What is the ET::ERR_CERT_INVALID Error?

This happens often when you forget the www domain in the SSL request. For example, you setup SSL for https://askshank.com but your site is https://www.askshank.com. Another scenario is if your browser is not trusting or accepting of the domain authority. Lastly, and also very common – the certificate expired.

How Do You Handle the WordPress Too Many Redirects?

For those running Cpanel, I have seen this type of issue from time to time. The site loads then stops and you get an error regarding too many redirects. The way this was fixed was enter two sets of codes. The first code is the following, in the wp-config.php file which is in the root directory of your WordPress install. If you don’t have direct access to the server, you can install a plugin such as a file manager.

define('FORCE_SSL_ADMIN', true);

If that alone does not work, then add the following code as well

if (strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'], 'https') !== false)
       $_SERVER['HTTPS']='on';

These two code pieces combined helped the SSL redirect issue immediately.

How Do You Redirect Everything in WordPress to SSL?

Sometimes, enabling SSL alone is not enough. Certain images may be called via http vs https. Edit your .htaccess file with the following code below. If you feel like reading all about this file, Apache has a good read.

RewriteEngine On 
RewriteCond %{HTTPS} off 
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ https://%{HTTP_HOST}%{REQUEST_URI} 
[L,R=301]

WordPress too many redirects can be painful. Issues like this could effect your SEO as well. These 3 common fixes have helped me in many scenarios. If you don’t want to deal with the manual work and just get a plugin, try the Really Simple SSL plugin.

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Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the process of doing certain tactics, steps and changes involving your website to increase your visibility for what people are searching. The more you improve the visibility, the greater chance for visitors to find you. Note, this is all NON-PAID search engine results, meaning Google PPC for example is not SEO.

So, is SEO important for your business?

YES…

Read no more, because asking if SEO important, you have your answer. But if you wanted details, read on…

Google and Bing are very popular search engines. I prefer Google, well, incase you cared. The search engines have bots that that go website to website, searching all the pages of each of the websites. The sites go into an index, where algorithms  then use ranking factors to determine the order of pages in the search results. So if you have a bad result from the ranking factor, you are going to the bottom of the list.. like page 4….7… or 100.

Search ranking factors include a secure and accessible site, keywords and mobile speed. There are a few major components of SEO. Technical SEO, On-page SEO and off-page SEO are the 3 categories. Each category has their own rank factors, and work for you… tactics to improve your quality for each.

Is SEO Important? I mean really?

WHY WOULD YOU EVEN ASK THAT?!

SEO is what let’s you reduce or eliminate Paid Ads. It’s bringing in traffic for you! If you are trending high with key words on google and are on the top 3 results, there really is no need to keep paying ads for those words. Theoretically. But some argue that keeping PPC while you rank on is still a smart move. SEO is important if you want to lower or eliminate specific ad spend.

Implementing Search Engine Optimization is a great long term strategy and it is cost-effective.

When you execute SEO, you are working in tactics to try and get your site on the top search results in google. By doing this, people will see your page.

How Easy is SEO?

I personally don’t think it is easy. Sure, certain aspects of SEO are, but many of the tactics require time, patience, and a lot of research and thinking as you look to execute them. Taking a step back, there are so many strategies that can be put in place. When you look at the types of SEO- on-page, technical, off-page, local – some you can start very quickly.

On-page deals with your content, the keywords the quality. It’s everything on your website page or post. Content is King. Technical covers your site speed, use of proper meta tags and descriptions and images optimized. Off-page is the most time consuming and difficult, with other sites referencing yours and linking back to you. Lastly, local SEO is tactics to get your business found locally, or nationally, on directories and places like Google My Business.

How to Get Started?

Do you know how well your site is performing today? Do you have an idea of how you are ranking? The first step is to get a SEO audit. This will tell you much about your site, and can be hood baseline to check back against as your work to improve your Search Engine Optimization by doing the tactics to support it.

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This is why I say, it is important to

1. Backup your website daily. ALWAYS
2. Keep your website patched. ALWAYS

The Plus Add-ons for Elementor is fully patched in version 4.1.7. It looks like the vulnerability was against anyone running version 4.1.6 or earlier. How do you know if you have been hit? You will most likely see a new administrator user created in your WordPress. Then users were being directed to a different site.

