by Steve Galloway | Apr 28, 2015
When updating to a new version of WordPress, the installation hangs and system returns the following message when users attempt to view the public web site:
Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.
In WordPress dashboard, the screenshot below shows how WP hangs at “copying required files” when updating to a new WordPress version:
Cause of the Maintenance Message
During an automatic upgrade, WordPress places a file in the blog root directory called “.maintenance” to prevent visitors from being confronted with ugly, broken pages during the upgrade process. That’s a great little built-in feature, but if the upgrade gets interrupted or fails for any reason, that file doesn’t get deleted and nobody, including you, can access your blog. No worries, this is (most likely) the simplest fix on Earth.
Removing the Maintenance Message
Delete the .maintenance file from WP’s root directory. In this example, WordPress in installed in \public_html\:
by Steve Galloway | Apr 27, 2015
Email signatures are included at the end of emails to disclose contact information like trading names, addresses, and other useful contact information. Signatures are created individually for email accounts. Users who rely on desktop clients like Outlook should create email signatures using Outlook. Users who manage email should create signatures in Outlook Web Access (OWA) should create their signatures in OWA. Users who use both Outlook and OWA should create signatures in both Outlook and OWA.
This article shows how to create a signature using OWA. Follow these steps:
– log into Office 365 at http://mail.office365.com
– open the apps dashboard on the left of the toolbar and click open Mail in the dropdown menu
– next, click open the setting icon on right side of the toolbar, and click ope “Options” in the dropdown menu:
– look down the options in the next page and click open “Signatures”. Complete the signatures using the editing tools. Also, depending on the operating system you use, you may be able to copy and paste content from Word. Save the the signature when completed.
by Steve Galloway | Apr 26, 2015
A “Resource” is a “contact” in an Exchange/Outlook Calendar that represents a room or a piece of equipment. In the same way that a person can have an email address and can be assigned to meetings, rooms and equipment can be treated the same way in Exchange.
Equipment can include anything from a mobile phone to a fleet vehicle.
Resources are established by an Exchange administrator by creating a unique name and assigning an email address to the resource. Users who have access to Exchange can access a resource list to create a meeting and they can “invite” the resource to the meeting just like setting up a meeting with a person. Network administrators are needed to create and configure resource accounts because these kinds of accounts are created and managed in Exchange Active Directory, which requires expert knowledge.
If the resource is available for a “meeting”, it can be reserved by the user. That resource is then removed from the list of available resources until its “meeting” is finished. If the resource is already reserved for a meeting, it cannot be used. Values can be attached to resources, too. For instance, a limit can be set so that a room can only accept a maximum number of people at a meeting. Also, equipment limits can be set so that a laptop can only be in use once.
The system is scalable and can cope with large volumes and types of resources including equipment. Universities use Exchange resource accounts to manage their rooms and equipment distribution on campus.
Outlook’s includes a scheduling assistant which graphically charts availability of resources.
There are two kinds of resource mailboxes:
1. Room mailboxes – A room mailbox is a resource mailbox that’s assigned to a physical location, such as a conference room, an auditorium, or a training room. After an administrator creates room mailboxes, users can easily reserve rooms by including room mailboxes in meeting requests.
2. Equipment mailboxes – An equipment mailbox is a resource mailbox assigned to a resource that’s not location specific, such as a portable computer, projector, microphone, or a company car. After an administrator creates an equipment mailbox, users can easily reserve the piece of equipment by including the corresponding equipment mailbox in a meeting request.
Resources can be reserved in a calendar using Outlook Web Access or with desktop installed versions of Outlook. If other users need to see resource usage, consider shared calendars or group calendars. Once you have decided how to organize your calendar, follow these steps for OWA or Outlook client for desktop.
1. Reserving rooms resources using Outlook Web Access (OWA)
– log in to OWA at http://mail.office365 using your email address and password.
