My web site has stopped working

[ClaudiusTheIdiot]

Any suggestions for what to check or do would be much appreciated.

I have a small, simple web site for my business. A few pages of text, a few images on one page, url is http://www.my-company.co.uk. A few email addresses at <SomeNames>@my-company.co.uk.

I have done nothing to it for years apart from reading emails, and go to it every few months (when I remember) to check it's working. It has always been ok until a few months ago when there was a message ""This page isn’t working http://www.my-company.co.uk redirected you too many times" Clearing cookies had no effect and the same has happened each time I have tried on a number of occasions since. I've had an exchange of messages with the web hosting company and they say they have done some checks, but the problem is unchanged and they seem unwilling to help further.

I have tried different computers and web browsers and Windows 7 and 10 over a number of weeks.

The email has continued to work normally. Control panel http://www.my-company.co.uk/cpanel and http://[ip address]/cpanel work normally.

I have downloaded a home directory backup and copied the htm and jpg files to a directory and subdirectory on my local pc. They run ok, link correctly between pages, and show the images.

http://[ip address] gives a message "SORRY! If you are the owner of this website... "... email address webmaster@[same ip address] and three suggestions. The first, clearing the DNS cache, I have tried. The others "There has been a server misconfiguration" and "The site may have moved to a different server" I hope were checked by the web site hosting company.

I wrote the site in Frontpage years ago and don't do any web site work normally.

In the web site host's portal my-company.co.uk is shown as Active, with valid SSL detected. It was registered in 2001 and next due on the same date in 2021. I can't see anything in the portal that looks like an error.

[chas49]

Who is the hosting company? Fools may have specific knowledge if they know who it is.

Moderator Message:
On this occasion i think it is acceptable to post the URL of your site so we can see what's happening.

chas49 - mod

[didds]

can you in a cmd window (windows) or shell 9linux) on a system connected to the web, run

telnet <websitename> 80

- and does it connect (you may get a cleared screen and no cursor, or some bumf like

tcms@z3lcoypu:/opt/tcms/crontab_job_logs> telnet z3lcoypu 80
Trying A.B.C.D...
Connected to <some string>.
Escape character is '^]'

... or does it refuse or time out ie doesnt connect?

[Lanark]

with valid SSL detected

Does it work if you open it with an explicit HTTPS: prefix?

If so then you just need to redirect the non-secure traffic to the Secure site.

[mc2fool]

http://[ip address] gives a message "SORRY! If you are the owner of this website... "... email address webmaster@[same ip address] and three suggestions. The first, clearing the DNS cache, I have tried. The others "There has been a server misconfiguration" and "The site may have moved to a different server" I hope were checked by the web site hosting company.

This is a red herring. Unless you've paid for a unique IP address (you'll know it if you have; they're expensive), your hosting company will be hosting dozens/hundreds/thousands of websites on the same server (IP address) and if you try to go to just the IP address like that it can't know which one to go to. You have to provide the domain name.

Is this a universal problem for your site or just for the index page? I.e. does it only occur if you go to http://www.my-company.co.uk or also if you go to, e.g.
http://www.my-company.co.uk/images/mymugshot.jpg (substitute as appropriate )

Either way, before doing much of anything else, do try Lanark's suggestion of going to https://www.my-company.co.uk

Also, log in to cPanel and under the Domains section check both Domains and Redirects. In the former you're looking at Redirects To and Force HTTPS Redirect, and in the latter scrolling down and looking at Current Redirects.

Also under cPanel, go to File Manager, open Settings (top right) and turn on Show Hidden Files (dotfiles), save and Reload. Now look for files called .htaccess (yes, that's a dot at the front).

Look in both your top-level directory and in the public_html directory. If there are any try renaming them and seeing if that makes any difference. If it does rename them back and post their contents here and we can advice on what to change.

If you're still not getting anywhere go to the site and crank up the Developer Tools in your browser (if you don't know how google it) and go to the Network tab and reload the page. That should show you the network activity including any redirects.

[ClaudiusTheIdiot]

YIPPEEEE! IT WORKS!

Thank you to everyone for taking an interest. I tried all the suggestions in order and it was the one from mc2fool that worked.

Also under cPanel, go to File Manager, open Settings (top right) and turn on Show Hidden Files (dotfiles), save and Reload. Now look for files called .htaccess (yes, that's a dot at the front).

Look in both your top-level directory and in the public_html directory. If there are any try renaming them and seeing if that makes any difference. If it does rename them back and post their contents here and we can advice on what to change.

