topic Re: Website broken following migration to greenby in Everything else

Website broken following migration to greenby

stourchess — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 10:29:05 GMT

My force9 email and website have been migrated to greenby and now the site with the domain ending in force9.co.uk gives 404 "page not found" for all the pages but the domain ending in f9.co.uk works correctly.

I have had no luck trying to get this fixed. A ticket was raised with greenby on 18/11/25. On 20/11/25 they said it would be fixed in 48 hours but it's still not fixed.

All the search engines use the force9 site so this will affect our search ranking.

Does anyone know how I can escalate this? As per the greenby instructions I have asked them to phone me but to no avail.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

MisterW — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 11:40:40 GMT

I've raised this to the right Plusnet people

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

stourchess — Mon, 24 Nov 2025 12:33:09 GMT

Thank you very much

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

mikeb — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 06:40:44 GMT

Just a quick ...

[AOL]

Me too !

[/AOL]

... to add to list of those allegedly valued customers requiring broken stuff fixing.

The plug was apparently pulled on username.force9.co.uk circa 0930 yesterday

Site A-record apparently now has an ENIX IP but homepages still has the usual PN IP

Also username2.plus.com email no longer working as of today - repeated AUTH errors

All other A/Cs webspace/email still working OK ... famous last words and all that

Sorry, no time for any poncing about and/or hoop jumping various at the mo so unable to investigate further.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

Townman — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 09:52:43 GMT

AUTH errors is that on connection to mail servers or sent message bounce backs?

If on connection that’s likely to be IMAP responsiveness issues

If sent item bounce backs that’s server reputation - can you please indicate the outbound server cited.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

stourchess — Tue, 25 Nov 2025 14:50:43 GMT

I've just got the following response from greenby:
"The issue should now be fixed, and we apologize for the delay in our response. You can access the page using the following URL: www.stourbridgechess.f9.co.uk "

Given that the ticket was about www.stourbridgechess.force9.co.uk

not working, the issue is not fixed. All the search engines use the force9 URL . There are also links to it from many other sites which I have no control over.
Why can't greenby at least put a permanent redirect in place?

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

mikeb — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 04:13:31 GMT

WEBSPACE FAILURE

I now have www.username.force9.co.uk *AND* www.username2.force9.co.uk webspace not working. Using the .f9.co.uk suffix no longer makes any difference either

All resolve to ENIX IPs but homepages still has the usual PN IP. All relevant data still appears to be lurking on homepages, at least for now anyway. I've received several website "up" and "down" notifications recently but the last few entries in the logfile quoted below provides irrefutable evidence of when the problem became very permanent.

[QUOTE]

checker-nbg5.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:22:34 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg10.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:27:40 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-fra2.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:32:45 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-fsn2.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:37:49 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-fra7.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:42:55 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg5.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:48:00 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-fsn1.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:53:05 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg9.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:07:58:09 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg1.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:08:03:14 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg10.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:08:18:29 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg5.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:08:28:38 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg9.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:08:38:48 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg9.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:08:48:58 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk
checker-nbg9.uptimerobot.com - - [24/Nov/2025:09:30:01 +0000] "HEAD / HTTP/1.1" 200 - "http://www.username.force9.co.uk" "Mozilla/5.0+(compatible; UptimeRobot/2.0; http://www.uptimerobot.com/)" www.username.force9.co.uk

[no further logfile data of any kind after this point in time]

[/QUOTE]

EMAIL FAILURE

PLEASE NOTE: Typo in previous post - The problem A/C is username2.force9.net plus the standard aliases various of course.

It's POP3 access ONLY, I don't use webmail or IMAP. Always the same error message now despite no changes whatsoever at this end since first being set up when this particular A/C was opened:

Last seen working circa 1724 Hours on 24/11/2025 "Success: You have no new email"

First failure circa 0534 Hours on 25/11/2025 "Server Force9 POP3 rejected your username and password ([AUTH] Authentication failed)"

All subsequent attempts to access this A/C also fail with the same error e.g. circa 1648 Hours on 25/11/2025 "Server Force9 POP3 rejected your username and password ([AUTH] Authentication failed)"

HOWEVER all attempts to access username.force9.net appear to be working as expected, both before and after the migration to Greenby apparently went live.

circa 1724 Hours on 24/11/2025 "Success: new email 1/1 ..."
circa 0534 Hours on 25/11/2025 "Success: new email 1/1 ..."
circa 1648 Hours on 25/11/2025 "You have no new email"

Both of these Force9 A/Cs have apparently only just been migrated to Greenby despite PN emails advising that transfers would be commencing in May and June ! All email settings are (and always have been) identical in all respects apart from username and password with no changes whatsoever since first setting everything up when the A/Cs were opened. Both A/Cs are POP3/SMTP using standard ports with servers mail.force9.net and relay.force9.net

POP3 SERVER TEST

[quote]

>telnet mail.force9.net 110
+OK POP3 ready <687244345.1764097200@mail.enmail.co>
user username
+OK
pass password
+OK Logged in.
list
+OK 0 messages:
.
quit
+OK Logging out.
Connection to host lost.

