So invariably if your running a site using MySQL(mysequel) you’ll probably get an error eventually from it because we all know that anything that has a bunch of letters all put together to form some cute meaning that says nothing but it does something that you don’t know about.

Or does it?

Lets take a look and see what exactly MySQL does for you and what to do when you get certain generic messages about your MySQL database. And hopefully this will give you some more insight into how this program runs on your server and gives you the chance to actually use a application, like WordPress, on your site to accomplish something that you couldn’t do with just plain old HTML scripting or PHP scripting.

MySQL which is a multi threaded multiuser structured query language, is a system which was created to retrieve and manage data. This is used to for web applications and acts as the database component for many different platforms. This program is widely used for open source platforms because MySQL itself is free to use and does not require any real licensing to run. Making it a cheap Alternative to running MSSQL which you have to pay for to use it on a certain structure thus upping the cost of running your website overall.

To break that down in terms that make a little more sense to someone who is just getting into this I’ll use one of my favorite examples. Lets say you have a bunch of different papers all spread out over the place on your desk, some of them stack higher then your computer monitor and others much taller. For most this is not the way to retrieve any information you might need on the papers. So you get a filing cabinet and being filing these stacks of paper away for retrieval at a later date. For example your tax returns from 2 years ago because suddenly your getting audited now. A database works much the same way by filing and storing information to be called on at a later date.

However there can be issues at times that come up when you are running a MySQL database, either on the user end, you, or on the back end, your service provider, lets take a look at some of these errors and see if we can figure out what they mean and see if we can fix them shall we?

MySQL error: 1040 - Well thats a nice message, but it doesn’t say whats wrong with my site or where to go to fix it. On a general basis if your seeing this then there are one of two things happening here.

• You could be sending to many queries to the MySQL database causing it to hit its maximum queries, the only way to really test this is to reset your database. You can do a Google search on how to do this exactly because I won’t go into it since it does break quite a few Terms and Services with multiple hosting provider including 4 of my own that I use.
• The second is when there are multiple users maxing out the connections for the server’s MySQL database itself. This rarely happens at all since it does require rather poorly written script to accomplish this, or malicious coders that are trying to do this for what ever reason they wish to do that. The first is usually the culprit this error and can cause a lot of trouble for a lot of users when they don’t know what to look for.

Database error: 1044 : Access denied for user ‘USERNAME’@'localhost’ to database ‘USERNAME_catalog’
Invalid query: CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE - This error is kind of hard as it refers to not being able to create a temporary table.

• This is known as temp/lock permissions for MySQL, and normally this is not turned on by a hosting provider unless requested by a customer. This can be done easily by making a call to have this done. The one thing you do need to remember what your username, and database name is, in this case its USERNAME, and the database name is USERNAME_catalog. Once you have that info then your provider can go off on their merry way to activate those permissions properly. In some cases you may need to add those permissions for multiple users depending on how the software you are using is configured.

DB function failed with error number 1146:

• When receiving this message it means one thing usually, that the table a query within MySQL is trying to run can not find the table it was set to look for. To fix this normally its best to reupload your database to your system. If you have a large MySQL database try breaking up the upload to make whatever system your using not pull so many errors down.

Warning: mysql_connect(): Lost connection to MySQL server during query in /home/USERNAME/public_DIR/shop/catalog/includes/functions/database.php on line 19
Unable to connect to database server!

• This is an error you’ll see a lot while you spend your time on the internet, whether its building the site as an admin, or visiting it as a user. What it means is that the server itself is either not available or not accepting connections, or in some cases it happens to be that you are connecting to the wrong server. In the case of this issue however it was because the MySQL services needed to be restarted. Which brought the site back up again, this is not however the end all answer to fixing this answer but only one of a few ways.

Warning: mysql_connect(): Too many connections in /home/user/cal/admin/INC_config.php on line 9
Unable to connect to database

• This one is a bit tricky, because there are two instances where you will see an error like this. The first is that the user on the hosting account, yourself or the site your visiting, has had to many queries to the MySQL database which has caused it to cap for the hour or the day. This is usually something that is a rolling hour, meaning that if people keep trying to connect the cap resets for another hour. The other, which was actually the error is where someone on that shared hosting server has reached the maximum connections on that server and MySQL can no longer process any more connections to the server.

For the most part a lot of these errors are easy to fix, some a little harder then others obviously. Like in the instance where MySQL is down for the entire server and not just your account. Your biggest tool in this is going to be a search engine, because nine times out of ten you can do a search to find your error.

Normally when your doing this search its easier to post the first portion of the error if it gives you a error code. Although sometimes its easier to paste the entire error message if your using a popular product, i.e. wordpress, oscommerce, etc. But if your using something simple a better rule of thumb is to just go with the error, the products that use MySQL tend to have a group of people who develop and fix issues and have already posted information somewhere. You just need to know where to search.