The crazy thing? The FREE version of the Plus Addons for Elementor has no issues. Zip. The paid version has some logon addons, which fell vulnerable.

I Have Been Hacked. Now What?

Save yourself time and headache. Just restore. Restore your site to the backups dated before March 5th, 2021. Once the restore is complete, quickly upgrade the One Plus Addons for Elementor plugin. Or better yet, just delete it.

The manual way? Don’t have a backup? Then get a backup strategy in place pronto or use a hose like Wpengine who already includes it. But, yes.. you can manually restore. According to the developer of the Plus Addons for Elementor, you can do the following

1. Delete WP-Includes, Wp-Admin (This is same for all)

2. Delete All Files in Public Html Apart from Wp-Content and Wp-config.php .

3. So now you are left with Only Wp-Content and WP-Config.php >
in Wp-content Only check this index.php and delete the suspicious lines.

4. In Wp-Content/Plugins Delete all the Sub-folders (We have to Reinstall once we get wp-admin access fresh)

5. In Wp-Content Delete all Themes. And Import the Zip of your Theme a Fresh one in this folder.
Eg. If you Use Hello Elementor Extract the Zip and Paste it theme Folder.

6. Now Get a Fresh WordPress ZIP from Here. Extract this in your directory and delete wp-config and wp-content folder and cuz have our Old Ones.

7. Access your PhpMyAdmin and open wp_Users and delete all the admins (common Emails: jaredaracccc@gmail.com, trainwordpressai@site.com)

8. In Wp_Post Search for "scripts" and delete them. [If you face difficulty here Please check the Video Link-( https://youtu.be/gViVT102m8w?t=195 )from the duration set for the next 5 Mins avoid the other Half because this 10-Step Guide will clean the FTP files easily for you ]

9. Make sure in Wp_Option In site URL and Home you have your Site URL

Back up and Running, Now What?

First and foremost, take a fresh backup of the system. Keep an eye on it, look for unusual traffic. Make sure the site is completely up to date with WordPress plugin and patches.

If you don’t have a backup system in place, that is daily, get it.

There are software firewalls that can be used to help mitigate these problems, such as Wordfence.

Lessons learned. Remember, keep your website up to date.

The post Websites Hacked? Critical 0-Day for the Plus Addons for Elementor appeared first on Askshank.

Linux error: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

I came across this issue when I was working on a shell script for an Autoscaling EC2 setup using Amazon Web Services (AWS). In the script, I was to specify the startup parameters of the application server. I made the mistake by taking the file on a windows system, then copying it back to linux. The worse part? The file was working fine, until I brought it into Windows. But, my comfort was windows, and so I decided to go down that path.

Time to move on to a few things to try to fix this issue: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Check Permissions

The first and foremost thing you can do, is to check the permissions of the file. So run your chmod 777 for now. Did it work? No? Of course not. You still get that darn error: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Let’s look at that error again in detail

/bin/bash^M

That ^M is actually a carriage return character.

Windows to Linux and Linux to Windows

What I learned is that this error is VERY common when you try to copy paste code from windows and linux. Or, even if you try to edit a linux file in windows.

Let’s move on to the fix

The sed Command

sed -i -e 's/\r$//' FILE-NAME.sh

The sed command can be used, and replace FILE-NAME with the name of your file. I had great success running this command when I took a file from linux to windows, made my changes in Notepad, then attempted to paste that back into the linux file.

Problem solved! no more /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory

Other Fixes

There is a program called dos2unix that fixes shell scripts.

Install the program using this command

sudo apt-get install dos2unix

Run the program using this command

dos2unix FILE-NAME.sh

Running this program is also another option.

Lessons learned is switching from linux to windows sounds easy for editing files, but in reality can set you down a 1 hour delay in trying to find out what happened. I commonly take files from linux and modify them in windows, like the .htaccess, robots.txt or even straight php and html files. bash sh scripts just need a little more steps. Hopefully the issue with /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory is finally solved for you.

