Andy Crawford
Andy Crawford's blogsite with tricks and tips of webtrickery and other computer related stuff
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How do I remove “Comments are closed.” from WordPress Posts?
Published 20/01/2012 | 
If you want to turn off the comments feature on WordPress posts you may do so by:
Posts -> Quick Edit -> Uncheck “Allow Comments”.
But, WordPress still displays the words ”Comments are closed.” at the foot of the page. The way to remove this is to edit the content of comments.php in your theme (or preferably your Child Theme).
If you want to remove ”Comments are closed.” from WordPress Posts
Comment out the following lines in comments.php
elseif('open' != $post->comment_status && !is_page()) {
theme_post_wrapper(array('content' => '<p class="nocomments">' . __
('Comments are closed.', THEME_NS) .'</p>'));
}
No longer will ”Comments are closed.” be displayed on any WordPress Post.
Free Website Hosting
Published 03/01/2012 | Website Hosting Packages come with a variety of features and scripts already installed on the server, so to a certain extent, you get what you pay for. The more features and services, the more disk space and the more bandwidth allowed, the more the website hosting package is likely to cost.
It would not be possible to run a large or secure website on a free website hosting package but I am often asked if it is possible to get web hosting for free. The answer is yes, so long as a) you know what you are doing and, b) you are prepared to register your own domain name and configure the domain and the webspace yourself. Perhaps not for the inexperienced wannabe web designer but for those with experience of the installation and set up of websites, it would not be too complex to do.
As a test, I have tried one such free web hosting provider: http://www.000webhost.com/
The service is limited. I had some issues with some PHP scripts being disabled on the free account and I have not tested all the features fully yet. I suspect that if I were to try to go much above a very basic website installation I would start running in to brick walls with the only option to be to upgrade to a premium account.
They offer 1500mb of disk space with two MySQL databases available. Uptime is above 99% and the server runs on Apache/UNIX, so overall, it’s does the job.
Time will tell how reliable the service is, but so long as you remember that you get what you pay for, you can’t really go wrong with something for free.
Unless that is, you invest a lot of time and effort into building something and then losing it and having to start over again.
Formmail CGI script stopped working on 1and1 shared hosting?
Published 22/11/2011 | My formmail script recently stopped working under several domains hosted on the 1and1 shared servers. Not all domains, just some.
The reason seemed to be that the ”$postmaster =” email address in formmail.pl was set to an address that was not with 1&1 (i.e. a domain not hosted with 1&1).
I know that UK2.net did a similar thing some while ago, but what they did was block anything which was not destined for a @uk2.net email address, which meant that if you wanted to use formmail.pl with UK2, you needed to sign up to a UK2.net mailbox as well. This was done to protect their servers from spam, but it was enough to make me stop using them.
How do I test if Perl is working on my server?
Published 22/11/2011 | Create a file called test.pl
Add the following text:
#!/usr/local/bin/perl print "Content-type: text/html\n\n"; print "test\n";
Upload it to your cgi-bin directory by ftp.
(If you do not have a cgi-bin directory create one on the server.)
Open your web browser and run:
yourdomain.com/cgi-bin/test.pl
The word test will be displayed.
How to format a Micro SDHC card in NTFS in Windows XP to increase maximum file size from 4gb
Published 19/11/2011 | [1] Insert your Micro SDHC into you device or a card reader and connect to your computer.
[2] Set the Device Properties “Policies”
Right click “My Computer”
Properties > Hardware > Device Manager > Open “Disk Drives”
Right click the drive to format.
Properties > Policies select the radio button “Optimise for performance” and OK
You may need to reboot for changes to take effect.
[3] My Computer > Right click the disk drive you want to format
Select File System NTFS from the drop down.
Choose whether to Enable Compression. By enabling compression you files may take up less space but performance may be reduced.
Use Quick Format for a reformat on what you know is to be a good card only.
OK the warning (but make sure you are formatting the correct drive).
OK the Format Complete.
Note:
When you remove an NTFS drive from Windows, you will need to either shut down the computer or use the Safely Remove Hardware tool from the taskbar (next to the time date display on your monitor). This is to stop and read write process to the drive which may cause errors or loss of data.
How can I secure or encrypt the data on my hard drive?
Published 30/10/2011 | If you want the data on your hard drive to be secure and unable to be read by anyone else, the data needs to be encrypted.
Encryption is a method of changing the data in to a format, which cannot be read without using a decryption “key”, this is usually in the form of a password. It should be noted that a Windows User Account Password does not encrypt, all it does is blocks access via the operating system and it can be easily overridden with the right know how or software. A Windows User Account Password offers very little in the way of security.
Anyone who processes or stores sensitive data, (personal records card data etc) should encrypt any sensitive files. Any sensitive data transferred over a public network or sent by email should also be encrypted; doing this will make the files unreadable if they were to fall into the wrong hands.
Sensitive data stored on portable devices, flash drives, external drives, CDs, DVDs etc should also be encrypted, in case they were to fall into the wrong hands.