Why do you need this Statistical tracker you may be asking yourself, well I’ll tell you why and then we’ll go into a discription of a few different types of trackers. The main reason you will always want to track your stats on a site is so that you can monitor your traffic. Depending on how advanced the software is it will give you a view of your visitors, their IP address, where they came from, what pages they accessed, and in some cases depending on what your using, it will also tell you approximately how long those visitors where on your site.

I know Mercutiom covered a few links to some different sites that do this for you externally without the need to be installed on to your site, the only thing you need to do is add in the code on your site and it’ll start working. However there are others that require being installed into the site itself as opposed to just being pre-setup. These are programs that you use a script to put on your site to setup and then let it run much like Wordpress and once you have it installed it goes off and starts tracking your site and the visitors.

For this Site I employ two different trackers, mostly for the use of seeing what traffic I have, and another more sinister plot…. To write this article. Kidding aside both programs can be very useful as long as you understand what they are saying in them. The internal one I use can be confusing at times and some portions of it do not make much sense at first but after you get used to it, its a very useful tool.

The external tracking tool I use is very easy to use and once it begins tracking your visitors gives you a wealth of information and even allows you to set monetary goals for your website. As well as a few customer goals, you can even set additional site wide goals you would expect to hit, for instance hitting over 1000 visitors in the first month.

Well We are just going to keep this simple today because I could go on for several pages and review multiple Statistic Trackers unfortunately I don’t have that much free time. However I do have the time to go through my stats and show you the good and bad of both programs.

For the internal tracker I have Webalizer, its provided by my hosting provider and works just fine so I have no complaints over it. There are of course somethings that need to be improved but you can’t complain with a free tracker. The external program I use is called Google analytics you may remember this from the recent Sunday brunch entry which gives you quite a few other tracking programs that you can check out and read up on.  I also touched on this in a older entry on my personal blog when I was reviewing Google Analytics.

While both of these programs have their downsides there are good reasons to pick either of the two, however I’ve found an alternate solution that I have liked even more specially when comparing the results side by side. And that is to use both programs, however the choice is yours as to what you wish to do. Lets take a look at both programs and see what each offer and then lets check out what one may have over the other.

Webalizer:

• Installed on the server, no worry about numbers being delayed.
• Will track the number of visitors on a daily/monthly/yearly basis
• Has charts and graphs to show a visual representation of traffic.
• Will show sites that referred traffic to you.
• Shows the files accessed on your site.
• Shows search strings people are using from search engines to get to your site.
• Shows the browser and OS of the visitor
• If its a spider from a search engine you will be notified when they went to your site which search engine they are from and where they went.

Google Analytics:

• No installation to worry about, just insert the code and go from there.
• Shows how long someone was visiting your site.
• Calculates the data for you and places it sections for you to review.
• Allows the break down of data in a presentation type manner.
• Will track the number of visitors on a daily/monthly/yearly basis
• Has charts and graphs to show a visual representation of traffic.
• Will show sites that referred traffic to you.
• Shows the files accessed on your site.
• Shows search strings people are using from search engines to get to your site.
• Shows the browser and OS of the visitor
• If its a spider from a search engine you will be notified when they went to your site which search engine they are from and where they went.
• Easy to read interface.

There is a lot more to Google analytics and it sounds like I’m really tooting my horn with it, however there are some downfalls that we’ve noticed while testing it, at times some of the data can report rather low due to the fact that it tries to weed out duplicate users. This can sometimes remove users that are accessing your site from the same network, however this doesn’t happen to often unless of course you make your roommates read your blog all the time. Or if you have a bunch of people from work that peruse your site for whatever reason they may have.

Luckly you can track that too and while Webalizer won’t give you the time frame you can narrow it down using Google analytics which is one of the reasons why I use both programs. While I use Webalizer much less it does have its uses and its a good practice to use two programs, at least this is my opinion.

Yes, I am speaking of the war between the Ninjas and the Pirates. The two sides of the Data Control War. But who are these technological warriors, and what, really is the difference between then? Let me tell you, though the similarities to the uninitiated may seem great the differences are what make all the, uh, difference….

First I will discuss some of the activities that both groups are guilty of, just to get you better acquainted.

• stealing music
• stealing movies
• hacking computers
• writing and implementing viruses
• spamming
• cracking passwords
• hacking websites
• taking over corporate servers and networks
• taking over residential networks
• destroying computers

OK, first things first. Neither group is to be blamed for spamming. Spammers are the lowest of the low when it comes to the internet. No one likes them and anyone who has anything to do with the internet thinks they should all be thrown into a thousand foot well, naked, with no food or water, and let the gods sort it out.

But back to pirates and ninjas. The rest of that list is pretty accurate. Both pirates and ninjas have been correctly accused of doing all those things, and more. But it’s not what they do, it’s how they do it that makes up the difference.

Here is how a Ninja would go about wreaking the havoc described.

