Tag Archives: support

Using DKIM To Validate Emails Sent To GMail From A Custom Domain.

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by Anura Guruge
on December 15, 2023

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This is on Microsoft’s ‘System Defender’ Page. Don’t try to do this on your own!

I have my own domain for e-mails. Have had it for over 25-years. These days my e-mail, from that Domain, is hosted at ‘GoDaddy‘ — & they use Microsoft e-mail servers.

Today, I found that my e-mails to SOME GMAIL accounts were NOT going through. Lucky that I happened to ask the recipients. I didn’t get any bounce backs or anything like that. Showed that they were sent.

On a HUNCH I called up GoDaddy support. A whole new experience. Didn’t have to wait on hold for 90-minutes. Had a human responding in about 5! Wow.

And she was AMAZING. Outstanding. Understood the problem. Knew how to fix it. This ‘DKIM‘ thing. I had no idea. It was quite involved. I had to go to Windows Defender and get a key. I had to send it to her vai e-mail. She had to type it in. But, it worked.

So, a HEADS UP. If you get e-mail issues get someone to check DKIM.

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I Appear In The ‘Dean Phillips’ Campaign AD.

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by Anura Guruge
on November 3, 2023

Click to ENLARGE.
From ‘Google‘.

I saw that ‘they’ (high campaign staff) were FILMING us as we spoke (& walked back to his bus). I kind of had a HUNCH that I would appear in SOME campaign Ad. I am STILL a rarity in New Hampshire — a non-white.

I only appear FLEETINGLY in the Ad. You don’t even have to blink to miss the shot. But, that is OK. Glad it shows me deep in talk. So, as you can see it wasn’t a meaningless ‘meet-and-shake‘.

I liked him.

As I said that day itself, I would have NO PROBLEMS supporting him for President.

I could even CAMPAIGN for him — & I have NOT campaigned for ANYONE since Obama in 2012!

I Can TOTALLY Support ‘Dean Phillips’ For President. Talked With Him For 10-Mins. Today. Very Impressive.

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by Anura Guruge
on October 28, 2023

From ‘Google‘.

I lucked out (as is my wont). I was in ‘Laconia‘, this afternoon, at the same time he was. And I there are a FEW people in ‘the party’ who know me. They arranged for me to talk with him. He was heading back to his bus. I walked with him (in a light rain shower).

He assured me, right up front, that he will NOT run against Biden.

That was PARAMOUNT. I will NOT support a Third-Party candidate or anyone who plans to run against Biden.

We CANNOT — WE CANNOT — afford to have the vote SPLIT. We need every single vote.

Once that was out of the way, we had a good, productive — albeit short — chat.

He is impressive. Very personable. Very much a PEOPLE PERSON. He connects well.

Talks well. Has presence.

And he is YOUNG. He is FIT. Wow.

I can — AND WILL — support him. IF he becomes the CANDIDATE I will campaign for him, tirelessly (& with my pocketbook) like I did for ‘Obama‘ in 2008 (Primary & Election) & 2012.

‘HostGator’ Shared Hosting Servers DOWN AGAIN For A 2+ Hour Outage — The 2nd Extended Outage In 16-Days!

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by Anura Guruge
on December 11, 2022

Click to ENLARGE. Screenshot of my CHAT transcript with HostGator support.

This is becoming concerning. Second, major & lengthy OUTAGE at Hostgator within 16-days. As I documented here, HostGator shared hosting was up-and-down during all day Thanksgiving, i.e., November 24, 2022. It was pretty obvious that they were doing some sort of maintenance using the holiday as a cover.

Then this afternoon this site went down again. WordPress Jetpack informs me whenever it detects a Website outage. They started sending me notifications. I also discovered the outage, to my cost & chagrin, when I went to check the stats.

This site was down for over 2 hours.

The first person I spoke to at HostGator DENIED that it was a server issue. That was bad. It was pretty obvious it was. I quickly terminated that chat. It was a waste of time.

Tried again a few minutes later. As you can see above, the second person, quite quickly & readily admitted it was a server issue. Well, I knew that. Just wanted confirmation.

Not happy. HostGator was, till recently, immaculate. Now … Plus, support is nowhere near as good as it used to be.

Our New ‘eero 6’ Mesh Network Diagram.

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by Anura Guruge
on December 10, 2022

Click to ENLARGE.

First & foremost eero Support has been very forthcoming. I am happy about that. Within minutes of my post (a couple of days ago) that my new eero 6 network is SLOWER than my old eero 5 network they reached out to me. I am impressed & pleased.

I had to draw a network diagram for them. What I show above is a slightly simplified version of that.

I put it here, as a post, MAINLY for my own use! My blogs (& I have a couple that are private) serve as my journals — a record of my convoluted life. This way I can go searching for things down the road. I know the keywords I will use: “network diagram”. Bingo. I will be able to find this years from now. I just went & checked some of my older diagrams — which were fancier.

Click to ENLARGE. Network diagram from 2015. More detailed diagram!

‘HostGator’ Shared Hosting Was Up-and-Down During Most Of Thanksgiving Day, Nov. 24, 2022.

