Miscellaneous Postings
The miscellaneous postings section is where I put stuff that doesn't categorise well anywhere else.
Post sort order: Post Date (Newest First) | Post Date (Oldest First) | Alphabetical | Date Updated
Disable auto renew at GoDaddy
Posted March 7th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
I use GoDaddy to register my domain names and secure certificates. When a new product is bought from GoDaddy it will be default set to auto-renew. I prefer to manually renew everything and this post shows how to disable auto renewal at GoDaddy. Following these instructions you can also change a product from not auto-renewing to auto-renew.
VPS.NET has increased node size
Posted March 4th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
VPS.NET have celebrated their first birthday by increasing the memory and CPU per node. Their VPS system works on a system of nodes where you can easily add or remove nodes to a virtual server at any time. Note this is a repost of my original post now that the upgrade has gone live.
GoDaddy 99 cent .com domain coupon code
Posted February 26th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
Occasionally GoDaddy has unpublicised 99 cent .com domains and all you need to do is enter the promotion code at the checkout. This post details a 99 cent .com domain code for GoDaddy which is currently valid at the time of posting (26 February 2010).
Added comments, new bookmarking, BSA asynchronous ad code
Posted February 17th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
This is a quick post to talk about some changes I made to my blog last night. These include adding comments using Disqus, replacing the Add to Any bookmarking and subscribe widgets with static buttons, and changing the Buy Sell Ads over to thenon-blocking, asynchronous ad code.
Interspire Shopping Cart 5.5 Released
Posted January 21st, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
Interspire Shopping Cart 5.5 has been released and contains a huge number of improvements over the older versions. I haven't actually used it myself but it looks like an excellent PHP based e-commerce solution.
GoDaddy 30% off new domain registrations and renewals
Posted January 19th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
I have found a GoDaddy coupon code which gives 30% off new domain registrations and domain renewals, for all years.
Big Day Out 2010
Posted January 16th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
I went to the Big Day Out in Auckland yesterday and post some comments about this here. I apologise to my regular readers as this is extremely off topic; if you've stumbled upon this page then unless you know what LAMP is then this is likely the only page on this blog that will interest you.
Amazon's Kindle DX
Posted January 9th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
I got an email in my inbox yesterday about the new Amazon Kindle DX with Global Wireless which looks pretty cool. It has a 9.7" e-ink screen (the older Kindle has a 6" screen) and e-books can be delivered wirelessly in seconds. It's available for pre-order now for US$489 and will be released on January 19th 2009. Amazon is even shipping the new Kindle to some international destinations (but not to New Zealand where I am).
Why I write this blog
Posted January 8th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
I thought in this post I would take a look at some of the reasons that I write this blog. It started back in 2003 with fairly irregular postings and it wasn't until about 2008 that I started posting with any real regularity.
Aims for 2010
Posted January 7th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
To conclude my recent posts looking back at 2009 and forward to 2010 I present some aims for 2010 for this blog and some of my other projects.
Aims for 2009 - Follow Up
Posted January 6th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
Back in January 2009 I set out some aims for 2009 and this short post has a look at whether I achieved them or not. This is part of a number of posts for the start of 2010 which looks back at 2009 and what's in store for 2010.
2009 Statistics
Posted January 5th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
This post is one of a few looking at how my 2009 went and to set some aims for 2010. This post looks at some statistics for 2009.
2009 Summary of Posts
Posted January 3rd, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings
This post is part of several posts at the start of 2010 to look at what I posted and achieved in the last 12 months and looking ahead at some aims for the next 12 months. This post looks at a summary of what I posted in 2009 - the number of posts made and a summary by topic.
Accessory Geeks Coupon Codes valid until January 31st 2010
Posted December 31st, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I have a coupon code for Accessory Geeks to get $10 off any order of $50 or more. Accessory Geeks carry a wide range of cellphone accessories for cellphones sold in the U.S. and Canadian markets. These coupon codes are valid until January 31st 2010.
Merry Christmas 2009
Posted December 25th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all my readers for 2009!
Accessory Geeks Black Friday Sale
Posted November 25th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Accessory Geeks has a 24 hour sale on Black Friday starting from November 27th 2009 at midnight until 11:59pm PST.
Smarty Template Programmer Wanted at iMall Brands
Posted November 18th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I'm currently doing PHP/MySQL work at iMall Brands Ltd and they are currently looking for a Smarty Template Programmer to work on a contract basis anywhere in the world.