• Stealing music: ninjas will hack onto your computer, download your music, wipe the history, and disappear without a trace.
• Stealing movies: um, yeah, see above, but replace “music” with “movies.”
• Hacking computers: ninjas will use a variety of stealthy techniques to get your password (see below) and then use your computer for their own means.
• Writing and implementing viruses: a virus is just a program that does something, ninjas will write one, and then using the cracked password, upload it to your computer and then fade into the shadows.
• Cracking passwords: ninjas use stealthy methods that don’t contact you, usually they have cracker programs that will find both your username and your password by comparing them to lists of possibilities. Other ways include using the default password that you never reset, writing a simple script that will bypass your login allowing them to see your password for next time, or logging in through an unused, but unsecured port on your firewall.
• Hacking websites: if a ninja has hacked your website, you will probably not know it. Ninjas are not the kinds of people to take over your site and post a big sign saying that you’ve been hacked. No, a ninja will hack your site and place a line of code, or a link, or take over the payment of your e-store. If you ever find out that a ninja was there, it’s because you too are a ninja and know their secrets.
• Taking over corporate servers: ninjas are all over corporate servers, but they are rarely doing anything bad. Ninjas, who know the secret ins and outs of computing, make the best system administrators. Many ninjas who have found new, secret ways into a corporation’s servers are often hired on by that company to work security.
• Taking over residential networks: again ninjas areall over the residential networks. But unlike corporations, the ninjas here are not working to protect the company. They use their knowledge to get into the network and set up programs, store files, and attack other networks and servers. Here as well as elsewhere the ninjas are very secretive and will setup these files in deep folders where you are unlikely to find it. This file and its contents will allow the ninja to come back to your computer often and use it for their own means.
• Destroying computers: Ninjas very rearely destroy computers. They would rather use the computer and its access to get into other networks and computers. It’s a good bet that if a ninja destroys a computer it was either an accident, or he was about to be caught.

Alrighty then. Ninjas are sneaky lil’ guys aren’t they? Well, now let me talk about Pirates and how they let slip their dogs of war:

• Stealing music: pirates use very blatant methods to steal music. Torrents, programs like LimeWire, outright ripping of CD’s, etc. Pirates are proud of their theft and will announce it happily, unless you’re from the RIAA.
• Stealing movies: again, see above, and replace “music” with “movies.”
• Hacking computers: a pirate will take over your computer while you’re using it and make your mouse do all sorts of crazy things, then he’ll let you know who they are, right before they destroy your computer.
• Writing and implementing viruses: pirates write viruses that do things. They will write things to make your hard drive spin so fast it explodes, viruses that fry your motherboard, hack other computers, etc., etc., etc.
• Cracking passwords:  pirates will rarely crack your password, instead they use social engineering techniques, like calling you up and acting like someone from your Internet service provider, but if they are unable to get it out of you, they will revert to similar methods as those of the ninjas.
• Hacking websites: if your website is hacked by a pirate, you will know about it. They will have replaced your homepage, if not all your files, with their own information. Pirates do this because they want you to know they’ve been there. They’re a vain group those pirates.
• Taking over corporate servers: pirates try to do this too, but those darn sys-admins catch them most of the time. When they do get in they use their new found power to their own means. Stealing other passwords, routing funds, or just playing the show they want to see.
• Taking over residential networks: pirates do this too, but usually their reasons are less selfish as those of the ninjas. Some may set up “bot” networks to attack others, but more often they will hack a neighbors router or internet access point and secure it. Then, of course, they’ll use it for their own downloading but without the fear of other pirates or ninjas moving into the area and making a mess.
• Destroying computers: the only people who can take more responsibility for destroying computers than pirates, are the owners themselves. Yes, pirates will download those evil viruses they created to your hard drive and blow your computer to kingdom come. Their only reason for doing this, is because they can.

So, that’s the difference between pirates and ninjas. If you remember the movie Hackers then you’ll remember the scene where Crash Override (played by Johnny Lee Miller) and Acid Burn (played by Angelina Jolie) fight for control of the TV station. Pure pirate versus ninja there. Now you should be able to tell which character was which. Now, which one are you?

Unfortunately if your not on a managed server system which most people aren’t, yes you will need to pay for this. But worry not, if your on a Virtual Private Server (VPS) chances are you have Virtuozzo bundled into this package. Why am I acting like its the end all trouble fixer in the end? Because it is to a degree, there’s a feature within Virtuozzo that allows you to reimage your server in one foul swoop thus ending the woes that you may have to reimage your server.

Lets take a look at how to do this shall we?

Ok the first step you need to do is log into Virtuozzo, you should of received login information on how to get this, it had the username set as root and the password was something funny looking. When you go to your url make sure you type it in like this, https://192.168.1.1:4643 once you type that in you’ll get a screen asking you for a username and password that looks something like this:

After you have done that you’ll get a loading screen with a few menu options, since we haven’t gone over this system as of yet in any of the walkthrough’s we are going to skip over down to where we need to go, I’ll define what each of these things do later on. For the most part what you do see is the following below, which tells you how the vps itself is running currently.