>telnet mail.force9.net 110
+OK POP3 ready <1450253436.1764097350@mail.enmail.co>
user username2
+OK
pass password2
-ERR [AUTH] Authentication failed.
Connection to host lost.

[/QUOTE]

INFO FROM GREENBY PORTAL

[QUOTE]

username:
The migration of your email to Greenby was completed on 20/11/2025. We’ve been keeping your email safe and we’ve also received and stored any new email sent to your Plusnet email addresses since then

username2:
The migration of your email to Greenby was completed on 20/11/2025. We’ve been keeping your email safe and we’ve also received and stored any new email sent to your Plusnet email addresses since then

[/QUOTE]

DATA CHECKED VIA PN PORTAL

Usernames and passwords have also been confirmed as being entirely correct by logging into the PN portal and checking the email and webspace settings for each account ! Everything works and appears just fine via both portals but not via Greenby email and web servers. Login failure for POP3 on 1 A/C and #404 for webspace on both A/Cs

CONCLUSION

I'm very sorry, but there is quite clearly no even remotely plausible excuse for any of these service failures other than finger trouble at the PN/Greenby end It's all *really* basic stuff which was working and had been working flawlessly (barring F9/PN system/server failures) for donkey's years but now it just suddenly isn't working properly if at all.

@Username.force9.net and www.username.force9.co.uk fully operational and in regular use since 4th July 1997

@username2.force9.net and www.username2.force9.co.uk fully operational and in regular use since 27th May 2007

No changes anywhere since day 1. Everything clearly working just fine and dandy until someone pushed the button to finalise the migration of these two historic F9 A/Cs to Greenby leading to several aspects of the service(s) going titsup almost immediately

It must be clearly understood BY ALL that ...

someone@anyusername.force9.net
someone@anyusername.force9.co.uk
someone@anyusername.f9.co.uk

... are equally valid email addresses for the F9 A/C anyusername.

It must also be clearly understood BY ALL that ...

www.anyusername.force9.net
www.anyusername.force9.co.uk
www.anyusername.f9.co.uk

... are equally valid URLs for the webspace of F9 A/C anyusername.

If anyone anywhere is even vaguely thinking about moving the goalposts now, several decades after these usernames were issued and started being used in anger, then they really do need to give themselves a bl**dy good slap right now ... then another one in a few minutes time and at regular intervals thereafter just to remind themselves of exactly how stupid and totally unreasonable they're being !!!!!

This *really* does not bode well for all the much more important A/Cs yet to be migrated

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

plusnettony — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 09:07:03 GMT

send me the usernames please, if it's not in the thread.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

stourchess — Wed, 26 Nov 2025 15:55:42 GMT

This is now fixed ! I discovered the site was working this morning. (The original problem in this thread)

I'm not sure what encouraged them to fix it but besides this post, I added a message to the greenby ticket "Please can this be escalated. I now wish to make an official complaint" .

I also emailed info@enixltd.com, outlining my poor experience with greenby and with the ticket number.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

mikeb — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 14:10:30 GMT

Just a quicky update:

Webspace sort-of working as of early this morning it would appear after some no doubt frantic tweaks various behind the scenes to add a CNAME to the DNS records I'll come back and read recent posts later when I find time but this is some important looking stuff that I've discovered so far which may be of interest. It may or may not be covered by posts various above of course but could be of some help to others if not.

1) homepages.force9.net should apparently be 91.204.210.11 and NOT 212.159.8.90 as that's where the website data currently appears to be being served from. It most definitely ISN'T being served from Ye Olde PN IP that's for sure ! Changes made on homepages have absolutely no effect whatsoever on what's currently being served by Greenby. However, changes made on that particular ENIX IP do Use it at your own risk needless to say.

2) There appears to be a total lack of raw logfiles available on the Greenby server(s) That's a show-stopper in my book hence why I've now stopped messing around. No log data then absolutely no use whatsoever to me I'm afraid. It would need to be resolved within a day or two because data will be lost otherwise if archiving is kept the same as F9/PN. I'm not going to be holding my breath waiting for logfiles to (maybe) appear as I rather suspect that they're never going to so it very much looks like time to give up and move on.

