TROUBLESHOOTING GUIDE  

This was written primarily for sites that I host on my server in Dallas.  If your site is hosted on my reseller site (www.trulywebsites.com), please log in to your account and use their support features.

But that said, much of the following applies no matter where your site is hosted.

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.

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 means AuthorizeNet 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

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

• Make sure the Product ID does not contain spaces or any special characters. It should only be letters, numbers and dashes.
• 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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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 web page"
• 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 domain name has probably expired.   If you know who you registered the domain name with, log in to that account to see if the domain has expired.  This is the most common reason that a website doesn't come up. 

If you don't remember where you registered your domain, do the following to find out:

• 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 the registration start and end dates.
  If it has expired, contact the Registrar* to renew your domain name.  
  
  If it hasn't expired, contact your web host.  If that's Truly Texan, fill out a support request

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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.

NOTE:  This ONLY applies if you are logging on to our mailserver to send mail. It does NOT apply if you are sending mail from Outlook or some other mail program.

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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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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ave different addresses.)

Log in to your mail account with your email address and password I gave you at one of these:

https://www.sconceptsmail.net/Login.aspx
or
https://mail.sconceptsemail.com/Login.aspx

(We share two webmail servers with other web hosts and the mailservers h

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 me.
  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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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

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: 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 mail server 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.

These instructions are for sites I host on my server in Dallas.  They may not work if your website is hosted at http://www.trulywebsites.com   Visit that site and log in to your account for instructions if your website is hosted there.

On your iphone, click Settings, then Mail, Contacts, Calendars

Click Add Account
Click Other
Click Add Mail Account
Enter your name, your email address, the password for your email account and whatever you want to describe this mail account

Then, Next

IMAP
Account: youremailname@yourwebsite.com

Next screen--
IMAP Account Information:
Name:  Your Name
Email:   youremailname@yourwebsite.com
Description:  Your Company

Incoming Mail Server
Host Name:  mail.yourdomainname.com
username:   youremailname@yourwebsite.com
pw:  (this should already be filled in)

Outgoing Mail Server
SMTP    mail.yourdomainname.com
No need to fill in email & password here

Advanced
Mailbox Behaviors (we'll skip cause they just tell the phone/mailserver where to file things)

Deleted Messages
Remove  After one week

Incoming Settings
Use SSL   Off
Authentication   Password
IMAP Path Prefix  /
Server Port  143

S/MIME  Off

Go to http://wstats.yourdomain.com
Log in with your domain name without the www (ex: trulytexan.com), and the username and password I gave you when we set up the site.

For clients who have been with me a while, we changed stats program and I sent you an email in the summer/fall of 2008 with your username and password.  But do use your domain name as above for the Site ID.