This guide explains how to add or modify one or more TXT records in the DNS zone (of a domain name) managed on the Manager Infomaniak.

Introduction

• The TXT record type allows you to insert readable text into the DNS zone of a domain name.
• This is the method generally used to help prevent spam and to verify domain ownership (Google may ask you to do this before using some of their services).

Modify the DNS zone

Refer to this other guide to manage this type of record in a DNS zone.

This guide explains how to display the IP address of a site on your Web Hosting.

Preamble

• The IPv4 address is generally the same for each site on the hosting (unless you have acquired a dedicated IP).

Display the IP address of your site

The IP address is specified on the hosting management page (Starter or containing multiple sites):

1. Click here to access the management of your product on the Infomaniak Manager (need help?).
2. Click directly on the name assigned to the relevant product.
3. Then click on the chevron ‍ to expand the Information section of this hosting.
4. The IPv4 address is displayed on the page:
   
5. The IPv6 address is also displayed in the case of paid hosting:
   

This guide explains how to move an existing website within an Web Hosting Infomaniak to another Infomaniak Web Hosting.

Preamble

• There are not many turnkey solutions for moving a website.
• Generally, few hosts offer the export or import of a complete site with its databases; this is largely due to the fact that there are many ways to build a site and just as many languages that are largely incompatible with each other.
• If the site to be transferred is built with WordPress, refer to this other guide illustrating a simplified solution.
• It is also possible to move a complete Web Hosting (read below).
• Make your life easier! If needed, **local partners recommended by Infomaniak can handle these procedures**. Launch a **free tender**. They take care of everything, freeing you from the technical details.

Manual solution: example of site transfer

To do this manually, it is necessary to:

• retrieve the web data as well as the associated databases,
• re-publish this on a site created on the destination web hosting,
• and if the associated domain name is the same, the first site will need to be deleted or renamed.

For the rest, here is an example of how to proceed:

1. Order the other Web Hosting / Cloud Server if you haven't already.
2. Create a «fake site» on this new hosting (for example dev.domain.xyz - read more below).
3. Manually copy your data via FTP and MySQL (export / import).
4. Adjust your site if necessary (database address, etc.).
5. Once you are satisfied with the «new site», delete the old one.
6. Change the name of the new site to give it its true name.

An alternative, at point 2 above, is to work with the alias www. which you can detach beforehand from your current site. Indeed, the alias www(.domain.xyz) is often installed as an alias for your site, and it is enough to detach it, which allows the creation of a site on the other hosting with the name www.domain.xyz (do not forget, at point 6, to add your alias of type "domain.xyz" without the www to this new site).

Moving entire Web Hostings

There is an automated way to move a Infomaniak Web Hosting to:

• an Infomaniak Cloud Server (if the hosting is currently shared or if the hosting is already on Cloud Server)
• another Infomaniak Organization

A Starter hosting cannot be moved but it can be converted.

This guide explains how to disable all extensions installed on your WordPress on a Web Hosting.

Preamble

• If you encounter an issue with your website, disabling WordPress extensions allows you to quickly identify if one of them is causing the problem and to draw the necessary conclusions to fix your site.
• For additional help, contact a partner or launch a free tender — also discover the role of the host.

Quickly disable WP extensions

To disable all WordPress plugins:

1. Log in to the server via FTP (need help?).
2. Go to the site location (folder corresponding to your WordPress site).
3. Rename /wp-content/plugins to /wp-content/_plugins for example
   • To disable a specific extension, rename /wp-content/plugins/PluginName to /wp-content/plugins/_PluginName for example.

This guide explains the principle of on-the-fly URL rewriting.

Introduction

• URL rewriting on the fly is a technique that allows you to change the appearance of a web page's URLs without actually altering the resource's path.
• This process is done through virtual redirects, transforming a visible URL into a more aesthetically pleasing one, while keeping the initial destination invisible to visitors.
• This method is often used to make URLs simpler and more readable, by hiding the parameters of dynamic pages.
• In addition to improving aesthetics for visitors, it is beneficial for search engine optimization, as search engines generally prefer URLs without complex parameters.

Example of URL rewriting

Consider the example of the URL: article.php?id=25&categorie=4&page=3. It can be rewritten as: article-25-4-3.html or titre-article-25-4-3.html. Here's how to configure this in a .htaccess file if article.php is located in the web/admin/ directory:

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /admin/
RewriteRule ^article-([0-9]*)-([0-9]*)-([0-9]*).html$ article.php?id=$1&categorie=$2&page=$3 [L]

• Options +FollowSymlinks : allows the use of symbolic links
• RewriteEngine on: enables the Apache URL rewriting module
• RewriteBase /admin/ : specifies the working directory
• RewriteRule: defines the rewrite rule

With this configuration, when a user accesses article-25-4-3.html, they are redirected to article.php?id=25&categorie=4&page=3 without this being visible.

Redirect to another domain

If you own multiple domains pointing to the same site, you can redirect all requests to a main domain. For example, if www.domaine.xyz and www.mon-domaine.xyz lead to the same site, but www.mon-domaine.xyz is your main domain, use this rule in the .htaccess of www.domaine.xyz:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.mon-domaine.xyz/$1 [R=301]

This will redirect all pages from www.domaine.xyz to www.mon-domaine.xyz transparently, with a permanent redirect (R=301).

Also, refer to this other guide on this topic.

This guide is for developers and webmasters experiencing issues displaying special characters (such as accents, Arabic characters, Chinese characters, emojis, etc.), whether on an Infomaniak website or in its database.

