Ricky’s Online Business Blog

Not everyday is perfect day and problems can come up anytime. Sometimes I have to put up with a bad hair day too. So I wonder whether it would be better to turn bald when I get old so that I don’t have to worry about my hair any more!

Anyway, sometimes my hosting customers too can encounter problems in their Internet connection to our server.  I normally ask them to check their connection to server and send me report generated by a software called PingPlotter.  Customer support by phone and email is a full-time job.  So I might as well post here and refer them to this article.

So are you reading this because you can’t connect to our server, or any web site?  Download PingPlotter (free version) to find out what’s wrong. Install and run the program as usual.

As you can see above, there is a little text box at the top left.  Just type your server address there and hit Enter.  The server address depends on what you want to check.  It could be mail.yourdomain.com or pop.yourdomain.com for mail server, webmail.yourdomain.com for webmail, www.yourdomain.com or simply yourdomain.com for your web site.

A little graph will be generated on the right hand side every few seconds.  It shows what happened along the way from your PC to our server.  If the graph is mostly in green, you are having good connection.  If there is some yellow or red color, there might be some bottleneck or network problem somewhere halfway.

To churn out the report, click Edit menu, then Copy As Image.  You can then start and paste the copied image into your graphic software, such as Paint.  Then save the image and send to me at ricky [at] rickysoo.com.

Any question or comments? Welcome to comment below.

Perhaps you work in a company with offices in a few countries or a few branches.  Or perhaps your company has many staff with various departments.

Would you like to indicate your location or department in your email address?  You can use subdomain in your email address such as sales@malaysia.mycompany.com or ricky@hr.mycompanycom!

What is a subdomain anyway?  It is anything that goes before your domain name.  For example, in “singapore.mycompany.com”, “mycompany.com” is the domain name” and “singapore” is the subdomain.

It’s easy to create email address with your chosen subdomain.  Let’s create an email address called ricky@malaysia.mycompany.com.

1. Log into your web-based control panel cPanel.
2. In cPanel, go to the Domains section and click Subdomains.
3. Enter “malaysia” as subdomain, specify the location of the subdomain (such as /public_html/malaysia), and click Create button.
4. In cPanel, go to the Mails section and click Email Accounts.
5. Enter “ricky” as the email username, select “malaysia.mycompany.com” from the domain list, enter other details such as password, and click Create button.
6. Now set up your email software such as Outlook to start using your email account. Done!

By the way, if you have created a subdomain as above, you can also use it to have a different web site for your branch in Malaysia under your domain name with the address http://malaysia.mycompany.com!

This is an announcement for BizPartner customers.

We have been communicating with others by email everyday for many years. It is such an indispensable tool that it is now part of our lifestyle. But have you taken it for granted? Do you know that the emails you send and receive can be intercepted and read by third party?

When you send an email out, your email content travels from your computer to the Internet in clear text format. That is, what you write can be read plainly if it is intercepted by someone or some machine while it travels to the destination. If you send password, it can be retrieved and your online security will be compromised. The same risk applies to incoming emails.

But worry no more. You can “encrypt” your emails before sending out, or get incoming emails “encrypted” before receiving them. When your emails are “encrypted”, it means that the email content is turned into garbage text before traveling on the Internet. When the emails reach the destination, they are “decrypted”, being turned back to normal text for your reading.

This is done by using a technology called SSL (Secure Socket Layers). By using a connection secured by SSL, your computer cooperates with your incoming or outgoing mail server to encrypt and decrypt your email message accordingly. This way, your email content becomes unreadable even if it is intercepted while traveling on the Internet.

If you are currently connecting to your mail server without SSL, it’s time to consider adopting such security measure now. Please change your email settings as below now to enable SSL on your end!

Outgoing mail (SMTP) port number: 465
Incoming mail (POP) port number: 995

Please turn on SSL for both outgoing and incoming mail servers. In Outlook Express, this is in the “Advanced” tab, the same place where you change the port numbers above.

For customers hosting on the new cPanel-based Linux server, SSL works immediately upon changing your settings as above. For customers hosting on the old server (non-cPanel based), please inform us at info [at] bizpartner.com.my that you wish to activate SSL email service.

Click here for some basic instruction to set up your Outlook Exress for SSL

From time to time I need to process domain and hosting transfer for my BizPartner customers.  Here is a technical guide I’ll use to refer to customers on the transfer process.  Though I write this for my own customers, the transfer process here should be applicable to any hosting provider you choose.

I know the process is not easy for non-technical people.  But we will be available anytime to ensure smooth transfer, including doing most if not all of the tasks below for you.

First some definitions.  Transferring domain name means changing your domain name registrar (the company with which you or your hosting provider registered your domain name) to the one we use.  Transferring hosting means migrating your web site and email service from another hosting provider to us.

Domain Name Transfer

To transfer your international domain name (.com, .net, .org etc), please ask your current domain name provider to “unprotect” your domain name, and obtain the “domain name secret code” (domain authorization code) from them and send to us.  It is a little password to protect your domain from unauthorized transfer.

Once received, we will do the rest to transfer your domain over from your existing registrar to the one we use.  The process can take a few working days, but your web site and email service will not be affected.  After transfer, your domain name will be renewed for another year starting from the current expiry date.

For .my domain names, there is no “domain transfer”.  You can simply login to MYNIC web site as billing contact, and change the “Invoicing Party” from your existing provider to the one we use, so that we can take care of your domain name and bill you in the future.

Web Hosting Transfer

To transfer your web site to the new server, please obtain a copy of your web site (most probably you already have), and just upload to the new server using FTP software.

If your web site uses any database, such as MySQL, MSSQL or Microsoft Access, please be sure to backup and upload to the new server too.

Email Hosting Transfer

To transfer your email service to the new server, please first send us a list of your current email accounts.  I’ll create on the new server.  It is possible to achieve zero downtime for email service by checking your emails from both old and new serveres at the same time.  Please read here for more information.

Changing DNS

When you are ready to transfer hosting, just login to your domain name control panel and change the domain name server (DNS) to ours.

Please contact us at info [at] bizpartner.com.my should you have any question.