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European IIS 8 Hosting - Germany :: How to Enable URL Redirection from Non-WWW to WWW?

clock December 20, 2018 10:44 by author Peter

We have many clients ask about how to redirect non-www to www URLs. We believe this is important factor in SEO as search engines consider http://www.domain.com and http://domain.com are different websites. As a result, if your website has been linked to from other websites using a mix of the two URLs you are effectively splitting the potential benefit of valuable link popularity.

Workaround

Using a 301 redirect on the “non-www” version of the URL, which is essentially a “permanent” redirect in server talk, you can effectively consolidate all of your link popularity to a single URL. This consolidation will serve to increase your website’s chances of obtaining and maintaining top rankings.

How To Enable The 301 Redirect

You need to instruct the server you are hosting your website on to redirect the traffic seamlessly. To do this you need to first establish what type of server your website is hosted on. There are two main types of servers that are in use: Microsoft and Apache (Linux/Unix), but as on our hosting environment, we use IIS, so we will discuss how to enable it on IIS.

Enable non-www 301 Redirect in IIS Server

Microsoft servers do not have a .htaccess file to alter so we suggest that you contact your hosting provider and request they make this change for you. If they are baffled or need further instructions on how to make the changes you can refer them to the tutorials referenced below:

1. Using Internet Services Manager create a new IP-based website using the http://yourdomain.com URL or alternatively you can avoid using a unique IP by using the host header (virtual website) of www.yourdomain.com.

2. Now verify the server headers for each website using the Server Header Checker. The server response should be 200 OK for both addresses.

3. Now add your domain-revised version of the following ASP code to the default home page for http://yourdomain.com:

< %@ Language=VBScript %>
< %
Response.Status=”301 Moved Permanently”
Response.AddHeader “Location”, http://www.yourdomain.com
%>


Note: do not change the spacing or line placement within the above code; place it as is.

4. Once the default page is online first visit your website via http://yourdomain.com to ensure the redirect is working. Next check the server headers for http://yourdomain.com and make sure you see the following code within #1: “HTTP Status Code: HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”. That code will confirm the 301 redirect is being properly communicated



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: How To Manage IIS Server Online?

clock December 14, 2018 08:41 by author Peter

Hey folks, now it’s possible to manage your IIS (Internet Information Services) Server right from the Browser. I am going to share the steps , which I was required to perform before it started running. It was simple though. Right now, the Service is in “Preview” mode, hope to see this launched very soon!

“To start, head over to https://manage.iis.net and download IIS Administration Setup.

As soon the download starts, it shows you another screen waiting for the Service to be installed and run and let you proceed further.

 

The installation failed twice. It asked me to install “Microsoft Visual C++ 2015 Redistributable (x64)” first and then asked to install “Microsoft .NET Core 1.0.1 Windows Server Hosting”. I had no other trouble during the installation. My machine config at the time is Windows 10 Enterprise (x64) / i5 / 12 GB. I did an IIS reset and the waiting Window started receiving signals. The first screen prompted me with a default port (PORT# 55539) on the localhost address and asked me to supply an “Access Token”.

The link, given below in the input box lets you generate or refresh the access token. In the background, it installed “Microsoft IIS Administation Service” exposing a Web Service on port 55539. I’ve yet to figure out, if the port is configurable or not.

Generate an access token and supply to IIS Management form and you are done. It also allows you to set how soon the access token should be expired.

IIS Administration Setup needs to be installed on the machine running IIS Server. To manage any IIS Server online, you just need the Access Token.

The steps are given below.

  1. Install IIS Administration Setup and its dependencies on IIS Server machine. (It will install and start “Microsoft IIS Admistration” Service).
  2. Generate Access Token on the machine.
  3. Use the token any where in the world to access IIS Server, which belongs to the token. Make sure the port 55539 is allowed from the network, which you’re trying to access the IIS Server over the Web.

You can refresh the key anytime, which you want to (or an access token has been compromised).

Server and Website Administration is very smooth with the Web console. All the options from IIS Manager are available online and are very user friendly. You can do pretty much everything from the Web console, which comes available with IIS Manager on Windows.

Exploring websites

Create a Website.

Managing IIS Server

 

I’ll leave the rest of the exploration for you. Hope, you enjoyed it. Thanks for reading.



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: Dedicated Servers As The Secured Solutions

clock November 14, 2018 10:42 by author Peter

When it comes to the option of dedicated servers, you may find it costly in comparison to other web hosting options. But ultimately, the choice is worth making because plenty of commercial benefits are integrated into this web hosting plan. Let’s see how it is a better option than others web hosting plans.

Better uptime
In dedicated hosting arrangements, the service provider reserves the SLA,  including the solution of hardware failure. The service provider maintains a support team for 24x7. With expert skill sets and ITIL complaint methods you can be sure about a high uptime.