Click on Maintenance which will bring you to the next screen we will be going to:

You’ll see three selections in this spot, all three of them a important for you, and one of them you should let run at least once, if your vps needs to be reimaged however it more then likely will not. What I’m talking about is the Backup feature, which will create a backup of your vps that you can use later on to restore your site. Use that option before you are getting into any trouble. Because if you’ve taken anything from any of the walk throughs I’ve given you before, always make a backup!

But lets go to the next step with is that wonderful reimaging, so what you want to click on is “Reinstall VPS”. This will take you to the next screen.

This will ask you if you want to stop the VPS if its already running, you should always choose to stop the services on it before proceeding. You want to check yes on this point and then click Next. Once you click this it’ll stop the VPS before setting up the site, and take you to a new screen which will ask you a few questions. Which you can see in the image below.

You can go one of several routes, with the four options. For the most part you can preserve the existing content within a directory called /old or you can just drop all the content all together. If you choose to preserve the content you can keep the database password or drop the database password and generate a new one.

I chose to drop all the content since I want a fresh install of everything but if you don’t want to there will be a few extra options to choose from which deal with where to store and then you’ll be at the same step as me next which is the final confirmation asking you if you are really sure you want to do this. And if you are do you know what your doing?

Well of course since your following this article since you don’t want to pay to have your vps reinstalled. Now you just wait, you can check your status when you look at the screen which will tell you what its doing.

This should take a while, but once the reimage is finished you’ll be able to log back into plesk again using Virtuozzo and after you have done this you can go in and start reconfiguring your fresh vps.

If you have not noticed already I am using a new plugin to minimize on the excess space taken up by large screen shots, just click the thumbnails to navigate through the images and you can click close when your done or click back on the main screen.

And while I can’t argue that they each sound like a great deal, what are they really selling? Well, the simplest answer is “smoke and mirrors.”

Yes, just like David Copperfield, most shared hosting platforms are all about what you see and not what’s really going on on the back end. But what does that mean? What is shared hosting anyway? And is there a way you can get what you’re promised?

Let me answer the questions backward, since that’s the more logical way to do so. If you’re promised 300GB (which seems to be a basic offer these days) then you’re not ever going to get that much space. Never! I don’t care what the salesman promised you or what the Tech Support guy said. You will never be able to use that much space.

And to be completely honest, you don’t need it. If you think about this for a moment it makes sense. Are you using all the space on the hard drive of your computer? Probably not. Will you ever use all the space on your hard drive? Only if you’re a designer or a big gamer or do something in the technical field, in which case you don’t need to read this post because you know what I’m talking about.

Now, before I go on, let me go through some of the basics on Shared Hosting. I believe my colleague already went over this some, but I’ll reiterate here.

Shared Hosting: an internet web hosting environment where several hundred accounts are located on the same server or server group. There are (generally speaking) two ways that this can be done.

1. Single Server Hosting: Multiple accounts and their files are located on one computer/server and are served from there to the internet.
2. Group Server Hosting: Multiple accounts and their files are spread out over multiple computers and servers that are tasked to support a specific portion of the website e.g., MySQL, email, HTTP, FTP.

Now I’m sure that sounds a little more complicated than it is, so in even more lay terms:

1. Single Server Hosting: Everything that is needed for your site including pictures, databases, emails, etc. are on one computer.
2. Group Server Hosting: The parts of the website that use different systems are divided amongst many computers. Pictures and files on one server, databases on another, and email on another, etc.

At this point we go back to our earlier reference to your personal computer. If you have a brand new, ultra fast, highly priced computer sitting on your desk you probably only have a 250GB hard drive in it. A hard drive that you haven’t even begun to fill up yet, and are probably questioning if and how you ever would.

Now your website is on a server that probably has some more storage than that. Most servers these days have a minimum of 1TB (1000GB) of storage and are scalable up to several TeraBytes (TB). But it’s not really going to matter how big the server is if you’re putting hundreds of accounts on there. Cost alone would dictate that you can’t really offer that many people that much space for that little price.

Now the real question is, “Does it matter?” You might say that, yes, you should get what you paid for. I wouldn’t disagree with that myself, and you’d be hard pressed to find anyone in the tech field that would. But if you honestly think about it, you’re never going to need that much space for a basic website. Most websites stay below the 500MB mark and only start creeping over 1GB when they have an extensive photo gallery or music library.

By the time you do need that much space you would want to be on multiple dedicated servers located on several networks to ensure that if something goes wrong with one, you’ll have a backup available immediately. You should also be making a hefty sum from your website and can afford this or you haven’t monetized correctly.

So why do you get the”smoke and mirrors” anyway? Well, as with most things on the web these days, it’s all about marketing. You the consumer want the most for your money, so we the provider make it look like you’ll get that. It’s not strictly illegal, because you can use that space if you really really really want to, but there is likely another limitation or addendum that you’re not aware of to prevent you from doing so.