The post Getting Error while executing a .sh file: /bin/bash^M: bad interpreter: No such file or directory appeared first on Askshank.

Saving…

Your WordPress

NOW WHAT? With WordPress hanging, so much for posting after all that work! However, there is a fix. There always is a solution!

Here are a few other things you can consider checking. I say consider, because it did not help me.

• Check your permissions on the server to ensure the proper ones are present.
• Check the database for any issues
• Turn off any caching plugins
• Moreover, disable all of your plugins and see if there is a conflict with one of them
• Above all, reboot your server (haha sorry had to)
• Turn off the CDN, and go direct to the server. Did that stop wordpress from hanging?

Similarly, it just so happened that I actually had this issue while working on the blog post about an error while running a shell command. In that particular post, I mention a code that I was having an issue with. This particular code was actually tripping the mod security on the server.

The issue I wrote about on that post had an actual linux query, which mod security was looking as if it was an exploit. When WordPress tried to save, it blocked the save because of that shell command.

That being said, the actual issue for WordPress hanging was that it was tripping REQUEST_URI.

ModSecurity: Access denied with code 403 (phase 2). 
Match of "rx (alt_mod_frameset.php|checkout_shipping.php|
^/components/com_zoom/etc/|/admin\\\\.swf\\\\?nick=
|/editor/filemanager/browser/default/browser\\\\.html\\\\?
(type=image&)?Connector=\\\\.\\\\./\\\\.\\\\./connectors
|/phpthumb\\\\.php\\\\?((?:w|h)=[0-9]+&)?((?:w|h)=[0-9]+&)?src= 
..." against "REQUEST_URI" 
required. [file "/etc/apache2/conf.d/modsec2/10_asl_rules.conf"]
 [line "219"] [id "340009"] [rev "61"] [msg "Atomicorp.com 
UNSUPPORTED DELAYED Rules: Protected Path Access denied
in URI/ARGS"] [data " /bin/"] [severity "CRITICAL"]
[hostname "askshank.com"] [uri "/wp-admin/post.php"]
 [unique_id "YDFcuL0OUDu73wmoT@1@-gAAAK8"], 
referer: https://askshank.com/wp-admin/post.php?post=821&action=edit

To clarify, the fix stop stop WordPress hanging is to whitelist which you do in the file here /etc/apache2/conf.d/modsec2/whitelist.conf

<LocationMatch "/wp-admin/post.php">
  SecRuleRemoveById 340009
</LocationMatch>

Once this code was added, I was able to successfully save my WordPress post and publish my article. No more WordPress hanging on save.

Conclusion to WordPress Hanging

To sum up, sometimes the issues that you have cannot be solved with a simple code change or plugin. Its deeper than that, server level in this case. Ultimately I was able to solve the issue with WordPress hanging fairly quickly. The right host will have a great support team that you can rely on to get the job done for you. But, the job done quick, and first time right requires the perfect host.

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I can tell you one thing: that I have worked with AWS, Godaddy, Hostgator, Liquidweb, Bluehost, WordPress.com and a few others that I don’t care to recall. Some of them started offering specialized hosting and managed hosting for WordPress. Others utilize your typical cpanel setup. Here, I am going to focus on WPengine and why I recommend WPengine to everyone I speak to as a great managed WordPress hosting provider.

So let’s see those top 5 reasons why WPEngine is the best WordPress host

1. Speed. Fast. Wow.

Let’s not talk about WordPress optimization by compressing images, removing whitespace, preloading and caching that comes with optimizing a site. Instead, I will only focus on the SPEED alone. I have migrated over 20 sites in 2020 (Covid made everyone take a really hard look at their website), and every single site that was migrated off of an existing platform saw a substantial speed increase.

Half of the sites I run into are hosted on Hostgator or Godaddy. Sure, it’s easy to just go buy a domain and the one stop shop, one bill, one point of place. But, did you ever think about speed? Quality of service? The moment you migrate to WPEngine, you will see a night and day difference.

Say goodbye to overcrowded servers. There aren’t 100,000 sites on a single piece server. You are in a shared setup, yes, but not shared with an entire state. Did I mention it’s great? You can do a speed test with Pingdom or GTMetrix at 2AM or 2PM, and it is fairly the same results.

