Wordpress fails to email owner when users comment on posts

When clients move their Wordpress 2.3.1 installations to us (or upgrade to 2.3.1), they may find that the usual emails they receive when users comment on posts stop being received. To resolve this issue, they must...

1. Create a wordpress email account . i.e. wordpress@yourdomain.com
2. Install the Wordpress Plugin called Comments Notifier.

If that doesn't work, remove the following line in wp-includes/pluggable.php which was added in WP 2.3.1:

228 $phpmailer->Sender = apply_filters( 'wp_mail_from', $from_email );

How can I log into cPanel securely?

You can access the secure control panel by entering:

http://www.yourdomain.com/securecontrolpanel

This encrypts the username and password so the information cannot be viewed ("sniffed.")

*Note: This does display security warnings questioning the validity of the certificate if you do not have your own SSL Certificate installed for the domain. This can be ignored and does not diminish the security of the login process.

The normal control panel access is
http://yourdomain/cpanel/

What is the difference between Shared & Dedicated IP's?
How do I get Port Access?
What type of SSL Certificate is right for me?

Shared vs. Dedicated IP's, Port Access & SSL Certificate's

Shared IP's:
Every domain name has an IP address assigned to it. An IP address is the real address of a website or server. Domain names were developed because it is difficult to remember long IP numbers like 234.123.66.7.
In shared hosting most hosting companies host several hundred websites on one server; those same sites will share one single IP address. This simplifies certain technical aspects of hosting your website. Instead of having a unique IP address for every domain, you share one IP address with all of the accounts on your server. This makes it easier to manage and maintain the servers while ensuring better stability at a lower cost.
The downside to shared IP's is that if somebody else on your server gets in trouble with another company for spamming or Phishing then your IP can get temporarily banned or blacklisted. Most hosting companies will work with the company that flagged your servers IP to ensure that this issue is resolved quickly. However some of the damage may have already been done. You may have missed important emails or messages you sent may have been rejected with out your knowledge. The Upside of shared hosting is the savings but the downside is that in exchange for those savings you are subjugating yourself to the actions of others on your server. Sharing a server can sometimes affect your sites performance and cause problems. There is one way to help avoid some of these issues.

Dedicated IP's:
By purchasing a dedicated IP your site is the only one on the internet that will be using that unique IP address. For example, if you typed http://64.233.187.99/ into your web browsers address bar you would see Google's website come up. This is their dedicated IP address and no one else's. This is their unique address on the web that has been attached to the domain name google.com.

SSL Certificates (Secure Socket Layer):
On your computer, you can see it as the little padlock in the bottom right-hand corner of your browser, when you send or collect information online. If you go to an unsecured website, you transmit information over many computers and networks, practically inviting hackers to steal this information - like passwords and credit card information. Obviously, that's not something you want to subject your customer, clients or fall prey to yourself.
SSL Cert.'s are absolutely essential for any website collecting sensitive information online. If you will be accepting credit card payments online then Rapid SSL is right for you.
Since SSL Cert.'s are Domain/IP specific and you are on a Shared IP you must first purchase a dedicated IP before purchasing or having and SSL Certificate installed on your account.

Alternative Options:
There are two ways you can get around having to purchase a Dedicated IP & Private SSL.
1. The first is by using a PayPal shopping cart or an alternative shopping cart that is hosted by another company off of your site. Your main site would still be hosted with BlueHost. However when someone goes to pay they would be redirected to the company you choose to host your shopping cart. Most businesses and customers don't like the idea of sending or being sent to a new website address to complete transactions.
2. The second is by using the BlueHost Shared SSL. This is a free SSL. The Shared SSL carries all the same levels of encryption and security that a Private SSL carries but there is a big difference. To use your SSL certificate you would point your hyperlinks that you want to be secure to https://secure.bluehost.com/~yourunixusername. When your customers look at the URL or examine the licensure of the Shared Certificate they will see that it belongs to BlueHost instead of to your specific site. This tends to cause anxiety for most customers or at least raise a flag of caution. For the sake of professionalism most companies will opt to purchase a Private SSL. Note: You cannot use the shared SSL Cert if you have purchased a dedicated IP, only when you are on the shared IP.

Port Access:
In a Shared Hosting environment, where everyone shares the same IP, some outgoing ports must be blocked. BlueHost blocks certain ports to prevent things such as security holes in the firewall and to allow us to monitor and control customers who attempt to abuse the different services that BlueHost allows to run through Port Access. The majority of services requiring specific Port Access typically are bound to the IP address which they are running on.
On a shared IP only one service could run through a specific port from that IP. This prevents all other users from accessing that specific port. Purchasing a dedicated IP will allow BlueHost to grant you access to the ports you will need to run your specific services on. This applies to both outbound and inbound connections running on non standard ports. You may also experience some increased performance on your account. Since your account will be the only account using your Dedicated IP you will be able to avoid the bottlenecking that tends to occur when a few hundred people try to squeeze through the same port.

