RETURN TO TRULY TEXAN WEB DESIGN home page

TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE  

Note:   Wherever you see www.yourdomain.com, substitute your website name for "yourdomain.com"
Website Issues 
How to clear your cache (to be sure you are seeing the most current version of a page) Click here
Website is down (home page and other pages will not come up)   Click here
Website has one or more pages won't come up Click here
A link on your site that goes to a different (external) website no longer works. Click here
I don't remember how to access my website statistics. Click here
 
Shopping Cart Issues
Customer has problem placing an order Click here
You use AuthorizeNet and received their order confirmation, but not the one from your website. Click here
A page or product won't come up Click here
 
Email Issues
Basic Info on Using Webmail Click here
Cannot send  
Do you send mail by logging on to your website's webmail account?    A webmail account is one you access by going to something like wmail.yourdomain.com Click here
Do you send mail using Outlook or AOL or some other program on your computer? Click here
Cannot receive  
You don't receive emails from the contact form on your website. Click here
You don't receive any emails sent to your website mail accounts (like info@yourdomain.com) Click here
Need to change email forwarding, delete account, etc. Click here
How to set up Outlook to receive mail from your website Click here
 
If your problem is not described above, please complete a Support Request.

 

 

 

Shopping Cart Problems and What to Do
A.  Customers say they cannot place orders:

 

Try placing an order yourself.     This is critical

  • If you can place an order, the cart works.  Assume that it was a temporary glitch or human error (the website visitor).

    NOTE: If you use AuthorizeNet (you'll know if you do),  place the order and enter an incorrect credit card number and submit.   If the cart is working, you will get a message that the card info was invalid (or something to that effect).  That means the cart works and communicates with AuthorizeNet as it should.   The problem is with your customer, not the cart.
    In this event, I recommend you get on your website (with the customer on the phone) and enter the order yourself.  This will help you determine if there is, in fact, a problem with the cart.

  • If you test the cart and do have a problem, please fill out a support request.
  • If you use PDShopPro as your cart, you might also search their knowledge base at http://www.pagedowntech.com.

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B.  You received the AuthorizeNet order confirmation, but not the website order confirmation email.
 

Go to the order reports page on your website to see if the order shows up there. 

  • If the order is listed, then the website's order confirmation email may be hung up somewhere en route to your mailbox.  Emails do not follow a straight path from where they are sent to their ultimate destination.  Print the order from the reports page, as you may never receive the original confirmation.
      
  • If the order is not listed, but you have received confirmation from AuthorizeNet, it meansAuthorizeNet took too long to send the credit card confirmation message back to your shopping cart.   There is no solution for this problem and it can occur with any type of shopping cart.  You will have to call the customer and take the order over the phone. 
    Fortunately, this only occurs once or twice a year when AuthorizeNet's servers get overwhelmed
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C. A particular page or product doesn't come up. (If the problem occurs during checkout, see "A" above))
 

Have you added or changed the product recently?   If so:

  • Make sure the Product ID does not contain spaces or any characters but letters or numbers.
  • Make sure none of the fields - Product name, description, etc. - ends with an exclamation point or / or >.  

If you have not added or edited the product recently and you know it's worked before, please complete a support request.

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Broken Pages or Links

First, clear the browser's cookies & cached files

In Internet Explorer 7, click:

  • Tools
  • Internet Options
  • You will be on the General Tab.  In the section called Browsing History, click Delete
  • Click Delete files to get rid of all temporary pages that the browser has stored. You are not deleting anything important.
  • Click Delete cookies to get rid of any spyware or tracking cookies that websites may have stored on your computer.
  • Click Close
  • Back on the General tab, in the Browsing History section, click Settings
  • Choose the first option "Every time I visit the webpage"
  • Say OK
  • OK

That should help ensure that you are always viewing the most current page.

 

If the problem still exists, contact your web designer.  
If that's me, fill out a support request

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Your website doesn't come up

Your domain name has probably expired

 
  • Go here:  http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jsp
    Enter your domain name (without the www) in the box and hit submit.
       Example:  trulytexan.com  
    Review the information that gets returned to see registration start and end dates.
    If it has expired, dontact the Registrar* to renew your domain name.  


    Otherwise, contact your web host.  If that's Truly Texan, fill out a support request
*Your registrar might be me,  Network Solutions, DROA,  GoDaddy, or one of many others.  
If you registered it with our service, the Registrar will show as Wild West Domains.   To reinstate it immediately, call 480-624-2500.  

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   Problems with Webmail (wmail.yourdomain.com or webmail.yourdomain.com)
Login Problems: 
 

If you cannot login to your mail account online:
First, clear the browser's cookies & cached files

If you still cannot get in and are sure you're using the correct username (always the entire email address) and password, please contact support@serverconcepts.com
Tell Martin that you are my customer and provide:
  1. your name,
  2. the website address you are trying to log into.
  3. the email address you are using to login with
  4. and the password you are using
  5. Tell him what is happening.

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Some people are not receiving mail sent from your Webmail account.
 

