Posts Tagged ‘Button’

WordPress blog MySQL data maintainance valuable plugin WP-OPTIMIZE

Tuesday, April 12th, 2011

The more my blog is growing the slower it becomes, this is a tendency I’ve noticed since a couple of weeks.

Very fortunately while reading some random articles online I’ve came across a super valuable wordpress plugin called WP-OPTIMIZE

I think it’s best if I present instead of taking the time to explain what the WP-optimize does for a wordpress powered blog:

WP-Optimize is a WordPress 2.9++ database cleanup and optimization tool. It doesn’t require PhpMyAdmin to optimize your database tables. It allows you to remove post revisions, comments in the spam queue, un-approved comments within few clicks.

Additionally you can rename any username to another username too.

For example: If you want to rename default ‘admin’ username to ‘someothername’; just put ‘admin’ (without quotes) to the Old username field and the new username to the New username field, then click “PROCESS”)

Now in short to rephrase above text, during MySQL database requests a lot of database starts needing the so called MySQL optimization , this operation becomes necessery especially for databases which are very actively used and is related to the basic design of the mysql server.

Very often many tables starts having a lot of garbage (repetitive) data and therefore read and writes from the SQL server gets slower and slower day by day.

Thus the MySQL server has it’s famous OPTIMIZE TABLE command which does wipe out all the garbage unnecessery data stored in a tables/s and hence seriously impacts the later read/write table operations.

Now to go back to wordpress the same optimization issues, very often are a cause for a performance bottleneck and some smart guy has came with the great idea to create a specific wordpress plugin to fix such an optimize table issues

The WP-Optimize plugin has 5 major options which somehow could have a positive impact on blog’s performance, these are:
 

  • Remove all Post revisions
  • Remove all auto draft posts
  • Clean marked Spam comments
  • lean Unapproved comments
  • Optimize database tables

Apart from the nice performance boost applicaiton the wp-optimize plugin has one super valuable function, it could change the default wordpress blog administrator user admin to some other desired username, for example rename the default blog administrator username “admin” user to “john”.

From a security perspective this is another must have feature in every wordpress blog as it can kill many of the possible brute force attacks with some web brute force softwares like Hydra

Installing and using wp-optimize is a real piece of cake, here is a very quick few command lines to install it:

host:~# cd /var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins/
host:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins:# wget https://www.pc-freak.net/files/wp-optimize.0.9.2.zip
host:/var/www/blog/wp-content/plugins:# unzip wp-optimize.0.9.2.zip
...

To launch WP-OPTIMIZE and fix many speed bottlenecks caused by unoptimized tables, or just hanging around in database old spam comments, go and login with your adminsitrator to wordpress.

In the left pane menu starting up with Dashboard somewhere near the end of the vertical menu you will notice a button reading WP-Optimize .
Click over the Wp-Optimize button and a screen like the one in below’s screenshot will appear in your browser screen:

wp optimize plugin database optimization options screen

I have personally decided to use just 2 of all the 5 available primary plugin options, I decided to select only:
 

  • Clean marked Spam comments
  • Optimize database tables

Scrolling below the PROCEED button I could also notice a number of tables which were missing optimization and hence required an optimize table to be executed on each one of them.
Further on I pressed the PROCESS button and after a couple of minutes (2, 3 minutes) of waiting the wp-optimize plugin was done it’s selected tasks:

In the screenshot below, you see all my blog tables which were optimized by the plugin:
WP-Optimize optimized blog tables screenshot

It’s interesting to say few words about the Remove All Posts revisions plugin option, as many might be wondering what this plugin option really means.

When writting posts, wordpress has an option to restore to a certain point of the write out and makes a sort of different versions in time of each of it’s written posts.

Therefore later restoration if something gots deleted by mistake is facilitated, this is actually the all meaning of Remove All Posts revisions

With time and the increase wp posts the amount of Posts Revisions is growing on and on and just taking space and possibly making the access to the database entries slower, thus it might be a good idea to also remove them as, it’s absolutely rare to use the wp post restoration function.
However I’ve personally decided to not wipe out the old posts revisions as someday i might need it and I’m a bit scared that it might cause me some database issues.

I’ll be glad if somebody has tried the Posts Revisions wp-Optimize funciton and is happy with the results.

Fixing QMAIL mail server SMTP auto-configure issues in Thunderbird and other mail IMAP / POP3 mobile clients

Friday, July 13th, 2012

One of the QMAIL mail servers, setup-uped on a Debian host has been creating some auto configuration issues. Every-time a new mail user tries to use the embedded Thunderbird client auto configuration, the auto config fails leaving the client unable to use his Mailbox through POP3 or IMAP protocols.