3) POP3 issues continue and having 'raised' a ticket, even the 'bot' thinks that it's a fundamental Greenby setup issue and recommends raising a ticket to get back-office techies on the job. Ummmmmmmmm, that's what I just did I thought

Apart from that, Greenby doesn't look like a bad setup. I'm already an ENIX customer anyway and I'll be moving more stuff over to them very shortly as well. No problems or complaints from me about my mail and web hosting over the past year. Hopefully, those staying with Greenby will have a similar experience once any initial hiccups and issues due to F9/PN silliness and finger-trouble various are sorted out

PN, please sort your DNS out so customers don't have to ponce about second guessing what the IP of essential services needs to be set to in order for it to do what it says on the tin !

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

mikeb — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 14:30:44 GMT

Q: How much do I hate this stupid forum software and it's post editing timeout period ...

A: Almost as much as I hate those who cannot keep their DNS records sensibly up to date so that services at least try to to do what it says on the tin :lol:

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

mikeb — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 16:21:37 GMT

Oh dear, I might have spoken a bit too soon it would appear.

[PANTO]

Ooooo, look it's working ... oh no it isn't ... oh yes it is ... oh no it isn't ...

[/PANTO]

After a day of seemingly all being mostly well, there's just been more ups and downs than a ... [ and I'm quite certain you all know the rest of that one ! ]

#403 all the way on all sites at the mo and a sizable bunch of warning notifications for websites various going AWOL into the bargain

PN: Got that DNS update in hand yet so things don't look quite as stupid as they currently appear to do ?

@plusnettony

Re POP3 issues. It's username.force9.net working and username2.force9.net not working. Just replace "username" with the actual username of my current PN A/C as registered on this forum. I don't like having personal and very identifiable data posted in public and especially not on a site where it can't ever be redacted in the future. It's been reported to Greenby via ticket system.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

stourchess — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 17:33:32 GMT

My website has also stopped working both the force9 and f9 URLS give a 403 error!

I am pretty fed up with all this. I will leave it until tomorrow and then raise another ticket if it's not fixed.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

mikeb — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 17:57:30 GMT

Give the guys at Greenby a bit of slack because migrating the entire F9/PN/whatever customer database has to be without any doubt whatsoever a truly monster exercise ! Problems are inevitable. Apart from the sheer volume of data/work involved, the total lack of consistency across the various PN 'brands' and over ~30 years must be a complete nightmare in itself.

I'm sure things will settle down at least a bit in due course ... famous last words and all that :lol:

This is perhaps the first batch of migrations including webspace and therefore all the DNS and server-related issues are coming to light. I've reported the apparent DNS and potential logging issues via the ticket system and noted problems with #403 and #404 errors. It's apparently been escalated. I'll post here if I see/hear/find anything else that seems relevant or interesting

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

Townman — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:42:32 GMT

@mikeb

I do not get why you are being so lenient towards Greenby ... frankly they have fouled up big time. I have led sizable migration projects and this is the worst I have seen.

The existing Plusnet services were a reference base to be replicated...

Same server IDs
Same login methods
Same domain standards / names
Same email constructs - mailboxes / redirects / aliases / catch all

One might have expected of an 'experienced' specialist provider that they would use the same technology stack which they have deployed elsewhere, but no, they have built a brand new untried system into which the working Plusnet services have been migrated. What have been the characteristics of the migration?

Logon methods are not the same as Plusnet's - that sabotaged the fundamental intent, that from a user's perspective, this should have been a like for like change: things are different - a change to using email address everywhere might have been reasonable ... however ...
Logon requirements for default and secondary email addresses are dissimilar where they were the same with Plusnet
Force9 domains have been morphed to f9
Idps has been morphed to free-online
Aliases did not work
Catchall did not work
The Greenby proxies which direct connections according to an account's migration status do not appear to work consistently
Users are not seeing new emails
Greenby's support appears to be abysmal - poor AI, difficulty speaking to someone who can fix things
Bad advice being provided on configuration changes
Though invited to partake in this forum during the migration, Greenby has yet to become part of the solution to the real issues being experienced by users

Yes things do go wrong, but when they do, you roll up your selves, dig deep and come to the coal face - Greenby are just not here facing their music.

PlusNet's support of the email services has at times been challenged, but never have things been as bad as we are seeing from Greenby. Enix claims to be a highly experience competent hosting company: that is not reflected in the Greenby sub-brand.

