces.

Click Save and close the editing screen, which will have been opened in a new window. You should be able to access your site as normal, if you get any errors at all contact me.

Keep an eye on your stats and you should see those fake referrers dropping off your stats. As new URLs appear you can edit the list in the .htaccess file as necessary by adding string| after the "("

If you don't have an exisiting .htaccess file in public_html you will have to create one. You can create it in something like notepad and ensure that you have the one long line in the middle. call it .htaccess and upload it to your public_html folder either by using File Manager or your ftp client.

Thanks for this solution go to Dorothea at Caveat Lector

Managing Your E-Mail

It's very important to keep on top of your e-mail. Many people don't seem to realise that the spaced used for mailboxes is part of their disk allocation. I've seen people use up their whole hosting account on e-mail! There are a few things to remember :
1. There is no ceiling on the size of your default mailbox. If you don't clear down your e-mail, either by downloading it or logging in via webmail and deleting it, your mailbox grows and grows until you run out of disk space. When you run out of disk space you don't get any more mail messages, instead they hang around on the server, slowing it down. In addition every time a message doesn't get delivered to you a return message is generated to the sender telling them your mailbox is full. If the message is from a legitimate address this isn't such a big problem but if you are getting a lot of spam the chances are the sender's address is spoofed meaing that the server is unable to deliver the reply. This also sits on the mail queue, slowing down the server even more. The server will try to deliver messages in the mail queue for about a week before it discards them.

2. Enable SpamAssassin via cPanel. It's very good at weeding out spam. Do bear in mind though that you need to clear down your spam folder (viewable via Horde or Neomail) otherwise it will grow and grow until it uses up all the space in your account, or your mailbox if you have set up a named mailbox with a finite space limit.

3. If you use webmail to send mail clear down your Sent Mail folders. This sits on the server using part of your space allocation until you delete it.

4. As well as using SpamAssassin you can dump a lot of spam by setting the default mail address, as outlined in this tutorial

Backups

Backups are taken every night. We save a daily backup, a weekly backup and a monthly backup. These backups are NOT guaranteed, your data is YOUR responsibility. It is very important that you back up your own files, particularly if you use a MySQL database as you will not have an original copy of this on your own computer.

Refunds

30 Day Money Back Guarantee/Refunds:
Should you become unsatisfied with our services within the first 30 days of your account activation, Small Packages will refund your hosting fee.

Cancellation Refunds:
We DO NOT refund partial annual/quarterly fees to accounts canceling after their 30 day initial account activation period.

Bandwidth

Bandwidth is allocated on a ration of 20:1 (bandwidth:disk space). Overusage of bandwidth is billed at $1/Gb. Bandwidth is calculated on a monthly basis.

Billing

We DO NOT send out invoices. All credit cards are billed automatically annually (or monthly if you take this option). It is the client's responsibility to ensure that they have sufficient credit to cover this transaction. In the event that a card is declined for any reason we will suspend the web site and send an e-mail with instructions for submitting a new credit card. If a new credit card is not submitted within 72 hours, the web site will be deleted without further warning.

Avoiding Spam By Setting The Default Mail Address

Spam is an ever-increasing problem but there are some steps you can take to avoid it. When your hosting account is set up a mailbox is created with the address username@yourdomain.com*. Any mail addressed to your domain is automatically routed to this mailbox, so e-mails addressed to webmaster@yourdomain.com, anyone@yourdomain.com or ahgdgcjhg@yourdomain.com will all end up in this mailbox, this is your default mail address. 99.9% of this will be spam; spammers don't need to know your e-mail address, they just need to know your domain name. Of course you can enable SpamAssassin which is very good at weeding out the spam but this means that your spam folder gets full very quickly. Whilst this doesn't count against your mailbox space, it does count against your disk space. If you don't clear it out very regularly you can soon end up with a spam folder that's used up all your web space. It quickly gets tedious logging into your webspace every day and clearing hundreds of messages from your spam folder.

]]> There's a more efficient way to get rid of spam as soon as it hits your mail box. The first step is to set up a new mailbox which will only catch e-mail explicitly addressed to it, eg, yourname@yourdomain.com. Any mail not addressed to this e-mail address will be routed to the default mail address. The second step is to tell the default mail address what to do with e-mail that gets routed there. If you have already created additional e-mail accounts you can skip the first step.

To create a new e-mail account log into cPanel; in the E-Mail category click Manage Accounts

This will take you to the Mail Account Maintenance window. You will see a list of your e-mail accounts. If you have already created additional e-mail accounts they will be listed here, in addition to the default mail address. (click to enlarge)

Click Add Mail Account to create a new account. This will take you to the Add Mail Account window where you can enter the details of the new e-mail account. (click to enlarge)

When you have entered the details of the account your screen will look like this (click to enlarge); click Create to create the new e-mail account.

