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Sunday 27 March 2011

PphBB 3.0.8 Upgrade

I was two versions behind production and I also wanted to see if I could install RSS & a mobile template Mod.


Upgraded to 3.0.8 which was the normal seamless experience.


Then entered the word of AutoMod.  Which as with most things sent to make life easier totally screwed me.  Firstly the app has a few 'update' file options.  Live, direct FTP or if they fail (because you have good security) then it will download the modified files and let you update at your leisure.


The download (zip, tar.gz or .tar) worked once.  And then all subsequent files appeared to be corrupt.  There are some posts on the forum with no obvious fix.


Tried FTP - #FAIL ! - it totally ignored (or maybe I mis-typed) the FTP path which resulted in the files getting splatted all over the structure.  Chaos, and a broken site.


Its OK, I have a backup - #FAIL #2.  Permissions all wrecked.  


Stop, slow down, think .. All the data is in the DB, which is safe, and I have many backups of.  Install a clean 3.0.8 and point the install to the old db.  Well this did'nt work as I'd expected - it wants to use a new db.  A quick google and just replacing the config.php from the screwed install got me working.  YAY.


Go to bed


Wake up to Bot hell .. I'd assumed (naively) that the .8 anti-bot would have been better, I'd enabled everything. Not the case so I went back and installed the tried and trusted Anti-Bot question mod.  


Again trying (stupidly) with AutoMod - #FAIL *sigh* - going off that very quickly.  


Manually made the changes and all is well.


EDIT : New and improved anti-bot registration installed - Peoplesign (which also required me to update to a 3.0.8 style)


EDIT :  Peoplesign didnt prevent all spam signups, wow they are persistent.  Reverted to the 'ask a question' default phpBB sign up options.  So far so good.

Wednesday 23 March 2011

Wisestamp signature code

As Wisestamp currently has no cloud or import export option I'll store the html here ..







<p><span><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva; color: #333333;"><strong><span style="font-size: medium; color: #000000;">Paul Regan<br /><br /></span></strong><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">t:</span> +44(0)7867 503631</span><strong><br /></strong><span style="font-size: small;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">e:</span> <a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;" href="mailto:me@paulregan.co.uk" target="_blank">me@paulregan.co.uk</a><br /></span><a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;"><span style="font-family: 'trebuchet ms', geneva;"><span style="color: #3366ff;">w:</span> http://</span></a><a style="text-decoration: none; color: #333333;" href="http://www.paulregan.co.uk" target="_blank">www.paulregan.co.uk<br />_</a>__________________________________________________________</span></span></p>



Which looks like :





Sunday 20 March 2011

GMail Signature - Wisestamp

The default one is pretty poor and surprisingly has no HTML support !


Stumbled across Wisestamp.com which installs as a Chrome extension.  


Works pretty well. Comes with a heap of default settings you'd normally use, social networking links, IM etc.  One downside is theres no cloud (when did everything become cloud ?) sync so you have to install the extension and setup your signature on each Chrome install.