GoDaddy $1.99 domain name coupon code
Posted October 29th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
GoDaddy is currently offering a one-off coupon code for new domain name registrations for just $1.99 plus the 20c ICANN fee.
Hello, yes, I am still alive!
Posted October 22nd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Hello people. Yes, there have been no new posts for a few days but they are coming :) My second son Sam was born on Tuesday so life is a bit crazy just now. There might possibly be a new PHP post tomorrow. But if not, something's coming real soon!
Blog Update October 13th 2009
Posted October 13th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I started working for a company 4 days a week 4 weeks ago and do some other work on the 5th day and it's been hard keeping up writing a post per day on my blog. That, and our new baby that will be born by cesarean a week today, means I need to be a bit more realistic about my posting schedule.
BigCommerce - The Easiest Way to Sell Online
Posted September 29th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
BigCommerce is an all-in-one, feature rich ecommerce platform that allows even the most novice of user to create a fully functional online store and sell both physical and digital products online.
VPS.net Review and discount code
Posted September 23rd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Just over a month ago I moved this blog from a dedicated server in New Zealand to a VPS at VPS.net in the USA. This post is a quick review of how I've found the service so far, a little bit of information about how it works, and a 25% discount coupon for your first month.
My workspace (September 4th 2009)
Posted September 4th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Justin at CodeJustin.com posted a photo of his workspace encouraging others to do the same so I thought I'd post up a pic of mine too.
Disallow the Internet Archive from your website using robots.txt
Posted August 30th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
The Internet Archive runs the "Wayback Machine" at www.archive.org to archive pages from websites maintaining copies of them at several points in time. If you do not wish to have your website archived in this way you can prevent this using a robots.txt file.
$7.49 .com domains from GoDaddy
Posted August 28th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I've got a GoDaddy $7.49 for new dot com domains link for you.
CloudCamp in Auckland - August 29th 2009
Posted August 26th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I am going to the CloudCamp "unconference" this Saturday August 29th in Auckland.
Hosting moved to USA for this blog
Posted August 17th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated September 24th, 2009)
I've just switched the hosting of this blog over from my dedicated server based in Auckland, New Zealand, to a VPS at vps.net in the USA.
Free Icons, Shareware Icons, Commercial Icons
Posted August 6th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I am about to shut down my Electric Bookmarks website and am in the process of moving the useful posts from it into this blog. I had a section on it for free icons and free icon websites so have consolidate those into a single post here. This post will be periodically updated as I find other useful icon websites and icon blog posts.
Free fonts, shareware fonts, commercial fonts
Posted August 5th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I am about to shut down my Electric Bookmarks website and am in the process of moving the useful posts from it into this blog. I had a section on it for free fonts and free font websites so have consolidate those into a single post here. This post will be periodically updated as I find other useful font websites and font blog posts.
Blog update July 26th 2009
Posted July 26th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I have jury service at the Auckland District Court this week so it's fairly unlikely I'll be posting any new content this week on my blog. This very quick update is just to let my readers know I haven't disappeared and posting will resume next week.
Back from holiday (July 13th 2009)
Posted July 13th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I'm back from a short holiday to Christchurch and Hanmer Springs in New Zealand's South Island. I had posts ready and which automatically posted for all but two of the days I was away and will be back hard at work tomorrow morning. Regular posting will resume tomorrow and I'll answer all the emails from people from when I was away.
Google Analytics Data Export API updates July 1st 2009
Posted July 2nd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Just a quick note for all you Google Analytics API users out there that Google have made some updates to the API. The post on Google Groups can be found here, and I've also copied the information below.
Follow me on Twitter and Facebook
Posted June 18th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I've just set up a Twitter account and a Facebook profile for this blog.
Yeah, what is a browser anyway?
Posted June 18th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I found this interesting video post this morning and had to share it. Some New York based Google employees took to the streets to ask people what they think a web browser is. Unsurprisingly the vast majority of people did not know what a browser is, answering stuff like "Google", "Yahoo", "the place where you search for stuff" and "that little E thing on the desktop".
AccessoryGeeks June Coupons
Posted June 4th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I've got a bunch of coupons for Accessory Geeks which give you up to 20% off items at the Accessory Geeks website. These are valid until June 30th 2009 and only one of them can be used at the checkout at a time.
