Knowledge base

This guide explains how to transfer to Infomaniak data (Web, Mail, Domain, and even Cloud) currently hosted elsewhere. You obviously remain the owner of your data, without any loss or interruption!

Specific guides

Click on the link corresponding to your current host:

• Swisscom: complete guide to migrate Web, Mail and domain name

Guides for any other hoster

To retrieve any other data, follow the procedures below:

1. Guide to copy Web data (all PHP, HTML sites, etc. - for WordPress refer to this other guide)
    
2. Guide to copy Mail data (email addresses, mailbox content, etc.)
    
3. Guide to transfer the domain name (domain management, DNS zone, etc.)
    

You can also bring other types of data to the Infomaniak servers:

• Dropbox, Google Drive, etc. content: refer to this other guide
• Data on NAS Synology or QNAP: refer to this other guide

Why join Infomaniak?

By grouping your domain names, websites, and email addresses with Infomaniak, you simplify the management of your invoices and services. Moreover, your domains will automatically link with your site and email address. You will therefore not need to manually configure the DNS of your domains with another registrar.

Learn more about Infomaniak

• Infomaniak, the Ethical Cloud
• Infomaniak's eco-responsible approach

This guide explains how to restore backups of previous versions of your files and other web data of your accommodation Infomaniak, and how to put in place an effective backup policy if the backups made available automatically and free of charge do not correspond or more to your needs in terms of availability or security.

Web hosting (Starter, Mutualized, Cloud Server)

Take note of these guides to restore automatic backups:

• of a whole accommodation (FTP + MySQL),
• of the specific files on hosting,
• of the Specific databases,
• of a Web application (Wordpress & Apps),
• of the Cloud Server SSH crons.

Take note of these guides to save and restore:

• accommodation with Swiss Backup and Acronis (simple),
• accommodation with Swiss Backup and Restic (advanced),
• WordPress with Swiss Backup,
• WordPress with an extension.

Also take note of https://faq.infomaniak.com/snapshot.

Accommodation v1 (old 60GB offer)

• View and/or download the automatic backup (versioning)of your data on your FTP space under /backups and /backup_mysql at the root of the domain (over /web).
• Restore this data.

Email

• Restore Messages from Infomaniak automatic backups.
• Restore contacts or events of the calendar.
• Save the current content of an email account:
  • in downloading current content in local,
  • in duplicate all current content to an emergency box,
  • in copying future e-mails as they arrive to an emergency box.

Domains / DNS areas

• Restore deleted DNS records from Infomaniak automatic backups.
• Restore one expired during the period of redemption.

DNS Fast Anycast replicates your DNS field around the world to reduce latency and increase the availability of your websites.

Preamble

• With DNS Fast Anycast, your domain's DNS are replicated within multiple Presence Points (POPs) in the world (list below).
• No matter where your visitors are located, they are thus redirected to the DNS server closest to them, which on average accelerates the speed of access to your site by 34% (DNS resolution).
• In addition, if one of your DNS servers is not available, the nearest server naturally takes over and your visitors can continue to access your site.
• The replication of DNS in your domain is automatic and no changes to your code are required.

Manage DNS Fast Anycast

Prerequisites

• DNS Fast Anycast is compatible with all websites, regardless of your host.
• All you need is a domain name managed at Infomaniak: transfer management of your domain to Infomaniak if necessary
  • Be aware of this other guide to manage external domains.

To access the DNS Fast Anycast option:

1. Click here in order to access the management of your product on the Manager Infomaniak (Need help?).
2. Click directly on the name assigned to the product concerned.
3. Activate DNS Fast Anycast from the dashboard:
   

POP - 'Point of Presence'

By activating DNS Fast Anycast on your domain, your DNS will be automatically replicated at the following points of presence:

Network 1

New York, USA (2x)
Paris, France (2x)
Warsaw , Poland (2x)
Dublin, Ireland (2x)
Singapore (2x)
Johannesburg, South Africa
Stockholm, Sweden
Vienna, Austria (2x)
Frankfurt, Germany (2x)
London, United Kingdom
Dallas, USA
Los Angeles, USA (3x)
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Sydney, Australia
São Paulo, Brazil
Miami, USA (2x)

Network 2

Hong Kong, China
San José, USA
Dallas, USA
Reston, USA
Chicago, USA
Seattle, USA
London, United Kingdom
Frankfurt, Germany
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Vienna, Austria
Toronto, Canada
Sydney, Australia
São Paulo, Brazil
Johannesburg, South Africa
Miami, USA

The points of presence are divided into two networks that are randomly operated when one of your visitors accesses your website.

