LOL, can’t keep up with you, Astonecipher…
So, tell us why you like this new mailer system! Is it a library like PHPmailer? More info please…
https://documentation.mailgun.com/api-intro.html#introduction
It has libraries but is also an API. It completely removes you from the mail server and allows tracking and a host of other things.
I would have responded yesterday but the site seemed to be down…
I’ve looked at PHp Mailer on and off for the last week, and apart from not being entirely sure yet how to make it work (yes, I know, it’s definitely me!), I can’t see how it can replace the current ‘email a friend’ utility.
All I need it to do is work from a combined image and text link in the footer of each page. The visitor clicks on the link to bring up a pop-up window. They input the recipient address and their own name and email address, enter the captcha phrase which is very easy to read in the accompanying picture (or whatever PHP Mailer uses), and click on ‘Send’. The intended recipient is sent an email that says something along the lines of ‘XXX thought you’d like this page on the XXX website’, and displays a link to the page the sender was on when they clicked on the email link.
Basically, all I need is what I have already, but with a captcha added. It’s a simple (?) Perl script in one file with three html pages to handle sending, confirmation, and errors. One problem is that I’ve had it since 2010 and can’t find the source online now. Can it be upgraded?
Yikes! I have done some PERL, but it was out of necessity!
If the send is handled on PERL, you will either have to change it or change it to PHP. No way around that.
Have you tried following the PHPMailer crash course?
http://phpmailer.worxware.com/?pg=tutorial
Well, if that is the only need and you do not need to have your own tracking of the emails sent out to others, then, it sounds
like you are good to go with what you have now. You mentioned upgrading your email system, therefore, we discussed other
email libraries. The one Astonecipher mentioned, is a pay service and therefore will not suit your needs.
Normally, if you look at the live code in the library you are using, you will find a copyright notice or author info and can see if
there is an update by going to the correct site location.
Back to your main post question, the site that used a robot to scan your system is registered to the location below. You can
contact them, but, there is no law against reading an online webpage, therefore, nothing illegal done. But, robots usually can
be blocked by just adding int a “robots.txt” file in the root folder of your site. But, you need to customize it to allow Google and
other search engines to scan your site if you want to be included in their databases… Anyway, here is what I found for you:
(you can get further info if needed from the UK company number, but, unsure if this helps at all…)
Domain name:
mysite.co.uk
Registrant:
Trinity Mirror Digital Media Ltd
Registrant type:
UK Limited Company, (Company number: 3906084)
Registrant’s address:
PO Box 3166
Chronicle House
Commonhall Street
Chester
CH1 2AA
United Kingdom
Data validation:
Nominet was able to match the registrant’s name and address against a 3rd party data source on 10-Dec-2012
Registrar:
Trinity Mirror Digital Media Ltd [Tag = TRINITYNEWMEDIA]
URL: http://www.trinitymirror.com
Relevant dates:
Registered on: 26-Oct-2007
Expiry date: 26-Oct-2017
Last updated: 24-Sep-2015
Registration status:
Registered until expiry date.
Name servers:
ns-1233.awsdns-26.org
ns-2010.awsdns-59.co.uk 205.251.199.218
ns-281.awsdns-35.com
ns-606.awsdns-11.net
WHOIS lookup made at 14:06:30 08-Jul-2016
–
This WHOIS information is provided for free by Nominet UK the central registry
for .uk domain names. This information and the .uk WHOIS are:
Copyright Nominet UK 1996 - 2016.
The one Astonecipher mentioned, is a pay service and therefore will not suit your needs.
? What service is pay? Mailgun has a paid side, but that is after you hit 10,000 emails a month and pennies after that. And if you are hitting that number you need a service.
Sorry, thought it said 1000 emails… 10,000 is a lot for most servers…
Even at a thousand, that is a lot of mail for most sites. We are trying to ‘encourage’ our IT director to switch to MailGun and we send out an average of 4,000 emails a month and growing, but $250 a month up to 60,000 emails a month is A LOT OF EMAIL!
I use it for my contact forms, and my automated systems and it is probably one of the simplest things to integrate.
[member=80930]KesslerAssoc[/member] , get this worked out?
Quote from: ErnieAlex on June 30, 2016, 03:02:14 pm Peter, 1&1 is a low-cost (Low-Budget) hosting company. They usually put you onto a "shared" server, not a real server where you have full control over everything. But, as you say, you can ban IP's using your htaccess file. But, only if you can identify them.
Any webhost is going to put you on what you sign up for. You sign up for a shared hosting account, of course that is what you will have. VPS, Dedicated, same thing.
As far as 1&1, I recently setup a VPS server with them and am saving a ton of money from my previous dedicated server. I don’t know about their support for shared hosting, but on VPS it seems they expect you to know what you are doing to manage it, so from experience on a VPS plan, support is weak but the pricing is fantastic.
I believe they have tiered VPS hosting as well, managed and unmanaged.
I moved my hosting away from 1 &1 after I was lied to an adding additional Servers and they took my servers offline.
If you know what you’re doing, Digital Ocean is a very promising host.
Yep, but it’s mostly Greek to me. I can’t see anything that says this emails a simple ‘XXX thought you might like this page’ message.
It certainly works, but I have no idea whether it’s secure. I’d love to be able to leave it alone and concentrate on increasing the site’s main subject matter instead!
I would look for an update of the PHP script but there’s no surviving accreditation. It’s possible that it was removed in the customisation process, although I don’t normally do that.
I suppose renaming the cgi folder annually will cut down on the risk of a hacker being able to find it and make use of something inside it…? I have to carry out an annual upload of the entire site anyway, when I update the copyright details or make any tweaks to the universal header and footer.
I only mentioned upgrading the emailer utility (and possibly the search engine and feed2js facility) because I couldn’t work out whether it was secure and also couldn’t work out how to make it more secure than it might already be. Given how complicated even the discussion about it seems to be, renaming the cgi folder sounds like a much easier solution.
I have actually upgraded the feed 2js facility to the most recent 2013 script, so at least that has been achieved. The search engine isn’t entirely reliable but perhaps it’s the best I can expect to get and make work.
Well, perhaps you can locate a programmer in your area to help you out. Quite often a local college or HS will have a teacher
that would help on the side. I suspect you need to have further assistance to manage your site for the future anyways. Or you
can hire a programmer here and give them remote access to the site to understand how it works. Then they could help you
with security and improvements. Just an idea or two…
As far as security goes, PHP is on the server along with Perl. These are usually fairly secure as long as user inputs are
cleaned before saving into a database. Javascript on the other hand can be easier to hack. JS is “client” side and runs in the
browser. So, you can see a lot of the code just by right-clicking on the page and view-source the code on it. It will never show
you the server’s PHP or Perl code.
Well, at the least you learned a few things about programming…
I certainly have, and thanks for your help with this (so far), and for suggestions by others. For the moment I’ll keep working with what I have but when there’s some research time available I may well have another look at improving things.
Great! Let’s mark this one solved for now. Once you get some studying time in, open a new post with your next questions…
(That’s what we are here for… LOL)
CYA in the Bitstream… (That is really all this is… Ha!)