Server offline drill to test your plans

April 28, 2012 Business, Ltd companies, Security, Server, Sole traders, Web hosting, Web server No comments

Most small businesses will run their website from a single server — either on shared hosting, a Virtual Private Server, or perhaps a dedicated server. Either way, you will occasionally have to deal with downtime, and it’s important to have a basic plan of action when this happens.

How long until you realise?

If you don’t have automatic server monitoring set up, you might not notice for a while. You probably don’t visit your own website often, and if your email is down too, you won’t get any tip-offs.

Consider setting up server monitoring including email and text notifications.

How much downtime can you tolerate?

Be realistic and don’t panic. 15-minutes of downtime won’t ruin anyone’s business, and it’s unlikely that it would cost you any custom.

A few issues could have occurred, and some are quick to solve.

  • Website errors are usually quick to fix when you’ve found them, and are usually caused by lack of testing
  • Hardware or network issues may often be out of your control — your web host is hopefully already aware, but contact them urgently
  • Security issues or recovery from hacking would generally be a longer process, and require analysis of how any compromise occurred and how to prevent it in future

Always have a backup, move your website easily

If your server’s just gone offline, it’s too late to make a copy and move it elsewhere. Setting up an automated, remote backup, allows you to up sticks and host your site elsewhere, without waiting for your previous server to be restored.

If you have access to more than one server, your backup can be set up on the second server, ready to go, in case of server loss. This can be automated, or you can manually update your DNS A record to point to the new server — this generally updates within a couple of hours, but will take longer to propagate around the world, so should be considered only if your server is expected to be offline for several hours.

Is your email down?

If you host your own email on the same server, that’ll be down too.

Once it’s back up, emails should be correctly delivered. Consider hosting your email elsewhere, so you have one less thing to worry about.

Using Tracks for GTD on Windows, Mac and Linux

April 27, 2012 Getting Things Done, Productivity No comments

I’ve been searching for some time for an excellent GTD application, which can be accessed from my main computer, laptop or mobile, where ever I am. After getting on with a free account on Vitalist for some time, I briefly tried the rather poor Wunderlist, before discovering Tracks.

This deserves to be much better known, and should be the tool of choice for any GTD practitioner.

You can download Tracks from getontracks.org. It is open source and built in Ruby on Rails, so can run locally on Windows, Mac and Linux computers, or on a web server.

Setup Tracks on a Windows web server

With a newly released version, existing tutorials on installing Tracks in Windows environment are somewhat lacking, but I’ve pieced together a quick overview of how to get Tracks up and running on your own domain name.

  1. Download the BitNami Tracks stack here (http://bitnami.org/stack/tracks). This installs everything required to access Tracks locally on a Windows machine, using Apache as a web server. During the install, select an alternative port for the web server to run on (port 80 already used by IIS).
  2. To make this accessible from the external internet on a Windows web server, running IIS, use the Microsoft Web Package Installer to add Advanced Request Routing and the related requisites.
  3. In IIS manager, where Server Farms is now an additional menu within your server, add a server for Apache, choosing the port picked during the earlier installation.
  4. Create an upper-level redirect rule in IIS, to rewrite your desired domain name to the Apache server. “Route to server farm” will now be an available option in the rewrite section.

Redirect default page in IIS7

April 11, 2012 Administration, ASP.NET, Server, Web hosting, Web server No comments

A useful snippet below, for use in the web.config of an ASP.NET web application. This example shows the Default.aspx page being permanently redirected to an SSL-enabled version. This may be useful where you may want to display a secure, HTTPS front page, but not redirect to HTTPS pages throughout your site.

<rule name=”Redirect default”>
<match url=”^$” ignoreCase=”true” />
<conditions>
<add input=”{HTTPS}” pattern=”OFF” />
</conditions>
<action type=”Redirect” url=”https://www.example.com/” redirectionType=”Permanent” />
</rule>

Trying to get hold of 1and1?

April 10, 2012 Administration, Web hosting, Web server No comments

Remember that any emails to 1&1 appear to take a minimum of 24 hours, as they don’t really want to help.

Also remember that they will never call you. They will only email in a very delayed fashion.

1&1′s useful contact details

Complaints: complaints@1and1.com

Hostmaster emails (for domain updates): hostmaster@1and1.com / hostmaster@1and1.co.uk / hostmaster@1und1.de

1&1′s useless contact details

1&1 list the following on their site, but these just get you through to unskilled, incapable staff who’ll waste your time.

1&1′s Germany office: +49 721 91374 0 (they speak better English than I do German, but don’t have access to customer records)

support@1and1.co.uk, 0844 335 1212, 0870 24 11 247

If you have a dedicated server, you can call them on 0844 335 1211 (same result as above?), if you’d like to speak to a bored American.

Link to rdesktop from the Unity launcher

April 9, 2012 Administration, Linux, Remote Desktop, Server, Web hosting No comments

rdesktop is the best remote desktop application for Linux, bar none. It doesn’t include a graphical interface though, so isn’t very convenient to run.