Cost efficiency
This is a cost efficient option. According to the plan, a dedicated hosting service provider is responsible for upgradates and maintenance of hardware for maintaining connectivity, and for offering a friendly physical environment. Under this plan, you as a user have no obligation to pay for the total server room or for employing a service administrator. Under this plan you have to pay for the services you will be using.

Reliable bandwidth
Under this web hosting plan you will get to enjoy higher internet speed. There is no chance to lose the speed as there is no risk of sharing the connection. This will help in faster communication, upload management, and uninterrupted business presence.

Complete control on applications
If you select dedicated web hosting, you will enjoy a complete monopoly of decisions about using site management tools and allied other applications to boost your hosting environment. However, about the tools, you need to get prior approval from your hosting service provider that they will be able to give you backend support to maintain them.

Better security arrangement
Dedicated hosting service offers uninterrupted access to physical server. The security arrangement includes supervision cameras, Biometric Access Control System, round-the-clock patrolling, etc. for improved security. Advanced service providers often provide additional supports like DDos guard, web application firewall, VAPT, and security event management.

These reasons can clearly  justify why Dedicated Server is a better option. It is clearly understood that although expensive, this category of web hosting service offers excellent ROI (Return over investment).



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: How to Enable HTTP Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) on IIS?

clock November 8, 2018 11:23 by author Peter

In this article, we will only show simple tutorial about how to enable and serve HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) response header in IIS.

Definition HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS)

HTTP Strict Transport Security (HSTS) is a web security policy mechanism which is necessary to protect secure HTTPS websites against downgrade attacks, and which greatly simplifies protection against cookie hijacking.

HSTS improves security and prevents man-in-the-middle attacks, downgrade attacks, and cookie-hijacking.

It allows web servers to declare that web browsers (or other complying user agents) should only interact with it using secure HTTPS connections, and never via the insecure HTTP protocol. HSTS is an IETF standards track protocol and is specified in RFC 6797.

The HSTS Policy is communicated by the server to the user agent via an HTTP response header field named Strict-Transport-Security. HSTS Policy specifies a period of time during which the user agent should only access the server in a secure fashion.

Therefore, adding a HSTS header is important after you’ve added SSL to your WordPress website, so browsers automatically request your HTTPS address.

All you need to add to your web.configconfiguration file is an Outbound Rule, to rewrite request responses and sending the HTTP Strict Transport Security response header:

<outboundRules>
  <rule name="Add Strict-Transport-Security when HTTPS" enabled="true">
    <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_Strict_Transport_Security" pattern=".*" />
    <conditions>
      <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="on" ignoreCase="true" />
    </conditions>
    <action type="Rewrite" value="max-age=31536000" />
  </rule>
</outboundRules>

HSTS and includeSubdomains #

Do you have your SSL (TLS) certificate on your www. subdomain? Then you need to include it using includeSubdomains. The outboundRules rule then becomes:

<rule name="Add Strict-Transport-Security when HTTPS" enabled="true">
  <match serverVariable="RESPONSE_Strict_Transport_Security" pattern=".*" />
  <conditions>
    <add input="{HTTPS}" pattern="on" ignoreCase="true" />
  </conditions>
  <action type="Rewrite" value="max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload" />
</rule>

HSTS header in WordPress functions.php #

You can set a HSTS header through your functions.php theme file as well. For this to happen, you can hook into the send_headers action.

Use the following code in your functions.php to send a HSTS header:

<?php
add_action( 'send_headers', 'saotn_add_hsts_header' );
function saotn_add_hsts_header() {
  header( 'Strict-Transport-Security: max-age=31536000; includeSubDomains; preload' );
}



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: Briefly Unavailable For Scheduled Maintenance. Check Back In A Minute

clock October 12, 2018 11:22 by author Peter

In this post, we will see how we can get rid of the error “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute,” in WordPress. If you are working with WordPress, or your blog or website is made in WordPress, you may face this kind of issue whenever you are updating any plugins or updating the WordPress core. But sometimes, what happens is that even after the update process is finished, your site remains in maintenance mode. Here, I am going to share with you a quick fix, so that you can fix this issue. I hope you will like this.

Background
I always prefer to update my WordPress core and the plugins whenever there is an update. So, I faced the following issue so many times. “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” 

So, I thought of sharing a quick fix with you for the same.







Here are the steps to remove the error," Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute".

Step 1: Go to your File Explorer


Step 2: Go to your ftp folder
You can either go to your ftp folder via file explorer or by using an ftp client, like FileZilla.


Step 3: Find the .maintenance file and delete
Check for the .maintenance file in the root folder and delete it.



Now, if you refresh your WordPress site, it will be running fine. Hope it helps.

