news and information
Updates for Drupal versions 6.13 and 5.19 have been released this week with a host of maintenance fixes as well as some critical security vulnerabilities which have been fixed.
As always, upgrading and keeping your installations up to date is highly recommended. As always follow the Drupal upgrading procedures with a current and tested backup of your site.
CMS, PHP Applications, Scripting & Coding, Security, Web Development, drupal
Being in the hosting industry, one of the key elements of hosting is uptime and availability. Trust us when we say this is VERY important. We spend a lot of money on making sure that if problems occur, there is a fail over. If the fail over, fails over - There is a “Plan C”. In order for us to know the moment a server becomes unresponsive, or if part of the network is having issues - We use monitoring.
Having support staff available 24/7 is one thing - They can answer customers queries, keep the information flowing and resolve problems. However, Not always can support staff fix the problem sitting at their desk. Sometimes systems administrators and network engineers need to be dispatched to the data centre at 3am on a Sunday morning, And lets face it - we can’t all work 24 hours a day. So the best way for all of our staff to know when an issue arises is via Instant SMS alerts. To do this, we use a particular service called Pingdom.
Pingdom monitor our network/servers and their response times from multiple locations, and send us SMS alerts when something goes wrong. This allows all of our staff to be aware, the exact moment a server goes down, no matter where we are. Now, they have opened up a new type of account which allows you to monitor your website for free. Part of this package includes 20 Free SMS credits per month.
We recommend you give it a go, Especially if you want to sleep at night - knowing that someone is keeping an eye on your website.
Pingdom: www.pingdom.com
After being in release candidate stage for several months now, the latest release version 3.5 of Firefox is finally available. Promising a host of improvements to speed and usability. Here’s a full list of what’s new in text or video rundowns to checkout while you download!
Also worth a mention Mozilla Labs have also released the latest version of Weave which requires version 3.5. Weave is handy service which allows you to securely encrypt and synchronise bookmarks and personal info across multiple browsers, allowing for automatic syncing your of Firefox at home and work or wherever.
With plans to support automated website logins, pretty handy! The new release includes automatic logins and OpenID support (for supported sites), and can sync your browser preferences across systems which is a big advantage over cross-browser solutions like Xmarks.
Here at AUSWEB we have a huge number of users running WordPress websites from personal blogs, to business oriented websites and even us here on the AUSWEB Blog!
Thanks to the huge community of WordPress users there exists a huge pool of custom scripting, plugin and theme/design resources out there for you to add various features to your blog. Often overlooked however are some of the more recent in-built features for WordPress such as shortcodes which allow you to easily call php functions within your posts, thus saving time by speeding up repeated tasks.
Blogging, CMS, Scripting & Coding, Web Development, Wordpress
The 404 Not Found error page is probably the most common error most web users will come across. Most designers and webmasters however, often choose to leave the default settings for these error pages, resulting in the generic unimaginative 404 Not Found error text we’ve all seen many times.
These basic error pages are automatically served up by the web server. However, if you prefer you can create and edit custom error pages from your cPanel. Once logged in you will see the option for “Error Pages”, which will let you easily manage and edit all your available error pages.
There are many roads to take, from the stylistic approach, matching the aesthetics of your site’s design, the informative, with custom search or suggestion options for where the visitor should be looking or even taking the humorous route with custom images, it’s all up to your imagination. The folks over at CSS-Tricks have compiled a handy guide with several ideas and tips for adding a little extra flair on your site, head on over to their 404 Best Practices post for some ideas!
If you’ve ever had those times when your website or emails are just not working how they should, the first thing you can do to see where the problem possibly resides is to get a DNS report on your domain.
What is Greylisting?
Greylisting is a new method of blocking significant amounts of spam at the mailserver level, but without resorting to heavyweight statistical analysis or other heuristical (and error-prone) approaches. Consequently, implementations are fairly lightweight, and may even decrease network traffic and processor load on your mailserver.
Miscrosoft’s new search engine Bing has generated another successive week of healthy buzz, with usage in Australia leading the way. The numbers creating all the buzz come from online metrics firm ComScore.
According to ComScore “Bing continued to increase its position” throughout the week of June 8 with usage interest mainly coming from Australia, with India and China not far behind.
It does look like the service has successfully passed the tentative launch stage and decent numbers of users are giving it a try. Good news for Microsoft you might say as the search market (ie. Google), has been one of the bigger mistakes made by the boys at Redmond.
Only time will tell and of course the quality of Bing’s search algorithm, if search leader Google should be worrying about any market shifts out there. As always though, extra competition is always a good thing and testing the variety of a few search results on both services might lead to some interesting results! Give it a try here: Bing
More helpful tips for all you web designers and developers out there. Google has recently introduced a tool called Page Speed which tests a web page based on a set of rules and best coding practices for fast-loading websites. It then gives you advice on what you can improve to make your website faster. It works as an add-on to Firefox and needs the Firebug extension (mentioned in our last post) to work.
Google’s new service is uncannily similar to Yahoo’s YSlow tool, another add-on for Firefox (with Firebug) which tests web page code based on fast-loading criteria and gives suggestions accordingly. Funnily enough Steve Souders the guy who created the first version of YSlow, now works for Google, although his involvement on the project if any is unknown. Of course more options are always a good thing and both services might offer valuable advice for improving the speed of your website.