We are performing Windows update maintenance on our shared Windows hosting website and database servers. Full details are as follows:

Servers: win1.pipeten.co.uk, win3.pipeten.co.uk, win7.pipeten.co.uk, win9.pipeten.co.uk, dwin5.pipeten.co.uk, dwin20.pipeten.co.uk, dwin25.pipeten.co.uk, mssql.pipeten.co.uk, dmssql.pipeten.co.uk.

Date: Thursday 10th May 2012

Time: 20:00 – 01:00 BST

Estimated Impact: Updates are expected to last up to 60 minutes per server, HTTP and FTP services will be unavailable for brief periods of time while updates are being applied and when the server requires rebooting.

We will test site(s) and/or servers(s) after maintenance is completed in addition to our normal intensive monitoring and alerting. In the unlikely event you see any problems after the maintenance window and we have not otherwise contacted you then please do contact the support team please contact the support team.

12:20: Most of the affected cloud servers should be available again. There is still an issue affecting a few servers which engineers are on site and investigating currently.

13:00: The problem is isolated to a distribution switch that is impacting the remaining affected servers and engineers are looking at a replacement.

13:20 – PSU replacement is currently being performed from on-site spares.

14:15 – PSU replacement has not been successful and we are looking at full chassis replacement and restore.

15:20 – Some progress has been made and further hosts will be returning online as we work through them.

15:45 – The majority of hosts have been fully restored, just a few last ones being worked through.

16:00 – All services restored with exception of backup, testing and investigation continues.

The core duties will include:

• Reception duties including directing telephone calls, tracking & receiving deliveries, sign in visitors and generally ensuring the smooth running of the office environment.
• Assist the directors in their meetings and with duties such as travel arrangements, note taking and follow-up management.
• Undertake clerical maintenance on internal databases and scheduled tasks without error.
• Liaising with customers on non-technical matters including cheque and credit management.

For full details of this and other positions please see the careers section of our site.

1. Downloading Kentico

1.1. Download Kentico CMS (92MB).

1.2. Run the downloaded Kentico CMS 6.0.exe (If you are using a Windows Vista or 7 operating system you may have to right click and run as administrator).

1.3. Choose a local directory on your computer to extract the Kentico files to, the desktop may be easiest. Now might be a good time to go and make a coffee while you wait for the files to be copied locally which can take some time.

1.4. Once the copying process has completed and there’s coffee in your veins, you will have the option to “Launch Kentico web installer“, please tick the box and click “Finish“.

1.5. Select both “I am using .Net framework 4.0 or Visual Studio 2010” and for “Web site project (recommended)” as shown below and then click “Next >“.

1.6. At the next prompt, choose “I want to install Kentico CMS on a remote (production or testing) server” as shown below and then click “Next >“.

1.7. Now you can “Choose target folder”, we have used the desktop in our example, choose “IIS7” for the “Target IIS version” and “Integrated” for the “Target application pool” as shown below and then click “Next >“.

2. Applying the latest updates / hot fix

2.1.

Download the 6.0.19 hot fix.

2.2.

Run the downloaded Hotfix_6_0_19.exe and when prompted check both “Launch hotfix utility” and “Open instructions” then clicking “Finish“.

 2.3.
Find the path of the directory of your local installation we previously extracted the click “Next >“.

2.4.
Since this is a new installation we will not take a backup by checking the “I already have a backup of my project” box and clicking “Next >“.

2.5.
If you will receive an error message stating your database connection string is missing, ignore this as this is a new installation.

2.6.
Confirm the changes, then click next

The hot fix program will now patch all the files in the Kentico installation directory. Once this is finished, you will see the following message:

We can now start to upload our patched Kentico installation.

3. Uploading

3.1 Once this is compete we can begin to upload the files via ftp.

As this is a large upload of files remember to check in Filezilla for failed transfers. See the bottom left window

4. Web based Installation

Although Kentico is free to use, it does require a licence code. You will need to register and setup a licence for your domain.