The .htaccess in the home directory is dated 2015 and the site still works with it restored. It contains only:

# Use PHP5 as default
# AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php

The .htaccess in the public_html directory is dated April 2020, and there are two others with names ...OLD and ...OLD2, all three same size (821 bytes) and all three with the same date, and times within half an hour. Also .htaccess.<10 digit number> dated 2003, size 0 bytes.

Here is the content of .htaccess from public_html

RewriteEngine on

IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^my-company.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.my-company.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[0-9]+\..+\.cpaneldcv$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/acme-challenge/[0-9a-zA-Z_-]+$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/pki-validation/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$

RewriteRule ^.*[-](\d+)/$ networko/index\.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^.*r/(.*)/$ networko/index\.php?cat=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.my-company.co.uk [R=301,L]

If I can beg a little further advice on what to change I'd be very grateful.

[kyu66]

YIPPEEEE! IT WORKS!
Thank you to everyone for taking an interest. I tried all the suggestions in order and it was the one from mc2fool that worked.

Did you try the https address as mentioned? I suspect this is at the root of the issue (as explained later on)

Also under cPanel, go to File Manager, open Settings (top right) and turn on Show Hidden Files (dotfiles), save and Reload. Now look for files called .htaccess (yes, that's a dot at the front).

Look in both your top-level directory and in the public_html directory. If there are any try renaming them and seeing if that makes any difference. If it does rename them back and post their contents here and we can advice on what to change.

The .htaccess in the home directory is dated 2015 and the site still works with it restored. It contains only:

# Use PHP5 as default
# AddHandler application/x-httpd-php5 .php

These lines are commented out, so effectively the file does nothing. It looks like historically your hosting company used PHP5 and used the AddHandler directive to choose it. Check in cPanel, but you should be on 7.x by default.

The .htaccess in the public_html directory is dated April 2020, and there are two others with names ...OLD and ...OLD2, all three same size (821 bytes) and all three with the same date, and times within half an hour. Also .htaccess.<10 digit number> dated 2003, size 0 bytes.

Here is the content of .htaccess from public_html

RewriteEngine on

IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^my-company.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.my-company.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[0-9]+\..+\.cpaneldcv$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/acme-challenge/[0-9a-zA-Z_-]+$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/pki-validation/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$

RewriteRule ^.*[-](\d+)/$ networko/index\.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^.*r/(.*)/$ networko/index\.php?cat=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.my-company.co.uk [R=301,L]

If I can beg a little further advice on what to change I'd be very grateful.

The <Limit> stuff is standard to control what sort of requests can be made to your site, nothing to change there.

The remainder sets up a set of conditions that if met results in access to your website being redirected as directed by the RewriteRule.

The very first conditions redirects any http requests to a .com address to your http.my-company.co.uk address.

You could try changing the last rule, simply change http to https.

HTH
kyu66

[mc2fool]

Here is the content of .htaccess from public_html

Ugh ... a cryptic sequence of RewriteConds/Rules is what I was afraid of ... A couple of quick questions:

(a) do you have the .com as well as the .co.uk of your domain, or is that a typo?
(b) do you have any idea what the "networko" is about? It looks like it should be a sub-directory, so if so, what's in it?

Anyway, although I'm far from an expert on this, the source of the problem is, I think, clear. AFAIAA RewriteCond-itions only apply to the next RewriteRule, so the last two RewriteRules are unconditional, i.e. will always happen, and the final one says: redirect all requests to http://www.my-company.co.uk ... which will then redirect all requests to http://www.my-company.co.uk ... which will then redirect all requests to http://www.my-company.co.uk ... etc ... etc.

So, assuming the answer to (a) is yes, I think the fix to the proximate problem would be to move that final RewriteRule to immediately after the first two RewriteConds, as so:

Code: Select all

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^my-company.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.my-company.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.my-company.co.uk [R=301,L]

That way only requests to the .com will get redirected, to the .co.uk. However, that leaves the rest of the RewriteConds and RewriteRules and I'm not sure what their purpose is and how they fit into your server's configuration, and just leaving them dangling (or removing them outright) might have other untoward effects. So, I have three suggestions:

1) As I take it that you've never edited the .htaccess yourself, everything in it must have been put there by someone in the hosting company and/or by their configuration setup, so bend their ear about it. Tell 'em you've determined (by the renaming) that the problem is in .htaccess, which they created/edited and you've never touched, so they have to fix it. Good luck.

2) As you don't seem to have much faith in your hosting company and you do have several versions of .htaccess there, take a look at them and the differences between them to see if you can figure out when it went wrong and what the last "good" version was.

