What to do if your website is not working with www prefix

What to do if your website is not working with www prefix

I got a new server and a new website and now my website is not working with www prefix, but is accessible without www prefix.

The solution of this problem it has a easy fix, but it involves 2 different actions:

  1. Adding a DNS Record
  2. Redirecting a www to non-www (as this was my goal)

After I had installed a new website on a newsite.domain.com subdomain it worked perfectly, but when i type the www prefix i get “the webpage is not available” kind of error.

To put things in perspective, I use a Digital Ocean Droplet with ISPConfig 3 Server on a Debian Jessie OS. But this can work on a wide range of configurations.

Here is how I fixed this:

First step go to Digital Ocean website and sign in: 

  1. Login to Digital Ocean Account  account
  2. Go to NetworkingDomains> select yourdomain.com
  3. Add a new A Record like this: www.newsite in “Enter Name” field and your droplet IP in “Host” filed like you see below.  
  4. Hit Create A Record button and you`re done!

Remember to change with YOUR IP address of your sever.

I asume  that you already have the non www record added, if you don`t do the same thing without the www in front of your newsite subdomain like you can see below.

Note! If you have a cPannel you can add that record in your cPannel dashboard, DNS section

Second step – go to your ISPConfig dashboard and login

  1. Go to Sites> select your site  (subdomain in my case) and click on it
  2. Then open the Redirect tab
  3. At Redirect Type select R=301,L
  4. From SEO Redirect select www.domain.tld => domain.tld

This is it!

Do you have a better solution? I`ll be happy to hear about it!

How to change your ISPConfig admin password

How to change your ISPConfig admin password

When you manage more then one ISPConfig server or multiple websites, it just happens sometimes to forget the passwords (in case you didn`t write them down) or can`t find the file where you put them.

Don`t worry! There is a simple way to reset your ISPConfig admin password .

To change your ISPConfig admin password: Get your mysql password first!

/usr/local/ispconfig/server/lib/mysql_clientdb.conf.

I use putty to login to my console. You can also do this in virtual console from your droplet.

So, let`s go!

– In the terminal type the commands below, in the right order as shown:

mysql -u root -p

– select your database

use dbispconfig;

– And insert the next query

UPDATE sys_user SET passwort = md5('newpass') WHERE username = 'admin';

(Replace your “newpass” with one that you desire.)

After this you can login again with your user and new password through server interface.

This is all that you have to do!