I don't understand what the aliases or filters are in the Backup Utility Tool. What is it good for?

Aliases are used for email Forwarders, etc. in your email accounts your domain(s) being hosted on BlueHost. The cPanel Alias Backup feature backs up your account settings for these aliases -- the fact that they exist and what they are -- NOT the entire contents of Forwarded email, etc. In other words, if you have an email Forwarder set up to forward email from you@yourdomain.com to you@yourisp.com, that's a setting you've created. The cPanel Alias Backup will back up that setting information so you can restore the Forwarder setting at some later date if you have changed or lost it. It will not back up the actual contents, mail, or files of any email account.

Filters are used for filtering email for spam, etc. If you have a whole bunch of email filters you have set up for your domain emails, you can back them up. So, if at some later date you delete the email filters and then change your mind and want to restore them, you can do it by Restoring a Filter Backup you have made with the cPanel Filter Backup feature. For instance, if you have 20 email Filters set up and you ever lose these settings for some reasons, it would be a pain to remember what you have being filtered out from where. You could just use the cPanel Filter Restore to restore all these filters at the click of a button.

cPanel Alias/Filter Backups allow you to selectively backup and restore mail aliases and filters for either your main domain or specific subdomains in your account, without affecting any of the rest of your site.

How do I use the Backup utility?

The Backup area allows you to download the daily, weekly, or monthly backup file of your entire web site, or a particular MySQL, alias, or filter backup file. If your computer crashes, or your personal backups are destroyed, these files allow you to recover your site in a convenient manner (you could also use FTP to download each file, but it would take much longer as the files are not compressed).

*Important: You should keep your own backup copy of your web site as well. Do not rely solely on the backup provided by your web host. Having multiple backups in different locations provides security against permanently losing information.

*Note: A complete web site backup file includes everything - from web pages to images to scripts to access logs. A large site will have a large backup file, and will take some time to download.

To download a backup file:

1. Click on the Backup button on the home page.
2. Click on the Daily, Weekly, or Monthly backup file to download the entire system backup for the indicated time, or click on the link
underneath the required area to download an SQL, Alias, or Filter backup file. Refer to Generating a backup if you need to generate
a backup first before downloading it.
Note: To download any previous stored backups, click on the Generate/Download a Full Backup link, and click on any backup that is listed.
3. Save the file to disk.

Note for Windows users: This file is in .tar.gz format (a GZIP archive file that contains a TAR archive file). This is a common
archive format used on Unix machines, in the same way that .zip is a common Windows archive format. Most compression utilities
should be able to uncompress a .tar.gz file.

Is there a Control Panel Manual?

Yes. You can view it here:

http://www.cpanel.net/docs/cpanel/

I would like to view the statistics for my website.

Click on the icon on your control panel that says "Web/FTP Stats". Then click on the Stats Manager. Click on the stats programs that you would like to enable for your main domain and any addon domains or subdomains that you have and then save the changes. The stats programs will start gathering information at that time and will display the previous day's statistics the next day.

To view the statistics for your main domain you should go to the Web/FTP Stats menu and select the stats program you enabled.

To view the statistics for your addon domains you should go to the Web/FTP Stats menu and click on "Subdomain Stats". Then click on the subdomain associated with your addon domain that is listed under the stats program you have enabled.

To view the statistics for your subdomains you should also go to the Web/FTP Stats menu and click on "Subdomain Stats". Then click on the subdomain that is listed under the stats program you have enabled.

I can not figure out what to do to get the Raw Access Logs to work.

Raw Access Logs allow you to see who has accessed your site without the use of graphs, charts or other graphics. You can use the Raw Access Logs menu to download a zipped version of the server's access log for your site. This can be very useful when you need to see who is accessing your site quickly.

Steps

1 To access the Raw Access Logs menu, click on the icon above the words Raw Access Logs on the main screen of your cPanel interface.

2 Select the domain or subdomain you wish to view the logs for by clicking on its name below the words Please select a raw log to download:

3 Click on Save to save the log to the directory shown by your browser's save file window.

4 To view the log, open it in a zip program and unzip the file inside. Then use a text editor to open the log and view it.

Troubleshooting
You will need to use a zip program that is compatible with .gz files to unzip the logs.