Some of the things that web hosts will do is limit the number of files you’re allowed to have. Yes you can use 300GB, but you can only use 30,000 files total, so each file would have to be 10MB in size. Those would be some really really big files and most browsers would take a long time to pull them up, regardless of your connection speed.

Some people will try to use that space to store music, or movies, or games, or whatever else. Most web hosing companies are going to delete those files for copyright infringement, or because they’re not allowed per Terms of Service so I wouldn’t suggest trying that either.

Basically, with shared hosting you will get what you paid for. I know that’s a cliché, but it’s still true. If you’re looking for a site that can actually handle more space and a high load, you will have to shell out the dough for a Virtual Private or Dedicated server.

The TLD is not case sensitive much like the domain name itself, so no mater how anyone types it, it will always come go to the address, and yes even if you wanted to type ZoMgBBq.neT or something to that sort.

Some of the different TLD’s are as follows, there are some newer ones which are either coming out or not as well know so I’ll list them below:

The first original ones that were created, back in the day 1985 if your curious, where these six.

• .com
• .net
• .org
• .edu
• .gov
• .mil

Aside from those there are many other types of TLD’s that have been created in the years that the internet has been around. There are different meanings to each of these however since they were all created to make the web a bit more efficient but at the same time can cause confusion for people. But I’ll list these too from the top of my head.

• .biz
• .info
• .mobi
• .name
• .travel
• .jobs
• .coop
• .museum
• .tel
• .cat
• .int
• .pro

These next ones are specific tlds that are restricted to the countries they are assigned to. Many of them are ones you have seen while traveling on the internet and make sense, some of them, well you may not of known that they were country code TLD’s. For these ones I referenced the following website: IANA