Preamble

• Common causes of incorrectly displayed characters that appear instead of special characters or emojis like ??:
  • PHP connection in utf8 instead of utf8mb4
  • MySQL table or column in latin1 or utf8 instead of utf8mb4
  • SQL file encoded differently from the import parameter
  • HTML/CSS/JS files improperly encoded
  • Missing or incorrect charset declaration on the HTML, PHP, or HTTP side
• Common solutions:
  • Use utf8mb4 everywhere: database, connections, tables, columns, files, headers
  • Validate the encoding of all files and dumps
  • Test the display of emojis, accents, and other multilingual characters
• Also refer to this other guide to force another encoding when connecting to a MySQL database.

1. Use UTF-8 or UTF-8MB4 everywhere

The utf8 encoding of MySQL does not support characters on 4 bytes, like emojis. These will display as ??. Therefore, you should use utf8mb4, which is a true complete implementation of UTF-8.

2. HTML – Correct encoding declaration

In the <head> of your HTML pages:

<meta charset="UTF-8">

Make sure that CSS/JS files are also saved in UTF-8 (without BOM).

header('Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8');

$connection = mysql_connect($host, $user, $pass);
mysql_set_charset('utf8mb4', $connection);

 $dsn = "mysql:host=localhost;dbname=ma_base;charset=utf8mb4";
$pdo = new PDO($dsn, $user, $pass, [
    PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE => PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION
]);

ALTER DATABASE ma_base CHARACTER SET = utf8mb4 COLLATE = utf8mb4_unicode_ci;
ALTER TABLE ma_table CONVERT TO CHARACTER SET utf8mb4 COLLATE utf8mb4_unicode_ci;

mysqli_query($conn, "SET NAMES 'utf8mb4'");
mysqli_query($conn, "SET CHARACTER SET 'utf8mb4'");

AddDefaultCharset utf-8
Header set Content-Type "text/html; charset=utf-8"
# Pour PHP
php_value default_charset UTF-8
php_value mbstring.internal_encoding UTF-8

iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF-8 dump.sql > dump_utf8.sql

This guide details the compatibility of Infomaniak Web hosting with IPv4 and IPv6.

Preamble

• Infomaniak supports both IPv4 and IPv6, thus ensuring optimal connectivity for all users.
• Only Starter (free) hosting plans and older hosting plans are not compatible: upgrade to a Serveur Cloud or hébergement mutualisé.
• Compatibility with IPv4 and IPv6 means that Infomaniak's hosting service allows websites to be accessible to users with both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.
• This ensures that your site can be visited by all types of devices and networks, offering an optimal experience to your users, regardless of the protocol they use to connect to the Internet.

IPv4, or Internet Protocol version 4

This is the first version of the Internet protocol widely used since the 1980s. It uses 32-bit IP addresses, which allows to identify and locate devices connected to the Internet. However, with the exhaustion of IPv4 addresses, it has become necessary to develop a new version (read more below):

• Example of an IPv4 address: 192.168.0.1
• In this example, the IPv4 address consists of four groups of numbers separated by dots…
  • Each group can contain a number from 0 to 255.
  • The address 192.168.0.1 is often used to represent a local IP address in a private network.
• Find the IP of your website: refer to this other guide…
• Get the public IP of your current Internet connection: https://chk.me/ip

IPv6, or Internet Protocol version 6

This is the latest version of the Internet protocol introduced to solve the problem of IPv4 address exhaustion. IPv6 uses 128-bit IP addresses, offering virtually unlimited addressing space. It also provides enhanced features such as security, quality of service and automatic address configuration:

• Example of an IPv6 address: 2001:0db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334
• In this example, the IPv6 address consists of eight groups of numbers and letters separated by colons…
  • Each group can contain a hexadecimal number from 0 to FFFF.
  • The IPv6 address is much longer than the IPv4 address, thus offering a much larger address space.

This guide details the use of Perl or Python scripts on Web Hosting Infomaniak.

Preamble

Here is some practical information:

• The path to the Python interpreter is /usr/bin/python.
• mod_python is not supported.
• Running scripts without the pl or cgi extension is not possible. However, a file with a .pl extension can exist and be called via a URL without the extension.

If you receive the following error message:

CGIWrap Error: Execution of this script not permitted
Execution of that script is not permitted for the following reason:
(1) Script file not found.
Request Data:Extra Path Info: /dossier/wwwdata/collection/vignettes/blabla.PL.12.34.56.gif

While the uploaded file is a simple GIF image with a filename type "blabla.PL.12.34.56.gif", this is due to the name of the files in question. To bypass the issue, simply rename your files.

This document explains how to manage incoming and outgoing connections between several hosting environments, particularly for accessing databases.

Connecting to databases between hostings

From a shared hosting environment

If you are using a shared hosting (excluding the old v1 - 60 Go formula), you have the possibility to access databases located on:

• another shared hosting environment,
• a hosting based on a Cloud Server.

It is therefore possible to share a database, establish a remote connection, or even configure cross-access between hostings.

From a Cloud Server

With a Cloud Server, it is also possible to connect to databases hosted on another Cloud Server.

• In this case, make sure that port 3306 (TCP protocol) is open for incoming traffic in the firewall.

Note: Connections to databases hosted on a shared hosting are not possible from a Cloud Server.

From another hosting provider

This guide explains how to display the absolute paths for certain web applications that need to know them.

Getting the absolute path…

… of a web hosting

For this:

1. Click here to access the management of your product on the Infomaniak Manager (need help?).
2. Click directly on the name assigned to the relevant product.
3. Click on the chevron ‍ to expand the Information section of this hosting.
4. The highlighted indication below is the location of the example site:
   

… of a website

For this:

1. Click here to access the management of your product on the Infomaniak Manager (need help?).
2. Click directly on the name assigned to the relevant product.
3. Click on the chevron ‍ to expand the Information section of this site.
4. The highlighted indication below is the location of the example site: