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If you are an administrator, then first login to your Plesk Control Panel and select the domain in question (if you have more than one), click on the Mail icon and  then click on the Autoresponders icon.

If you are a general email user, login to your Control Panel using your email user name and password and  then click on the Autoresponders icon.

Autoresponder Admin

Here you are able to ‘Add New Autoresponder’ – and as add many as you like.

The ‘Add New Autoresponder’ screen allows various setting and is pretty straightforward…

After naming your Autoresponder (eg. Holiday) you can then choose to forward the original email on to another user (eg. work colleague). Once you have then cofigured the conditions for which a responder must be applied, you are then able to detail your automated response text (that will be sent back to the email sender).

Finally, you can set limts as well as add an attachment to your response emails should you wish.

When you are done, be sure to enable each autoresponder you have setup, this is done by toggling it on/off. Also ensure the overall Autoresponder is set to on/off (which turns on/off the entire autoresponder service) otherwise your autorepsonders will not work as planned.

• How to compose a message using stationery in Outlook Express
• How to configure default stationery in Outlook Express
• How to automatically add a signature or vCardin Outlook Express
• How to create custom stationery in Outlook Express

How to Compose a Message Using Stationery in Outlook Express

To compose a message using stationery, follow these steps:

1. Under the Compose menu, click New Message Using, and then click the stationery design you want to use. In Outlook Express 5, click New Message Using on the Message menu, and then choose the stationery design you want. If the stationery design you want to use is not on the list, click More Stationery to view more stationery designs.
2. Address and compose your message, and then click Send.

How to Configure Default Stationery in Outlook Express

To configure Outlook Express to open all new messages with a default stationery type, you need to do the following:

1. Under the Tools menu, click Stationery. In Outlook Express 5, click Option on the Tools menu, click the Compose tab, and then click Stationery.
2. Click the Mail tab to configure the default Mail stationery, or click the News tab to configure the default News stationery.
3. Under When Composing New Messages Use, click This Stationery, and then click Select to choose your default stationery type.
4. Click OK, and then click OK.

How to Automatically Add a Signature or vCard in Outlook Express

When you compose a new message from the Insert menu, Business Card may be unavailable. This option is not available until you create a new business card entry by following the steps in this article.

To add an automatic signature, follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Stationery. For Outlook Express 5, select Options on the Tools menu, and then click the Signatures tab.
2. Click Signature, and then click the “Add this signature to all outgoing messages” check box to select it.
3. Type the signature in the text box, or click File and then choose a file to insert as your signature. This file can be your company logo for instance.
4. Click OK, and then click OK.

To add a Personal Business Card (vCard), follow these steps:

1. On the Tools menu, click Stationery. For Outlook Express 5, click Options on the Tools menu, and then click the Compose tab.
2. Click Signature, and then click the “Attach card to all outgoing messages” check box to select it.
3. Click New, type the information to be included in the vCard, and then click OK.
4. Click OK, and then click OK.

How to Create Custom Stationery in Outlook Express

1. Copy the .gif or .jpg graphic file that you want to use as the stationery background into the stationery folder. By default, the stationery folder is Program Files\Common Files\Microsoft Shared\Stationery.
2. Press and hold down the SHIFT key while you right-click an .htm file in the stationery folder, click Open With, and then click Notepad.
3. On the File menu, click Save As. Type the name of the graphic file you copied into the stationery folder in the File Name box, add “.htm” (without quotation marks) as the extension, and then click OK. For example, if the file is named Flower.jpg, type “Flower.htm” in the File Name box.
4. Modify the HTML code in the .htm file so that it uses the .gif or .jpg file as the background graphic.
5. Quit Notepad.

However, due to there being no need for a commercial license, and the superior amount of support available (including the excellent Mike Williams tutorials), we at Kaweb plumped for Google Maps for our new service, mappr.

The service will be primarily used to plot estate agents’ properties on a map, allowing potential homebuyers to see what real estate is available in a given area. The aims of the project were:

-    Automatic geocoding from postcode data in order to plot the markers
-    Summarise property info in a panel rather than the default info bubble
-    Real-time updating on map movement or criteria change

Automatic Geocoding

Geocoding is simply the process of turning an address into a set of latitude-longtude co-ordinates. In the case of property, we intended to essentially convert the postcode into co-ordinates, to be stored in the database. However, due to the Royal Mail’s copyright, this requires payment. There are attempts at an open database, though this remains incomplete.

Google do offer a free geocoding service via their Maps API but the UK results are somewhat variable, over a mile off in some instances. The solution was somewhat surprising – simply use another of Google’s APIs – the AJAX Search API, in Local Search mode. Using the REST interface, we were able to retrieve accurate JSON-encoded data that was simply parsed and stored. Example PHP code:

$postcode = 'WS13 6TJ';
$url = "http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/services/search/local?v=1.0&q=".urlencode($postcode);
// Note how referrer is set manually
$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, "http://www.kaweb.co.uk/");
$body = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
// Now, process the JSON string
$json = json_decode($body);
// Latitude: $json->responseData->results[0]->lat
// Longitude: $json->responseData->results[0]->lng


Display summary panel on click

Rather than use the native information bubble GInfoWindow, which we felt was rather uninspiring, we wanted to display a semi-transparent panel overlaid on the map. The key to this was to inject the HTML into the map’s holding div once the map content had been loaded. For example, using the markup below as the document’s starting HTML would mean anything within the “map” div (i.e. mappr_panel) gets overlaid when the map is rendered.