Conclusion

Did I miss anything that you may think is needed? Did you find this post useful? I hope you liked this article. Please share your valuable suggestions and feedback with me.

Your turn. What do you think?

A blog isn’t a blog without comments. So, comment on it but try to stay on topic. If you have a question unrelated to this post, you’re better off posting it on C# Corner, Code Project, Stack Overflow, Asp.Net Forum instead of commenting here. Tweet or email me a link to your question there and I’ll definitely try to help if I can.



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: Server And Service Health Check And IP Capture For Bulk Servers

clock October 4, 2018 12:11 by author Peter

This Script will help in checking the below basic functionalities of the Bulk Servers. It will do so during Migration, Patch and Monthly Restart activities
This Script is added with the below functionalities,

  • IP Capture -- >Collects the DNSHostName,Description,DHCPEnabled,IPAddress,IpSubnet,DefaultIPGateway,MACAddress,DNSServerSearchOrder for all Enabled and IP Discovered NICs
  • Services Status -- >It checks all the Services Automatic set and not Stopped services and provides the output.
  • Server Status –- >Checks the Servers reachability and provides the output on screen
  • Server Shutdown/Reboot -- >Checks the server status and perform Bulk Shutdown / Restart at once with Event Description Keyed.

Output Samples

European IIS 10 Hosting



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: Load Balancing

clock September 26, 2018 11:52 by author Peter

What is Load Balancing ?
Distributing network traffic across multiple servers effectively is called Load Balancing.To meet high volumes, it generally requires adding more servers. Load Balancer routes the client requests to the servers in an optimized way and takes care that no server is overworked. If a new server is added to the group, It will start sending requests to this new server.


Load-Balancing Algorithms
Why did algorithms come into the picture ? Actually Load Balancer selects the server based on two factors,

  • periodically pinging server to check its availability.
  • defined algorithms - based on which load-balancer selects the server.

Algo 1 Least Connection (Default algorithm)
The least connection is the default algorithm to select server. Server which has the least number of active transactions is picked by Load Balancer to handle request. Load Balancer maintains records of transactions for each server. Now discuss this in detail: Let's say all the servers have the same capacity and still some of the servers are overloaded as there may be the situation that the client stayed in those servers for longer duration and connected to other severs for shorter duration. Active connections on the server where client stayed longer will pile up and hence based on the least connection algorithm Load Balancer will route the request in the server with least active connections,

Weighted Least Connections
Now let's consider the above Least Connection algorithm with different server capacities (CPU/RAM etc.). You would definitely want to allocate more requests to the higher capacity server than the lower capacity servers. Weighted Least Connection is the solution.

Let's say there are 2 servers, server 1 and server 2 and server 2 has high configuration.With this algorithm Load balancer will allocate more requests to server 2 to utilize it better. Like Least Connection this also allocates request to the server withthe least number of active connections but the higher configuration server will handle more requests based on the right proportion defined during the Load Balancer setup. Weight proportion is calculated by the server capacity. Server 1 : Capacity X, Server 2 : Capacity : 10X the weight for each server would be 1:10 .


Round Robin
Round Robin is a vastly used and simple algorithm. Load Balancer distributes requests in the cyclic order irrespective of server inefficiencies. There might be the scenario if you don't want to overload any of the servers for some reason, you may use this algorithm to give extra weight to other servers.


Both the Servers are ready to take request, suppose request comes and load-balancer routes to Server 1 then if a second  request comes it will be routed to Server 2. The third and fourth will be routed to Server 1 and 2 respectively in a cyclic order. Even if one of the server has stronger configuration i.e. RAM, CPU etc. As per Round Robin algorithm Load-Balancer will follow the cyclic order.

Algo 4 Weighted Round Robin
Like Round Robin this is also cyclic but the higher configuration server will handle more requests.Rest it is same as Weighted Least connection algorithm i.e. weight would be defined during Load Balancer setup and high weight server will handle more requests.

i.e. if weight proportion to server 1 and server to is 1:10. first 10 requests will go to server and 11th request will go to server 1 and next 10 request will go to server 2 and so on.

Algo 5 IP Hash
This algorithm generates a hash key using client and server IP addresses which means this key would be assigned to client for subsequent requests which assure that the client is routed to the same server that it was using earlier.This algorithm can be used to achieve Session Persistence or Sticky Session.

Session Persistence
In the multiple server environment a user might experience losing cart items during navigation. Persistence session or sticky session is the culprit. As you know Http is a stateless protocol which means in subsequent requests it doesn't maintain any information about the user so to identify server uses client's ip or cookie to track users session. Sticky session is to make sure all the requests goes to the same server which has its user's session tracking information.