3) Post your problem and the .htaccess in a forum where experts on this hang out. Stackoverflow is usually a good 'un, although I'm sure there are others. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/.htaccess

[UncleEbenezer]

Ugh ... a cryptic sequence of RewriteConds/Rules is what I was afraid of ... A couple of quick questions:

An occasional topic of mine is "mod_rewrite is obsolete". It's mostly (ninetysomething percent) true, and the main point of the talk is that most uses of mod_rewrite are based on historical baggage from a long-gone era when it was often the only tool for a hack job, and are constructed by cookery, not understanding. mod_rewrite was great in its time, but nowadays there's almost always a *much* simpler, more understandable and less error-prone alternative.

This looks to me like a case in point. With the proviso that if it arose from something the OP did with his control panel, that might offer an explanation.

Anyway, although I'm far from an expert on this, the source of the problem is, I think, clear. AFAIAA RewriteCond-itions only apply to the next RewriteRule, so the last two RewriteRules are unconditional, i.e. will always happen, and the final one says: redirect all requests to http://www.my-company.co.uk ... which will then redirect all requests to http://www.my-company.co.uk ... which will then redirect all requests to http://www.my-company.co.uk ... etc ... etc.

Indeed. With the proviso that that's a fallthrough rule, that only applies if none of the earlier rewriterules match. A configuration howler - or a bug in whatever generated the configuration.

More generally - can't fault your analysis in the abstract, but I fear that without knowing where they come from and what (and by whom) they're supposed to accomplish, it's most likely to fix the wrong problem and leave the OP no better off.

3) Post your problem and the .htaccess in a forum where experts on this hang out. Stackoverflow is usually a good 'un, although I'm sure there are others. https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/.htaccess

Asking here might actually have been the better idea. Fools haven't got for-the-zillionth-time fatigue posting helpful replies.

p.s. those <Limit>s also look like nonsense, as well as being an obsolete, over-complex and error-prone construct.

[ClaudiusTheIdiot]

Did you try the https address as mentioned?

Yes I tried when the site was not working but it didn't help. Now that it works, https works as well, for my-company.co.uk and my-company.com.
I did try all the suggestions in order until removing the .htaccess file got it working.

It looks like historically your hosting company used PHP5

Control panel PHP selector states

Current PHP version Native (5.6) (current)

with the down arrow selector offering versions to 7.3

do you have the .com as well as the .co.uk of your domain

Yes. I have mycompany.co.uk as well. I tried adding it, but it doesn't work. I'm not too concerned about that as it's mainly to prevent anyone else using it.

the fix to the proximate problem would be to move that final RewriteRule to immediately after the first two RewriteConds

Done in the version installed now, and works.

just leaving them dangling (or removing them outright) might have other untoward effects

As you can see, except for the redirection to my-company.co.uk I've left the conditions and rules as before, to minimise the changes made.

you do have several versions of .htaccess there, take a look at them

They are all the same. It looks like someone fouled it up, didn't know what they were about and cared less, then went off and forgot about it.

I take it that you've never edited the .htaccess yourself,

That's correct. I didn't even know it existed until this problem arose.

you don't seem to have much faith in your hosting company

Too right! I told then two or three times that I haven't done anything to the site for years, and it worked until a few months ago. If they had known what to look for the sign was there in that the file (and no other in the public_html directory) had been modified this year.

so they have to fix it

Tempting, but in view of their record it might be less trouble to keep them out...

Post your problem and the .htaccess in a forum where experts on this hang out.

I think I will do that. Maybe leave it a short while to make sure it continues working. There might be some security flaws that others would spot.

I'm immensely grateful to all who have taken an interest and to mc2fool for spotting the flaw. All contributions have given valuable advice. Since I know very little about web sites (though I need to learn a bit for one of the next tasks) this had the potential to soak up large amounts of time, but has been resolved quite quickly.

Here is the current version of the .htaccess file

RewriteEngine on

IndexIgnore .htaccess */.??* *~ *# */HEADER* */README* */_vti*

<Limit GET POST>
order deny,allow
deny from all
allow from all
</Limit>
<Limit PUT DELETE>
order deny,allow
deny from all
</Limit>

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^my-company.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.my-company.com$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.my-company.co.uk [R=301,L]
# 9/8/2020 v1 the two conditions have been duplicated and this rule moved from the end of the file

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mycompany.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mycompany.co.uk$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.my-company.co.uk [R=301,L]
# 9/8/2020 v2 the two conditions have been duplicated again and this redirect added

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^my-company.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.my-company.com$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[0-9]+\..+\.cpaneldcv$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/acme-challenge/[0-9a-zA-Z_-]+$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/pki-validation/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$