This guide explains how to redirect a domain name directly to another or how to automatically send visitors to your website to another page address (internal or external URL).

Introduction

• To redirect traffic, you will need to act…
  • … or on the domain name itself (it must be hosted by Infomaniak and its DNS must be Infomaniak's as well),
  • … or on the code present in your pages (page .htaccess, homepage, etc.) if you have a website.

Act on the domain name

via Web Redirection Tool

The tool available on the Manager allows you to easily redirect the domain name (or subdomain) to the Internet address of your choice.

via DNS modifications or A record

Change the DNS of the domain name or modify its A/AAAA records to direct web traffic to another provider.

Act on the page code…

… via HTML code to insert

Insert this line of code between the <head> and </head> tags of your homepage (usually named index.html):

<meta http-equiv="refresh" content="5;url=INSERT-HERE-NEW-URL">

Replace 5 with the desired wait time in seconds (0 for immediate redirection).

The search engine Google indicates that it is preferable to use a 301 redirect on the server side (read more below). The W3C also advises against using it.

… via PHP code to insert

If the site page has a .php extension, insert this header function call at the very top of the file:

header("refresh: 5; url=INSERT-HERE-NEW-PAGE-URL");

… via .htaccess file

To redirect all traffic targeting your site (regardless of the page called) to another address, insert this into the .htaccess file at the root of your site:

RewriteEngine On
RewriteRule ^(.*)$ INSERT-HERE-NEW-URL/$1 [R=301]

To target the page that should be redirected:

Redirect permanent /ancienne_page.html insérer ici adresse URL de destination

Redirectpermanent, Redirect permanent and Redirect 301 are equivalent commands.

Here is another example of redirecting a sub-section to the homepage (this directive has the advantage of working with "deep links" unlike a permanent redirect):

RewriteEngine on
RewriteRule "old/path/url "/" [L]

Refer to this other guide on this topic.

This guide explains how to find and display DNS type information for any domain name registered with Infomaniak (or elsewhere).

Domain at Infomaniak

To access your domain names and see the DNS servers indicated:

1. Click here in order to access the management of your product on the Manager Infomaniak (Need help?).
2. Click directly on the nameallocated to the product concerned.
3. Click on DNS servers in the left side menu:
   
   

Search WHOIS

To view DNS information from another domain name, use a WHOIS service as https://whois.infomaniak.com/ e.g. or https://who.is (attention to advertisements on all these third-party services).

This will give you a clear answer to the DNS situation of a domain name at a T-minute.

Often DNS are displayed in pairs and start with ns... then are followed by numbers and the name of the registrar or hoster.

Please choose the customization of your account with Custom Brand !

Optional with any Infomaniak offer or included with kSuite enterprise, discover this customization tool to make your web addresses unique, to add an image logo or slideshow to your login page to your Infomaniak Organization.

Prerequisites

• To have a domain name of which extension is supported by Infomaniak - it should be noted that it also works with a subdomain.
• Hosting your domain name at Infomaniak (transfer it to Infomaniak if necessary) or manage the DNS area of this one at Infomaniak.

Custom Brand Custom Guides

• Customize URLs and interface / disable Custom Brand
• Solve a problem:
  • verification of the associated domain
  • blockage of the associated domain

Customize your web addresses with your domain

Customize the interface of your Organization

The following interface options can be modified from your space:

• Adding your logo to the interface of your Organization.
• Added a panorama of 3 images on the login page.
• Change the color of the text and the button of the login page.
• Customization of kDrive pages.

This guide helps you identify and correct most of the email errors encountered after sending an e-mail to a recipient Be aware of this other guide if you are looking for information about errors obtained when setting up an email address in a software/mail client.