4.1. Once the ftp upload has complete, we need to setup our MSSQL database. Now that we have our MSSQL database and user setup we can visit our domain and begin the web based installation. The domain will need to be set to .Net 4 and classic application pipeline mode. We have a guide on changing the .Net version here

4.2.
Enter your MSSQL details here, including the correct SQL server name which can be found in your hosting control panel.

4.3.
Choose the existing database option and tick “Create Kentico CMS database objects” and click next

4.4.
Kentico will now ask to change the database collation to the preferred SQL_Latin1_General. Choose this option and click next.

4.5.
Because we are doing this installation in a medium trust environment you will have to manually edit the web.config file. Add the database connection information between the <connectionStrings> </connectionStrings> section.

4.6.
You will need to input your domains licence key that we obtained in step 4 here.

4.7.
This is the final step, here you will need to choose a basic initial template to get your Kentico site setup. You can choose several options here, choose whatever best suits your sites purpose. Once selected click next and the installer will set-up your site.

Your Kentico installation is now complete, the default username is “administrator” with no password. First thing you should do is login and add a complex password to the administrator account.

Website of the month for April is Finger Industries – Imaginative, original animation design and production, pre-production, character design and illustration…

We’ve known and admired the work of Finger Industries for over a decade, forged in Sheffield around the same time as Pipe Ten and sharing space in the same building, we’re not sure why we haven’t featured them before now!

A simple website which lets the content do the talking, check out some of their most recent works, familiar favourites or showreel.

To have your site or business featured next month please comment below. Unfortunately we are unable to accept submissions not hosted with Pipe Ten or in direct competition with ourselves or our customers’ primary markets (no web design, web development, SEO or hosting resellers).

What is the Google malware warning?

On visiting a website found via a Google search you may see a warning appear:

Google indexes the content of your website by using automated robots/scripts to request your site and extracting the information retrieved to generate it’s search results and your position in those results. Google also examines the content it retrieves for malicious code that could infect or compromise a visitors computer.

If someone else’s site is getting this warning:

Never ignore the warning! Always click back and choose another result.

If you know someone responsible for the website, then it might be nice if you let them know but never ignore the warning.

If your own site is getting this warning:

This means your website may harm a computer visiting your website. It is most often a problem with your website itself due to the hosting of outdated, unsecured or otherwise exploitable software/scripts, but in some circumstances it can be the result of external data sources being pulled into your own website (RSS, external JS or CSS). In rare circumstances this particular message can be the result of a problem with your local computer or local network devices being infected and leaking FTP or other login information to malicious persons/scripts.

You should first ensure the computer you are working from is virus scanned, secured and free from any virus and be confident that your internet connection or other devices upon it are similarly secure and private.

Once your local computer is secure we recommend this excellent 25yearsofprogramming.com article which goes into much more depth, a summary of which can be found below.

Why antivirus scanning might not find the bad code:
A) Scanning your website files on the server
B) Downloading your site files to your PC and scanning them there
C) Risky – browse your pages with an antivirus program running on your PC

How to search your pages for malicious code:
1) Discover which pages are flagged for malware and get clues about why they are flagged
2) Remember to search your source code for badware
3) Programs for searching pages for malicious code
3a) Search one page at a time (recommended)
3b) Multi-file searching
4) Search strings to find malicious code
4a) What do malicious or invisible iframes look like?
4b) What do malicious JavaScript references look like?
4c) What does malicious or obfuscated JavaScript code look like?
5) Which pages to search for malicious code
6) Forum posts and blog comments
7) Advertisements that Google considers badware
8 ) Out-of-date, exploitable, malicious Shockwave Flash files
9) Advertisements from otherwise legitimate ad networks that have been hacked and are now serving badware
10) Other third party content
11) Database content from your CMS.
12) Rewrites or redirects in your .htaccess file(s)
13) JavaScript redirects
14) Meta-refresh redirects
15) Check your error pages
16) Server has a rootkit installed
17) DNS cache poisoning
18) Request a review from Google or StopBadware

If in doubt please ask the support team and we’ll do our best to help.