Since about 2 years Thunderbird and many other modern pop3 and imap mail desktop and mobile clients are by default using the auto configuration and hence it was unthinkable to manually change settings for new clients with the QMAIl install; Besides that most of the Office users are always confused, whether they have to manually change SMTP or POP3 host for a server.

Below is a screenshot displaying the warning during email auto-configuration:

Thunderbird new Mail account setup auto config warning SMTP not OKThe orange color in the button for the newly auto-detected smtp.mail-domain.com indicates, something is not right with the SMTP host.

Obviously, something was wrong with smtp.mail-domain.com, hence I checked where smtp.mail.domain.com resolves with host command. What I found was actually smtp.mail-domain.com Active ( A ) DNS records was pointing to an IP address, our company previously used for the mail server. At present time the correct mail server host name is mx.mail-domain.com and the QMAIL installation on mx.soccerfame.com is configured to be the actual SMTP server.

By default Thunderbird and many other POP3, IMAP mail clients, however automatically assume the default SMTP host for a mail server is to be configured under a host name smtp.mail-domain.com. This is really strange, especially when the primary MX record for mail-domain.com domain is pointing to mx.mail-domain.com, e.g.:

qmail:~# host -t MX mail-domain.com
soccerfame.com mail is handled by 10 mx.mail-domain.com.
soccerfame.com mail is handled by 20 mail.mail-domain.com.
soccerfame.com mail is handled by 30 mail-domain.com.

The whole warning was caused due to the fact mx.mail-domain.com was resolving to an IP like xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx, whether smtp.mail-domain.com was resolving to yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy

Both xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx and yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy hosts were configured to have a different qmail SMTP host i.e.:

The server under IP xxx.xxx.xxx.xxx – (mx.mail-domain.com) was configured in /var/qmail/control/me to be mx.mail-domain.com and the other old one yyy.yyy.yyy.yyy – (mail.mail-domain.com) had (mail.mail-domain.com) in /var/qmail/control/me

As smtp.mail-domain.com was actually being still resolved to mail.mail-domain.com, the EMAILs were improperly trying to be sent with a configured DNS hostname of smtp.mail-domain.com, where the actual one on the server was mail.mail-domain

It took, me about an hour of pondering what is causing the oddities until I got the here explained issue. As the DNS recors for the domain the sample mail-domain.com were handled by Godaddy, to fix the mess, I logged in to Godaddy and;

a) deleted – DNS record for smtp.mail-domain.com.
b) Created new CNAME record for smtp.mail-domain.com to be a domain alias for mx.soccerfame.com

A few minutes, afterwards I tried configuring once again the same email account in Thunderbird and this time both imap.mail-domain.com and smtp.mail-domain.com turned green; indicating everything is configured fine.

To be 100% sure all is working fine I first fetched, all email via the IMAP protocol without hassles and onwards sent a test email to my Gmail account; thanksfully the sent email was delivered to Gmail indicating both Get Mail and Send Mail functions worked now fine.

Thunderbird icedove new mail account setup auto config Okay
 

Life was easier when Blackberry and Apple were just fruits

Saturday, June 30th, 2012

Life was much easier when blackberry and Apple were just fruits

Sad but true fact Life was much easier when BlackBerry and Apple were just fruits!.

I don’t know about others but I have difficulties to adjust my body to the fast pace life has taken. Life would was easy and more fun without all this technology. Now even going to a pub you can’t escape the “doom” of technology. If the tech hype continues the way it does or something drastic doesn’t happen I guess all people on earth will get completely crazy …

I thougth about how this techno-mambo jumbo can be stopped on a wide scale and the only idea I have is a weapon that blocks all tech equipment world-wide. I hope someone will develop it soon and press the destory button SOON ! 🙂

Negative impact of Cell Phones (GSM) use on individual and society

Monday, June 25th, 2012

Negative impact of Cell Phones GSM on individual and society

We all live in an age, where cell-phone communication has become a standard part of our daily lives. As with everything new adopted in basic human life. GSM tool inclusion in our life had a severe impact on both individuals and in summary to whole society groups and nations.

The benefits out of having an instant “channel” for communication to anyone else in the world are indoubtfully numerous. However as present tosicety is learned to mostly thing in one direction, most people didn’t have a clear understanding on the negative impact of this little communicators on our mind body and soul.

