What does “Registration request being processed” mean?

This is a Nominet accounting status code indicating the registration status of your domain name. Even though it says “Registration request being processed.”, this also means your domain is fully registered. Once 30 days has passed, the status will change to “Registered until renewal date”.

Nominet explain the (sometimes confusing) status as follows: “This status is used after first registration but before the initial registration fee has been received.  Please note that we (Nominet) issue monthly invoices, so it is possible that if this status is displayed your registrar has not yet been invoiced for the domain name.”.

For more information, see Registration request being processed at Nominet.

Problems forwarding to AOL email addresses

AOL is constantly tightening their network to reduce spam through the network and to their users. Unfortunately this can cause problems for anyone using email forwarding addresses to their AOL accounts.

To increase your change of being able to send through the AOL network please check the following:

  1. Ensure that your forwarding email addresses are added to your AOL Safe Senders List.
  2. Check that you have a valid SPF DNS record. This is a DNS entry looking something familiar to:
    “@ IN TXT v=spf1 a:microlite1.com ~all”
  3. Ensure that your mail server IP has a reverse DNS pointer set. AOL will not allow connections from IPs that do not contain a reverse pointer. You can test this by entering the IP address or domain name here: Check Reverse DNS Pointer
  4. If you forward email to AOL from email aliases then be aware that any spam you forward to your AOL address will be marked as originating from your forwarding address and not the original address. This may result in AOL blocking your domain name in the error of assuming that it is sending SPAM into the AOL network.
  5. If you receive SPAM in your AOL inbox that is forwarded from one of your own domain names DO NOT MARK IT AS SPAM. This will result in your own domain name being blocked on the AOL network. AOL will then not allow and connections from your domain name to the AOL network.

External resources:

It is EASY to block your own domain name from sending email through the AOL mail network. If you get “Deferred: Connection refused by yourdomain.com” with your domain name in the message, you are blocked.

If you suspect that you have blocked your own domain name through the AOL network then simply await for the block to expire or contact AOL and attempt an early unblock of your domain name through the AOL support network.

Top 10 Web 2.0 Places to Post Articles

As explained time and time again, it is of utmost importance to get great Web 2.0 sites to link back to your site. You may have covered all the obvious Web 2.0 sites but there are plenty you will have missed.

We have compiled a list of 10 Web 2.0 sites of PR6 which we think you might have missed.

  1. http://www.blogspirit.com
  2. http://www.opendiary.com
  3. http://www.blogdrive.com
  4. http://www.blog.co.uk
  5. http://hubpages.com
  6. http://diaryland.com
  7. http://www.20six.co.uk/
  8. http://www.tblog.com
  9. http://weblogs.us
  10. http://blog.com

This week, make a pact with yourself to take a few hours and and sign up to each of the above services. Keep a copy of your username and passwords in a spreadsheet.

Keyword Targeting

Compile a list of keywords and key phrases that you would like to dedicate all the lovely link juice that these articles will bring to your site. Use these keywords in your anchor text which will link the article back to your site.

Putting Pen to Paper

As much of a drain that it is, write a unique article about your web site and post it. A good unique well written article will be accepted by the site owners and in time will begin to pass link juice to your site. Try not to include more than 2 links back to your site. A good rule of thumb is one link back to your root domain and one to an inside page.

SEO is a long term effort. The seeds that you sow here will help you reap the rewards of the future.

How to find files containing text in Linux

sshRe: Find files containing a specific string of text

This is useful and can save a lot of time, so this is worth remembering!

grep -lir "your text here" *

Here is what the parameters do:

  • r – search recursively in to sub directories
  • i – ignore text case
  • l – output the name of the file and not the line of text

Type man grep for more details.

My email header shows random domains in the hostname section

Re: Why does my email appear to come from domains unrelated to my account?

This is because you are using a shared hosting account. This means that your account is on a web server that also has other hosting accounts. This is normal and how shared hosting works. It means you do not have the expense of leasing your own dedicated IP address which we provide with Pro Hosting accounts.

Because the IP address is shared between all shared hosting accounts, any application that attempts to “reverse” the IP address to a hostname will erraneously pick up any domain name that is using that particular IP address because the IP address is not allocated to any single domain but to the server and all domains on that server.

If you use VPS hosting, Dedicated server hosting or Pro hosting you will not have this issue as the IP address that your site uses will be unique to your site and not shared with any other sites.