The Plusnet guys are doing their very best to get the user experience reported here in front of the Greenby folks ... life would be so much better for all involved, if they just came and participated in this forum. That they have failed to do, so I suggest that they deserve no slack whatsoever.

I might add that thee really complicated ones (brands) have yet to be started!

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

jab1 — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 18:44:16 GMT

@Townman Hope they get their act together before I move, otherwise I shall be forced to move my email provision elsewhere, and that is not something I am looking forward to.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

mikeb — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 20:13:13 GMT

@Townman wrote:

I do not get why you are being so lenient towards Greenby ...

Nor me tbh. It's quite unusual to the say the very least ! I'm more often than not far from 'understanding' when things go even slightly titsup for no good reason :lol:

But it still has to be a monster job no doubt made 1000x worse by historic F9/PN issues and inconsistency. Just ask BobP how much he still hates me even now for all the grief he got over every single one of the seemingly endless list of historic email, spam filtering and data breach issues over the past 30 years I can still show you every single spam message I've received thanks to the (in)famous May 2007 data breach and those that followed shortly after. Upto 20k messages per week per account thanks to total incompetence ! More stats and pretty graphs than I could shake my very best big stick at. All of which demonstrate beyond doubt just how utterly useless every one of the alleged solutions various were in reality despite all the BS and political spin various.

However, contrary to popular opinion no doubt, I'm usually relatively happy to accept sh*t happens once. Maybe even twice. But take the pee and try repeating it more often than that then you can definitely expect bucket loads of sarcasm and being beaten by the biggest stick I can find as regularly as possible until you get all your sh*t sorted properly and to my satisfaction !

You're obviously far more knowledgeable than me in most things and are also clearly on top of all the current issues various that users are experiencing. I haven't been keeping an eye on what's been going on at all I'm afraid. I'm only involved now because things have just gone titsup for me and for no particularly good reason it would seem ! Fortunately, it's all stuff that doesn't really matter in my case. In fact the only significant reason that these F9 A/Cs are being migrated and very closely monitored is as a dry run for the much more important stuff. Forewarned is forearmed and all that.

However, all the historic F9/PN web/mail issues together with more than a few 'hints' over the years about these services being discontinued at some point in time means that I've been moving everything away from PN gradually for several years now. Ideally, I'd like to keep some email addresses and my landline number but it will definitely no longer be anywhere near an end of the world situation if I get totally p*ssed off or financially abused and decide to just storm off in a huff.

At the moment though, Greenby (and to a lesser extent, PN) will get a relatively smooth ride from me if any issues found get fixed in a sensible timeframe. But if that doesn't happen and/or if things get progressively worse then rest assured that I have my very nice collection of really big chunky sticks readily available at arm's length

I most certainly can't disagree with any of your comments. It definitely doesn't make good reading all written down in one place does it. It really shouldn't have been that difficult to come up with solution which (almost) 100% matches the current F9/PN/whatever system. Avoiding customer manual intervention of any kind just has to be the goal so if that's not been the case then, like you say, it's been a very poor job right from the start.

I do hope that I'm not giving anyone the benefit of any potential doubt undeservedly Only time will tell and all that. But my experience so far is actually somewhat better than I feared it would be.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

Townman — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 20:56:08 GMT

Mike,

You have told it how it is over the years … there have been issues, but the service has largely worked. At the moment it is deeply challenged.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

Anonymous — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 01:22:14 GMT

In reply to https://community.plus.net/t5/Everything-else/Website-broken-following-migration-to-greenby/m-p/2030166#M40107

What 'story' was told to Plusnet customers?

N.B. I took the pain of migrating e-mail away from Plusnet about 2 years ago. That included ditching more than one historic account (web stuff hosted on an e-mail only account? That's a bit strange? Can't complain about it, but it was a bit weird).

Various failures of sending mail convinced me that not all was well at Plusnet Towers. Given my personal experiences (albeit rather minor), please excuse me if I happen to think the project was going to have its 'gremlins'. Some of which I might think of as zombie gremlins.

Perhaps Greenby were sold a proverbial pup. It wouldn't be the first time such has happened.

Re: Website broken following migration to greenby

Townman — Fri, 28 Nov 2025 02:56:48 GMT

That disposition suggests that the issues with Greenby arise from the state of the Plusnet system. It would be interesting to understand how you reach that conclusion.

The Plusnet systems were functional and have the content to be migrated. Greenby’s task is to mimic that functionality and to accept the transfer of contents. In a multitude of ways their base platform has exhibited fundamental functional deficiencies and inconsistencies. One would not expect such from an established supplier of these services.

We are though where we are - it’s going to be fix forwards… in Greenby’s world in Greenby’s time frame.