Pipe Ten’s FTP servers are always configured to support both active and passive FTP connections however depending on your connection/firewall/network settings it is quite common that only one method work and the other may hang while requesting directory listings.

1. Open FileZilla on your local computer

2. Click “Edit” and then “Settings…”

3. Locate the FTP option and click it

4. Choose between Passive and Active modes and re-test connecting to the server.

Further instructions can be found via our article FileZilla for FTP.

BlogEngine.NET can be installed on any new Windows Hosting plan or for existing customers where .NET4 is available on their existing server.

1. Download the BlogEngine.NET web project to your computer.

2. Find the .zip file you just downloaded onto your computer and extracts its contents locally.

3. Within the extracted files, find the Web.config file and open it with a text editor.

4. Add the full <handlers></handlers> section listed below somewhere after  “<system.webServer>” and before “</system.webServer>” (around line 155) and save the Web.config file.

  <handlers>
    <add name="cshtml-ISAPI-4.0_32bit" path="*.cshtml" verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG"
         modules="IsapiModule"
         scriptProcessor="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319\aspnet_isapi.dll"
         preCondition="classicMode,runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness32" responseBufferLimit="0" />
    <add name="cshtml-ISAPI-4.0_64bit" path="*.cshtml" verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG"
         modules="IsapiModule"
         scriptProcessor="C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework64\v4.0.30319\aspnet_isapi.dll"
         preCondition="classicMode,runtimeVersionv4.0,bitness64" responseBufferLimit="0" />
    <add name="cshtml-Integrated-4.0" path="*.cshtml" verb="GET,HEAD,POST,DEBUG"
         type="System.Web.HttpForbiddenHandler"
         preCondition="integratedMode,runtimeVersionv4.0" />
  </handlers>

5. Upload via FTP the extracted files from your local computer to the web server.

6. Set your domain to use ASP.NET Version of “ASP.NET version 4.x” and Pipeline mode to “CLASSIC” then click the “Submit” button.

7. Within your web browser, visit the URL which relates to the location you uploaded the files to, this may by http://yourdomain.com/ or http://blog.yourdomain.com/ but should not be http://yourdomain.com/blog/ unless you have already setup a web application for /blog/. If your domain is not already pointing towards our servers, you may use the instant access domain alias or testing url.

8. You will now see your demo installation of BlogEngine.NET:

9. Login to the administration using the “Log in” link found below the header and above the right navigation with the username “admin” and password “admin”.

10. IMPORTANT: Create a new admin username and password and then delete the default ‘admin’ user within the BlogEngine.NET control panel.

We hope you enjoy your BlogEngine.NET hosting with Pipe Ten, if you find any problems or useful tips please comment below.

1. Select the settings icon from your springboard.
   

2. Select “Mail” from the settings menu.

   

3. Click “Add Account”.
   

4. Select “Other”.
   

5. You have two options here, IMAP or POP, choose one

6. Fill in the details like the image below:

6. Click finish and the save button at the top right.

7. Mail will now check your settings and take you to your account.

Now for the advanced settings

1. Select “Settings” from your springboard.

2. Select “Mail” then the account you have just created

3. Scroll down and click the “Advanced” button

4. Make sure “Use SSL” is turned off for both incoming and outgoing.
   

Servers: win1.pipeten.co.uk, win3.pipeten.co.uk, win7.pipeten.co.uk, win9.pipeten.co.uk, dwin5.pipeten.co.uk, dwin20.pipeten.co.uk, dwin25.pipeten.co.uk, mssql.pipeten.co.uk, dmssql.pipeten.co.uk.

Date(s): Tuesday 20th March 2012

Time(s): 20:00 – 01:00 GMT

Estimated Impact: Updates are expected to last up to 60 minutes per server, HTTP and FTP services will be unavailable for brief periods of time while updates are being applied and when the server requires rebooting.

We will test site(s) and/or servers(s) after maintenance is completed in addition to our normal intensive monitoring and alerting. In the unlikely event you see any problems after the maintenance window and we have not otherwise contacted you then please do contact the support team please contact the support team.