Layer 4 & Layer 7 Load Balancing
In Layer 4 Load Balancing , Load balancer decides the server on which it will redirect the requests on the basis of the IP addresses of the origin and destination servers (Network Layer : Layer 3) and the TCP port number of the applications (Transport Layer : Layer 4).

On the other hand Layer 7 Load Balancing decides routing on the basis of OSI Layers 5, 6, and 7 which together makes Http.

 



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: How To Fix "Unrecognized attribute targetFramework" Error?

clock September 12, 2018 08:50 by author Peter

We may get the following error after publishing a website on IIS.

Parser Error Message
"Unrecognized attribute 'targetFramework'. Note that attribute names are case-sensitive."

To fix it, we need to follow the below troubleshooting steps.

  1. Check on which .NET version the application is developed. Let's assume, it's .NET 4.0.
  2. Open IIS Manager and find the Application Pool, on which your website is hosted.
  3. Go to that Application Pool and check the .NET version and change it to 4.0 accordingly by clicking on Basic\Advanced Settings.
    If .NET 4.0 is not listed, go ahead and install it.
  4. If it still won't show up, go to command prompt and fire the below command to find a list of ASP.NET versions installed:
    C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319>aspnet_regiis.exe -lv

    In the output, if .NET 4.0 is not listed, register it by firing the below command:
    C:\Windows\Microsoft.NET\Framework\v4.0.30319>aspnet_regiis.exe -I.
  5. It should show up as .NET 4.0 in the .NET Framework Version dropdown for the application pool.



European IIS Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: IIS - A Worker Process Has Requested A Recycle Issue

clock August 8, 2018 09:43 by author Peter
My website recently experienced an issue where one of the servers was throwing some random error. On investigating, I found the below message in the information of event viewer of that server.

IIS, by default, sets application pool to recycle after an interval of 29 hours ( 1740 minutes ). This can cause issues when using in-memory sessions.
 
To resolve this issue, either remove the automatic recycle or change it to a specific time such as 12 AM, depending on your requirement.
  • Open IIS.
  • Go to Application Pool and select the required application pool. Then, click on Recycling on the right sidebar.

  • Select your required setting and save.
 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Important point to note is that Website sessions should be designed to not be dependent on IIS restarts or IIS app pool recycles.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
More Information - https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc735298(v=ws.10).aspx



European IIS 10 Hosting - HostForLIFE.eu :: Configuring Nano Server For Remote Connections

clock July 25, 2018 11:18 by author Peter

Here, we are going to connect with the Docker engine remotely using PowerShell. For this, we can either use our local machine or a VM. Before we proceed further, make sure that your Nano Server is up and running.

Step 1 Downloading the Docker Daemon and extracting them
Create a variable that references the zip file which is in the official docker website. This zip file will have the Docker engine data that is required to create the client and server. Open the PowerShell with administrator privileges and run the below given command.

This will assign the link to that variable named,

$package = "https://download.docker.com/components/engine/windows-server/cs-1.12/docker.zip"

The next step is to invoke a web request to get the link that has been referenced in the variable called. Then, the file will be stored in a temporary storage by getting downloaded from the Docker site. For this, we have to run the following command.
Invoke-WebRequest $package ` -OutFile "$env:TEMP\docker.zip" ` -UseBasicParsing

Now, we shall expand the downloaded zip file to the programming files of our machine. For this, run -
Expand-Archive -Path "$env:TEMP\docker.zip" `
-DestinationPath $env:ProgramFiles


The final step is to create an environment variable that will add the Docker directory to the path daemon. Run the command
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", $env:Path + ";$($env:ProgramFiles)\Docker", [EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

Nano Server
Now, we have finished installing the Docker (client) and Dcokerd (engine) in "Program Files" folder. Check for these inside the Docker folder.

Step 2 Creating Environment variable to connect Docker easily
Here, Docker is client and Dockerd is engine. Now, we are going to configure an environment variable that will store the DNS name of our Nano Server and connect with it. For this, run the below command.
[Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("DOCKER_HOST","nanoserver007.southindia.cloudapp.azure.com",[EnvironmentVariableTarget]::Machine)

Note - Replace the DNS name with your Nano Server DNS or IP.

Now, open the new PowerShell console and run the command "docker version" . This will show you the client (Docker) and engine (Dockerd). This means we have created a connection in between these two services which we have actually downloaded from the Docker website.



About HostForLIFE.eu

HostForLIFE.eu is European Windows Hosting Provider which focuses on Windows Platform only. We deliver on-demand hosting solutions including Shared hosting, Reseller Hosting, Cloud Hosting, Dedicated Servers, and IT as a Service for companies of all sizes.

We have offered the latest Windows 2016 Hosting, ASP.NET Core 2.2.1 Hosting, ASP.NET MVC 6 Hosting and SQL 2017 Hosting.


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