General Tips

Apple Time Capsule Flashing Amber

Today I noticed an amber light flashing on my time capsule. Normally I would just rip a power cord out of a device like this and power up again. Today was different. I was having so much fun making my first iPhone app on my mac, I bothered to stop and think… when was the last time something Apple just funked out for no reason (try never). So I jumped Google for a first hit response. Time Capsule Flashing Amber = Could be there is a software upgrade available for the time capsule. How do you check? Applications –> Utilities –> Airport Utility, you’ll see this: Click the update button and you are done. Go Mac!

Email Limits for web hosting providers

Mail server SMTP email send (rate) limit for popular web hosting providers Why do you need to know your web host’s SMTP email rate limit If you run a web site and you plan to send out mass emails (for example, a newsletter), it is advisable to send the emails using an authenticated SMTP mail server that matches the nameserver records for your own domain name. This way, your outgoing emails will not trigger anti-spam filters set to identify phishing emails or spammers. For example, if you run a web site at www.my-web-site.com, our advice is to send the emails from a SMTP server name that resolves to the same domain name (like smtp.my-web-site.com). However, to prevent spam, many web host providers enforce email send rate limits to their customers. The goal of this article is to show you the email send rate limit and options for most popular web… Read More »Email Limits for web hosting providers

IIS 7 WordPress permissions Could not create Temporary file

When hosting wordpress on iis 7, the ability to upload images from blog post tools like Live Writer and the ability to automatically update plugins is controlled by the permissions set both within IIS and within the directory structure that IIS accesses. The account that holds the key to the success is the “Users” account, unlike other versions of IIS. WordPress 3.5 Manual Fix Below is the manual fix you can apply to be able to get your WordPress 3.5 install working correctly, there are two options that should work. 1) In the file wp-config.php, add the following line before “That’s all, stop editing” define( ‘WP_TEMP_DIR’, ABSPATH . ‘wp-content/’ ); or 2) In the file /wp-includes/class-http.php comment out lines 144 and 145, which look like the following: if ( ! is_writable( dirname( $r[‘filename’] ) ) ) return new WP_Error( ‘http_request_failed’, __( ‘Destination directory for file streaming does not exist or is not… Read More »IIS 7 WordPress permissions Could not create Temporary file

Backup Exec could not find a Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) software or hardware provider on the media server.

We setup a new job recently on our Backup Exec 12.5 server. One of the jobs had the following error: Backup Exec could not find a Microsoft Volume Shadow Copy Services (VSS) software or hardware provider on the media server. To use offhost backup, a VSS provider must be installed on both the media server and on the remote computer. The solution to the is actually easy. It was a mistake we made in setup of the Backup Job. All we had to do was un check the option in Advanced Disk-base Backup. Hope this helps others.