Miscellaneous Postings - Chris Hope's LAMP Blog

Buying secure certificates from name.com

Posted August 24th, 2012 in Miscellaneous Postings

I've been slowly moving my domains and secure certificates from GoDaddy to Name.com; their secure certificates are issued by Rapid SSL / GeoTrust / Verisign and this post has a quick look at this.

Facebook link not downloading thumbnail image, title, description

Posted May 28th, 2012 in Miscellaneous Postings

Sometimes when you post a link in a Facebook status update, all you get in the little preview box is the website address that you typed in, and the thumbnail image, meta title and description are missing. This can be due to issues on your website, communication between Facebook and your website and so on. This post shows the simple way to fix the issue so Facebook downloads the information again.

Assign additional users in Google Webmaster Central

Posted January 16th, 2012 in Miscellaneous Postings

I needed to assign an additional verfied owner in Google Webmaster Central for a website today and forgot how to do it because it's not in a very obvious place. This post will help me remember next time if I forget again, and hopefully will help some other people too if you have the same problem.

Google, SSL Search and referrer information

Posted October 20th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

Google have announced that SSL search at www.google.com will now be the default for all users. This post looks at the before and after of what's stored in web server logs to show that you'll still be able to see if visitors came from Google, just not what the search query was.

Coupon codes and discounts for domain names etc

Posted September 15th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

From time to time I come across useful coupon codes and discount offers from various providers. In the past I have created a new post for each coupon code but I've ended up with a number of pages with invalid coupon codes on them, so instead I've set this page up which I will keep updated as and when I find new coupon codes.

GoDaddy SSL renewal credit bought - now what?

Posted August 1st, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

After buying a renewal credit for a GoDaddy SSL certificate it's not all obvious what you need to do next to actually request and download the certicate. The last time I had to do this was a couple of months ago and when I went to renew some certs today I couldn't remember how to do it. Now I've figured it out again I've documented it here for anyone else needing help.

Google Analytics: Tracking not installed, Last checked Dec 31 1969

Posted June 11th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

Google recently released a new interface to Analytics and it's naturally labelled "beta". I've only just started using it recently and the only issue I've found so far is with adding a new site and tracking status. After adding the new site, the tracking status shows "tracking not installed - last checked Dec 31, 1969 4:00:00 PM PST". 10 hours after setting up a new site it was still showing this status so I flicked through to the old interface, checked the status there and that fixed it.

Opting out of LinkedIn invite emails when not a LinkedIn member

Posted June 8th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

So you don't have a LinkedIn login or profile and you keep getting invites and followup reminders from people you don't know via LinkedIn inviting you to join? Have you noticed there's no way in the emails to opt-out of these emails? This post shows how to opt out of these emails.

Google's Panda update and a drop in traffic

Posted April 15th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

Google rolled out an update in late February known as "Panda" or "Farmer" for US queries only; this week it rolled the update out for all English language queries. The purpose of the update is an attempt to drop the rank of low quality pages and sites which have little use to the end user.

We've all seen the sorts of sites they're trying to affect and not having these at the top of the search results is a good thing. However, the update appears to have had a major impact on many tech sites including mine, which has seen a 1/3 drop in traffic. In this post I'll provide my theory as to why.

BigCommerce - The Easiest Way to Sell Online

Posted April 2nd, 2011 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.

Old school ads #3

Posted March 21st, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

This is the third and final post in a series looking at "ad school ads" from a bygone era before the world of political correctness, modern feminism and the realisation that cigarettes and alcohol are bad for you and your baby. Part 1 featured cigarette ads; part 2 featured ads patronising women; today's post looks at soft drinks, alcohol and guns.

Old school ads #2

Posted March 20th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

This is the second in a series of three posts featuring some "old school ads" from a bygone era before the world of political correctness, modern feminism and the realisation that cigarettes and alcohol are bad for you and your baby. Read part 1 here featuring cigarette ads. Today's part 2 features ads patronising women and very much putting them in their place in the home.

Old school ads #1

Posted March 19th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

This isn't normally the sort of post I'd make on this blog but someone sent me these "old school ads" the other day and I decided to share them. They're from a bygone era before the world of political correctness, modern feminism and the realisation that cigarettes and alcohol are bad for you and your baby. Pretty much anything used to go. In the context of today's world these are so unacceptable and it's amazing to think they ever were.

TradeMe Auctions

Posted January 28th, 2011 in Miscellaneous Postings

I have a bunch of computer equipment I'm selling on New Zealand's TradeMe. If you are in Auckland, New Zealand then check out my listings. I have a brief summary of the items below but otherwise check My Listings Page on TradeMe.

Installing Redmine on Debian 5

Posted November 22nd, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings

I just installed the Redmine project management / bug tracking software on a Debian 5 server and ran into a few issues getting it installed, so this post is basically a bookmark for me to the relevent pages I used to get it installed should I need to install on another server in the future.

Web server setup, DNS and Email Hosting, Domain Registrars

Posted November 5th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings

I have two VPS servers, one in the USA and one in New Zealand. This post explains a little bit about my current VPS providers, web server setup, DNS and email hosting, and the domain registrars I use.

Blog Update October 11th 2010

Posted October 11th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings

Things have been a bit quiet around here lately; I haven't had a lot of time to write new content due to a heavy workload and a large project running late. I've was also on holiday for 10 days but am back now and back into getting the large project completed. I still have a lot of work to do over the next couple of months so am likely to continue posting at a rate of around 1 post per week.

My workspace (June 13th 2010)

Posted June 13th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings

Now that I've moved to using a Mac Mini my workspace layout has changed again so I thought I'd write a quick post showing how it looks now. I moved from 3 monitors before on my Windows box to 2 with the Mini because it only supports 2.

Change Google Analytics Profile Name

Posted May 3rd, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings

I set up an additional Google Analytics profile this morning for my new Australian Running Calendar website (which is just really a placholding website for the moment until I start loading content) and accidentally added a trailing slash in the profile name. Asthetically I found it a little annoying, so worked out how to change the profile name and show here how to change a Google Analytics profile name.

My workspace (March 27th 2010)

Posted March 27th, 2010 in Miscellaneous Postings

Six months ago I posted a photo of my workspace. Since then I have purchased a new monitor second hand and replaced the smaller of my 3 monitors and have been meaning to post an updated photo of my workspace. So here it is... if you would like to share your workspace put a link to your photo in the comments section.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

My workspace (September 4th 2009)

Posted September 4th, 2009 in Miscellaneous Postings (Updated March 27th, 2010)

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.

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.

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".

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...

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 September 14th, 2011)

I post regular content on this blog, currently every weekday in the morning, New Zealand time

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 / 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.

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.

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.