Preamble

• In general, an error message at the email level follows on from...
  • ... a poor configuration of the domain name used with your mail,
  • ... a problem at (the email provider of) your recipient.
• In any case, a delivery failure report ( Mailer Daemon or Mail Delivery Subsystem) containing the explanation is sent to the sender.

Search and identify mail error

When your message does not reach your recipient, a first failure report (Temporary Delivery Failure Report) is sent and specifies that the server will try to return your message several times.

A final non-remission report (Final Delivery Failure Report or Undeliverable Mail) sent by the correspondent's server is sent to the sender (via a pass through the Infomaniak mail server, hence the mention of Infomaniak at the beginning of most error messages that you can receive) to inform him that the email could not be delivered even after several attempts.

The notification shall contain: Always the reason for failure. Example below:

This is the mail system at host smtp-1-1234.mail.infomaniak.ch.
I'm sorry to have to inform you that your message could not be delivered to one or more recipients. It's attached below.
For further assistance, please send mail to postmaster.
If you do so, please include this problem report. You can delete your own text from the attached returned message.
The mail system anna.a@abc.xyz: host mxbw-abc-xyz.abc-ab12.abc.ch[123.456.789.00] said: 550 5.1.1
anna.a@abc.xyz recipient rejected, account administratively disabled (in reply to RCPT TO command) 

So here your correspondent's address is visibly suspended by his courier provider (account administratively disabled).

Sometimes you have to look for the reason for the error message received from its attachments (often a plain text file). Example:

Reporting-MTA: dns; mxbw.abc.ch‍ [123.456.789.00]
Received-From-MTA: dns; smtp-1-1234.mail.infomaniak.ch [12.345.678.99]
Arrival-Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2023 15:49:22 +0200
Final-recipient: rfc822; anna.a@abc.xyz
Diagnostic-Code: smtp; 552 RCPT TO:anna.a@abc.xyz‍ Mailbox disk quota exceeded
Last-attempt-Date: Tue, 01 Aug 2023 15:49:22 +0200

Here the mailbox of your external correspondent to Infomaniak seems full (Mailbox disk quota exceeded).

Most common cases

FPS Impaired

The SPF (Sender Policy Framework) record is not properly configured:

Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
From: Mail Delivery System mailer-daemon@domain.xyz
To: Anna.A anna.a@abc.xyz
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipient failed due to SPF failure:
anna.a@abc.xyz
Technical details of SPF failure:
The sender's domain domain.xyz does not have a valid SPF record. Please contact your email administrator to correct the SPF configuration.

Solution: check the configuration of your domain name and in particular SPF type registration if your website is hosted by Wix or another provider.

User Unknown

The e-mail address specified in the message is invalid or does not exist:

Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
From: Mail Delivery System mailer-daemon@domain.xyz
To: Anna.A anna.a@abc.xyz
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipient failed permanently:
anna.a@abc.xyz
Technical details of permanent failure:
The email address does not exist. Please check the recipient's email address and try again.

Solution: carefully check the recipient's e-mail address and correct it if necessary; make sure you use a valid e-mail address for the recipient.

Temporary Failure

Le serveur de messagerie du destinataire rencontre des problèmes temporaires ou est indisponible.

Solution: wait a while, then try again to send the message later. If the problem persists, contact the recipient's technical support for assistance.

Blocked by SPAM Filter (or Content Rejected)

The recipient's email server blocked the message due to anti-spam filtering rules:

Subject: Delivery Status Notification (Failure)
From: Mail Delivery System mailer-daemon@domain.xyz
To: Anna.A anna.a@domain.xyz
This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.
Delivery to the following recipient failed due to the message being rejected as spam:
anna.a@domain.xyz
Technical details of delivery failure:
The content of the message triggered the spam filters of the recipient's email server. Please review the message content and try again.

Solution: check if your message contains elements that may be considered spam (keywords, suspicious links, etc.). Contact the recipient to see if the message has been filtered into the unwanted mail folder.

Be aware of this other guide on spam Out and this other guide on spam Incoming.