• .ac – Ascension Island
• .ad – Andorra
• .ae – United Arab Emirates
• .af – Afghanistan
• .ag – Antigua and Barbuda
• .ai – Anguilla
• .al – Albania
• .am – Armenia
• .an – Netherlands Antilles
• .ao – Angola
• .aq – Antarctica
• .ar – Argentina
• .as – American Samoa
• .at – Austria
• .au – Australia
• .aw – Aruba
• .ax – Aland Islands
• .az – Azerbaijan
• .ba – Bosnia and Herzegovina
• .bb – Barbados
• .bd – Bangladesh
• .be – Belgium
• .bf – Burkina Faso
• .bg – Bulgaria
• .bh – Bahrain
• .bi – Burundi
• .bj – Benin
• .bm – Bermuda
• .bn – Brunei Darussalam
• .bo – Bolivia
• .br – Brazil
• .bs – Bahamas
• .bt – Bhutan
• .bv – Bouvet Island
• .bw – Botswana
• .by – Belarus
• .bz – Belize
• .ca – Canada
• .cc – Cocos (Keeling) Islands
• .cd – Congo, The Democratic Republic of the
• .cf – Central African Republic
• .cg – Congo, Republic of
• .ch – Switzerland
• .ci – Cote d’Ivoire
• .ck – Cook Islands
• .cl – Chile
• .cm – Cameroon
• .cn – China
• .co – Colombia
• .cr – Costa Rica
• .cu – Cuba
• .cv – Cape Verde
• .cx – Christmas Island
• .cy – Cyprus
• .cz – Czech Republic
• .de – Germany
• .dj – Djibouti
• .dk – Denmark
• .dm – Dominica
• .do – Dominican Republic
• .dz – Algeria
• .ec – Ecuador
• .ee – Estonia
• .eg – Egypt
• .eh – Western Sahara
• .er – Eritrea
• .es – Spain
• .et – Ethiopia
• .eu – European Union
• .fi – Finland
• .fj – Fiji
• .fk – Falkland Islands (Malvinas)
• .fm – Micronesia, Federated States of
• .fo – Faroe Islands
• .fr – France
• .ga – Gabon
• .gb – United Kingdom
• .gd – Grenada
• .ge – Georgia
• .gf – French Guiana
• .gg – Guernsey
• .gh – Ghana
• .gi – Gibraltar
• .gl – Greenland
• .gm – Gambia
• .gn – Guinea
• .gp – Guadeloupe
• .gq – Equatorial Guinea
• .gr – Greece
• .gs – South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands
• .gt – Guatemala
• .gu – Guam
• .gw – Guinea-Bissau
• .gy – Guyana
• .hk – Hong Kong
• .hm – Heard and McDonald Islands
• .hn – Honduras
• .hr – Croatia/Hrvatska
• .ht – Haiti
• .hu – Hungary
• .id – Indonesia
• .ie – Ireland
• .il – Israel
• .im – Isle of Man
• .in – India
• .io – British Indian Ocean Territory
• .iq – Iraq
• .ir – Iran, Islamic Republic of
• .is – Iceland
• .it – Italy
• .je – Jersey
• .jm – Jamaica
• .jo – Jordan
• .jp – Japan
• .ke – Kenya
• .kg – Kyrgyzstan
• .kh – Cambodia
• .ki – Kiribati
• .km – Comoros
• .kn – Saint Kitts and Nevis
• .kp – Korea, Democratic People’s Republic
• .kr – Korea, Republic of
• .kw – Kuwait
• .ky – Cayman Islands
• .kz – Kazakhstan
• .la – Lao People’s Democratic Republic
• .lb – Lebanon
• .lc – Saint Lucia
• .li – Liechtenstein
• .lk – Sri Lanka
• .lr – Liberia
• .ls – Lesotho
• .lt – Lithuania
• .lu – Luxembourg
• .lv – Latvia
• .ly – Libyan Arab Jamahiriya
• .ma – Morocco
• .mc – Monaco
• .md – Moldova, Republic of
• .me – Montenegro
• .mg – Madagascar
• .mh – Marshall Islands
• .mk – Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic of
• .ml – Mali
• .mm – Myanmar
• .mn – Mongolia
• .mo – Macao
• .mp – Northern Mariana Islands
• .mq – Martinique
• .mr – Mauritania
• .ms – Montserrat
• .mt – Malta
• .mu – Mauritius
• .mv – Maldives
• .mw – Malawi
• .mx – Mexico
• .my – Malaysia
• .mz – Mozambique
• .na – Namibia
• .nc – New Caledonia
• .ne – Niger
• .nf – Norfolk Island
• .ng – Nigeria
• .ni – Nicaragua
• .nl – Netherlands
• .no – Norway
• .np – Nepal
• .nr – Nauru
• .nu – Niue
• .nz – New Zealand
• .om – Oman
• .pa – Panama
• .pe – Peru
• .pf – French Polynesia
• .pg – Papua New Guinea
• .ph – Philippines
• .pk – Pakistan
• .pl – Poland
• .pm – Saint Pierre and Miquelon
• .pn – Pitcairn Island
• .pr – Puerto Rico
• .ps – Palestinian Territory, Occupied
• .pt – Portugal
• .pw – Palau
• .py – Paraguay
• .qa – Qatar
• .re – Reunion Island
• .ro – Romania
• .rs – Serbia
• .ru – Russian Federation
• .rw – Rwanda
• .sa – Saudi Arabia
• .sb – Solomon Islands
• .sc – Seychelles
• .sd – Sudan
• .se – Sweden
• .sg – Singapore
• .sh – Saint Helena
• .si – Slovenia
• .sj – Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands
• .sk – Slovak Republic
• .sl – Sierra Leone
• .sm – San Marino
• .sn – Senegal
• .so – Somalia
• .sr – Suriname
• .st – Sao Tome and Principe
• .su – Soviet Union (being phased out)
• .sv – El Salvador
• .sy – Syrian Arab Republic
• .sz – Swaziland
• .tc – Turks and Caicos Islands
• .td – Chad
• .tf – French Southern Territories
• .tg – Togo
• .th – Thailand
• .tj – Tajikistan
• .tk – Tokelau
• .tl – Timor-Leste
• .tm – Turkmenistan
• .tn – Tunisia
• .to – Tonga
• .tp – East Timor
• .tr – Turkey
• .tt – Trinidad and Tobago
• .tv – Tuvalu
• .tw – Taiwan
• .tz – Tanzania
• .ua – Ukraine
• .ug – Uganda
• .uk – United Kingdom
• .um – United States Minor Outlying Islands
• .us – United States
• .uy – Uruguay
• .uz – Uzbekistan
• .va – Holy See (Vatican City State)
• .vc – Saint Vincent and the Grenadines
• .ve – Venezuela
• .vg – Virgin Islands, British
• .vi – Virgin Islands, U.S.
• .vn – Vietnam
• .vu – Vanuatu
• .wf – Wallis and Futuna Islands
• .ws – Samoa
• .ye – Yemen
• .yt – Mayotte
• .yu – Yugoslavia
• .za – South Africa
• .zm – Zambia
• .zw – Zimbabwe

With any of those many Country Codes out there they all have their own specific restrictions set on them. For example, to own a .us domain name you can not have privacy on it and you also must have a residence or business within the United States. With Taiwan you have to actually be living within the country or have an established base of business within the country before you can actually register a domain with their country code(.tw).

There are others out there still awaiting approval but you will probably not see them any time soon and it is not important to list them. If you want to see those or find out about them you can either check the website referenced within this article or do a search on Google to find them.

As always any comments or suggestions are welcomed.

Ah, yes, the domain snatchers are at it again. Fishing for foolishness in a sea of naivety. Hoping against hope that you fill out their form, write them a check, and mail it back in.

But who are these people and how do they know that your domain name is up for renewal? Where did they get your personal address? And what do they want with your domain name?

These companies are, in my opinion, scam artists. Their goal is to get you to move from your current registrar and host to theirs. Usually at a significant increase in price.

If you look closely at the paperwork that they send you, you will see things like, “This is not a bill,” or “you are not obliged to respond.” Of course these notices are in 8pt font while, “Warning,” and “Important Notice About Your Domain,” are in 80pt. Red Italics to draw your attention.

