havenswift-hosting

The best way is always going to be to do a manual upgrade. There are other threads on here that give the steps on how to do this Ian

If you have just installed a new plugin (Noodleman's one based on our conversation maybe ?) then you have probably installed the incorrect version for the version of ionCube loaders you have on your hosting Ian

http/2 is extremely difficult to implement at the moment so unless you run your own very highly customised server it is unlikely. cPanel (which most people will be running on their server) introduced http/2 in EA3 a short while ago and then in EA4 (which is now mandatory for cPanel) only a couple of months ago. However, this is when it starts to get tricky ! During the initial connection negotiation, if wanting to use http/2, the server and browser needs to establish a secure connection using either the NPN or ALPN protocols. Most versions of OpenSSL only support the older NPN protocol and for a short while that worked and allowed http/2 connections, but Google deprecated NPN in Chrome 51 (followed by almost all other browsers) and only support ALPN effectively breaking http/2 for most of the few people that had implemented it ! The very latest OpenSSL libraries do support ALPN but these havent been adopted by the majority of Operating Systems. So to fully support http/2 you need the very latest OpenSSL libraries in order to support ALPN and these OpenSSL libraries are not yet supported in most Operating Systems - although it isnt too far off. For example, CENTOS (which is the general choice for many and what we use exclusively) is currently on version 7.3 and will be supporting the latest OpenSSL libraries in 7.4 There is one further issue in that there is no upgrade path from CENTOS 6.X to 7 and most hosting servers are running 6.9 which is the latest version available. To upgrade to CENTOS 7, you need to remove all accounts to a second server (obviously ensuring that the specification is OK to run all sites) and then reload the Operating System, reload WHM/cPanel, configure all products and services and keep all fingers and toes crossed that when you move the sites back to the newly reloaded server, they all work ! We are just completing this process on the first of our many servers and it isnt an easy process but something we want to do many so we can support http/2 as soon as CENTOS 7.4 is available ! So the short answer, is that I doubt anyone running CubeCart will be running http/2 which is a shame as it is so much faster ! Ian

For anyone that uses git with CubeCart (or any other packages for that matter), cPanel have been adding a huge amount of functionality which will be included in V68 - see https://features.cpanel.net/topic/allow-users-to-install-websites-from-version-control V68 is already in Edge release status so most people will not have access to it yet, but V68 should be into general release in a few months (V66 has just been released in the last week) Ian

Agreed that this should be core functionality in CC but for some strange reason, it never has been. There was a mod for V4 and the plugin from @Noodleman for V6 but if you are VAT registered and sell to consumers or export your products to Google Merchant services, then this plugin is effectively mandatory. We have used / recommended the V6 plugin for many sites and it works extremely well and isn't so difficult to implement - we even have the skin changes built into our Retail Therapy skin so that if you use the module, it simply works out of the box ! As an aside, you should consider not using Mican as it is a skin designed for V5 and isn't being maintained or upgraded for V6 and you also don't have any mobile responsive features which you would have with a Foundation based skin. Google have a stated "mobile first" policy, so not having a responsive skin will provide your mobile visitors with a worse experience which is why Google are penalizing sites in rankings with them. Also ensure you use a SSL across the whole site - again, sites without are suffering in the rankings and Google have now started putting very bold "Insecure Site" messages for those not using a SSL Ian

Have a chat with @Noodleman as he has a solution that can be tailored to achieve this Ian

Depends what you mean by "support" ? If you mean will it run on their servers then yes, CubeCart will run on most Linux based hosting servers. If you mean support as in technical support of CubeCart itself, then no they don't and as with most hosting companies, they won't care what CMS you are running and won't have any expertise or knowledge. Not sure what you mean by "has anyone listed" ? What I can say is that we have migrated quite a lot of clients from 1&1 hosting - they, along with hostgator and godaddy are the three hosting companies that we migrate the most client's from. Ian

Upgrading will have overwritten any changes you made and replaced any missing files that could have been causing this

Firstly, upgrade to latest V6 - 5.2.16 is very old and has a lot of bugs that have been fixed including some serious security issues. Your hosting environment is also pretty old - PHP 5.4 reached end of life several years ago and you should really be using PHP 7.0 (or 7.1 is even better as long as you dont intend to use any third party plugins that are encoded with ionCube as that isnt yet available for PHP 7.1) None of the above would cause either of your issues and skin changes also would not have caused categories to not appear within the admin side of things. Have you checked the categories still are in the database ? Viewing the error_log file (and enabling it if it doesnt already appear automatically) is a useful thing to do as well Ian (originally from Wiltshire as well !)