Bad Reputation

The recipient's email server blocked the message due to anti-spam filtering rules:

gmail-smtp-in.l.google.com said: 550-5.7.1
Our system has detected that this message is likely suspicious due to the very low reputation of the sending domain.
To best protect our users from spam, the message has been blocked.
Please visit https://support.google.com/mail/answer/188131 for more information.

Solution: check the reputation determine if there has not recently been an involuntary exploitation of one of your email addresses for malicious purposes, e.g.

Domain Not Found (or DNS Error)

Le nom de domaine du destinataire n'a pas pu être résolu ou n'existe pas.

Solution: Check the spelling of the recipient's domain and correct it if necessary; make sure that the domain name and DNS are valid and active.

Mailbox Full

La boîte de réception du destinataire est pleine, empêchant la réception de nouveaux messages.

Solution: inform the recipient of the situation and ask them to free up space by deleting e-mails or archiving items.

This cannot happen with e-mail addresses managed by Infomaniak since they do not have no storage size limit.

Part of their network is on our block list

If the error message (obtained in principle as a result of sending from an online tool, placed on the server where your website is located, e.g. an order confirmation from the Prestashop or other online store you manage) contains the following:

host hotmail-com.olc.protection.outlook.com[104.47.30.97] said: 550 5.7.1
Unfortunately, messages from [89.123.456.789] weren't sent. Please contact your Internet service provider since part of their network is on our block list.

Solution: Change the method of sending emails. The shipment is Unauthenticated and leaves from the server with a specific IP address that is apparently blocked by the recipient for any reason (Infomaniak does not intervene to request a release). It is therefore necessary to configure the online tool to perform authenticated consignments.

Less frequent errors

Deferred - Delayed

Error message Deferred - Delayed - Warning: message still undelivered after 4 hours, Will keep trying until message is 3 days old means that the Infomaniak email server has tried to connect to your correspondent's email server to send the message but for some reason has not been able to do so. This error message specifies that the Infomaniak server will continue to try to send your message during the period specified in the error message. If, after this delay the message has still not been distributed, you will receive a final error message stating that your message could not finally be distributed and therefore your correspondent did not receive it.

Greylisting Delay

This error Greylisting Delay happens when your recipient's mail server uses, like Infomaniak, a technique called "greylisting"which imposes a temporary time limit on the first attempt to deliver a message from an unknown sender. The Daemon Mailer may eventually send an error report indicating that delivery has been delayed due to the greylisting. Error may also mention banned sender You must return your shipment a few minutes/hours later.

Message Size Exceeded / File Too Large

These errors Message Size Exceeded / File Too Largeoccur when the size of the message (or attachments) exceeds the limit allowed by the recipient's mail server. The Daemon Mailer will return an error report indicating that the delivery failed due to the exceedance of the message size.

Rate Limit Exceeded

This error Rate Limit Exceeded occurs when the sender has exceeded the frequency or volume limit allowed by the recipient's mail server. Mail servers can impose limits to prevent spam or system overload.

Malware message rejected

This error Malware message rejectedoccurs when the message contains an attachment, a link to a Dropbox-type storage site or dynamic content including in the "transmitted" part of the message (in the case of a "forward" message, e.g.). Try to return the message from the web app Mail Infomaniak (online service) mail.infomaniak.com) instead of an email application, and eliminate any content that could cause this error.

The message contains a unicode character in a disabled header

This error The message contains a unicode character in a disallowed header may appear if you have inserted a special character like a heartr♥e.g. in the body of the mail, the subject or especially in the full name The risk of being refused by suppliers is very high: it is necessary to remain as simple as possible in the use of signs, characters and fonts.

This guide describes the meaning of TTL, abbreviation for "Time To Live" and the principle of time limits DNS propagation, concepts important in the operation of domain name services.

Preamble

• The TTL determines how long the DNS information is cached before being updated.
• This directly influences the speed of propagation of DNS changes across servers around the world.
• Although the reduction of TTL can accelerate the spread, ISP behaviour and caches can introduce additional delays.