You will be told that the account has been created. Click Go Back to return to the main Mail Account Maintenance window. (click to enlarge)

In the Mail Account Maintenance window you will see that your new account has been added to the list of e-mail accounts. (click to enlarge)

Click Go Back to return to the main cPanel window. In the E-Mail category click Default Address. This will take you to the Default Address Maintenance window where it will tell you what is being done with all unrouted mail. It will say that it's being routed to username, ie, the default mailox. Click Set Default Address (Click to enlarge)

In the Default Address Maintenance window you can see it gives you a couple of suggestions on what to do with unrouted mail. You can either send it to a "blackhole", ie, delete it, or you can "bounce" it - this option will generate a reply to the sender that the e-mail address they used doesn't exist. If you elect to send all your unrouted mail to a blackhole the server has to download it to the server then delete it. If you elect to bounce it the server checks the address the e-mail is being sent to and replies with a failed message before the e-mail is downloaded. It's better to bounce it. In the "to" box type :fail: no such address here and click the Change button. (Click to enlarge)

You will be taken to a window confirming the new action to be taken with unrouted mail (Click to enlarge)

Click Go Back to return to the main Default Address Maintenance window. You will see that unrouted mail is no longer being sent to username but :fail: no such address here (Click to enlarge)

*This has changed since April 2005. All new accounts are created with the default mail address set to :fail: no such address here

Logging In Using SSH

If you like to work from the command line you can log into the server via SSH. There is an SSH utility within cPanel but I find it rather slow and unpleasant to use. Putty is a great little SSH client - just download the executable file, save it to your PC and you're set to go.

To use it open the file, enter your domain name and make sure the SSH option is clicked. At this point you can enter a name in Saved Sessions and click Save - this will make logging into the server quicker in the future, just double-click on the name you saved and away you go. This first time you will have to click Load.

This will connect to the server and you will get a warning message (click to enlarge)

Click Yes, then enter your username and password at the prompts (these are the same as your cPanel login). You only get the warning message the first time you use Putty to connect to a domain, it will not appear in future sessions.

Exporting A MySQL Database From The Command Line

Log into the server via SSH, either through cPanel's SSH utility or a SSH client such as Putty. At the prompt type :
mysqldump -h server -u username -ppassword database > filename

server - your MySQL server name (usually localhost)
username - your database username
password - your database password (note there is no space between -p and the password)
database - your database name
filename - the name you want for the dump file

Download the file via FTP.

Exporting Your MySQL Database

Although a full back up of your account is taken every night there may be occasions when you want to take an export of your database(s); before an MT upgrade is a good time to do one, if the upgrade goes wrong you may need to re-install MT.

Taking a backup of your MySQL database is easy, the only downside is it can take a while if you're on a dial-up connection and have a big database. In the past I've had trouble trying to back up databases using Internet Explorer, for some reason it resets the connection part way through unless the database is very small, however I've had no problems downloading backups of large databases using Firefox.

]]> The first thing you need to do is log into cPanel. At the bottom-right there's a link to PHPMyAdmin.

Click on the link and PHPMyAdmin will open in a new window.

On the left-hand side you will see the name of your database (if you have more than one database there will be a drop-down list.

Click on the name of your database to select it.

When you select your database the right-hand side of the window will change. You'll see a list of the tables on the right and a row of tabs at the top.

Click on the Export tab.

This will load the export view on the right-hand side of the window. You need to make the following selections :
Export - underneath the list of tables click "Select All", the list of tables should turn grey.

SQL options - in Structure the following boxes should be ticked : Add DROP TABLE, Add AUTO_INCREMENT value, Enclose table and field names with backquotes. In Data none of the boxes should be checked.

Tick the save as file but DO NOT enter a file name.

Your screen should look like this (click to enlarge)

Finally click on the "Go" button. A download box should open and you can select somewhere on your PC to save the file. (click to enlarge)

As you can see PHPMyAdmin assigned a perfectly sensible file name.

Changing File Permissions

If you log into your account via SSH you can bring up a list of files using the ls command. To see more information about the files use ls -l. This will bring up a list of files in the following format:
-rw-r--r-- 1 username groupname 13987 May 5 22:58 filename

The first part, -rw-r--r-- tells you if it's a file or a directory and what permissions exist. The first character is usually "-"(meaning it's a file) or "d" (it's a directory). Occasionally you will see "l" or "s" which denotes a linked directory or a symbolic link. The next 9 characters indicate the permissions, r=read, w=write, x=executable. These permissions are assigned to user (the owner of the file), group (the group the user belongs to) and other (anybody else). Just to make things more confusing permissions also have numerical values assigned to them:
Read=r=4
Write=w=2
Executable=x=1

]]> The command used to change file permissions is chmod. Depending how extensively you want to change the permissions there are 2 ways to use the command. The first way is:
chmod ugo+rwx filename or chmod ugo-rwx filename

This is more useful if you just want to tweak the permissions. "ugo" refers to user, group, other - in other words who you want to assign the permisions to. You do not have to use all 3. "rwx" indicates the permissions you want to assign. Again, you do not have to use all 3 which is why using the chmod command this way is so useful for teaking file permissions. Use + to give permissions and use - to take them away.

For example if you realise you've assigned write permissions to everybody and only the user should have write permissions (otherwise anybody can update your file!) use the command:
chmod go-w filename

The second way to use the chmod command is by assigning permissions using numerical values. You need to specify a 3 digit number. The first digit is the user's permissions, the 2 digit is the group permissions and the 3rd digit is everyone else's permissions. You need to add together the read, write and executable values to arrive at each digit (see above for these values). You would use the command like this:
chmod 755 filename

755 is the value commonly assigned to cgi scripts. The user has full permissions (denoted by the 7). Both the group and other permissions are set to 5, ie, read and executable.

Many ftp packages allow you to change file permissions. You can also change via the Cpanel interface.