– click down the app menu, and then click on Calendar, as this screenshot shows:
– in Calendar, click “new” to create a new event:
– Fill in the form, making sure the event is something that is meaningful when viewed in the calendar. There are two ways to reserve a location or a room. Firstly, you can click the “add room” button to display the room resource available. Secondly, you can click open the Scheduling assistant to find a view of resources that are already committed to meetings. The scheduling assistant is useful because it show what resources might already be reserved when you want to use it. You can add rooms using the scheduling assistant.
You can reserve rooms and equipment for one meeting. To add equipment, you must select it from the “attendees” button which sits behind the dropdown menu in the illustration below. When you have finished creating your event, be sure to click “save”.
2. Reserving equipment resourcing using Outlook Web Access (OWA)
The process for reserving equipment resources differs from the method for reserving rooms. Firstly, there is not a button like the “add room button illustrated above. Instead, equipment is selected from the attendees button which you can see in the illustration below. Lastly, equipment cannot be selected in the scheduling assistant, although the scheduling assistant lists equipment which is being used. Unless you are sure the equipment you want is available for a meeting, you should always check the scheduling assistant to save work.
Note that in this example, a room resource has already been assigned to the meeting. The location reserved is Workshop 1, and the room is included in the “Attendees” field. Also, the “add room” button has changed to “change room”. When you select equipment, it will be added to “Attendees”.
When you have finished creating your event, be sure to click “save”. You will receive an email either accepting or declining the event. Events are usually declined because of conflicts, or because the reservation duration or date falls outside the scope of scheduling.
by Steve Galloway | Apr 23, 2015
It is good practice to change email passwords occasionally. Sometimes, ComStat may ask you to change passwords if we suspect that a third party has compromised your account. If users do not know passwords, we can force a password change, however you should take responsibility of your passwords and we ask users to log in to their email accounts and overwrite our forced password changes with passwords of their own. To manage your passwords:
1. Go to your Webmail control panel at http://webmail.example.com (replace example.com with your own domain name).
2. Login with your email address and the password if you know it, or the password we have given you. Click open the settings icon. The image below shows you where this icon is.
This is your Webmail account, and you can use this control panel to manage your email and your email settings, review mail statistics, and more.
3. In the next screen check that the control panel is opened to the “Account Settings” preferences, and the “User” tab, and then input your passwords and click save. A time of writing you will need a capital letter and a number in your password. Our policy may change from time to time. When you have entered your passwords, click “save”, which is located above the “User” tab.
You have now changed your password. Also, changing your password will mean you need to update settings on any devices that connect to Office 365, including desktops, laptops, tablets, or mobile phones. This process will allow you to manage one account at a time. To manage another account, log out of your Webmail account, and then log in to the next account with that user’s credentials, and repeat.
by Steve Galloway | Apr 23, 2015
Sometimes, SSL secured web pages return an error like:
“parts of the page you are viewing were not encrpypted or the encryption is not strong enough before being transmitted over the Internet.”
Although the certificate is valid, it is unable to encrypt some content. This is different from a certificate mismatch, or an invalid certificate which renders https services null. In this case, the certificate is valid, there is no mismatch, but the certificate cannot guarantee that all content is encrypted in transit. The problem usually has to do with external content. For instance If you link to resources at an external site using https://, and then the external site does its own HTTP redirect to non-SSL pages, that will break the SSL lock on your page. This results in an advisory that looks like this when you click on a padlock which has a warning sign included:
Firebug’s “Net” tab is a useful tool to isolate show this and other problems. Follow these steps to diagnose SSL problems:
- Install Firebug add-on (Chrome, Firefox) if you don’t already have it, and restart your browser when prompted.
- Open Firebug.
- In firebug, choose the “Net” tab. Hit “Enable” (text link) to turn it on.
- Refresh your problem page without using the cache by hitting Ctrl-Shift-R (or Command-shift-R in OSX). You will see the “Net” tab in firefox fill up with a list of each HTTP request made.
- Once the page is loaded, hover your mouse over the left colum of each HTTP request shown in the net tab. A tooltip will appear showing you the actual link used. Look for requests that are http:// instead of https://.
