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WEBMASTER ALERT! Unannounced AACA Website Hosting Change


Bob Stein

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I got a spate of emails Wednesday night and yesterday that our club web site was messed up - the information was a year old and none of the navigation was there. One of our members is the webmaster for another region and her site was having the same issues. A call to AACA National provided the answer - AACA is switching over to a new web hosting company, apparently without any transition period or notification to the webmasters. The company representative who I spoke to was very nice, but stated that Front Page issues could not be fixed. In my case, that means I can no longer use the 'Publish' feature, and will need to manually FTP content. No big issue, but we will all need to get the FTP info to log on with. On the plus side, they did get our web site fixed immediately - I just can't update it for the time being. All webmasters should review thier sites for the next few days to make sure the content made the transition intact.

UPDATE 11:45: The new hosting company responded quickly - it has changed both of my web site passwords. Unfortunately, that is not the issue as I am not able to connect to the site. Still working the issue.

Edited by Bob Stein (see edit history)
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I was able to access my region website and update today, but was not able to use the FrontPage publish tool. It looks like the new servers do not have FrontPage extensions installed or at least installed correctly. The hosting company representative I spoke with said they could not fix FrontPage errors. However, you can still use FrontPage. You need to get an FTP program (Filezilla is free and easy to use) and manually update your web site. It takes a bit longer, and you have to remember to bring over support files (images, photogallery files, etc.), but it all works. You will need to get your new username and password from AACA as the hosting company has changed them all. On the plus side, they have been very responsive to me.

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If you don't want to use a content management suite like Wordpress or Joomla it is still possible to download Microsoft Expression Web 4 from Microsoft for free. While not exactly the same as FrontPage it does allow you to create your webpages and website locally and then simply sync the changes to the hosting server, in this case the AACA server. - Bob

Butler Old Stone House Region

Club Website: www.aacabosh.org

My Website: www.centuryfarm.org

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Instructions for FrontPage users:

First of all, you CAN continue to use FrontPage to build and update your website on your local computer. The change is that you CANNOT use the ‘Publish’ feature to upload your changes to the host servers.

Update your website as usual in FrontPage, save your work, and then exit.

You will need an FTP program to upload your changes. A good, free tool is FileZilla. You can get it from CNET.com downloads page or the FileZilla site. Just type in ‘FileZilla’ in Google or another search engine.

Once you have an FTP tool loaded, you will need to get your new Username and Password, and FTP instructions from the new Hosting company (Higher Info Group).

Here are the instructions that were sent to another webmaster:

Please submit an FTP Access request with your chapter and website name to:

https://www.higherinfogroup.com/hig/main/help_desk_tickets/new

Please be sure to leave accurate contact information in your ticket.

They will send you your FTP information.

Open FileZilla (or whatever FTP program you choose.

In the Local Site box (on left) navigate to your web site files on your local machine.

Enter the information in the blocks on the top:

HOST: local.aaca.org

USERNAME: (The username assigned)

PASSWORD: (The password assigned)

Click on ‘Quickconnect'. This should bring up the remote site (your files on local.aaca.org) on the right side.

Drag the page files over first – these are usually ‘.htm’ files that will replace the existing files on the server. You will have to approve copying over files.

Next, open your ‘Images’ folder in the Local Site: files and drag the new image files over to the ‘Images’ folder on the host site.

If you use FrontPage photogalleries, you will need to open the local ‘photogalleries’ folder and drag the new photogallery file to the ‘photogallery’ folder on the remote site.

NOTE: If your home page does not update, check to see if you have an ‘Index.html’ file on the remote site. Delete it and reupdate the Index page from your local site.

Edited by Bob Stein (see edit history)
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Guest B. Ridle

Note for those webmasters who use McAfee Antivirus. You may have to toggle off McAfee's firewall to access your website on the new server. I spent an hour trying to login yesterday with the newly assigned username & password with no luck. Contacted the folks at Higher Info Group and, after some analysis on their part, it was determined my McAfee firewall wall blocking my connection to the server. Switched off the McAfee firewall, turned on the Windows firewall, and "voila"...I was able to login. Don't know if this will be true for all McAfee users, or other third party firewalls, but it was for me. Note - The McAfee firewall had never been an issue when accessing our club's website on the old AACA server, or accessing my church's website which I also maintain.

On another note, I asked the HIG folks about moving over to a new website editor (leave FrontPage behind) and begin building a new site now. I wanted to shift to WordPress. I was told that support for WordPress and DreamWeaver will be coming along later, but was not available now, so I should stick to FP for the time being.

BTW - I found the folks at Higher Info Group to be courteous and helpful. And, while I'm thinking about it, thanks to Bob Stein for all the great information he has posted!

Bob Ridle

Webmaster

Waynesboro-Staunton Region

http://local.aaca.org/waynesboro-staunton/

Edited by B. Ridle (see edit history)
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I am wondering now, there is a chapter website that is still at the local.aaca.org and I have tried to get it removed. I sent a message to Pat Buckley at HQ but it is still there. what does a person have to do to get rid of the website? I can just make it part of the MN Region web site

Thanks

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After working with the folks at Higher Info Group, I am once again able to update our Region's pages. Many thanks to Bob Stein for his work and posts. I'm currently using FileZilla and Front Page on the side as suggested by Bob. Some additional coding but most pages are working fine. Thanks again Bob. :)

Edited by Mark DeFloria (see edit history)
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  • 3 weeks later...

Just saw this thread. Looks like it'll be a couple more weeks before I will have the time to update my club's website and make this switch. I had noticed that the site didn't seem to be updating easily a little over a month ago but thought it had updated. Now it looks like it hasn't since January. Haven't used ftp for a number of years.

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  • 4 weeks later...

Finally got to working to get my club's website reset up today. They have a script set-up now that makes it as easy as Frontpage was to upload. Their help desk personnel were great, even showed me how to use the script. As Bob Stein said, they are quick to respond.

Edited by 5bird7 (see edit history)
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  • 3 months later...
For assistance with AACA-hosted web sites, you can contact the new company help desk via email at: HelpDesk@higherinfogroup.com

They have repsonded quickly to my requests.

I haven't had as good an experience with the Higherinfogroup Help Desk. Due to a hack into my Joomla editor, I changed my web site program to Weebly. After I notified the Higherinfogroup of the change, it took two weeks for them to update the DNS pointers. We are hosting a National Dual Meet in March of 2015 and our meet ad is already in the July-August issue of Antique Automobile. We needed the website to be back on line as quickly as possible so interested parties could get additional information about the meets. All you get when you send an email to higherinfogroup is an automated message that someone will contact you as soon as possible.

Roy Ireland

Tucson Region Webmaster

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