How these companies get their information, e.g., your email address, home address, etc., is pretty simple. You can do a WhoIs search on almost any domain name and pull that information publicly and legally.

As for the goals of these registration thieves, well that’s simple, to make money, of course. By taking over the registration for the domain name, they can charge you a ginormous fee for the transfer and re-registration, thus making themselves lots of money.

But this is not the only thing that these companies will do. Some companies will actually take over the ownership of the domain name and sell it off to the highest bidder. This of course makes them a lot of money and at the same time kills any business you may have had.

It would also force you to track down the new owner of the domain name and try to purchase your own domain back from them, if they’re even willing to sell it.

Luckily there are some things that you can do to protect yourself from these companies. You, as the domain owner, so have the option of making this information private with your registrar, usually for a minimal fee. This would help you avoid any unwanted mail and the potential of mistakenly transferring your domain.

Additionally, ICANN, the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, also known as the Government of the Internet, has set up some additional steps in the last year to help you avoid unwanted domain transfer.

You are now required to obtain authorization codes from each registrar to ensure that you do indeed want to transfer your domain between companies. You are also required to submit these codes via email to each registrar to allow the transfer to go through.

Of course this has only made it more difficult for these companies to operate, not impossible. So set up that domain privacy and makes sure you read the fine print on anything you receive that deals with your domain name and website. You, the domain owner, are your own best protection when it comes to this type of fraud.

Well they really aren’t going to take your soul away or anything like that but I can tell you one thing I know from working for several registrars, always read your fine print regarding your payment contract. A lot of them are very straight forward and honest about their charges. Others… well they might not be looking out with your best interests in mind. So now you find yourself wanting to transfer away from them. For the most part you should never ever have to pay a fee to your current registrar to transfer away from them. You found Y registrar who has a very straight forward contract and you pay a fee to transfer your domain name to them, this also gives you another year on top of what you have left over once you successfully transfer to them.

Your at the end of that dark scary road and almost to that shining light ahead, but wait you still have to do some things before you can get into that shining beacon of light. Lets go over these things real quick so that you won’t find yourself failing a transfer and having to wait possibly up to 60 days before you can transfer again, with certain registrars not all.

Leave some time before you transfer over…

On average you want to insure you have time left over before you can transfer your domain so it doesn’t fail. For the most part this magical number isn’t just one, its a range, it lies somewhere between 12 and 14 days. If you go any sooner then that you risk loosing your domain name to a redemption from your current registrar and having to pay even higher fees! Redemptions are not fun trust me.

If you need to renew the domain name at the current registrar, then do so and try the transfer process after at least 30 days, because there are sometimes restrictions on when you can transfer from one registrar to another. In some cases certain registrars don’t have restrictions on this, so you may not even need to wait. Its always good to check with them first. You can always transfer your domain name if you have more then 12 days left because when you transfer your domain any time you have will be carried over at the new registrar and and added to the time they are giving you.

I’m going to move on to the next section because now that we know how long we should give ourselves before transferring we now need to look at further information on what will help us in succeeding in transferring your domain name to another registrar other then just the time frame.

Make sure the domain name isn’t locked….

Another thing that causes a transfer to fail is domain locking, its something that can be easily resolved however if you pay attention to what you need to do. But lets see what you really have to do and why you need to do this in order to better understand this process.

Domain locking is the process through that prevents your domain name to be transfered, registered or otherwise altered for any of its functions by anyone other then the domain owner or the registrar through given permission. This can be disabled very easily however by the owner of the domain name.

To do this you normally log into your registrar’s website and go to your domain controls and look for a section labeled Domain Locking or Domain Protect anything that sounds like that should be where your locking will be. Once you are there you can disable it very easily by choosing this option. This signifies that you can make a change to your name servers, begin a transfer process away from the registrar or update your WHOIS information for the domain.

If your registrar does not allow you to do this then you will have to contact them and have them disable the domain locking for your site. Recently however there are some registrars that allow you to change your name servers and contact information. This however does not always signify your domain name is unlocked. So make sure you specify that you want your domain name unlocked when contacting your registrar.

Once this has been done you can now begin your transfer process and your registrar can go to the next step. But hold on there is still one last thing you need to do. But its a pretty easy one, as long as your information is up to date on your domain name.

Remove Privacy on your domain…

This is something that I will talk about only shortly, you will usually always have to contact your registrar to have this done, but make sure you remove domain privacy if you have it, otherwise the transfer letter will go to the privacy address and not to you. This would be bad since it contains information you need in order to complete your transfer and it can not be sent anywhere else.

The Authorization Code….

This is another step that is often overlooked which is a shame because it normally signifies the end of the transfer process on your end and the time for your registrar to take over. Basically this is a code that is a requirement of ICANN(Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) to show that this transfer is in fact a legitimate transfer and the domain name is not being stolen from under someone.

You will receive this email via the administrative contact for your domain name, so if you have that set to something fake, invalid, misspelled or anything else that would make it inaccessible you will need to have it changed. In some cases this will cause the transfer process to take longer so make sure you get that portion.