Speed is important not just for you to be able to check the speed and smile, but also for the users and their interaction. Let’s not forget, SEO. This is one of the FIRST things I recommend you do when you look at your site. Make it fast. Google does not care for slow loading sites.

Are there other faster hosts? YES, BUT WHO CARES? Who cares if another host is .25 seconds faster at loading your site. Even if it was 2 seconds faster. Does it matter? Maybe. That’s for you to decide. I will tell you this, I am not going to move a site of mine for a 2 seconds savings, because that is probably going to result in a more costlier service with even costlier packages for increased traffic. Also, going from 8-15 seconds down to under 5 is already a huge accomplishment.

2. Support

Its 12:30AM on a Friday night and you are working on your site and need some support. You go to the chat support, you send a message and the bot responses with HEY BOB, SEND ME YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS AND WE WILL CONTACT YOU MONDAY MORNING. Not only will the tech reach out to you Monday evening because they are swamped with the entire weekend full of issues, but it’s too long, you can’t wait. Or, you get in the chat queue, and you have to wait… 84 minutes, with 34 people in front of you.

What…?

That’s not WPEngine.

With WPEngine you go into the support portal, which is the same as your WordPress management and click support. Then wait….maybe 2 minutes. Lindsey answers and she’s helping you right away. How awesome is that? Barely a wait.

Even the best WordPress users need support once every so often. In the managed WordPress environment, there are certain things you cannot access. After all, it is a shared setup, and you have neighbors. I’ve used the support many times, sometimes because I am pure lazy, and I don’t like looking into something. But guess what, WPEngine support is so flipping responsive that by the time I do bring up Askjeeves, the staff already has a solution.

3. Your Neighbors Are Not Naughty

This whole shared environment means you are on a server with multiple people and sites. Not 1000000s where you are fighting for resources, but, you have neighbors. They don’t have to be on the same server to be your neighbor. For example, maybe it is the same IP block but on another server.

So why is this important?

Naughty neighbors can take your site down. They can make Google look at you funny. Google could flag an ip or whole subnet of addresses as bad. Now Chrome is warning you when you try to load it. Your customers see that and say WTF no thanks.

But how?

Say the site is promoting a topic in question. There are providers that say ok no problem, pay and I’ll host it. There are other providers that will say nope, see ya. Now, by naughty, I don’t necessarily mean only porn, or sheeps and goats, but even things such as gambling may fall in this category. Don’t ask why, but I hope you get my point. But other questionable sites are spam sites, or sites that may attempt to trick individuals.

These things can have a negative impact on your site and could even impact SEO, and worse, may prevent your site from being accessed or loaded.

WPEngine is selective on their neighbors. For all the sites supported, and migrated to them, I have never once had a problem with bad neighbors.

That is not to say there may not have been a bad neighbor at any point of time. That’s WPengine catching those types of sites and quickly eliminating it from their platform.

4. Content Delivery Network

The base speedy service that WPEngine offers ALSO includes a content delivery network or CDN. WHAT. Not only do you get a great speed site but now they include a CDN for you. One stop shop.

At the time of this writing, they are using MAXCDN, who I use for many other sites, and love! What’s even better? You do not need to setup a separate record in your DNS settings. The same initial settings you use to setup direction of your site from domain to WPEngine, works for the CDN. Enabling the CDN is a click and a sneeze, and your site starts serving via the CDN in minutes.

For other hosts that do not offer a CDN, here’s how the setup looks. You have your site at the host, and now you want to enable the CDN. Googling gives you the CDN companies out there, like MAXCDN, Cloudflare, AWS Cloudfront, and determine which one you are going to use, again, after scouring 24 pages. You setup an account there, put in your credit card, and they send you over some DNS entries. Now you have to plan a night to do the DNS change.

Have a problem? My point 2 stands. Just go to the support, and they will help you. No need to go to another provider. Tell me, convinced that WPEngine is the best WordPress host yet?