Save the code below as a .desktop file, and you can then drag it into the Unity launcher. It’ll create a quick access button to rdesktop, connecting to your chosen server. Just customise the Exec line with your domain, IP address and desired settings – options provided here include compression and caching for a responsive remote desktop experience. An icon is also specified on the line below, to be displayed in the launcher.

[Desktop Entry]
Name=Rdesktop to Brierfield
Comment=Connect to a remote Windows Terminal-Server
Exec=rdesktop -u Username -d example.com -g 1600×1000 -r sound:local -x b -P -z -a 32 -k fi 123.123.123.123
Icon=/usr/share/icons/hicolor/scalable/apps/nm-device-wired.svg
Terminal=false
Hidden=false
Type=Application
Version=1.0
Encoding=UTF-8
StartupNotify=true
StartupWMClass=rdesktop
GenericName=

Group by date in Microsoft SQL

April 9, 2012 Databases, SQL No comments

An excellent, useful snippet of SQL, to group rows by date, including a count of entries for each date.

SELECT CAST(DateColumn As DATE) As LogDate, COUNT(IDColumn) As TotalCount
FROM yourTable
GROUP BY CAST(DateColumn As DATE)

Export list of sites from IIS7

April 7, 2012 Administration, Server, Web hosting, Web server No comments

Need to quickly export a list of sites set up on an IIS7 web server? Just use this in the command prompt:

%windir%\system32\inetsrv\appcmd list site > c:\sites.csv

Great for running an automatic check for broken links or errors using Xenu Link Sleuth.

Review of the Snom 870 VOIP phone

April 3, 2012 Communication, Technology, VOIP, VOIP No comments

The top-of-the-range Snom 870 is the first desk phone I’ve ever owned. When I started seriously working from home, a mobile just didn’t cut it, and I couldn’t find a reliable software phone to run from my computer.

Using VOIP as my sole phone provider let me to discover an underutilised medium in small-business circles, where many still use mobile numbers or normal landlines as their primary number. In short, VOIP provides options for many phone numbers, all forwarded to your desk, where ever you are.

This isn’t a cheap phone by any means, at about £300, but it is almost faultless. Snom have achieved both minimal style and function, with any advanced calling feature available.

The touchscreen provides quick and clear access to all phone functions, while the web interface provides all those and more – action URLs, for example, allow the phone to carry out automatic tasks when calls are received, etc.

The wireless internet addition will often be required, and works very well. Configuration has been the only issue here, requiring reboots and the ethernet cable to be unplugged in the correct order, and providing no feedback on initial connection problems. Once set though, this has always proved reliable.

Combined with a wireless headset, like the Sennheiser DW Office, nothing can beat it.

How to backup everything

April 2, 2012 Administration, Backup, Business, Databases, Ltd companies, Server, Sole traders, SQL, Web server No comments

Local documents and files

Most users can split their local files in to two sections; those which change regularly, and are typically small in size, and those which rarely change, if ever.

For your small, regularly edited files – usually documents and photos – an automatic backup to a remote location is sensible. This avoids issues with your usual computer affecting the backup, and if done well can allow you access to these files online, from any computer. LiveDrive is a good service, providing automatic backup as files are updated, and with an online interface accessible from anywhere.

For your larger files – videos, music and large collections of photos – it’s usually not practical to create an online backup, as it would take so long to upload. As these will much rarely change – you’ll want to save your holiday photos forever, and your music collection will gradually grow – creating a local copy on an external hard drive may be the best approach, while scheduling a monthly copy in your calender. For very precious files, you might consider two copies, and keeping the other out of the house; in the car, or at the office.

This keeps a copy of important files easily accessible in case of loss, but also more safe from malware – be sure to run a virus scan before plugging the hard drive in.

Google services

Chances are, you might use at least one of several Google services, such as Gmail, Google Docs, Calender or Contacts, and you may rely quite heavily on them. It’s unlikely that Google will suffer permanent data loss, but it’s not sensible to assume that they never will. BackupGoo provides a great way to keep an up-to-date, local backup of these services, in case of loss, and in case your home or office internet connection goes down.

Web hosting

While your web designer or developer will have a copy of your website files, which you should have an up-to-date copy of anyway, it’s sensible to keep a backup of website files and particularly databases from your web server.

Files may not change often, but an automated backup can easily be set up on either a Linux or Windows hosting environment to create a nightly backup, and transfer that automatically to a remote location. The same technique can be used to backup databases, which likely hold the most importance to a dynamic website – for a busy website, it may be sensible to schedule an hourly backup.

LiveDrive may also help in your web hosting environment. FTP access is available for Linux users, and Windows Server can run the LiveDrive software.

Server monitoring is essential

April 2, 2012 Administration, Backup, Server, Web hosting, Web server No comments

Regardless of your web hosting set up, your online presence isn’t guaranteed to be online 24/7. Apart from server availability issues, which should be minimal, website misconfiguration and sudden, heavy traffic can take your website offline without notice.

If your email is managed elsewhere, this will continue to function as normal, with no indication that you’re missing out on potentially valuable visits and enquiries.

IPPatrol provide an excellent monitoring service, including email and text message alerts, and configurable monitoring intervals. Options include daily and weekly summary emails, including availability and performance graphs.

« Older Entries