1.; Negative impact of mobile phones on body level

Whenever we talk over the phone especially when picking up incoming calls or initiating out-going ones, the GSM device has to connect to the closest network cell “dial up” and wait for initialization of remote or local connection. The levels of radiation waves during the two mobiles connects up is higher. Therefore if one moves the phone near his ear listening for the status of call the amount of radiation that enters our brains is slightly higher. The extra-radiation whether mobiles are connecting is also few times more whether our phone is ringning, hence it is unhealthy to put the phone near our ear before we press the Answer Call button.

2.;; Negative effect of continuous mobile phones use on human brain

Knowing about the increased radiation on connection initialization thanksfully one can protect himself by simply not putting the mobile headset near ear on call initialization. Though this “problem” can be partially solved, next comes the health brain damage (tumours) which according to some researches are higher among people who do frequentlong phone call conversations. In long phone calls the brain is exposed for a longer time to the flowing waves making the peer to peer call possible. According to some medical researches, a long and frequent phone calls could be a reason not only for brain cancers but also other misfunctions or damages in normal brain cells functioning.

3.;;; The bad impact of Cell Phones on nervous system

Another health issue which the daily phone use and the constant exposure to mobile network cells radio frequency radiation affects generally our nervous system.

Unexpected phone calls early in morning or late at night are a cause for increased bodily stress and even the fear sometimes for an incoming phone call are a cause for many types of neurological disorders diagnosed by psychiatrists.
Even when we sleep at night the mobile phone periodically connects to the nearest mobile cell generating some almost undetectable “waves contamination”. This constant waves air flow caused by the mobile network cells positioned all around cities is not usual thing for our bodies. This also has some influence on our nervous system as the nervous sysm tends to be a bit more alert because of the waves constantly passing the body. The natural reaction of our bodies nerves is to try to balance itself. As nervous system of different people is not equal some people’s nervous system is more prone to having difficulties to balance the disbalance created by the increased number of mobile air waves.
The result of this to many people is in increased sleeplessnes and hardships to get asleep (according to research taken place in American Academy of Sleep Medicine.).

4.;;;; Lost of social and ethical behaviour in people

There is lately observed a huge shift from a face to face communication to peer to peer (p2p) on the phone. The cellphones breeds a culture of socially group detached people (the communication over phone is rarely a conference) but rather consists of communication between two persons (peer to peer). The p2p communication is not only a primary mean of communication of people exposed to heavy phone use. p2p Communication is a primary communication in Skype, Google Talk and mostly all modern available communication medias and softwares.

As more and more people spend nowdays more time on the mobile than in real communication, this makes them introverted and isolated and increases the inability to deal with real human f2f interaction. In other words continuous phone use re-trains us to communicate with others via the mobile. Besides that according to numerous researches about 40 to 50% of visual communication whether a phone call is used is lost (this also makes negotiation or expressing over phone harder and at least twice longer than in real communication).

The influence of the decreased social abilities cause of the phone use has also an impact on ethical behaviour of people too. The increased lost of communication abilities makes even daily real communication vague and lacking accepted social norms and ethical values. Next to that comes the huge problem of over-simplification of communication. As the line communication over the phone loose half of the communication as well as sometimes there are quality of voice over the network interferences. People are doing their best to simplify the communication adopting short command like like phrases and talking in a slang.

5.;;;;; Addiction to mobile phone use

The use of mobile phone often has a short beep sounds, whether you work on the keyboard receive a phone call or look for some mobile functionality staring at the screen. We’re wearing the mobile everywhere with us so often we do check the mobile screen quite un-consciously (by addiction). Checking the mobile screen to see what time is it has become almost an instinct and an automated learned behaviour.

The continous use of mobile phones makes many people mobile addicts. There are huge amount of people I’ve observed who speaks everyday for few hours (whether everytime they feel lonely they call someone in order not to feel lonely). The mobile phone addiction in youngsters is slighly higher than in adults. Probably the most mobile dependent addicts are kids who were given a mobile to use since there very early years.
Anyways there are tons of adults nowdays who cannot even think to be able to live without mobile and even cannot understand: how can anyone think that life could be possible without a cell phone. This kind of thinking is a direct trait showing an addiction and dependency on the phone such people have.

