How to install a Let’s Encrypt SSL certificate (for Windows)

This article assumes you’ve already purchased a dedicated IP address for your account, each site you’d like to secure with a Let’s Encrypt certificate will need its own dedicated IP address. Follow the guide – https://www.aspnix.com/kb/how-to-purchase-a-dedicated-ip-address-addon/ to purchase a dedicated IP.

1. Login to the Windows control panel at https://panel.aspnix.com/
2. Click the “Web Sites” icon
3. Click the website you’d like to install the Let’s Encrypt certificate on
4. If you do not see the “SSL” tab, please follow the step below or continue to step #6
5. Click the “Switch to dedicated IP” option
6. Click the “SSL” tab
7. Click the “Install free certificate from Let’s Encrypt” button
8. Select the required options on this form and click the “Create and install Let’s Encrypt certificate” button

Congrats! Your Let’s Encrypt certificate should now be generated and installed on your website.

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How to purchase a Dedicated IP Address addon

Purchasing a dedicated IP address for your account is simple to do. Follow the steps below to purchase 1 (or more) for your account.

1. Login to the billing system at https://billing.aspnix.com/clientarea.php
2. Click “My Services”
3. Click the “Manage” button next to the hosting service you’d like to purchase the IP for
4. Click the “View Available Addons” button

From here you will be able to purchase a single dedicated IP address addon. To purchase more than 1, repeat these steps for each IP address required. You may also contact our sales / billing team to have them assign multiple IP addresses to your account.

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“System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: Access is denied”

You may encounter the following error after publishing a .net 4.5 or higher application…

System.ComponentModel.Win32Exception: Access is denied [Win32Exception (0x80004005): Access is denied] [ExternalException (0x80004005): Cannot execute a program. The command being executed was “c:\hostingspace\USERNAME\somewebsite\wwwroot\bin\roslyn\csc.exe”

There are 2 solutions that will resolve the issue.

Solution #1

1. Open NuGet Package Manager window
2. Uninstall Microsoft.CodeDom.Providers.DotNetCompilerPlatform package and rebuild & republish. (This uninstallation also removes CodeDom configuration from web.config file.)

Solution #2

Remove the system.codedom compiler config from your application’s web.config on the web server.

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What is the geo filtering module, how do I use it and what are the performance affects?

The Geo Filtering module is an IIS module that ASPnix has developed to allow website owners to filter incoming traffic from specified countries. When enabled, our module does geographical lookups on the visitor’s IP address, then does an internal check against countries the website owner has restricted. If the IP address belongs to a blocked Country, the visitor is given an IIS HTTP 403 Forbidden page. Allowed countries can browse your site like normal.

The performance of your website will not be noticeably affected. In our tests, our module adds up to 50ms to the overall response of your site. We’ve done up to 1000 requests per second and saw no negative impacts on our test website.

To activate it follow the steps:

1. Login to our control panel system
2. Select your website
3. Select the Geo Restrictions tab
4. Check the “Enabled” option
5. Select the countries you’d like to block

If you have any questions, please contact our Windows Cloud Hosting support department.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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How do I change my SQL Server database’s collation?

You can easily do this from within the Windows Control Panel. Follow the steps below to set your database’s collation.

1. Login to https://panel.aspnix.com/
2. Click SQL Server under “Databases”
3. Click the SQL Server database you wish to change the collation for
4. Click the “Database Collations” panel / drop down
5. Select the collation required for your database
6. Press the “Save” button

You’re done! You may also set the collation when creating a new SQL Server database. The “Database Collations” panel is not hidden when creating a SQL Server database, you may use the default option or select a different collation and press “Save”.

If you have any questions, please contact our support department.

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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WordPress plugin to allow sending mail using SMTP for ASPnix customers

Due to our recent PHP security changes (disabling PHP’s mail function), WordPress websites that are not configured with an SMTP plugin are no longer able to send email. The fix is super easy and only takes a minute or two to complete.

1. Install the following SMTP plugin “WP Mail SMTP” – http://wordpress.org/plugins/wp-mail-smtp/
2. Configure the plugin’s SMTP connection settings per this article – https://aspnix.com/kb/windows-shared-kb/how-do-i-send-mail-from-my-website-on-windows-shared-services/
3. Done!

Your WordPress powered website should now be able to send mail using our website mailer servers using SMTP.

(3 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Does ASPnix support fully encrypted / secured email delivery?

Yes! Our SmarterMail services fully support SSL / TLS based delivery from start to finish. Our primary SmarterMail server, our delivery (outbound) gateways, our backup MX gateways, our website mail delivery gateways all fully support encrypted / secured email delivery.

With that said however, there are exceptions and limitations. For example – a recipient’s mail server may not support secured connections for incoming mail and as a result our SmarterMail systems cannot establish a secured delivery. When our SmarterMail systems cannot establish an encryption session they will fall-back to standard delivery methods. Our SmarterMail systems will always attempt to establish an encrypted session to the receiving mail server first.

Our SmarterMail services also fully supports encrypted incoming email deliveries from 3rd party mail servers. Just as our SmarterMail servers attempt to establish secure connections to recipient servers, other mail servers also attempt to establish secured connections to us as well.

This is quickly becoming standardized and widely adopted, large service providers like Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, AOL and many others already support encrypted email delivery and many many smaller companies do as well!

You can quickly test a recipient’s mail server to see if they support encrypted mail delivery at http://checktls.com/perl/TestReceiver.pl

(4 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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IMAP IDLE vs. ActiveSync

While IMAP IDLE provides real-time notifications to your client, it differs from ActiveSync in many ways. IMAP IDLE is an extension of the IMAP protocol (as described here) and IMAP being a message protocol, it handles only email. ActiveSync (as described here) handles email, calendar, contacts, notes and tasks, and syncs them across all of your clients (that support ActiveSync, including devices).

ActiveSync for example, if you added a new contact on your phone, your desktop client would instantly also have the contact available. The same goes the other way too, if you create a new calendar event on your desktop client, your phone would instantly have the event as well.

IMAP IDLE can also only generally receive notifications for the folder you currently have selected / viewing. ActiveSync does not have this limitation and receives real-time notifications for all folders.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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What is IMAP IDLE?

IMAP IDLE is an extension of the IMAP protocol to allow the client (Outlook, Apple Mail, Thunderbird etc.) to receive real-time notifications of mailbox changes without the need for the client to keep checking the server for new messages.

While this does provide real-time notifications for changes, it does have limitations. For example, you can only receive updates for the folder you currently have selected / viewing in your email client. IE if you have the “Inbox” folder selected and you receive an email in a folder called “Job Listings” the email client will not be updated until it does a standard refresh / check for new messages.

The reason for this is due to how IMAP IDLE works. When you select a folder, the client establishes a connection to the server’s IMAP service and states that it supports IDLE and the connection remains open and constant to the server. So imagine if you had 25 folders… That would be 25 connections to the server. That may not seem like much, but do that across thousands of IMAP email clients, some with 1 folder, others with 25, some with hundreds… You can quickly see this can become a connection nightmare for the server to handle.

(2 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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Is the IMAP IDLE extension supported / available for Windows-based hosting?

Yes, Our SmarterMail services provide support for IMAP IDLE and are enabled to allow IMAP IDLE. Though while the server supports this extension of the IMAP protocol, it is up to your email client application to implement this. Email clients such as Outlook, Outlook Express, Apple Mail, Windows Mail, Thunderbird and Opera provide support for IMAP IDLE.

(1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)

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