The simplest way to secure a drive or an individual file is using encryption software such as Secure LockWare™ available from: http://www.buffalo-technology.com
For more secure and complex arrangements, such as securing an entire system partition or drive, “on the fly”, where the content of your entire drive is automatically saved encrypted, I use TrueCrypt, the free open-source disk encryption software which works with Windows 7/Vista/XP, Macs, and Linux available from: http://www.truecrypt.org
It needs to be noted also that file encryption is only as secure as the passwords used. Dictionary words and names should be avoided when creating secure passwords and there should be a combination of characters including non-alpha non-numeric ones like these!ӣ$%^&*([
You need ideally to be able to remember your password without writing it down. One of the ways to do this is to say think of a verse or a saying and use say the first letter of each word. As an example:
“The cat sat on the mat” would make a code of “Tcsotm” that could then be interspersed with numbers and symbols such as [Tcs&otm! Making it even more secure. Ideally the whole password needs to be about 20 digits long to be really secure
To test how secure your passwords might be, there is the online facility at: http://howsecureismypassword.net/ Try it! Your results may be quite worrying.
Display Errors in Internet Explorer 8 using Artisteer, WordPress, jQuery and iFrames
Published 06/09/2011 | Artisteer is usually very stable and reliable, but I cam e across this display error whilst working on another website.
The symptoms were:
- The menu bar repeated itself and stretched down the page
- A large gap appeared below the content or “comments are off”
- The page froze, no scrolling, and none of the taskbar items would work (in IE8)
The only way out was to shut down IE8 or click on the header link or a menu link taking me to a page theat was not loaded with post content.
My process of elimination was to:
- Validate the page with W3.org.
- Clear IE8 cache of temporary files.
- Remove the post content, iFrames, Google maps, jQuery tabs.
- Diasable Plugins
- Log out of WordPress
- Install a new theme.
Still no joy …
The problem did not exist in Firefox or Google Chrome and even more strangely, the problem did not exists when viewing in IE8 on my desktop or 2nd laptop, it only existed on my Studio Laptop. All three were running Windows XP SP3 and all were up to date with Windows Updates.
So I eventually figured that this must be problem somewhere between Artisteer and my installation of IE8. I reinstalled IE8, and then went through every possible setting to make sure that the settings on the Studio Laptop were the same as the others. (toolbars, add-ons etc).
I eventually found the problem. The page was being viewed in IE8 in Compatibility View. After you load a page in IE8 an icon appears at the end of the address bar. The feature is there to correct display errors when viewing websites designed for older browsers (presumably websites designed for older versions of Internet Explorer). This had inadvertently been clicked at some point for the website I was viewing and was causing the issue. The Compatibility View icon sits next to the refresh/reload button so it is easy to see how it was accidentally clicked while refreshing the page.
So, it was nothing to do with Artisteer, jQuery Plugins, iFrames or Google Maps. It was Compatibility View being unable to render the page correctly with jQuery while IE8 was in compatibility view for that website.
One click of the Compatibility View Icon sorted the issue.
How do I change the size of the TinyMCE Content Editor in WordPress?
Published 05/09/2011 | The default value for the content editor in WordPress is 30 lines which is rather small if you are working on large or complex pages.
You can change the height of the editor by going to:
Settings > Writing
Then changing the size of the Size of the post box.
60 is a reasonable size.
How can I delete the data on my hard drive?
Published 03/09/2011 | From time to time it may be necessary to erase the data on your hard drive. It might be that you are selling the machine, passing it to another user, or just want a clean installation.
Even if you were to reformat the hard drive and reload the operating system, the data is still stored (although it is not easily accessible). Deleting files and then emptying the recycling bin does not delete the data either. The physical space where the files are stored needs to be overwritten with data several times over to ensure that the data cannot be recovered.
To wipe an entire drive
A useful free tool to do this is Copywipe
Boot Copywipe from a CD and you to erase the entire content of a drive by overwriting it.
To wipe a drive or a partition
Another useful tool is Killdisk
KillDisk for Windows will allow you to erase drives and partitions from within the Windows environment which is useful for erasing flash drives external drives or partitions on your hard drive.
How do I stop my uploaded WordPress files from being accessed by users who are not logged in?
Published 03/09/2011 | One of the security loopholes with WordPress is that while you can prevent pages and posts from being accessed by unauthorised users who are not logged in, any uploaded files (such as images and PDFs etc.) are still available to anyone who has the URL. If the URL is picked up by search engines, it means that the content of PDFs and other files you wish to keep out of public view may be indexed and cached too.
To protect your uploaded WordPress files from users not logged in
In the directory you wish to protect (eg. /wp-content/uploads/private) create a .htaccess file and insert the following content:
# BEGIN WordPress
<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>
RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} ^.*uploads/private/.*
RewriteCond %{HTTP_COOKIE} !^.*wordpress_logged_in.*$ [NC]
RewriteRule . /index.php [R,L]
RewriteRule ^index\.php$ - [L]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-f
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_FILENAME} !-d
RewriteRule . /index.php [L]
</IfModule>
# END WordPress
When a user calls for the uploaded file, WordPress checks to see the users log in status. If they are not logged in. they are redirected to index. If you want to force all users to log in. There is a plugin available to do this.