Once you have received this email which will come from your old registrar you will be able to either give this to your new registrar or enter it in yourself through a domain transfer control panel provided by the registrar. At this point once you enter in the code it is giving your new registrar permission to take over the domain name and begin the process of transferring the domain name.

If you have followed all these steps, and given yourself time to transfer your domain name, ensured that your domain name is unlocked, and have received and entered in or given the authorization code to your registrar you should be seeing your domain name transferring over very shortly to your new provider.

As always leave a comment if you thought this was helpful or if you feel I should add more in. And I’ll be sure to update this or respond to your messages.

Atlas:Okay, I’m a retard when it comes to DNS records
type?
A, CNAME, TXT, NS
??
corivus: hrmmmm what chu mean?
Atlas: For custom records (making a subdomain)
it has name, and then type
corivus: a A record is what points the domain name to the server, the cname record in this case which you are going to be using, creates subdomains such as www, shop, mysubdomainiscool, etc.
txt is for reverse dns and NS is your nameservers
Atlas:
corivus: so you want to add a cname which would look something like this
subdomain name [in CNAME] ADDRESS
Atlas: curls up in a ball testing

This kind of confusion happens a lot when your trying to configure your DNS mostly because people don’t know what it is and when they are given instructions on how to do these things they assume they have to change everything or know everything about it. When doing this inherently they will make a call to a hosting provider wondering why his site no longer shows up but his email works.

Lets try and first define DNS for those of you who absolutely need to know what it is, as defined in wikipedia DNS or Domain Name System, is the process which servers as a type of “phone book” for the internet, it translates human-readable computer host names, e.g. en.wikipedia.org into the IP address that network equipment needs to deliver information. It also Stores other information such as the list of mail servers to accept mail for the given domain name.

So now you know the definition of what this does, but it doesn’t tell you what all these records are, lets take a look at what a standard dns record will look like if your doing a dns lookup for all the records of the domain. For the sake of time I’ll use a screen shot of what this site looks like when you do a lookup:

Ok so we have all these cool numbers and things in here but they don’t make any sense at all. Lets define what each of these records mean so that you can better understand them. And get a feel of what to do in the future:

A Record: The A record does a few things, but the main thing that it does for you the end user is point your domain name to your website. That is the job of the primary a record, you have other A records which do many things from controlling your name server record to defining your mail record.

MX Record: a mx record or Mail Exchanger record specifies how email is routed from one point to the other and also identifies the mail server which is handling email for the domain name.

CNAME Record: a cname or canonical name record is a means of naming one address to another within a server for example, you want to setup shop.zomgbbq.net in order to do this you must create a cname of shop pointing to the address of your hosting account or service where you are wanting it to go to.

NS Record: A NS record or name server record, maps a domain name to the listed DNS within the server to translate the domain name from 192.168.1.1 to zomgbbq.net for instance.

PTR Record:the PTR or Pointer Record maps the IP4 record to the canonical name record for the host.

SOA Record: A SOA or Start of Authority Record specifies the DNS server providing the authoritative information about the domain name, the email of the administrator of the domain, the serial number of the domain name and the timers relating to the domain name as well.

Hey, I know you’re just my web guy, but I’m having a problem with my computer, it won’t show a picture when I turn it on and it makes his funny humming noise. What’s that mean?

Well, I have no idea. I’m not going to claim to have a clue, because I haven’t built a computer in over five years and that means that I might as well have not built one at all.

What? You mean you don’t know? But I thought that’s what you did for a living! Aren’t you working on a computer all day? How can you NOT know?!?!??!

Well, yes, I do work at a computer all day long, but then doesn’t almost everybody? In fact when is the last time you walked into an office and didn’t see a computer on almost every desk?

But how can you not know, you do all that stuff with websites and blogs and emails and all that?

Let me explain it to you the best way I know how, through our recent Real Estate analogy.

Not that thing again.

So your moved into this nice happy house, and things are going well when all the sudden the pipes burst and you’ve got water up to your ankles in the basement. So who ya gonna call?

Uh, the Ghostbusters?

No not the Ghostbusters, you call the Carpenter. By your theory anyone involved in the construction industry must know about fixing houses, so go get the phone book. Hurry up this water is getting deeper.

Well I was joking but no, you call a plumber carpenters can’t fix a leak.

So you’re saying that people can specialize in different areas within an industry? It’s allowed? Then why would I, a code geek and blogger, know anything about your monitor not working.

OK, I see your point, but I have no idea, so I’m sure you know someone who can fix this for me, right?

Well, sure I have lots of friends who can probably fix it, but they wouldn’t be able to write a blog post or fix a website.

Alright, I think I get it. So just because you like computer stuff doesn’t mean you know everything about computers.

Exactly. It’s all a matter of scope really. Different people understand and work on different things. And by the way, your video card is probably fried and you’ll need to buy and install a new one.

You know you’re a jerk, right.

I love you too.