GoDaddy vs. WordPress: The Windows Hosting Fiasco

Edit:

So I received a rather nice communication from Mario G. of GotMVC.Com who has apparently gotten WordPress v2.5.1 to work on his Windows Deluxe hosting account. After viewing his PHPInfo results he is running PHP version 5.2.5 on Windows IIS7. As far as I know, no existing account has the IIS7 option, so only new accounts have this option, but this is a pretty good sign that GoDaddy is finally moving in the right direction with their servers and software support.

Additionally, the GoDaddy Hosting blog posted this on the 16th of June further proving their support of PHP5 and IIS 7 but only on newly opened accounts. Sounds like all of us PHP 4, IIS 6 users need to get on the phone with GoDaddy. I know I will.

Original Post:

So time and time again I see people wanting to adapt the famous WordPress blogging system to their GoDaddy hosting account, with no success. Now, if you happen to have the Linux hosting package, then you are probably thinking, ‘what are you talking about?’. Well for those of you who do happen to have their sites cozied up with the Linux package, then aside from a lack of support for certain features such as post-by-email you don’t have much to worry about. There are however hundreds, if not thousands, of people who have Windows hosting packages for various reasons such as the utilization of the .Net framework. For those of us who do rely on the Windows hosting, there is no support for PHP anymore, yet as you will find PHP pages will still run to a limited extent.

What I have come to find through my extensive research is that there is still some form of PHP support available on most every Windows server in GoDaddy’s extensive nature from what appears to be left behind from previous offerings and attempts. There are however many restrictions in place that restrict WordPress from running correctly without extreme modification to the source files. I was able to run a PHP page which output the of so wonderful ‘phpinfo()’ function. Just to give you an idea of what we are working with here is a list of the disabled functions. Bear with me, it is pretty long:

getmyinode, getopt, getrusage, extension_loaded, dl, mysql_pconnect, crack_check, crack_closedict, crack_getlastmessage, crack_opendict, fsockopen, pfsockopen, mysql_list_dbs, mysql_stat, ini_get, ini_get_all, ini_alter, ini_set, get_current_user, get_defined_constants, get_include_path, php_ini_scanned_files, php_uname, phpcredits, restore_include_path, set_include_path, set_time_limit, version_compare, zend_version, getmypid, getmyuid, getmygid, assert_options, assert, fopen, fwrite, fread, file, fpassthru, file, mail, opendir, readdir, closedir

Now, what you will find here is that a majority of the functions required to go through the WordPress installation routine, or even access your WordPress blog are disabled. Without ‘fopen()’ or ‘fwrite()’ WordPress is unable to create your custom ‘wp-config.php’ file. Without ‘ini_get()’ or ‘ini_set()’ WordPress is again unable to continue on past many of the functions. The biggest problem however that I am sure many of you are more than familiar with is the error that results when you try to connect to your MySQL database.

The problem here is that the version of PHP in place on these servers (in most cases 4.3.11) requires an updated connector to interface with MySQL 4.0 and especially MySQL 5.0 databases. The work-around here would be to convert the entire WordPress system to use the ODBC connector version 3.5.1. I have had success getting WordPress to connect to the database after modifying it to use the ODBC connector however you will find that WordPress will never populate your database with the schema it needs. This is because the ’schema.php’ file which stores the SQL to create the database cannot execute properly without all of the variables and environment information discovered in the other files that handle the WordPress installation process.

Because of this problem, unless the entire system is converted to work around all of the disabled functions and MySQL connector reliance you would have an easier time converting your entire site to PHP and using a Linux server than converting the entire WordPress installation to a GoDaddy Windows server friendly software set. Hopefully this post will serve to save some other the frustration and anger that can easily come about when you see a PHP page work on your Windows server but can’t ever seem to get WordPress actually running.

Thank you,

Geoff Kauten
www.KautenEffects.com

MySQL vs. GoDaddy: The ASP.Net Work-Around

So again, something I have come across many times over is people still having trouble connecting to MySQL databases from their GoDaddy Windows hosting accounts. First and foremost, traditional methods do not allow for this. But why you ask? The MySQL connector itself requires a full trust environment. GoDaddy has their servers limited to medium trust for security reasons. Thus, a full trust DLL will then always throw an error in a medium trust environment. This explains most all of the errors people get when trying to go about things in this manner.

