Publishing problems with Host Europe GmbH

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Over the past weekend I thought I would try to test publishing to Host Europe via RapidWeaver since we had a couple users (@Gelbseidenraupe for example) who mentioned they were having troubles with it.

It was mentioned that Host Europe updated their policies to only allow uploading via FTPS (explicit) or SFTP. Based on reports from our users it seems like FTPS was not working via RW. SFTP was not tested but usually when FTPS fails in RW, SFTP will work, so my goal was to troubleshoot FTPS a bit to see if I could get it working, and then write some docs on either it or SFTP (or both) if either worked. Basically my goal was to get a working solution for direct publishing to Host Europe.

I signed up for a 1 month contract which was around ~17 Euros. After ordering, the account did not auto-provision so I had to wait until Monday morning for manual provisioning. Below is the email I got from them:

I found the documentation requirements a bit excessive, and I’m always hesitant sending personal identity documents via email to companies I have no prior relationship with, so I wrote back stating the reasoning I needed the hosting account (troubleshooting purposes for our user base) and that I’d only need it for a couple days, after which I’d cancel the service. I stated I didn’t mind paying for 1 month of service even though I would only need the account for a couple days to complete the troubleshooting.

Their response is below and I discovered something I did not know when I received it.

I was unaware that Host Europe was a GoDaddy owned company.

GoDaddy has had several major security breaches over the years, the most recent and major being a 3 year security breach.

GoDaddy said on Friday that its network suffered a multi-year security compromise that allowed unknown attackers to steal company source code, customer and employee login credentials, and install malware on company servers that redirected customer websites to malicious sites.

I follow web hosting related news as that’s the industry I’ve worked in for the last decade so I was aware of the above news. Because of it I cancelled my order. Regardless, I’d still like to try and troubleshoot publishing to Host Europe.

@Gelbseidenraupe, if you are still having publishing issues, I’d love to schedule a one-on-one so we could test a few publishing scenarios for your Host Europe account if you have the time.

Alternatively, is anybody successfully publishing to Host Europe via RapidWeaver’s publishing settings? @capetom I believe you mentioned you are successfully publishing to Host Europe yeah?

[Gelbseidenraupe (Ronny Roeske)]

Hello Dan
I still have my account with Hosteurope and until this story I was always quite satisfied because the phone service is really good and always available. In this day and age, when you only have to talk to chatbots that don’t understand you anyway, or at best talk to call center agents who often don’t feel like it because they are usually paid far too little, this has become a luxury item.
However, the lack of service at Hosteurope has also bothered me in this case.
The fact is that I bought the FileZilla app out of sheer desperation. This also works, but is an additional expense. I really liked the function in RW and it was very easy to “just quickly” change a small thing. Some RW fans might roll their eyes now, but simple is the best! Anyway - I’m happy if you want to take care of the matter. We would just have to agree on a time that suits us both. Tuesdays or Thursdays would be good for me. Or evenings. Please let me know.
On the subject of security breaches: This is very bad, but nowadays it seems to be almost normal for companies that have made a mistake to deny everything until they can no longer do so. Responsibility now seems to be a foreign concept for many people. In any case, I have no idea how to escape this dilemma. If you switch to another provider, something is guaranteed to happen there too! It’s a bit like standing at the checkout in the supermarket: you’re always guaranteed to be in the longest queue.
All the best
Ronny

[capetom (Thomas Roegner)]

Hi,
I have clients who host their websites with HostEurope - BUT - I always use Cyberduck for publishing.
I often have to do only minor changes on a website, I publish locally and only upload the changed files (like index.php or the css files) which is normally very fast.
Started this workflow years ago and am happy, gives me much better control and takes only about 30 seconds to a minute longer.

[dang]

@Gelbseidenraupe

Anyway - I’m happy if you want to take care of the matter. We would just have to agree on a time that suits us both. Tuesdays or Thursdays would be good for me. Or evenings. Please let me know.

Awesome, will send you a DM to get something scheduled.

@Gelbseidenraupe

It’s a bit like standing at the checkout in the supermarket: you’re always guaranteed to be in the longest queue.

Haha, this is so true.

[dang]

Ah right, I remember now you mentioning you use Cyberduck.

Are you using FTPS or SFTP when uploading via Cyberduck?

[capetom (Thomas Roegner)]

Hi Dan,

it is FTPS - see screenshot

Herzliche Grüße,
Thomas

T. Roegner

Journalist

thomasroegner.de

[dang]

Awesome, thank you for that information.

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Tentatively happy to report we got this figured out this morning.

Using FTPS we were able to connect, and publishing via RapidWeaver worked for a few seconds, but for some reason the upload failed when it got to a specific .woff2 file. This was true when the connections were set to maximum (6) as well as minimum (1).

Instead of investigating that we tried changing the publishing settings to SFTP to see if that would result in successful publishing. The preliminary results looked good, publishing kicked off and did not error out while we were on the meeting, even with the connections set at maximum (6).

I had to jump off the meeting before the upload was finished, however @Gelbseidenraupe if you encounter any errors while publishing with SFTP, please follow up to let me know.

With the above said it looks like if you are hosting with Host Europe GmbH and would like to publish directly via RapidWeaver, then SFTP would be the publishing method you’d want to select. FTPS seems unstable.

If you are hosting with Host Europe GmbH and need any help getting SFTP set up in RapidWeaver please let us know.

[Gelbseidenraupe (Ronny Roeske)]

This is just a big “thank you” to Dan for support my publishing problems with hosteurope!

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Not a problem, happy we were able to get it working.

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Just a heads up to add more information to this topic regarding Host Europe GmbH.

I was on a Zoom call this morning with a RapidWeaver and Host Europe GmbH user trying to get their publishing working. Thought it would be easy, but discovered not all of their hosting packages have an SSH/SFTP option to enable. This morning’s user was on their Host Basic plan, which looks like it doesn’t have the option to enable SSH/SFTP.

I asked the user if they could contact Host Europe GmbH and ask if they could enable that feature on their hosting package without having to upgrade to some higher level package. Waiting to hear back from them if it’s possible.