Try switching the Sending Method from one of the SMTP methods to phpmail(), save and send a test email. CubeCart cannot validate whether this has actually been sent but the store admin email address should then receive an email. In you dont and it isnt in spam, then it is possible that your server is configured to not allow phpmail() emails to be sent (this is often disabled for security reasons). This specific problem is a recent one (within the last day or two depending on when and how the hosting server updates) and cPanel have been working on this for the past 16 hours and have discovered a major bug in a ea-libcurl package which they say prevents PHP from handling secure connections correctly. This has created problems establishing a secure SMTP authenticated session via PHP. This doesnt explain why non-secure SMTP doesnt work either or why certain servers are affected and others arent so there is more to it than that but at least they have acknowledged the bug and are actively working on a fix. There are reports from a lot of other people hosted on other cPanel based servers being affected with the same issue so hopefully a solution will be provided soon Ian

Too many redirects generally happens when you have a mismatch with SSL settings (server settings, CubeCart settings, .htaccess settings etc). You should definitely upgrade your site as already mentioned, so many bugs and security issues have been fixed since your version Ian

I agree with @Al Brookbanks and this causes a lot of issues with people blindly following recommendations on certain page speed sites. The other one I would be careful of is the CSS one ! Ian

Firstly, this is an issue that Dreamhost should be sorting out as it is their issue - but their support dept is not known for anything approaching good support ! AOL are especially bad for this type of thing (but all of the big free email providers do it to a certain degree) as they can block an IP address simply because (as Brian said) one single user has marked an email as spam/junk - so if you are on a shared IP address and are one of several hundred or more on that same IP address, then you can be affected and blocked by another user. This is one of the big reasons we always recommend anyone running a business using CubeCart or any other software, always has their site on a dedicated IP address. Worse still, many companies can block a whole /24 class of IP address (255 addresses) for problems from one of the IP addresses within that group. A block can also be caused by sending too many emails too quickly, even if they are legitimate but your hosting company will probably rate limit the sending anyway. It can often be caused by sending too many (and too many actually isnt a very high number) emails to addresses that dont exist - this is due to this being a symptom of sending to purchased email lists. It is therefore extremely important that mailing lists are cleaning on a regular basis so when sending emails out, collect any bounces where it says the mailbox doesnt exist and delete them or at least stop them being sent emails Ian

You should always upgrade to the latest version of plugins or extensions when available and in your case, the very latest version should stop people from being to download digital products when they haven't paid the correct / full amount owed Ian

Demo of the Retail Therapy skin can be seen at https://www.cubecart-demo.co.uk - this is out of the box with a couple of our plugins installed (including the two I mentioned earlier) I dont have a timescale on the full width version but it shouldnt be too long as have several other people after it as well - best bet would be to register as a client at our website and then open a ticket asking to be updated when the skin is released Ian

If you are looking to switch, then I would recommend SagePay as an alternative to WorldPay. If you want a much better alternative to PayPal, then look at Stripe Ian

OK, I have taken the above two points out of your OP. 1) You can combine WordPress with CubeCart but they are not integrated as such. You can develop a WP theme to match your CubeCart skin so tha it looks like an integrated site. We have developed custom WP themes based on existing or custom built CubeCart skins and to use them, you have a choice of : (a) CubeCart at the top level with WP installed in a sub-directory (say for example /blog) and a link to that from the CubeCart menu. This is most often used where you want to have an active blog or other manageable content. (b) WP at the top level with CubeCart in a sub-directory such as /shop and this is less commonly used but useful if the main purpose of the site is to provide a content driven site that also sells things 2) That could be accomplished using CubeCart and simply needs a custom skin. The concept of having everything full width is a good one and much more modern and is something we started to do with our Retail Therapy skin (which currently just has a full width slideshow section) and the next release will have be full width by default with the current layout as an "old style" sub-theme. However, most of that example site could be done now with that skin plus two of our plugins (Multiple Homepage Documents and Manage Site Document Location) Ian

I would very strongly advise to not use the automatic admin upgrade option until you are on 6.1.8 (we believe it is fixed once at that version although Al, Alec and myself etc ALWAYS do manual upgrades as you have so much more control) as you will certainly have problems. A good number of the other "issues" reported on here by other users over the last three to four months have been caused by incorrectly upgraded sites ! Ian

suPHP executes processes as the hosting user id and therefore all files are owned by that user and no other user on the server has access to them. DSO executes as the generic user "nobody" as will every process for every other user on that server, meaning it is far less secure. If you switch between php versions that use different handlers then you will have a huge number of permission problems Ian

Yes you can use V6 under the Open Source licence and upgrading is definitely recommended Ian

It is likely to be that PHP 5.6 and PHP 7 are running different handlers and are creating the files with different ownership. Start from scratch and create the files again under both and check the permissions and ownership and also use the Server Info to check which PHP handler you are using Ian

It is probably another case of an admin dashboard upgrade that didnt complete correctly due to the recent problems - manual upgrades have to be done until you are on at least 6.1.8 (as this is the latest version, we are not 100% sure the problems have all been fixed) - and this has create file version mismatches. A manual upgrade to 6.1.8 will fix this and if you wish to do a backup then phpMyAdmin for the database and SSH / FTP / File Manager for the files Ian

Sorry but your hosting company seems to not know what they are talking about. Optimizing the database is extremely unlikely to have any effect on this issue as the problem is your site hitting hosting limits imposed by your hosting company. 25 simultaneous connections to the database is a reasonable number so either your website is VERY busy or more likely your hosting company has issues with the configuration of the server and / or it is overloaded. Ian

Have a look under the Admin | Manage Extension menu option Ian

Why do you think that and have you checked the database to see whether encoded data for the card details has been recorded. I will ask again about the SSL - CubeCart will not display card details if you are trying to view without using https. The Card Capture module is used by so many people and for 99% of them, they are contravening PCI regulations even if you do have an SSL installed