Demon

[johnd]

Does anyone know what the network settings are for the new Demon Servers?

The ones listed on the Actinic Knowledgebase do not work now that Demon have gone over to new servers. The Demon "helpdesk" is a nightmare! They won't give you the answer to your questions they just tell you what they think you need to know!

Can anyone help?

[Ben]

Hi John

I didn't know Demon had changed their servers. If the settings on the KB no longer work, could you register a query with our support team here who will help to configure your settings. We can then update the knowledge base.

Ben

[clefty]

Hi John,

I recently moved my site from the old shared hosting at Demon (uk-upload) to their new Demon webhosting servers (running Zeus). You are on one of these servers if you have a website address in the format: yourname.demonweb.co.uk. They have several 'features' in place that proved to be problematic during my changeover.

The main differences are:

1. The path to the Perl interpreter. On the old server, you needed to explicitly set the path to access the correct version (Demon run several versions for backward compatibility). Now using /usr/bin/perl will get the server to use the highest available version (5.8.0 if memory serves).

2. E-mail is tricky. The Zeus servers are heavily firewalled and from discussions with technical support, you cannot open a port on the server. The setting for SMTP server appears to need to be set to 'localhost' rather than post.demon.co.uk for the scripts to be able to get the order e-mail receipts over to the locally running mail server (Exim). However, if you are downloading the orders on a separate machine and are using Actinic's e-mail facility to send 'Order shipped' emails etc, leave the SMTP setting on this machine as 'post.demon.co.uk'

3. Upgrading some versions of Actinic 6 from Zeus is apparently difficult, although I haven't tried this myself (going for a v7 upgrade this weekend!), as a change made by Actinic to the upgrader requires the opening of a port during the upgrade which Zeus will not allow. Demon's helpdesk have several logged calls regarding these failures but no apparent workaround.

4. There is *no* specific cgi-bin on the Zeus servers - you can shove any script, be it Perl, PHP, wherever you like within the /docroot directory


The following is an export of my current Actinic network settings. I have Actinic 6.0.2 running in an acatalog directory under /docroot

HTTPPROXYMODE 0
HTTPPROXYADDRESS
HTTPPROXYPORT 80
HTTPPROXYUSER
HTTPPROXYPASSWORD
FTPPROXYMODE 0
FTPPROXYADDRESS
FTPPROXYPORT 25
FTPPROXYUSER
FTPPROXYPASSWORD
SCRIPTID 1
SCRIPTEXT .pl
SMTPHOST localhost
WEBSITEURL http://www.livingaidsonline.co.uk/
IGNOREPASSIVEERRORS false
USERELATIVECGIURLS false
PATHTOPERL /usr/bin/perl
CATALOGURL http://www.livingaidsonline.co.uk/acatalog/
CGIBINURL http://www.livingaidsonline.co.uk/
PATHFROMCGITOCATALOG ./acatalog/
CODEBASE ./acatalog/
FTPHOST YOURNODENAMEHERE.demonweb.co.uk
FTPUSERNAME YOURUSERNAME
FTPPASSWORD YOURPASSWORD
PATHTOCGIBIN ./docroot/
USEPASSIVEFTP true
FTPPATHFROMCGITOCATALOG ./acatalog/

One other point to note: if you are using Actinics shared-ssl solution you will need get your cgi path updated on their server in order to receive orders. As usual Actinic did this for me at the exact time I asked them to and the transition was seamless.

I hope this proves helpful. These settings have been working fine for me.

I can say that the Zeus servers are worth the configuring effort. They are far superior to the old offering - very fast!

I will post here after the weekend if I encounter any problems with the v7 upgrade

Rgds

Chris

[TonyF]

I've had similar problems trying to set up actinic on our 1&1 webspace. I wanted to put everything to do with the catalogue and ordering in a seperate sub directory but whatever I did actinic just froze when running the network setup wizard and specifying the cgi-bin path. It's all fine if I put the cgi-bin directory in the root and let it create it's standard acatalog directory. I can't believe that's it's not possible to use a sub directory but try as I might it just don't like it !

[wjcampbe]

@Tony,

You should have asked . I have Actinic running in a folder on 1 & 1.

[TonyF]

@Tony,

You should have asked . I have Actinic running in a folder on 1 & 1.

I'm asking - please - if I had any hair I'd be pulling it out

[wjcampbe]

@Tony
From 1 and 1 Control panel, Package Administration, Domains, click the domain name, on the Domain Destinations Settings page, click edit alongside Destination and navigate to the folder you want to use. Save the change and wait 3 hours for it to take hold.

FTP to your site and create a cgi-bin folder inside the destination folder, then use settings similar to the attached for Actinic.

[wjcampbe]

There is an error in the text file I posted at #7 (unless the subfolder is called acatalog)
PATHTOCGIBIN /acatalog/cgi-bin/ should point to the new folder - i.e PATHTOCGIBIN /newfolder/cgi-bin/

Sorry if this caused any confusion.

[TonyF]

Cheers Bill.

I tried this although I must admit I didn't wait three hours, might give it another go. The reason for the sub directory is that I've set up a sub domain with a dediciated ssl cert and I wanted to point the sub domain to a particular sub-directory. I can use acatalog which seems to work fine but really would like to use a sub-directory with a different name.

I really can't believe that all this is so difficult to set up and judging by other postings I'm not the only one.

[wjcampbe]

Tony,

The 3 hours is a direct quote from the 1 & 1 setup instructions. I did try myself one time without waiting the three hours and failed. Second time I actually left it overnight and had success after creating the (for me second) cgi-bin inside my new folder and setting permissions on the new folder and cgi-bin.

[TonyF]

Cheers Bill

Seem to have uncovered another strange and mysterious thing now. I've got a few products uploaded to start testing things out and I now find that when the Add to Cart button is clicked the following cart/checkout pages don't dispay the site colours or graphics !!! Tried deleting all the folders/files off the server and refreshing it all, seemed to work for a while then fell over again. Anyone come across this particular sweety ?

Site (test) address BTW - http://www.kbyre.kari-tek.co.uk/kbyre.html

[Mike Hughes]

The scripts are assuming that images are in the acatalog folder, but it looks as if you're running the shopping site at the web root level.

I can think of two ways of fixing this, but there may be a better solution.

1. Call all images from the acatalog folder.

2. Copy all your images into the acatalog folder. (not as efficent for vistors as they will have to call two different images when the add things to the cart.)

Mike

[TonyF]

Well, all the files/graphics are in acatalog directory, it was ok for a while yesterday but this morning it wasn't which in itself is very strange !! I'm sure you're on the right track Mike in that it's something to do with a path from the scripts in cgi-bin directory but I can't for life of me see what's wrong. A dark,quiet room is beckoning

[TonyF]

I've now re-arranged the directories (and got the sub-domian & sub directory sorted - thanks Bill). For some reason when adding to cart the number of products and value isn't updating on the left of the screen but at least I feel I've made some progress at last. Thanks guys.