<div id="map"><div id="mappr_panel">Panel Contents</div><div>

Instead, we used our Javascript framework of choice, jQuery, in conjunction with a marker click listener.

// Create a marker called our_marker here
Event.addListener(our_marker, 'click', function(){
var contents = 'Marker ID: ' + our_marker.id;
show_panel(contents); });

function show_panel(contents){
var panel = '<div id="mappr_panel">\
' + contents + ' \
<\/div>';

$('#map').append(panel); // Puts the panel div inside the map div...
}


NOTE: jQuery’s remove() function was then used when we wanted to hide this panel.

Real-time updating on map change or criteria change

We needed the map to reload properties (incidentally we used an AJAX approach) and redraw following either a map movement (e.g. zoom, pan), or a change in search criteria.

The first was a simple case of :

GEvent.addListener(map, 'moveend', redraw_map);    // Call redraw_map() on drag / pan / zoom end

The second however, required the function to be triggered following a form change. Again, jQuery was used. By simply including class="onchange" on form elements that may change, we could harness jQuery’s selector syntax to actually apply the onchange event.

$(document).ready( function(){
$('.onchange').change(redraw_map);
}

The finished product can be seen by performing a map search at http://www.chartex.co.uk.

Remote host said: 550 OU-002 Mail rejected by Windows Live Hotmail for policy reasons. Reasons for rejection may be related to content with spam-like characteristics or IP/domain reputation problems. If you are not an email/network admin please contact your E-mail/Internet Service Provider for help. Email/network admins, please visit http://postmaster.live.com for email delivery information and support.
Having checked all know spam blacklists, we discovered that although we were not listed, Microsoft had blocked our main email server from sending emails to these accounts.

Rather frustratingly, we could only sort this issue out with them through countless emails and online form-filling. Eventually they lifted the block and could not really explain in any detail why we were blocked in the first place, except to say that:

Messages from your IP are being blocked based on the recommendations of the Symantec Brightmail  as traffic/e-mail originating from your IP matched characteristics of recent spam attacks from compromised, or ‘zombie’ infected, machines.

This would hint that one of the issues that might have caused it was an exploit on one of our clients computers. This could have been a virus that spawned spam emails to the account types in question.

To that end, we are detailing below suggested links in order to check for any infected machines within your organisation.

http://safety.live.com

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/security/downloads/default.mspx

http://antivirus.about.com/od/whatisavirus/a/zombiepc.htm

Used the trial – great, like it, and after trying to get my head around Windows Server 2008 IIS 7 and it’s reworked FTP service, Gene6 FTP Server was a breeze.

But hey, nearly fell at the first – the service would not start up after installing the licence.

A quick email to their support and they offered the following solution which works (it’s Windows DEP messing with it). Thought I’d quickly post it as I could not find the solution on the developers support site and it may help others to find the soultion more quickly.

Go to your Windows Control Panel, then > System > Advanced > Performances > DEP, and add g6ftpserver.exe to the exception list.

Recently, however, I had a problem. I created a new site with a default local directory that had over a thousand subdirectories. Upon connecting, the program began pinwheeling, presumably working its way through the many files. After a few minutes it was time for a cmd-click, force quit (ooh rhymy!). Upon relaunch, FileZilla was painfully slow to load. The FZ icon would happily bounce for a couple of seconds, but then it was pinwheel city again… one could only assume it was starting where it left off last time.

So, you’re stuck – unable to load FileZilla to change the setting that is causing FileZilla not to load. And so, as is so often the case, it’s command line to the rescue.

First, (force)quit FileZilla and open up a terminal. If you’re not already there, go to your personal user directory (/Users/yournamehere). An ls -la will reveal a hidden directory named .filezilla. Dive in and then edit filezilla.xml. The offending line reads as follows:

<Setting name="Last local directory" type="string">path/to/directory/here</Setting>

Remove that whole line, save your file, start FileZilla and enjoy port 21-action all over again! Just remember to change the local directory in the problem site before you re-connect otherwise you’ll be back to square one.

Refreshing the page would cause the mssql_connect function to fail.  A further three or four refreshes would result in further failures, until suddenly one more refresh manages to establish a connection.  This situation would repeat itself, and is completely random.  Despite months of trying to track it down when we had spare time, we just could not get to the bottom of it.

