knowledgebase

Businesses can use Gmail to host their emails but if you get a 550 error then here are the steps to correct this.

If you get a response as follows:

550 Please turn on SMTP Authenticationin your email client. [209.85.160.43] is not permitted to relay through this server without athentication.

The server is rejecting outgoing emails because your email client has not presented valid login credentials.

1. Turn on SMTP Authentication in Gmail.

Login to Gmail.

Click on the setting icon on the top right.

Select see all settings.

Go to Accounts and import.

Click on the edit the email and check all the settings, if not, then re add your email address.

In the send mail as section click on “Add another email address”.

Enter email address.

Send through Gmail and click next step.

Enter the SMTP server provided by your host i.e. mail.website.com

Email and password.

select secured connection using tls and click add account.

The port must be 465, SSL and authenticated

Port 465 is the correct port to use for security, so ensure this is set correctly.

We sometimes put a website into a sub directory to work on it i.e. carryout the updates and maintenance.

When working on a new website we can put the site into a www.website.com/folder/ so the site is not visible to visitors and will not get picked up by search engines.

Once the updates and new site are ready to go live follow these quick and easy steps.

1. Make sure you have all the back ups i.e. files and database.

You will find Jetpack in cPanel with all the backups you will need but check they are there before proceeding.

You will need to login to cPanel to carryout this task so you will need login details.

2. Remove all files and folders from the root directory.

Ensure the root directory is empty. Compress the files in there and download them if you want to keep them.

2. Login to WordPress and go to settings > General and change the url from the sub directory to root.

WordPress Address (URL) http://website.com/wp (no trailing slash)

Site Address (URL) http://website.com (no trailing slash)

4. Move files to root folder.

Go to File Manager and select all the files and folders in the sub directory and move them to the root. You can drag and drop.

5. Log back into WordPress.

Now log back into WordPress using the domain i.e. https://www.website.com/wp-admin/

6. Set Permalinks

Select permalinks to update the .htaccess file.

Settings > Permalinks click save changes. This action will update the .htaccess file.

7. Update urls

Update the urls throughout the site with a plugin i.e. Search and replace.

https://www.website.com/folder

https://www.website.com (no slash)

7. Go through all the links on the site to check for broken links.

The plugin may miss links, so go through the whole site and double check the links to images, videos, pages etc

You can also use  broken link checker plugin that may pick up broken links.

Manually update Revolution Slider links.

7. Set up a redirect

If you don’t want to lose your credit score then add a redirect from the old url to the new url.

You can add this code to the .htacccess file

RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST) ^website.com/folder$ [or]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.website.com/folder$
RewriteRule (.*)$ http://www.website.com/$1 [R=301, L]

Summary

This is a simple way to move a website to live rather than downloading and re-uploading the whole thing, which takes time and can lead to issues. 

This is why we use the sub directory to create new websites and carryout maintenance.

If you need any help with this then please contact me.

The latest WHMCS has removed bank details from PDF invoices.

Bank details can be added to the Payment apps which appear on the online invoices, but disappear on the PDF download versions.

There is a way to manually add the details to the invoicepdf.tpl file but a temporary measure is to add the bank details to the notes sections.

Put bank details in notes sections

The bank details will display at the bottom of the invoice.

Reissue an Invoice

I like to send invoices with notes and edit the details. The latest WHMCS update doesn’t give you this option, so here is a work around.

Duplicate the original system generated invoice to create a draft copy. Edit the new copy and then delete the original as follows.

Go to your unpaid invoices

Select the invoice you wish to duplicate and at the bottom select duplicate. 

Go back to invoices > drafts and edit the invoice.

Use the next available invoice number, managed the edits.

Publish the new invoice.

Click Publish and either select send or download and send manually.

To cancel the previous invoice, go to that invoice and click Mark Cancelled under the invoice status.

The quickest way to create a brand new WordPress website is by using Softaculous.

Softaculous is a web app that automatically creates a database and loads up the WordPress files for you so you are ready to begin.

All you have to do is to fill in a few details and let it run.

Login into cPanel

Go to the bottom of cPanel where you will find softaculous.

Select Install

Select https:// then create a new sub directory such as /dev/

Enter site name and site description

Admin Username and Password (this will be your WordPress login, so do not use Admin, use a longer unique Username and difficult password)

Add your email address that you want to use to login and receive emails

Go to advanced and change the Database name to something other than wp

Before you click install, make sure you add your email address so you get the details.

Click install.

There you will have created your first WordPress website.