Notes on better hosting: part two, helpdesk and setting up wildcard subdomains in IIS

In the first part of the cycle of notes, I told how and why I chose windows-hosting for myself. Those who have missed the first part should fill in the gap and read . And for the rest, I'll get down to business right away. So, in this part we will talk about the first impression of the hosting, the support service, my amateurish attempts to understand how the hosting works and what needs to be done to make it work as it should.

The first steps

In the last article, I forgot to say that the moneyback program is in effect on the urine table, when you can return some of the money after using the hosting for a while and you didn’t like it. Almost everything is returned, except for some expenses (it is necessary to specify on the site).



So, last time we stopped at the time of payment for the purchase of hosting and domain. Money withdrawn, I am waiting for confirmation of registration. A few hours passed, and silence. As a person who did not deal with remote hosting, I was worried. And then I had to talk with support for the first time.



I'm not sure how things are with other hosters, but on the website urine-mail there is an excellent service “chat with an operator”. This is a kind of reception where you can contact on stupid questions, such as mine. Well, then I turned. The first thing you liked was politeness. Then you have a "good day" and "how can I help" and "if anything happens, be sure to contact." These are certainly standard phrases, but when politeness is a standard, I consider it good.

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The operator came out instantly. Somehow I had to deal with similar services in our Russian Internet. Frankly, I never waited for the operator, and after unsuccessful attempts, I never used such chat rooms again. And then look, instant response. Magic. A polite operator asked how he can help. And then I realized that there was a very big problem, which can be written down in a minus hosting, but even more in a minus to myself. This problem is knowledge of English.



In general, I assess my knowledge of the language as average, I can easily read, I understand it a little (when they speak at an average speed), but as it turned out, I get completely dumb when it comes to communication. I can still formulate something simple, and then come the Jamshuto remarks in English. In general, realizing myself a complete illiterate idiot, I began to communicate with the operator.



The operator was not just patient, it was almost a bot. I even suspected at first that the machine gun was talking to me, which of course was not the case. In general, I asked him the question of what and how, why there is no letter confirming the registration of the hosting, to which I received an answer that everything is fine, wait for 6 hours everything will be ok. It was later, I went to bed and in the morning, really, I received a letter.

Problems

The letter was cruelly disappointed. No, everything was fine, except for the fact that they sold me linux hosting, instead of windows hosting. It was a shock. So only a complete idiot could laze, and it seems I was rapidly turning into him.



The cause of the problem is this: on the site, the urine-hoste in the most prominent place is the form “start your hosting by getting a free domain”. The fact is that this form by default registers linux hosting, which is not mentioned anywhere. Acting on the installation in my head, I clicked on it, completely forgetting about the presence of different hosting sites, and when it came to entering data for registering a domain and the hosting itself, I could not even think about any other hosting option.



Another disadvantage of a urine bast is that its hosting programs are called “Business Hosting” for linux and “Business Hosting Win” for windows. As you understand, the first one does not exactly define Linux-ownership.



In short, I bought not what I wanted. The first damn lump. Climbed again to the operator in the chat. A kind operator from the very first lines of my vague English advised me to create a ticket in the center of communication. What our conversation ended. I reached the center and created such a ticket. In which, cursing his stupidity, tearfully asked for support to transfer me to another plan.



Honestly, I expected anything. I was ready for additional expenses, for the fact that they would send me and say “I am guilty myself”. But a few hours later I received a letter stating that my account was simply re-created. Behind him came a standard letter with registration information. I was pleasantly surprised. I do not know why, but I really liked the simple lack of reflection on the other side of my mistakes. It's time to deal with hosting.

Subdomains

As a perfect noob, I looked at the Plesk Panel and did not know where to poke. Frankly, I have not experienced such feelings for a long time. First of all, of course, flooded the standard project, making sure that everything works. I created databases, made sure that the new data types of SQL Server 2008 are supported. In general, I poked back and forth to get acquainted.



It took several days to build the first site, launch it and start developing it. And here there was another problem with which I patted the nerves of support. I could not configure url rewriting for subdomains. For those unfamiliar with IIS, I will explain that in this server this process takes place through setting the rules in the configuration file for the url rewriting module. From the very first attempts, it became clear that my virtual subdomains simply did not respond, which meant the DNS problem. Yes, it was necessary to configure the DNS. Do you still remember that I am an amateur in hosting? So, the Plesk Panel, with all its beauty, hid the DNS settings in a place that was completely non-obvious to me. And not finding these settings, I again climbed into the support to complain about the "problem".



As I understand now, my entire thread with support was made idiotic. If these were not “breaks,” then they were dangerously close. I will not tell all the entire thread, I can only say that the support proved to be just fine. First, they answered very quickly. Secondly, they never showed emotion, it was robots who, despite my language and stupid questions, continued to delve into the situation and direct my actions. In the end, we figured out what was happening and they poked my nose at the DNS settings, which, of course, were present in the admin panel.



But on the DNS setup, my epic subdomains are not over. After configuring the DNS, the ping began to take place, but it was still impossible to configure the url rewriting. When switching to the left subdomain, instead of getting to my domain, I got to the host server by default. Now I can explain why it is different and what needs to be done. But then I did not know this and decided that I need to contact the support again. Here one more interesting side of my support showed up: they do not delve into the difficulties that do not concern their service. Can't do something? Go learn materiel. On the one hand, I would like to have a smart consultant, but on the other hand, they are absolutely right and should not be wasted on the user's personal problems. In general, I was informed that the problem was in my code, and they could not help with anything.



I will not tell you how much time I spent on google problems and how many forums and faks I re-read. Lot. I'll tell you right away a solution that will be useful for someone, and someone will seem like a quote from the primer. The fact is that on virtual hosting in IIS, unlike Apache, you cannot configure such parameters as mod_rewrite allows. My problem on the Apache is solved in two lines, but on the IIS solution simply does not exist. Except one.



The solution is to buy a dedicated IP address. Did you know that? But here I am, and it took me a week to find out. What does a dedicated IP give? It allows you to set a default site through the plesk panel, to which all unprocessed requests will fall, which can already be analyzed through the IIS url rewrite module. Such are the cases.



Not having found the possibility of buying an IP on the website, I created a ticket saying “how can I buy IP?”. The answer came very quickly, moreover, my ticket was marked as critical. Having received the letter with reference to the purchase form, I filled out everything, paid for it and in a few hours I became the happy owner of a dedicated IP. It cost me $ 12 per year. Which is also very inexpensive. After gaining IP, all my ideas on subdomains turned out to be realized and with this the story with subdomains can be considered complete.

Summary

Support urine showed itself from the best side: competent answers, endurance, patience, zero own opinion, maximum rational answers. No ping-pong, moreover, sometimes other specialists were connected to the branch of the ticket, that is, they did not send me, but on the contrary, additional people themselves joined the discussion. Which is very pleased. When communicating for the first time, the support center for the urine detector was at its best.



That's all for now. Hope you enjoyed it.

The next part will deal with more serious disadvantages: problems with hosting, mail and freezes.