A few months ago, a result began cropping up on Google that appeared to contain some answers. Part of Microsoft’s data programmability team announced they were working a new driver for PHP for use with SQL Server 2005.  Excellent, we thought!  Of course, we haven’t been able to use this driver in a production environment yet as it is still in beta and subject to change (and change it has). However, we’ve ran tests using the driver and so far, it does appear to be more stable.  The only isssue is that the symptom we were experiencing is very difficult to replicate (if nigh-on impossible), and so we cannot know for sure if the driver has aleviated the problem.

Parts of the project are written using an excellent framework known as CodeIgniter.  We took the liberty of also writing an php_sqlsrv.dll compatible driver for it which you can download here.  To use the driver, just unzip it into a folder called “system/database/drivers/sqlsrv” and change your database.php to reflect the changes (change the driver to “sqlsrv“).  Hopefully this will help one person that was in the same boat as us!

The Microsoft SQL Server 2005 driver for PHP is a PHP 5 only extension.  It allows the reading and writing of SQL Server data from within PHP scripts. The extension provides a procedural interface for accessing data in all editions (importantly, including Express) of SQL Server 2005 and also SQL Server 2000.  The API makes use of PHP features such as PHP streams to read and write large objects.

Linux mail server

Over the last couple of months, we have slowly but surely, moved River Internet clients from the old Windows mail server on to our brand new Linux based one. The main reason for this was because of the spam filtering we have installed on this server (Spam Assassin) through Plesk. This, together with the fact that the server is more highly specified (it includes RAID, redundant power supply etc.) we feel Linux gives us much more control and more power when it comes to customisation. It’s flexibility, security and the amazingly low virus count (as opposed to Windows), make it ideal for what we need.

So is Linux secure? What about BSD (unix)?

Most of our experience has been with Linux (predominently Red Hat distributions) and although the learning curve to FreeBSD or OpenBSD would be small, Linux gives us many of the required packages and software etc we need built in. Also, the choice of Unix or Linux distribution would solely depend on the purpose you need it for. OpenBSD is an extremely secure server with many encryption options etc but for a webserver is a bit too much. We choose CentOS 5 as our main Linux distribution (based on the Red Hat core) as this is very stable and performs extremely well as a web server.

But Linux is free, are you just going for the cheap alternative?

Not at all. Yes Linux is free but that is because it has to be under licence restrictions. Some may bring up the argument that not all Linux operating systems (OS) are free but this is wrong. The actual OS itself is free or preferably open source (allows you to view the original code yourself), but what is being paid for is usually support and proprietary software that’s not allowed to be “given” away. CentOS 5 is pretty much identical to Red Hat except all the “paid” stuff is taken out and references to Red Hat is changed to CentOS 5. But we don’t use Linux because it’s free (even though that is an advantage over Windows). We use Linux because it acts as an extremely capable, stable, flexible and very secure server. A high percentage of servers around the world use Linux or Unix including larger companies such as Google and GX Networks (Pipex).

So are we totally disregarding Windows?

No – not at all, some customers request hosting on a Windows based server mainly due to their need for ASP or other Windows architecture for their sites. And, although Apache in Linux does have support for ASP, it’s not completely reliable as of this date so we prefer these websites to be hosted on our Windows 2003 servers.

Why is PHP better? Well there’s two points of view for why it’s better.

From a coders point of view, coding in PHP is a hell of a lot easier with better documentation, plenty of resources available, frameworks to work in making it quicker to get the job done and you can easily adhere to best software practices. It is incredibly flexible and can connect to a variety of databases, most commonly used is MySql database which is (in my view) a better database system to use than MS SQL, it’s syntax, extra functionality and clear documentation that MySql gives me is ace and makes any expansions/requirements needed by the client, no problem to do at all. Which is what every client wants to hear, a yes that’s possible rather than a err, well, that could be a problem.

From a clients point of view – PHP is free and doesn’t need a Microsoft platform to run on (which isn’t free, you have to pay Microsoft). The database PHP uses most commonly is MySql, which is also free, unlike MS SQL (again you pay Microsoft). The resources available in PHP are vastly greater than ASP meaning whatever a client needs from their site, it’s not a problem to do in PHP. Imagine a simple image uploading tool, in ASP you have to purchase a module _just_ to handle the images, in PHP there’s a wealth of image manipulation libraries at your finger tips at no cost.

With the purchase of River Internet we acquired some estate agent clients whose sites were coded in ASP. The next step for us will be to advise them to have their sites recoded in PHP (for which we use a great MVC framework that builds in many SEO best practices as well as other useful classes) so as to ‘future-proof’ their online marketing activity (now, in the present market, becoming more and more important as traditional advertising costs escalate).

While I’m advocating PHP here, if in another 10 years time there’s a better language out there, I’m pretty confident that we’d be using that. It doesn’t pay to be stuck in your ways when it comes to internet technologies and your clients shouldn’t have to pay for your shortcomings and not keeping an eye on trends in the future.

So for the love of all things good, can we please lay Classic ASP to rest?

Any good applications that you would like to share? Please leave the Kaweb team a message in the comments to this article!

Happy programming!