Website Update May 7th 2009
Posted May 7th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I was without broadband at all yesterday. For some mysterious reason my connection went down around 1am on the morning of the 6th and wouldn't work at all yesterday (the 6th). Then this morning it was all working again...
Google Analytics API dimensions vs metrics
Posted May 3rd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
The Google Analytics API has dimension and metric fields for getting data. If just a metric is specified then the data returned is for the time period as a whole. If dimensions are also supplied then the data is segmented by the metric. This post looks at the XML returned when a dimension is supplied and when it is not.
Get the ID for the Google Analytics API IDS parameter
Posted April 26th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Google announced an API for the Google Analytics product last week and I posted the start of a PHP class for using the API on Thursday and will post extensions to the class for getting data from the XML tomorrow. In order to get data you need to know the ID for the Google Analytics Account Profile and this post looks at one way to get it without needing any programming code.
Google Analytics API Launched
Posted April 23rd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings and PHP
Google have finally launched an API for Google Analytics, rendering my tutorial series about how to get Analytics data via email somewhat redundant. However despite that I'm pleased they've done this as it makes accessing data a lot easier.
No I will not fix your computer T-Shirt
Posted April 22nd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I saw this T-Shirt the other day (which you can buy here from ThinkGeek) and had to share it. For all us out there who know something about computers and get sick of people asking for us to fix them should anything go wrong...
Blog update March 12th 2009
Posted March 12th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated March 13th, 2009)
Just a quick update to let people know that while I'm still not 100% I'm much better now and will be back to blogging today.
Blog update March 9th 2009
Posted March 9th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I've been quite sick over the weekend and am off to have some blood tests etc this morning. I had only blogged posts up until Saturday so there weren't any new posts yesterday, today and probably won't be until tomorrow or the next day when I'm up to working again. Thanks for your patience - I know there are a number of you waiting for the continuation of the PHP IMAP series of posts. I'll be back writing them as soon as I can.
Sending Google Analytics Reports Regularly by Email
Posted February 1st, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
This post looks at how to send any report from within Google Analytics by email either as a one-off email or on a scheduled basis (daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly). While this may appear to be off topic for this blog, I will be looking at how to extract data from the attachments sent in the emails using PHP in a later post.
Posting schedule
Posted January 19th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated November 30th, 2009)
In my aims for 2009 post I set up a schedule for posting frequency and what's posted on each day. This page shows the current posting schedule.
Ferrit finally shuts down
Posted January 13th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
I've been saying for the last two years that it was only a matter of time before Telecom's Ferrit closed its doors, and sure enough they announced yesterday that it would be closing on Friday.
Aims for 2009
Posted January 5th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated January 6th, 2010)
So on Saturday I said I'd done the last of summaries and overviews and it would be back to regular blogging, but I forgot to set aside a post for my aims for 2009 for this blog, so here they are. There will be a regular LAMP post tomorrow.
2008 Summary of Posts
Posted January 3rd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
This post is the last of the three summary posts for the start of this year (the monthly roundup and 2008/2009 overview of the past two days). Normal posting will resume tomorrow with a MySQL post.
2008 / 2009 overview
Posted January 2nd, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings
Out with the old and in with the new... 2008 was an interesting year for me as I changed tack a couple of times in the work I do and the year coming up should be much more interesting and fulfilling.
Co-browsing with Live Person
Posted December 28th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
When I was working for JK Kids, the managing director was wanting to use a technology which allows the call center people to interact with the customer's desktop to help them out if they were having issues ordering. It took a bit of research but I finally found that the technology is called "co-browsing".
Merry Christmas 2008
Posted December 25th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Merry Christmas and happy holidays to all my readers for 2008! This post comes to you while I should be eating Christmas lunch or going for a nice walk at Cook's Beach in the Coromandel in New Zealand.
How to get an auth code from GoDaddy
Posted December 21st, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
If you need to move a .com domain name to a new registrar you need an auth code. This post looks at how to get your auth code from GoDaddy using their domain name manager. You also need to ensure the email address associated with the domain is one you can receive mail to and that the domain has been unlocked before it can be transferred.
Electric Bookmarks website minor delay
Posted December 17th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
In Monday's weekly roundup I mentioned that I was discontinuing the offsite links section of the weekly roundup and moving it off to a new blog called Electric Bookmarks. I'm finishing off a couple of minor bits of functionality today and finishing the load of initial content and will have ready to go live no later than this time tomorrow. Thanks for your patience!