The TTL (Time to Live)

The TTL (Time to Live) is a key parameter in managing DNS records. It represents the duration, expressed in seconds, during which DNS information can be stored in cache before being updated. When a DNS server or Internet Service Provider (ISP) queries a DNS area, it temporarily keeps the responses obtained in order to reduce the burden on servers and speed up navigation for users.

P.e. if the TTL is set at 24 hours (86400 seconds), the DNS information relating to a domain will be cached and will not be updated during this period, even if you have changed settings like the IP address of the domain. This means that the DNS changes will only take effect after this deadline has expired.

It is possible to speed up the implementation of the changes by reducing the TTL before making updates. P.ex lowering the TTL to one hour (3600 seconds) allows DNS servers to check new information faster after a change.

DNS propagation

The TTL is directly linked to the TTL process. DNS propagation DNS propagation is the time required for changes to a DNS area to be disseminated to all DNS servers around the world. This delay depends not only on the TTL that is configured, but also on how ISPs and other DNS servers manage their caches.

When editing DNS records, DNS and FAI servers must wait until the TTL delay expires before retrieving the new information. Thus, the shorter the TTL, the faster the changes spread across the network. However, some ISPs sometimes ignore the duration of the TTL and keep the information in cache for a longer period (e.g. 24 hours or more), which can slow the spread of DNS changes, even if you have configured a reduced TTL.

This guide covers the configuration of the Infomaniak Newsletter product in cases where the domain name used to send your emails is not managed by Infomaniak.

Introduction

• For the automatic use of the Newsletter tool, it is necessary to manage the domain name from which you send your newsletters (as well as its DNS zone) through Infomaniak.
• For example, if you send your newsletters from the address news@domain.xyz, the domain domain.xyz must be managed by Infomaniak.
   

Specific DNS Configuration

In order to use the Newsletter tool with a domain not managed by Infomaniak, you will need to add specific entries to your DNS zone provided in your Manager:

Please refer to this other guide for adding the DNS entries mentioning ._domainkey, making sure to select DKIM as the type first, then the CNAME subtype when adding the DKIM.

In Case of Domain Transfer

If the domain name currently managed by Infomaniak (and corresponding to the Newsletter) is transferred to another registrar, the Newsletter tool will be deactivated within 30 days unless appropriate DNS modifications are made.

This guide explains the operation of a domain name and a DNS area.

Preamble

1. When you surf a website https://www.abc123.xyz for example, abc123.xyz is the domain name.
2. Each domain name has DNS (Domain Name System), which indicates where (for example, which provider) the DNS field is located.
3. The DNS area then allows the management of different domain name services to be entrusted to different providers.
   • For a single domain name, for example, it is possible to entrust:
     • Web hosting a provider X (via type recording "A")
     • and Mail Service to a Y provider (via type registration "MX")

Domain name, DNS and DNS area, then services

Who manages what?

1. Each domain name is reserved and managed by a registrar (Registration Office). P.ex Infomaniak is registrar, one of the cheapest in Switzerland.
2. The DNS of a domain name are configured with the registrar who manages the domain name.
3. The DNS area can be supported by the registrar or another provider.
4. Web hosting and Mail Service can be supported by any hosting provider.

In the most complex case, it is therefore possible to have 1 different provider for the following services: domain name booking and DNS management, DNS area management, Web hosting, Mail service.

Infomaniak

As registrar and host, Infomaniak can manage all these services. It's the simplest solution.

• In the case of Infomaniak the DNS are usually of the form nsXX.infomaniak.com and nsXX.infomaniak.com (XX as 11 or 12 e.g.).
• You can edit the DNS of your domain name, as well as modify the "inside" of these DNS i.e. modify the DNS area of a domain name.

And in these DNS areas, to redirect traffic to services, we distinguish:

• one MX record which makes it possible to point a domain name (domain.xyz e.g.) to an email server.
• one Registration A which makes it possible to point a domain name (domain.xyz e.g.) or a sub-domain (exemple.domain.xyz e.g.) to a Web server that has a static IP address (if not, you would have to edit the A record to enter the new IP address - check out this other guide on this subject)

Some possible situations

etc.