Fortunately, some brilliant man went through and recompiled the DLL to work in a medium trust environment and completely saved the day for all parties interested. I personally have been using the recompiled DLL for quite some time and have never once come across a single problem with it. I wish I knew who took the time to do it though, I certainly would love to shake his hand and I am sure GoDaddy probably would too.

So, with this all having been said now lets go over some things real quick that you should NOT do. Do not call GoDaddy complaining that your MySQL database is not working with your Windows Hosting account. Unless there is a server malfunction they can do nothing for you. They are aware that MySQL when used with ASP.Net requires full trust which they also know their servers do not have. Next, do not call them asking to be moved to a server that does allow full trust. For this you will most likely get laughed at. Or at least they will laugh at you in their heads because that are actually too polite to do that to your face.

What do you do then, you ask? I have the compiled DLL available for you here and to make things even easier, I will show you how to use it. To make it even better, the average time it will take you to upgrade to this method will probably be less time than it takes to call GoDaddy customer service and get someone on the phone; it is that easy.

First: Download the file [MySQL.Data.zip ~56.4 KB] and then upload it to the “/bin” directory of your project directory.

Second: Insert the following code into your web.config file to apply the connection string globally to your project.

1    <appSettings>
2    <add key="sqlConnLive" value="server=[server address];uid=[username];pwd='[password]';database=[database]"/>
3    </appSettings>

Third: Insert the following code into whichever page of your project you are making the data connections from.

1    Imports MySql.Data.MySqlClient...  
5    Public strConn As String = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings("sqlConnLive")
6    Public myConn As MySqlConnection = New MySqlConnection(strConn)
...  
15  Dim strSelect As String = [query string]
16  Dim dataSelect As MySqlDataAdapter = New MySqlDataAdapter(strSelect, myConn)

At the end of the day what you should then have is a system that properly makes use of the recompiled DLL file and allows you to take advantage of all of the benefits of using MySQL on your GoDaddy Windows hosting account. Afterall, they do give you about 10 times as many MySQL databases as they do MSSQL databases so you should probably get used to using them. If you need a little extra help, feel free to let me know and I will see what I can do. I just don’t want to see any more people leaving the GoDaddy network over something as simple as a MySQL connector.

Thank you,

Geoff Kauten
www.KautenEffects.com

CDOSYS vs. GDForm.asp: GoDaddy’s Mail-Relay Alternative

One thing I have come across time and time again are fellow developers who are completely perplexed by the GoDaddy GDform.asp form mailer. What they often times do not realize is that this is not the only method available to them; GoDaddy also allows for the use of the CDONTS and CDOSYS functionalities. Proof of this can be found in the GoDaddy help knowledge base found here: http://help.godaddy.com/article/1485

The CDOSYS functionality is what I am going to focus on here as it is what I personally use and have had amazing results with. It uses the System.Net.Mail namespace and can be used with all of the Windows hosting accounts on the GoDaddy network. Certain hosting accounts however do have some limitations as to how many messages can go out in a day, which I will discuss later in this post. If you want to check out the GoDaddy help knowledge base article on using CDOSYS functionalities feel free to check it out at the following URL, however rest assured that I am going to simplify it for you a bit: http://help.godaddy.com/article/1073

The example I am going to show you will be using the VB.Net code system which as we all know in the .Net world, means you can easily interpret it into whichever .Net language you are using. First a little background though, my example uses the CDOSYS functionality in a relatively simplified form other than the fact that I have moved it out to a class file in all of my projects so that I may globally reference it from any page in my project without having to write to code in multiple places.

Now on to the example:

1    Imports Microsoft.VisualBasic
2    Imports System.Net.Mail
3    
4    Public Class cdosys
5        Public Function SendMail(ByVal Sender As String, ByVal Recipient As String) As Boolean
6            Try
7                Dim tstMail As MailMessage = New System.Net.Mail.MailMessage(Sender, Recipient)
8                tstMail.Subject = "CDOSYS Test Email: " & Now().ToString
9                tstMail.Body = "<html><body><center>Here is your test email.</center></body></html>"
10               tstMail.BodyEncoding = Encoding.ASCII
11               tstMail.IsBodyHtml = True
12               'Declare Mail Client
13               Dim SMTPServer As String = "relay-hosting.secureserver.net"
14               Dim sClient As SmtpClient = New SmtpClient(SMTPServer)
15               'Send Email
16               sClient.Send(tstMail)
17               'Release Objects
18               tstMail = Nothing
19               sClient = Nothing
20               Return True
21           Catch ex As Exception
22               Return False
23           End Try
24       End Function
25   End Class