How to unlock a domain name at GoDaddy
Posted December 14th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Domain names are usually locked at your registrar to prevent unauthorized activity happening to them, including moving to another registrar. If you do want to move the domain to another registrar you must first unlock the domain and this post looks at how to unlock a domain with GoDaddy.
Google search changes 22nd November 2008
Posted November 23rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated November 25th, 2008)
While looking at some websites last night for next week's weekly roundup I noticed some changes to Google's search result which have social aspects to them: "promote", "remove" and "comment" buttons. I'm sure I haven't noticed these before so they must have only just gone live in the last day or so.
GoDaddy Coupon Codes 16 November 2008
Posted November 16th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I received GoDaddy's monthly email newsletter today which included a 20% off discount coupon code and thought I would share it here. GoDaddy is a domain name registrar and I register all my .com and .net domains with them.
Website changes October 17th 2008
Posted October 17th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
This post is a quick note about an update I made to my site yesterday to finally add recent and related posts to the end of each post to see if I can increase pageviews per visitor.
Change your login and/or password at GoDaddy
Posted October 15th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
GoDaddy is a domain registrar, web host, email provider etc. I recently needed to change the login name and password for a GoDaddy account but couldn't work out where to change it. After a little messing around with their options I found it in the "Account Security Information" section. This post looks at how to change your login and password at GoDaddy, along with screenshots showing how to do it.
Website changes October 2nd 2008
Posted October 3rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I made a change to the subscribe/bookmark/share section at the end of each post yesterday to make it less cluttered and smaller, and have posted this here so I have a reference of the change made.
PHP Job Opening at JK Kids
Posted September 24th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated December 4th, 2008)
I have been working with JK Kids for about a year now but am not able to give them as much time as they need for the ongoing development and maintenance of the website, and we are looking for someone to work on a near full time basis.
Website changes September 11th 2008
Posted September 12th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I made a couple of changes to this website yesterday so thought I would share them here and also so I have a record of changes made over time.
IMDB website design changed
Posted September 4th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I was looking something up on the Internet Movie Database last night and noticed that the design seemed to have been modified slightly. It is now a fixed width and centered in the browser window instead of the previous "stretchy" middle column.
Why do they expect free support?
Posted July 11th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
One of the reasons I stopped selling Linux on my Linux CD Mall website was because I got sick of people who seemed to expect support from me because they happened to have Linux (maybe from downloading it themselves, getting it from a friend or magazine cover etc) and I happened to sell it. Something about it being free seems to mean a lot of people seem to expect to get free suport or something...
Dreamhost Promo Codes and Vouchers
Posted June 6th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Dreamhost are a US based hosting provider who offer an number of excellent features such as 500 GB disk space, 5 TB of monthly bandwidth, unlimited websites, databases and email accounts. A free domain registration is included for the duration of the hosting account and you can get shell access, cron jobs etc. I've been using them for email and hosting of some of my sites for the past couple of months and am pleased to be able to offer some promo codes for Dreamhost here to make their already low fees even better.
The Linux CD Mall is now closed
Posted May 23rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Last night I closed my Linux CD Mall website for sales. I operated the Linux CD Mall from February 2005 until May 2008 and it has been an excellent experience for an e-commerce website developer to have his own e-commerce website. However I have too much other work going on at the moment and into the future; the CD Mall, while a reasonably nice earner, just doesn't stack up on a dollars per hour basis which is how I make most of the rest of my income.
Transaction declined errors when testing DPS
Posted May 22nd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I kept getting transaction declined errors when using a test DPS/Payment Express account for processing credit cards on a website I'm working on. (DPS or Direct Payment Solutions is the biggest player in New Zealand for providing credit card processing gateway services). This post looks at why I got the error message and the solution.
eBay "Internal error to the application" RSS feed error
Posted April 3rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
As an affiliate of eBay it is possible to do an advanced search on the eBay site and create custom RSS feeds which contain the search data and your affiliate information. On April 1st 2008 eBay have changed from using Commission Junction for their affiliate program to their own system. When testing out generating RSS feeds I got the error message "Internal error to the application" instead of the feed that I was expecting. This post looks at why I got the error and how to fix it.