RewriteRule ^.*[-](\d+)/$ networko/index\.php?id=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
RewriteRule ^.*r/(.*)/$ networko/index\.php?cat=$1&%{QUERY_STRING} [L]
# 9/8/2020 commented out here and placed higher as shown above RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.my-company.co.uk [R=301,L]

contents of home directory \public_html\networko is only one file, named moban.html with contents as follows (blank lines removed)

#bbb1content1bbb#
#link1#
#bbb2content2bbb#
#link2#
#descontent#
#link3#
#flink#
#link4#
//file end

[mc2fool]

Here is the current version of the .htaccess file

Ok, well having done some searches I'm revising my recommendation a bit. It seems that the "RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI}" lines are added automatically by cPanel as part of adding the SSL certificates, and should be kept in or the next auto-renew of the certificates may not work. (I thought the .well-known/pki-validation looked familiar, as I realise I have those directories on my sites, although they're empty and there's nothing in my .htaccess files.)

Here's a couple of references, although if you search for those lines you'll find plenty.
https://webmasters.stackexchange.com/questions/115087/what-does-this-htaccess-file-do-in-this-configuration
https://forums.cpanel.net/threads/comodo-entries-added-to-htaccess.583972/

Now, I couldn't find anything about "networko" but on searching for moban.html I find that it and all but identical .htaccess lines are associated with a bit of WordPress malware. Here's a couple of references, again if you search for mobal.html you'll find plenty of others.
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/54699168/cant-find-malicious-code-creating-parseopmlo-directory
https://wordpress.org/support/topic/infected-with-malicious-redirect-malware/

Are you using WordPress? If so then you might, from those articles, have a continuous problem. If so there are what-to-do's in or in links from those two articles. I rather suspect, seeing you don't have an index.php in the networko directory that this may (fingers crossed!) have been a one-off problem.

So, if I were you I'd change the whole of the rewrite section of the .htaccess to just:

Code: Select all

RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^my-company.com$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.my-company.com$  [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^mycompany.co.uk$ [OR]
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^www.mycompany.co.uk$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[0-9]+\..+\.cpaneldcv$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/acme-challenge/[0-9a-zA-Z_-]+$
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !^/\.well-known/pki-validation/[A-F0-9]{32}\.txt(?:\ Comodo\ DCV)?$
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://www.my-company.co.uk [R=301,L]


And I'd remove the networko lines (or just comment them out if you really want to keep them for reference) and delete the networko directory and contents.....

[kyu66]

Glad you got it working.

I went through the same investigations as mc2fool, with the same conclusions. It's been a while since I have use mod-rewrite so a quick refresher was need.

One thing I would add, and that is to use cPanel to upgrade to PHP 7.3 as 5.6 is no longer supported so may contain unfixed security holes. in fact I would hazard a guess at that could be one way the moban.html file and networko references were added to your site folder structure and .htaccess files.

I had an issue some years ago with a friend's site that was having .htaccess modiifed via a flaw in PHP 5.4 that was present in shared webhosting environments. The site itself wasn't hacked, but access was gained via other websites on the same server to poison .htaccess files and add redirects to dodgy e-commerce websites.

kyu66

[ClaudiusTheIdiot]

Web site is still working after several days. Today I have replaced .htaccess with the simplified version, renamed networko and its only file moban.html as suggested by mc2fool. Also changed PHP to 7.3 as kyu66's recommendation. Site is still working, so I think the job is done and I can continue getting on with what I'm supposed to be doing. This time I have made backups and notes!
Much relief and gratitude, many thanks to all.

[tjh290633]

It may have no bearing on your problem, but I run two websites with TSOhost and I was unable to get FTP access recently.

The problem was that my IP address had probably changed and so was not in their "allowed" list of users.

TJH

[UncleEbenezer]

It may have no bearing on your problem, but I run two websites with TSOhost and I was unable to get FTP access recently.

The problem was that my IP address had probably changed and so was not in their "allowed" list of users.

TJH

That is entirely different.

For most home users (unless you pay extra for a premium service), your IP address is assigned dynamically and will routinely change. It's not reliable even to identify a session, let alone a user longer-term.

[tjh290633]

It may have no bearing on your problem, but I run two websites with TSOhost and I was unable to get FTP access recently.

The problem was that my IP address had probably changed and so was not in their "allowed" list of users.

TJH

That is entirely different.

For most home users (unless you pay extra for a premium service), your IP address is assigned dynamically and will routinely change. It's not reliable even to identify a session, let alone a user longer-term.

I had recently changed to a VPN, which may have been the reason.

TJH

[xeny]

I had recently changed to a VPN, which may have been the reason.

TJH

I can imagine that a hosting firm might by default block FTP (and SSh/SFTP) access from a VPN. Too attractive to miscreants.