When trying to update my website via ftp, I received
Just such a message. Attached screenshot.
Is this the result of a macOS update? Is it missing something in Sitely?
Just such a message. Attached screenshot.
“Your web host has misconfigured their FTP server”
Dzień dobry Krzysztofie,
this message is, I would say typical. As Duncan said it’s server misconfiguration. I am receiving it each time. The solution is simple: choose Connect anyway and Don’t ask again and everything works fine.
Powodzenia,
Zbr
I would not agree with the thesis that this is typical. This happened to me for the first time in 2 years. I check the host certificate, check the connections and connect to my host via ftp and it’s OK. Unfortunately, when using the Sitely tool, it stopped working properly. I think this is an obvious Sitely error or some changes in macOS in the last update. I’m curious what other tools will stop working in Sitely.
I would say your hosting server has made changes which has Sitely triggering the error, and rightly so! Maybe have a talk with your host?..
Based on our sample of support requests, it is indeed typical for web hosts, particularly large ones, to ignore their FTP server certificates.
Most commonly they have one server configuration for all their domains, but tell their customers to use ftp.domain.com or an IP address (which can’t have a certificate), so when connecting with some amount of security, namely TLS, that requires a server certificate, they either have a certificate for ftp.webhost.com or they have a self-signed one. That’s cool, it still encrypts the connection, but makes you more vulnerable to a so called man in the middle attack, so Sitely needs to warn you about this security issue.
If the problem never happened before perhaps their certificate expired. If you show a screenshot of what “Show certificate” says we can look at that.
There is actually no involvement with macOS infrastructure, because we bypass macOS and use a very widespread and very compatible library for FTP (libcurl). So the implication that we would not be on top of macOS changes is BS.
And implying that Sitely would be progressively stop working is just unwarranted. We are working hard and continuously to make Sitely the best it can be.
I would say that many users are unaware of the issues with some web hosts. Appreciate you pointing that out. One large web host I once used was hacked and left that way for quite some time. Sitely is updated constantly, and support is exceptional. My experience over the years is that 90% of my issues have been user error or unfamiliarity, and when it’s not, Duncan has been extraordinarily quick in responding and I really appreciate the dedication and hard work.
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Thank you for taking care of this topic. Attached are screenshots of the certificate, unfortunately in the cut screens 
.
As the screen says, the certificate is using *.seohost.pl as their FTP server certificate. This is not trusted because most likely it doesn’t match the server name you are connecting to.
The certificate is a good certificate in of itself, the problem is if the name doesn’t match the server name you’re connecting to it still won’t be trusted.
This is unlikely to have changed recently, the certificate appears to have been renewed on January 21st, but I don’t think they had a certificate specific to your domain before that.
It seems that now the certificate is ok. But it doesn’t help anyway. The constant logins to the server are correct because I can connect from the Mac to the FTP server.
I am still inclined to the thesis that Sitely is not without errors in this regard.
What server are you connecting to? I’m quite sure it’s not *.seohost.pl.
My website is hosted on the SeoHost.pl server, so I can’t connect to another server except ftp.seohost.pl. The certificate I put in the previous post clearly shows this fact.
Please email us the exact settings you use for publishing and we’ll look into this. feedback@sitely.app
This turned out to be an FTP server mis-configuration. As is usual, web hosts don’t really care about their FTP server security configuration, that’s why Sitely says “a common problem”.
Specifically that FTP server has not been configured to return the so called intermediate certificate (a link in the chain of trust between the certification authority’s root certificate and the server’s actual certificate).
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