Now that you have seen what we are working with, let me break it down a little bit. First things first you need to make sure you import the System.Net.Mail namespace into your project. You can either do it as I have done on line 2 of the example, or include it in your project’s web.config file. It really is up to you. Next up on line 5 we have the function I have defined to get us rolling with the email process. I have the function set to return a boolean value so that the page calling the function will know whether there were errors or not and can then handle it appropriately. Aside from that I have specified the sender and the recipient as the two ByVals. You can of course use more if you wish to enable a higher level of customization, but that is all up to your imagination as mine here is just a simple example.

Next up we have to create our MailMessage object as seen on line 7 of my example. There are about four different options here with creating a new MailMessage object such as what I have done here including the sender and recipient in the creation of the object. Alternatively you could create the object with the sender, recipient, subject, and body content all in one line. For organization and cleanliness however, I chose to leave that up to a few different processes within the example. Once we have successfully declared our MailMessage variable and created the object we move on to some of the options.

Lins 8 and 9 show how simple it is to specify the subject and body contents of the mail message. There really isn’t much to explain here other that you know have the ability to add HTML content to the body. You can also do something similar to what I have done with the subject and included the current time. I find this allows for me to keep an eye on when the mail object is created and when it actually arrives. So far I have had great results with the email arriving within 3 minutes of sending it. Moving on lets take a look at lines 10 and 11.

Both of these lines handle some of the settings pertaining to the body content. First we set the body encoding; not something you always have to do, but it never hurts. Then we move on to inform the system that the body content will actually be using an HTML format rather than just plain text. Again, pretty straight forward and simple to understand. What comes next may not make as much sense, but still have no fear.

Lines 13 and 14 are we we actually specify the GoDaddy SMTP relay’s server address, and create out object to actually mail the MailMessage object we created before. In order to get these messages off of the GoDaddy network you must specify “relay-hosting.secureserver.net” as the server of choice here. Next we create the SmtpClient object and attach it to our variable. Fortunately this process is very simple and pretty self explanatory, it is just a matter of making sure you get the server address correct.

Line 16 is what finally sends the mail message we have been working with thus far. Once we execute this then we are done with our whole mailing process and all that is left is a little cleanup. Lines 18 and 19 take care of this for us. Though there is some uncertainty as to whether this is truly required or not, it absolutely never hurts. Line 20 returns the success message to our calling page and alas we are all done here and can move on to bigger and better things.

Before I let you go though there are some things to clear up which I have often seen people confused with and of course referring back to earlier, explaining the limitations of this method. One thing I always see people ask is whether you have to include any form of credentials with this method. You in fact do not. Because it is all local to the GoDaddy network the relaying server is aware that the request is coming for a GoDaddy hosting server and as such knows it is not an outside source trying to port an open relay through them. Secondly, there are no references that need to be made to any of the global godaddy.web.config files. Since your project should presumably already be using .Net 2.0 and have the proper configurations set to make the directory the root project, then all that your project needs to see is the web.config file you have included with it. Lastly, this relay server has nothing to do with the mail relays that you are allowed for the email addresses you configure for your domain. Those simply apply only to the SMTP interactions between your email account there and the mail client you choose to use to access your emails in place of the GoDaddy WebMail system.

Now for the fun part; the limitations. If you are on a shared hosting plan there is no reference as to what sorts of limitations are in place for how many emails can be sent using the relay. The way I see it, since GoDaddy does not require any credentials they simply check to make sure it is their own hosting server making the request and because there can be thousands of sites hosted on your one shared hosting server it would be more difficult for them to determine where the request was originating versus just letting shared hosting servers have unlimited access to the relay server. However if you are on a dedicated hosting plan, they are aware of how many posts you are making to the relay server so just be aware that you are limited to 1000 outbound mails a day. Proof of this can be found in the GoDaddy help knowledge base article found here: http://help.godaddy.com/article/1167

Hopefully by now you have a decent understanding of just what all you can do with the GoDaddy system and also understand that the GDform.asp form mailer is not your only option. If you need a little extra help, feel free to let me know and I will see what I can do. I just don’t want to see any more people leaving the GoDaddy network over something as simple as a form mailer.

Thank you,

Geoff Kauten
www.KautenEffects.com