Around The Business

At IX Web Hosting, and all of the other Ecommerce Inc. brands, mod_wrap2 has been installed on all webservers. The joy of this module is to provide you with allow and deny access lists for all ftp accounts. It will make it possible as a user to define what IP addresses can, and the best part which cannot, your account through FTP.

How Does It Work?

During the login process, your ftp daemon looks for two specific files, ftp.allow and ftp.deny. After reviewing those two files, the system will check to see if the IP address trying to connect to the server at that moment is on the approved access list. If the IP address is not allowed to login into the server, they will receive warm and loving 503 error.

530 User ‘username’ denied by access rules

Right now you are thinking, “What if I lock myself out?” Something to remember, the ip address 127.0.0.1 is ALWAYS allowed, meaning access from webshell within your IX Web Hosting control panel will always be permitted.

What If I choose not to use FTP Allow and Deny

If you have not created any allow.ftp or deny.ftp files within your home directory, then the ftp behaviour of your account is not changed. No really if you do not want to use, it your site will still work correctly.

Quick words of Wisdom

The files ftp.allow and ftp.deny *MUST* be created in the home directory of the user, as it is seen by the ftp daemon:

1. for the main ftp login, this directory is: /hsphere/local/home/username/
2. for the ftp sub-users, this directory is /hsphere/local/home/username/some/path/set/by/customer/ (if the relative path set by customer is /some/path/set/by/customer)

Also, if 2 different users have the same home directory, the ftp.allow and ftp.deny contents will affect BOTH users.

If the ftp main user has strict rules defined that only allow certain IPs to connect, but a ftp subuser doesn’t have any rules defined, the ftp sub-user will be allowed to connect from anywhere. Vice-versa is also true.

Both ftp.deny and ftp.allow files *MUST* end with an empty line.
Both ftp.deny and ftp.allow should have read permissions for owner&group&others.

Hint from the Pros

If you do not know your IP address, you can obtain by visiting the site, What is my IP address. Also remember many Internet Providers are assigning what is call a dynamic IP address to many of their clients. If you are given a Dynamic IP it is highly recommended to whitelist your C-Class subnet. Here is a quick example

Your IP address i 88.182.14.24, so you would want to whitelist 88.182.14.

Examples of the Files

Here are the two files you would upload into your home directory if you plan to use allow.ftp and deny.ftp on your hosting server. When you upload these files to your account, make sure they are saved as allow.ftp and deny.ftp not allow.ftp.txt

allow.ftp

deny.ftp

ionCube is a PHP Loader that is used for executing PHP scripts previously encoded with the ionCube PHP Encoder software, which renders them non-humanly readable. Which also means any documentation, electronic or online is also non-humanly readable.

Which sometimes is a good thing.

Currently at IX Web Hosting, ioncube can be installed on all servers, both Windows and Linux.

How to install it to a windows-based server

1. Visit ioncube’s site, and download the Windows x86 package.
2. After you have downloaded the zip file, upload it to your domain folder. The domain folder is the file inside your FTP that is titled the same as your website address (example in my control panel it would be aroundthebusiness.com)

After you have uploaded and extracted your files, you should see a folder inside your domain folder titled “ioncube”. Inside this ioncube folder you will a file called, “ioncube_loader_win_XXX.dll” inside. Also, there is “ioncube-encoded-file.php” file in the package for testing purposes.

How to install to a Linux-based server

1. Visit ioncube’s site, and download the Windows x86 package.
2. After you have downloaded the zip file, upload it to your domain folder. The domain folder is the file inside your FTP that is titled the same as your website address (example in my control panel it would be aroundthebusiness.com)
3. After you have uploaded your files, add this link of coding to your php.ini file located inside your cgi-bin.

zend_extension=/hsphere/local/home/(USER)/(DomainFolder)/ioncube/ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so

After you have successfully installed ioncube to either server, run the ioncube test page at

http://domainname.com/ioncube/Domain name/ ioncube-encoded-file.php. If ioncube is working correctly you should receive a message congratulating you on your happy install.

If you have any problems installing ioncube, you can contact IX Web Hosting, at any time at 1-800-385-0450.

I have been banned by Twitter. My account which I used to speak with many of my followers and readers has taken off the Twitter Stream. Here is the email I received from Twitter:

Now I am not one to break the rules. I understand that I may have followed more then my allowed at one time, but now I am being banned with this my only warning. That’s not far Twitter! I don’t spam people besides my blog, I don’t send out look at my cute friends links and I build and speak with my clients and friends on a daily basis.

Here is what I had to say to Twitter:

I will keep replying to them until I get a good solid answer to why I was singled out for doing what thousands online do everyday, follow people.

Most businesses today recognize the power of blogging and are using it to their advantage. Everyone from the bigger companies to much smaller businesses are taking advantage of the free advertising and wonderful increase to website traffic that can be gained from successful blogging. There are some mistakes that you should avoid if you are blogging for your business. Unfortunately, these mistakes have been learned the hard way, but you can learn to avoid these mistakes before they happen to you.

To read the rest of this article click HERE.

In case you’re a bit out of the loop, Facebook has been receiving pressure from outside sources after some Facebook Group Pages were created that spoke out against the Holocaust and denied it ever occurred.  There were two groups in question at the heart of this controversy, “Holocaust is a Holohoax” and “Based on the facts…there was no Holocaust,” and both were removed from Facebook today as it was determined that they were violating Facebook’s Terms of Service allowing messages that spread hate on their Walls.

To read the rest of this article click HERE.

Throughout my life I have used a lot of different internet providers. I have had a good services and I must admit I have had really bad, I mean really, really bad service providers.

My first high speed internet service came when I was in college (don’t life I was excited about dial-up while I was in high school). I had this little white box that I had to plug into my phone jack and for some reason that created high speed internet. Or most of the time it at least created internet.

For the majority of my one year service contact I couldn’t connect with to the World Wide Web, I could barely connect to the modem itself. I went from the buzzing of dial connection bliss, to no internet connection of any kind what so ever. But heck it was high speed internet so who was I to judge.

Now 8 years later, I have a high speed wireless internet connection that allows me to the pleasure to connect easily to the no longer called World Wide Web from room in my house. Isn’t luxury grand. With the advancement of technology from internet providers such as wild blue high speed internet the online world just seems to keep getting better.

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of wild blue high speed internet. All opinions are 100% mine.

WordPress is a relatively SEO friendly blogging tool to begin with. It offers a linking structure that makes it relatively easy for spiders to crawl your pages, and the code contains very little validation errors if any at all. However, there are a few additional steps that you can follow in order to make your WordPress blog even more SEO friendly, and most are so simple to implement that there is absolutely no reason not to.

To read the rest of this article click HERE.