5. A FREE SSL for You and You and You

SSL is important for every site, even if you aren’t dealing with credit cards. SSL stands for Secure Socket Layer, and is a security protocol for encrypting information between web server and your internet browser. This way, information is only viewable to the user.

You can buy SSL certificates, of varying types and for various uses and protection, from many online retailers including Godaddy, Namecheap, and Comodo. It’s a very tedious process, but required for many reasons.

Every year you have to renew your SSL certificate when you buy it manually and do it yourself. You can install Let’s Encrypt yourself but then there’s the headache if the cron job ran to auto renew it every few months. The process of getting a certificate is multi stepped. This includes generating a certificate signing request, sending it to the place of purchase, authenticating yourself/domain by DNS or email, and then finally getting the private and public key.

Oh no, you’re not done.

You have to then take that key, and apply it to the server. Once applied, then the server will have SSL ready to rock. These steps can be cumbersome, and it is required, in my view. So how does WPEngine handle SSL certificates?

You have to pay them $299 and they will do it for you. What? Just Kidding (that’s like a year of great hosting)!

Say hello to free SSL, or included SSL with all WPEngine plans.

You are going to see me as a broken record, but I’ll say it again. Just like site speed, SSL is also important for SEO. If you aren’t using a ssl certificate on your site, don’t even bother thinking or trying to rank with google. Having a secure site is a must.

Try the Best WordPress Host and See For Yourself

To conclude, there are 100s, errr, 1000s of hosting companies out there that help their clients with websites. Are you still wondering which is the best wordpress host available today? Many of them may have the same offerings as WPEngine, but do they do it as great as WPEngine?

Probably not, but after you get a headache from trying the other hosts, send me a message so we can both get a good laugh and high five for our sites on WPEngine.

The post 5 Reasons Why WPEngine Is The Best WordPress Host appeared first on Askshank.

What is this trunk you speak of

A trunk can make your life much easier. You don’t need to take network cable from one switch’s VLAN and running it to another switch. For example, vlan 1 to vlan 1, vlan2 to vlan2, etc making you use up ports to connect different vlans. Let’s not forget long cable runs. A trunk will let you use one port to hold all the VLAN information. Without trunking, each VLAN between the switches would EACH need a cable running to the VLAN.

Dell PowerConnect 2724 and VLANs

VLAN1 is the default VLAN. You cannot receive TAGGED packets to VLAN1. Other VLANs you can receive tagged packets. I wanted to setup 3 VLANs.

VLAN 1 – Ports 1-8
VLAN 2 – Ports 9-17
and lastly…
VLAN 3 – Ports 18-24

First you go into your Dell management web gui and click on VLAN membership. Here you create VLAN 2 and VLAN 3. Next you UNTAG packets on the VLANS for the specific ports, so VLAN1 would have  U by ports 1-8. I will be using PORT 1 as the trunk. For VLAN2 and VLAN3, make sure you specify port 1 as the trunk. It will show a T which means tagged egress packets.  VLAN1 cannot cannot receive tagged packets. You cannot make port1 on VLAN1 the T, it will remain U which means untag egress packets.

The switch that will be connected to the Dell Powerconnect 2724 is a HP ProCurve. The trunk port on this end is configured to send UNTAGGED packets to VLAN1. TAGGED packets are sent to VLAN2 and VLAN3. This is very important, or nothing will work.

Now this line of Dell switches are a little different. You created the VLAN you think and specified which ports are associated with which VLAN under the VLAN membership. For some reason, we are NOT done. Click on the VLAN port settings. Here you will need to AGAIN specify which VLAN each port is associated with. Enter in the VLAN # in the PVID.

Let Me Clarify

Few clarifications

To clarify, under the VLAN membership, you would select your VLAN ID on the drop down box. Then assuming we are using port 1 as the trunk, you would TAG port 1. So I did this for both VLAN 2 and VLAN 3. By showing a T there for port 1 on 2 VLANS. Not VLAN1 since you can only show a U untag packets because that is the default VLAN.

Is this my all time favorite device for VOIP? No.

To conclude, the Dell PowerConnect 2624 is a great starter device, and has been used in small to medium size businesses. The VLAN can be finicky, but hopefully this guide helps you get this setup.

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