Improve default picture viewing on Slackware Linux with XFCE as Desktop environment

Saturday, March 17th, 2012

Default XFce picture viewer on Slackware Linux is GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program). Though GIMP is great for picture editting, it is rather strange why Patrick Volkerding compiled XFCE to use GIMP as a default picture viewer? The downsides of GIMP being default picture viewing program for Slackware's XFCE are the same like Xubuntu's XFCE risterroro, you can't switch easily pictures back and forward with some keyboard keys (left, right arrow keys, backspace or space etc.). Besides that another disadvantage of using GIMP are;
a) picture opening time in GIMP loading is significantly higher if compared to a simple picture viewer program like Gnome's default, eye of the gnomeeog.

b) GIMP is more CPU intensive and puts high load on each picture opening

A default Slackware install comes with two good picture viewing programs substitute for GIMP:
 

  • Gwenview

    Gwenview on Slackware Linux picture screenshot XFCE

  •  
  • Geeqie
  • Geeqie Slackware Linux Screenshot XFCE

    Both of the programs support picture changing, so if you open a picture you can switch to the other ones in the same directory as the first opened one.
    I personally liked more Gwenview because it has more intutive picture switching controls. With it you can switch with keyboard keys space and backspace

    To change GIMP's default PNG, JPEG opening I had with mouse right button over a pic and in properties change, Open With: program.

    XFCE4 Slackware Linux picture file properties window

    If you're curious about the picture on on all screenshots, this is Church – Saint George (situated in the city center of Dobrich, Bulgaria).
    St. Georgi / St. George Church is built in 1842 and is the oldest Orthodox Church in Dobrich.
    In the Crimean War (1853-1856) the church was burned down and was restored to its present form in 1864.

    gpicview is another cool picture viewing program, I like. Unfortunately on Slackware, there is no prebuild package and the only option is either to convert it with alien from deb package or to download source and compile as usual with ./configure && make && make install .
    Downloading and compiling from source went just fine on Slackware Linux 13.37gpicview has more modern looking interface, than gwenview and geeqie. and is great for people who want to be in pace with desktop fashion 🙂

How to make Print SysRQ keyboard key working on Slackware Linux’s XFCE

Saturday, March 17th, 2012

By default Slackware's XFCE, does not allow screenshot taking by simply pressing PrintScreen SysRQ, like is in most of the "more advanced" graphical environments (GNOME, KDE), MS-Windows 🙂 etc.

To have a key binding assinged to PrintScreen SysRQ key in XFCE, you will first need to have xfce4-screenshooter

I've earlier blogged on how to take screenshots on Slackware's XFCE by installing and using xfce4-screenshooter program , so I suggest you take a look at it.

After xfce4-screenshooter is installed start:

bash-4.1$ xfce4-keyboard-settings

XFCE4 keyboard settings window Slackware Linux screenshot

Further on go to:

Application Shortcuts (tab) -> Add

Type in the command prompt to appear xfce4-screenshooter and press the PrintScreen SysRQ keyboard button.
From now onwards pressing it will allow you to take screenshot like with GNOME's gnome-screenshot -i command.
Happy Screenshoting 😉

Nokia 9300i Communicator with final firmware Symbian version 6.27 still contains an old telephone hanging bug

Sunday, September 5th, 2010

Earlier I’ve written an article tagged How to reset to factory defaults (hard reset) hanged Nokia 9300i device / How to format your Nokia 9300i

Therein I explained how I ended up with an unbootable telephone after improperly shutting down my Nokia directly removing the battery instead of pressing the Nokia front turn off button first and then remove the battery.

Two months ago in order to get rid of the annoying nokia hanging on boot up bug I decided to flush my firwmare.
The firmware was a flushed by a friend of me who is a Mobile software specialist he used a special so called double cable and a special software programmer device which is required to flush up a certain range of mobile phones models.

Since the firmware update my Nokia was equipped with the latest firmware version provided by Nokia corp before Nokia dropped the support for the phone.
The latest Nokia firmware version available which was installed on my phone was 6.27.(0)

For two months the Nokia worked just fine, however just recently once again after a couple of different SIM card changes with the phone, the phone hanged the same time as described in my earlier written article How to reset to factory defaults (hard reset) hanged Nokia 9300i device / How to format your Nokia 9300i

This pissed me off and I once again had to follow the necessary described steps about formatting the Nokia 9300i Communicator mobile device as it’s explained in the up-mentioned article.

The format went fine nevertheless the newer phone firmware version.
The format completed quite quickly once again it took in between 30 seconds and a minute to complete.

The good news after the format of my hanged Nokia phone was that it kept the newer firmware version, even after reverting to facture defaults with the firmware format.
Now thanksfully still my Symbian OS version is still 6.27(0)

It’s rather strange that even the newest avaialable firmware patch for the Nokia 9300i doesn’t fix such a vital boot up mobile hang error.

Hope this info is helpful to somebody out there.