NOTE: If you use Outlook, Eudora, etc., this does not apply to you.

If your emails are not bouncing back to you, they are probably getting caught by the recipient's spam filter. Ask the person you're emailing to add your email address to their "whitelist" or "approved list" or address book.

Did the undelivered emails have very large attachments?   Sometimes an attachment is so large it can't be delivered to a particular mailbox but it doesn't bounce back to you.

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Cannot send mail from Outlook, Outlook Express, AOL, etc.
Contact your ISP (Internet Service Provider).
  You do not send mail through our server.  
You may have set up Outlook so it looks like it came from your website, but it doesn't really. 

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  Not receiving Contact form results from your website
 

Test it yourself as follows:
First, clear the browser's cookies & cached files

Try the contact form again.   Do not use your website email address as the "from" when you test.  Use a fake email address - or mine.

If you don't receive the form results within 2 hours, contact your web designer.    If that is me, please complete a Support Request

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Not receiving any emails addressed to your website
Have you changed Internet Service Providers?
  If so, log in to the mail account for your website and update the forwarding for your account. 
If you do not have your login info, please complete a Support Request.  
Note: For your security and ours, we only provide Email Administration access to the person whose name is on the most recent agreement with Truly Texan.
 
If you have not changed ISP's recently, send yourself an email to see if it bounces and what the bounce message is. 
 

See this site for an explanation of what the bounce messages mean.  This may help you determine the problem/solution without needing further support from us.

Forward the bounced message (with the bounce message included) to support@serverconcepts.com.
  Tell Martin you are my customer and give him your domain name and a brief description of the problem, including when it started.

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Update forwarding or add/delete/modify email accounts
 

Log in to the mail Administrator/postmaster account for your website and update the forwarding. 

If you do not have the Administrator's Email login info, please complete a Support Request 
Note: For your security and ours, we only provide Email Administration privileges to the person whose name is on the most recent agreement with Truly Texan.  If you are not that person, we will contact them to get their permission to make the change.

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Broken link to off-site website

Do a search for the page you used to link to or, if it's important enough, email the webmaster for that website and ask what happened to the page.
  When you have the replacement URL (website address), contact your webmaster.   If that's me, please complete a Support Request

 

 

 

 

 

 

The concept behind the Outlook instructions below:  

You send mail out through your ISP's server. 
You receive mail from your website via our server.

Therefore, your OUTGOING mail server settings are provided to you by your ISP. 
I give you your INCOMING mail server information.

SET UP OUTLOOK TO RETRIEVE MAIL FROM THE MAILSERVER

These instructions assume you are setting up a new email account in Outlook to retrieve mail from your website (our mailserver).  Remember: you do NOT send mail out through our mailserver. Mail from your computer always goes out through your internet service provider.  

If you already have an account set up, but it isn't working correctly, you can use the screen prints below as a guide to identify what you might have set up incorrectly.   And always check your spelling!

I did the setup below using Outlook 2003.  Your screens may be slightly different but the basics are still the same.

NOTE: To my knowledge, AOL does not let you do this.  

1. In Outlook, click Tools/Email Accounts/ then choose "Add a new email account" and click Next.  You will see this screen:

2.  Substitute your name and your domain name and your ISP's  SMTP server in the screens below.
NOTE:  The "Logon Information" should be your website email logon (entire email address) and password (that I have given you).   Replace "mydomain" with your domain name, obviously.

3.  After you've done the above, click the More Settings button on the screen above.
4.  Fill out the General tab that will come up, using the example below - but use your mail server address, your company name and your email address.

5.  Click the Outgoing Server tab and here is where you will enter the mail server information given to you by your ISP (Internet Service Provider).   It might be Roadrunner, SBC, Earthlink, or others. On this screen, you use ONLY information provided by them.  Do NOT use your website email address or a password that I give you.      (Your mail always goes out via your ISP.   Sending mail from your pc has nothing to do with your website or me.)

6.  Click the Advanced tab.  If you work on 2 computers, you may want to check the box under Delivery (below).  If you do so, be sure to check the box under that and set the days to 3 or less.  Otherwise, your mailbox might fill up and mail sent to you will start bouncing.

It is a good idea, anyway, to log in to your online mail twice a week to clean out the junk folder, making sure there is nothing of value in it. 

It is a bad idea to use webmail as your permanent mailbox.  Mailboxes are NEVER backed up.  In the event of a catastrophic hard drive crash, all mail in the folder at the time of the crash will be lost forever.

7. Click the OK button to save all these settings and on the original screen, click "Test Account Settings"     You should get all green checks as Outlook connects with our mailserver and then tests sending through your ISP's server.   If not, go back through the instructions above because I won't tell you anything different than what is shown here.

Finally, if you have multiple mailboxes for your website, you would want to repeat the process above for each mailbox (POP3 account).   Or have the mail from those other mailboxes forward to the one you just set up above.

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Go to http://wstats.yourdomain.com
Log in with the site #, username and password you were given when the site was set up, or for clients who have been with me a while, find the email I sent you in the summer/fall of 2008 and log in with that info.