It’s easy to make errors that prevent spam from being blackholed. (An earlier post, described how to blackhole spam with email filters.) Several people recently swore to me that SpamAssassin was broken. I checked the email filters they had set up and found some peskly self-inflicted problems. Here’s the problem so that you can hopefully avoid wasting time figuring out what is wrong. Continue reading ‘Avoid Common Errors When Trying to Blackhole Spam’

Just where are those emails stored on your server? For emails that have been delivered, here is how:

Log into cPanel, click the “File Manager” icon. Go to the directory named (appropriately) “mail.” (Your “public_html” directory is at the same level directory as “mail.”) When you have only one, default, email set up, you will find what appears to be files for “inbox,” “saved-messages,” “sent-mail” and possibly others depending on how much you have used this email account.

After you have set up several email addresses, you will find additional directories in your “mail” directory that match the email addresses. Open one of these and you will find additional files that contain the email for this email address.

You can also look for email by logging in via FTP using your favorite FTP software. Most accounts are set up so that upon log in, you are at your “home” directory. Click around just like above and you will see where email is located.

Sometimes after deleting an email address, cPanel does not delete all the files for that email address. Now that you know where email is stored, you can delete files and directories yourself to clean up and free up disk space.

When you want to add a low-cost or free forum to your site, you can install phpBB by using cPanel. Most setups of cPanel let you install, delete or upgrade phpBB and other software from within cPanel.

Click the link called “Scripts Library” on the main cPanel page. This takes you to links to the various software packages that you can install with an easy user interface. Select phpBB and you will be on your way.

phpBB has been around for a long time. Many sites use it. I have used it in the past and recommend it.

The previous post provided a command that deletes all emails sent to an email address. You can also use this command when you log directly into your server via ssh (assuming your hosting provides allows this type of access). I highly recommend SSH secure shell client.

You have an email inbox that is filled up. Or perhaps your “spam box” is filled up. You have so many emails to delete that it would take you forever to clear it out, page by page with NeoMail. One of my customers cried for help because of 35 MBs of spam that had accumulated.

It is time for drastic action. I say “drastic” because this cron job will delete all the emails in one fell swoop. And it will delete all emails that are in the email inbox everytime it runs. There is no recovery path for getting any of those emails back. Nonetheless, in some cases deleting all emails is justified. I use this with some accounts. I might be deleting real emails, but there is so much crap, that I feel it is worth it. Just so you know the downside of this cron job.

Here is the syntax Continue reading ‘Cron Job to Clear Out an Overstuffed Email Inbox’

cPanel provides two interfaces that simplify setting up a cron job. This post discusses the “standard” interface because most people find it easier and faster to use than the advanced interface.

Two common problems people often encounter with cron jobs :

1. a server uses “military” time or a 24-hour clock rather than a 12-hour clock. For example, 1:00 pm would be 13:00
2. your server’s time zone might be different than your own. For example, your server is in Atlanta, Georgia and you live in Sacramento, California, “your” time is 3 hours different than the server’s time for running the cron job. Remember this when you check to see that your cron job ran and find unexpected results (such as it did not run because the time has not been reached, or you think it ran early and it should not have run).
Now, let’s set up a cron job. Continue reading ‘Setting Up a Cron Job With cPanel’s Standard Interface’

“I am not receiving all my email!” and “People are not receiving emails from me!” are common customer complaints. Sender tells recipient they sent an email. Recipient checks and does not see it. Blame the email service. Ditto for the reverse (not receiving an email you sent.)

The first step is to check the email address. User error causes lots of issues. The server just does what it is told. No, the server cannot correct misspelled names. For example, someone was upset that their email they wanted to send to kyle@ but they typed kylr@ was not automatically corrected by the server.

What to do: Log into the default email account for your server (login@yourdomain.com) and you might find more emails than you care to know about. Misdirected emails will be in this email. There might even be many emails that could not be sent. Open some of these emails to see the error messages. You might learn something useful.

Automatically run scripts or commands for your site by setting up a
cron job.” (A bit of trivia: “cron” is short for chronograph.”) Your cron job will run on the server at times and intervals set by the job.

A cron job can automate a repetitive task. For example, a cron job can periodically delete all mail in an email account to reduce the amount of disk space used. A cron job can also “rotate” log files.

A cron job can even be used to make changes to your website. The quote of the day and blog of the day are each updated every day by a cron job.

Cron jobs give you great flexibility in the times and intervals they can be set to run. You can set minute, hour, day of month, month, day of week in various ways to fine-tune how frequently or infrequently your job runs.

You can automatically send your site’s visitors to a new web page by setting up a “redirect.” Use it when you change a page’s file name, or move the page to a new directory (aka, folder).

Setting up a redirect is an easy, efficient and search engine friendly technique. The redirect maintains your search engine ranking for the redirected page.

It is easy to set up a “redirect” in cPanel. Log in. Click the “Redirects” link. Enter into the blanks, the “old” page name. (Remember to include any directory names, if applicable.) You can make the redirect temporary or permanent. You can even redirect to a different site.

cPanel provides a way to remove a redirect. It also lists any redirects you have set up.

In “Part 1″ of how to deal with emails from the server warning that you are approaching your file limit, we looked at how to figure out why you were approaching your limit. We also looked at one likely culprit: email.

Causes other than email accounts might be the problem. In this post, we look at how to delete files through cPanel. We also point out 2 things that cause some people problems so that you can avoid the trouble. Continue reading ‘How To Deal With “Disk Usage Warning” Emails — Part 2′