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by Anura Guruge
on November 25, 2022

I would like to think that they were doing some server maintenance or possibly even an upgrade — trying to sneak it in during the holiday hoping that only a few would notice. If that was the case, it would have been nicer & more professional if they had given us a heads up. C’est la vie. It is done now — I hope.

I get these automated messages from ‘WordPress‘ ‘Jetpack‘ whenever they detect a site outage. I got at least 4 of them yesterday, the one shown above the last. Per these messages at least 2 of the outages lasted for over an hour. So, I think, in total, I suffered close to 4 hours of downtime, if not more. Not happy, but not much I can do.

At one point, late in the afternoon, during the 3rd outage I contacted ‘Hostgator’ support via chat. To begin with they were not aware of the downtime. Then they confirmed that it was a server issue at their end. That I knew. I knew it wasn’t MY Website, i.e., this one (you are reading).

I am just basically documenting this. As I said before, not much I can do.

To be fair, Hostgator outages, SO FAR, have been few & far between. I hope it stays that way.

NOT Just On Twitter (Per ‘Elon Musk’), But Bots Are A Huge Problem On ‘WordPress’ Sites As Well.

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by Anura Guruge
on June 11, 2022

Click to ENLARGE. Link to WP description for this plugin.
Click image to access my February 2022 post.

Elon Musk has been vehemently complaining of late that there are too many bots on Twitter — i.e., more than 5% of Twitter accounts are bots.

Well, Twitter isn’t the only platform plagued by bots.

WordPress, from my experience, is riddled with bots.

At least in my case I see too many ‘hits’ on my site, i.e., this Website, from bots. They totally distort my traffic stats. I don’t do these posts for bots! I do them for human consumption.

Yes, as you can see from the second image above I already use a plugin to eradicate SOME blogs from this site. But, it doesn’t seem to be enough. How else can you explain all the visits I get from Azerbaijan. I am sure it is a lovely country & the people are stellar, BUT for the world of me I cannot see what folks in Azerbaijan find so intriguing about my posts! I get more hits from Azerbaijan than I do from Canada or any European country bar my native U.K. That somehow does not seem right.

I would love to learn what percentage of WordPress traffic is bot generated. 

‘WordPress’ Plugin To Foil ‘Bad Bots’ — ‘Blackhole For Bad Bots’.

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by Anura Guruge
on February 27, 2022

Click to ENLARGE. Link to WP description of this plugin.

I won’t mention the details for obvious (i.e., ‘security’) reasons but I had been noticing some incongruous traffic to this blog over the last few weeks. I had been waiting until I had some spare time to look into this. This afternoon, I did. I started by calling the OUTSTANDING, EXEMPLARY phone support at my hosting provider, ‘HostGator‘. [I am so glad that I picked HostGator as my new hosting company. They offer some really great support.]

They explained to me that this was probably BAD BOTS! I had never even thought of that. Yikes, BOTS visiting this blog. Is there nothing sacred?

They told me about this WP.org provided plugin: ‘Blackhole for Bad Bots‘. I checked it out. It is NOT a 3rd party plugin per se. WP.org supports it. I was game. Looked like exactly what I needed.

The only thing was updating the ‘robots.txt’ file. I needed help with that. HostGator AGAIN stepped in & did it for I. I am delighted.

Now, I have to wait & see if it works.

Just letting you know since this might be of use to YOU.

‘HostGator’ Web Hosting — Just Absolutely AMAZING Telephone Support Makes All The Difference.

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by Anura Guruge
on July 1, 2021

Click image to get to know ‘HostGator‘.

This post migrated over from my old, now archived,
nhlife.wordpress.com, blog.

After more than 20-years I have FINALLY got around to consolidating my Website & blog in one place — under my ‘guruge.com‘ domain. THIS IS IT!

After about a month of research & soul searching I finally opted to go with ‘HostGator‘ shared hosting & WordPress.

‘guruge.com‘ was at Weebly. I was NOT enamored with the Weebly editor. Clunky.

I tried nearly everything out there. You name it, I must have tried it.

Truth me known, I was with HostGator previously — albeit with their template-based ‘Website Builder‘. That was OK, but was too rigid.

In the end, hosted WordPress (outside of wordpress.com) made most sense for I.

But, what FINALLY & decisively made me opt for HostGator is their support.

I had been impressed with their CHAT support. It is very good. Most of the time it is from India (with a lot of female associates) & they have been OUTSTANDING. WOW.

But, I tried the 24/7 phone support a few times. The phone support tends to be from the U.S. Wow. They just go out of their way to be helpful & they know their stuff.

Yes, I know that ‘BlueHost’ & ‘HostGator’ & a number of others are ALL owned by the same ‘investment’ company. But, I think HostGator support is superior to that available from BlueHost.

PLUS, HostGator claims to give you UNLIMITED disk storage. I like that.

So, that is why I went with HostGator. I can’t say enough good things about them. And their pricing is NOT bad too — & yesterday (i.e., June 11, 2021) I could cash into their 70% off rates (as opposed to the 60% rates). SMILE.