Holiday March 2008
Posted March 23rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I am currently on holiday. This post (and the last three ones and the next one too) were written before I went away. I had intended to have posts written for every day that I was away to keep up the "one post per day" thing I have going on but I simply ran out of time. My next post after tomorrow's weekly round up will be on March 31st.
Use of www in website addresses - follow up
Posted February 3rd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Back in October 2007 I posted about the use of www in website addresses. There was a bit of talk about this recently in the NZ PHP Users Group's Mailing List (you can browse the discussion here in the thread "Is WWW still relevant") and I posted a link to my article so thought I should do a quick follow up about this.
Network Solutions Steals Domain Ideas - Follow Up
Posted January 31st, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
About three weeks ago a number of articles and blog posts talked about how Network Solutions Steals Domain Ideas, so natually I had to add my own post about the issue. This is a short follow-up post to confirm that Network Solutions drops the registration of the domain a few days later.
Blogging Resumed
Posted January 30th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
It's been two weeks since I last posted - extremely poor performance considering it was my intention to post something new every day. I've been pretty busy with work and it's so easy to slip behind. It only seems to take one or two days to slip behind and then it becomes easier to not do a post that day. Anyway, I am resolving to get back to posting once per day, andalready have a number of posts all ready to roll out over the next week. Blogging resumed!
Network Solutions Steals Domain Ideas
Posted January 12th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated January 17th, 2008)
Network Solutions had the monoploy for domain name registrations for .com, .org and .net domains for many years before the market was opened up. They are always been much more expensive than the competition and now it turns out that they have been taking advantage of ICANN's 5 day domain refund rule to hold onto all domains that are searched on on their site, therefore preventing them from being registered through another domain name registrar.
Google corrects incorrect payment amount
Posted January 8th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
Last week I posted how Google had used the wrong exchange rates when calculating their payment to me as a Google Adsense advertiser and paying by EFT or electronic funds transfer. As it turned out, this affected all of Google's Adsense advertisers in Australia and New Zealand who are paid using EFT.
Google recalculated what the payment should have been and then paid the difference to me on January 7th, so it has all ended well, although I would have like to have received the full payment at the start. It's a real wonder that they managed toget it wrong in the first place though.
Don't forget to backup before messing around with hard drives
Posted January 6th, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
My primary desktop computer has 4 x 320GB hard drives. The first hard drive is partitioned into an operating system drive with partitions for Windows XP, Linux (currently Fedora) and a dedicated partition for my VMWare virtual machines. The second one contained my /home partition and the third and fourth were combined into a single LVM (Logical Volume Management) partition containing Linux ISO images, backup files and so on.
The LVM volume was nearly full, and I'd been wanting to merge the 2nd disk into the volume for a while now, so I copied some files around the place and got ready to add it to the LVM. I used a graphical tool for managing LVM partitions and was easily able to add the drive to the LVM.
Incorrect exchange rates used in Google EFT Payments December 2007
Posted January 2nd, 2008 in Miscellaneous Postings
I use Google's Adsense program for serving ads on a number of sites I own. I don't earn a particularly large amount of money from this but it's a nice passive revenue stream from those sites. My monthly Google payments are done by EFT (Electronic Funds Transfer) and are converted from United States Dollars into New Zealand Dollars before the EFT is done. Unfortunately this month they managed to get the exchange rates the wrong way around.
Merry Christmas 2007
Posted December 25th, 2007 in Miscellaneous Postings
I would like to wish all my readers a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year (or a Happy Holidays if you don't celebrate Christmas). As this posting goes live I will be enjoying a beautiful Christmas lunch with my family on what is hopefully a nice sunny Christmas day.
RSS Feed Launched
Posted December 5th, 2007 in Miscellaneous Postings
Finally I have added an RSS feed to the site, using Feedburner to host the feed so I can get an idea of the number of people using it.
50th Consecutive Post
Posted December 4th, 2007 in Miscellaneous Postings
This post marks the 50th consecutive post on my LAMP Blog. I first set this website up in late 2003 to publish useful articles for solving problems etc and had intended to add new content every day. However other work kept me busy, and when I moved the site to a new server I never got around to making the admin functionality work again.
Earlier this year I decided I should get back into posting articles and turn this into a blog site. So I redeveloped the database structure, the admin and the frontend and re-skinned the website and turned it into a blog. I've only just added an RSS feed and will add some more "bloggy" things to it, such as user commenting etc shortly.
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