Update on Site

Hi again,

Thank you all so much for helping us.  We managed to get a cheaper deal on our server and, with your help, we were able to renew our current server for another year.  Our plan is to work on our personal server over the next year so that we can get our website moved to it.  In the mean time, our site is back up and running.  

Thank you again so very much!!  God bless

-Jimmy

Hi again,

I have some updates for everyone.  First, please keep my wife in your prayers.  Her blood clot not only returned, but has gotten worse.  She is on blood thinners at the moment, but not only is this VERY dangerous for her, but we are also at risk of losing our health insurance.  If that happens, I'll have to pay full-price for insurance, forcing me to drop insurance for myself to ensure I can afford to pay for her.  (Isn't socialism great.... sigh...  oh wait, they call this "our democracy" now.  Good-ole double-speak.)

Second, our transfer to our new server FAILED!!!  We had it 98% there, but that last 2% kept crashing the site as you all seen the past few days.  We moved back to our old server, but I cannot afford it., and it's up for renewal in 2 days. We have no choice but to keep using the expensive server for a few more months while we find the help we need to get this all working on our new server.  

We desperately need help to keep the site up and running.  The current server costs around $2,000 simply because of the size of our database being too large for normal website servers.  (Who knew there was so many messages from heaven that a normal database couldn't maintain them.)  We're working with our provider to see if there are any cheaper alternatives (or monthly plans) which will unfortunately affect the website performance, but I guess we just gotta do what we have to to keep the site up.

Please say a prayer for us, and any help is SOOOOO much appreciated.

God bless.  Your Brother in Christ,

-Jimmy

 

For TECHIES Only...

We at times had gotten emails from people who want to help us with out IT things, but find out afterwards that they don't know how to manage our particular situation.  So, before we get inundated with emails with various solutions and having me respond to each with a summary of what's going wrong, if you are an IT techy and have an idea as to what I'm doing wrong here is our specific situation:

• I rebuilt a Dell PowerEdge R530 server and installed Windows Server 2016 Essentials.
  • No virtualization on it.  Would love to, but couldn't figure it out.
• We have multiple domain names with websites. 
  • AfterTheWarning.com is one of them, but I also have my business website and various subdomains that I must run as well.
  • Our websites are .Net Framework and .Net Core websites, each running on Umbraco CMS.
• Each domain is hosted at GoDaddy along with their DNS, our emails, websites and SSLs
• We do NOT have a static IP. 
  • (Way too expensive in our area, so I'll need to update the dns every once in a while when our dynamic IP changes.  I can do that though.)

What we attempted to do:

• We installed a PfSense firewall in our home and connected everything through it.
  • Got everything working on it, but I have no idea how to manage things on it such as forwarding and redirecting and allowing or blocking.  (All instructions sound greek to me.)
• We copied the websites and databases to the new server and connected them to IIS
  • Attempted to copy our existing SSLs to the new server, but not sure if we did it correctly.
  • Each website had binding to their domain name AND binding to a localhost for testing.
• We installed emails on the server using MailEnable. 
  • It's the same email system we have on the GoDaddy server.
• We then copied our DNS to Cloudflare and pointed the IP to our dynamic IP.

This so far did not work.  I was able to get 1 website working based on what was connected as the "default" website, but I need the ability of several websites and subdomains on a single machine.  Not sure what we were missing in our setup, or if we need some kind of redirect or forwarding set up to point domains.

• Next we added separate ports for each website, both non-secured and secured.
  • We also added ports to the emails in IIS
• We then added 'tunnels' in cloudflare to redirect traffic for each domain to their assigned ports.

This is where everything kept breaking and causing all the site errors you all seen the past few days.  For each site, the localhost works fine locally.  But the actual domains when used would crash the server, spiking the CPU to 100% and causing cloudflare to stop working.  My guess was that we had some kind of loop occurring from http to https and back, but I could not figure it out.  I am unsure if I have this all setup correctly, or if there is a better way of doing this (with or without cloudflare)

My goal is:

• Point the domain's DNS to our server, both A records and MX.
• Have multiple websites on our server, each set up in IIS
• Have email running on our server.
• Each site has their SSLs connected
  • Also 2 email boxes needed their SSLs set up locally as well.
• When a domain connects to our server, it is directed to the correct website in IIS.
• Set up our firewall to protect the server, but not hinder the rest of our household with restrictions and blocking everything we do.

So, if this made any sense to you and you have an idea as to what I'm doing wrong then PLEASE feel free to reach out to me.  Remember, I am NOT an IT person, but a web programmer, so I might not understand how to do certain things, especially in a cmd prompt.  

We are gonna extend our current server for a few months, so we'll have a little bit of time to work on this again.  Any help would be GREATLY appreciated!

God bless.

-Jimmy

 

 

 

Site Outages Coming

Over the next few days I'll begin the process of moving After the Warning to its new home on a new server.  Please be patient as the site WILL go down a few times during the transfer.  Also, it may take a few days for me to get the SSL working correctly.  During that process you may see a warning stating the site is unsecured and asking if you wish to proceed.  Lastly, emails may take a bit for me to respond to.  I need to save my existing emails received from our readers while transferring my email services to our new server at the same time.  

Please keep us in your prayers as we begin this huge leap.  (God knows I am NOT an IT guy at all... I can barely use my phone never mind connecting a server, switch, firewalls, and SSLs.)

Gonna be FUN!!! 

God bless
-Jimmy