- If any of your links resulted in an HTTP redirect, you will see “301 Moved Permanently” in the HTTP status column, and another HTTP request will be just below for the new location. If the problem was due to an external redirect, that is where the evidence will be – the new location’s request will be HTTP.
- If your problem is due to redirections from an external site, you will see “301 Moved permanently” status codes for the requests that point them to their new location.
- Expand any of those 301 relocations with the plus sign at the left, and review the response headers to see what is going on. The “Location:” header will tell you the new location the external server is requesting browsers to use.
- Note the info in the redirect, then send a polite email to the external site in question and ask them to remove the https:// -> http:// redirects for you. Explain how it is breaking the SSL certification on your site, and ideally include a link to the page that is broken so that they can see the error.
Below is sample output from Firebug for the the external redirect issue. In this case a page calling https:// data feeds was getting the feeds rewritten by the external server to http://.
This sample site is called “mysite.example.com” and the external site to “external.example.com”, but otherwise left the headers intact. The request headers are shown at the bottom, below the response headers. Note that mysite.example.com is requesting an https:// link, but getting redirected to an http:// link, which is what was breaking the SSL lock:
by Steve Galloway | Apr 22, 2015
This article will assist you in setting up a free UK2 SSL certificate using your cPanel account.
**All pictures are for reference only. The actual layout of your interface may differ from the images below**
**You will need to change all references of yourdomain.co.uk to the domain that you for which you are creating the SSL.**
STEP 1: If you are running a live site and wish to install an SSL on to it the site must first be assigned a dedicated IP. This can be requested by submitting a ticket to technical support.
**When applying this dedicated IP, the DNS records may take up to 24 hours to fully point to the new IP, your site will be down during that time, so please let us know what time will be best for this IP to applied.**
STEP 2: Log into your cPanel interface. You can log in at yourdomain.co.uk:2082 replacing the example with your domain name.
**If you need help logging in, our technical support department would be happy to help. Just submit a ticket requesting your login credentials and be sure to include the domain name you need access to.**
Step 3: Once logged into the Cpanel, click on SSL/TLS Manager in the Security section.
STEP 4: On the page that loads you will go to the link under Private Keys
STEP 5: At the top of the page there is a section to Generate a New Key select your domain from the drop down menu. You must use 2,048 bits key.
On the page that loads click on the Return to SSL Manager.
Step 6: You will now click on the link under the Certificate Signing Requests (CSR)
Step 7: You will now fill out the form for the domain that you wish to create the SSL on.
Key: (Select the key that you generated in STEP 5)
Domains: yourdomain.co.uk (Or your preferred hostname, e.g. secure.yourdomain.co.uk or shop.yourdomain.co.uk. **Please note that www.yourdomain.co.uk is automatically included if you enter yourdomain.co.uk)
City: (Your city)
State: (Your state or province)
Country: (Your country)
Company: (The name of your company)
Company Division: (What your company does, e.g. if you run an ecommerce shop you can put E-commerce.)
Email: (An email on your domain, most commonly admin@yourdomain.co.uk)
Pass Phrase: (A secure combination of numbers and letters)
Description: (A way for you to recognise the certificate in the future)
Once you’ve filled-in each of the fields, click “Generate.”
STEP 8: Once the page has loaded with the new CSR information you will want to copy the content of the box that starts with “—–BEGIN CERTIFICATE REQUEST—–“ as this information will need to be used later.
STEP 9: You will now need to visit the following link: https://ssl.uk2.net/cgi-bin/certificate-apply.pl
Step 10: Fill in the “Hostname.” This needs to be the same that you entered into the earlier forms. (e.g. yourdomain.co.uk.) Click “Submit.”
Step 11: Select the email address you wish to receive the confirmation email to.
Click Submit.
Step 12: Fill out the form with the information requested. You will want to match the previous forms that you have filled. You will need to select Apache/ModSSL as the server software. You will also paste the CSR that you copied earlier.
Step 13: You will receive an email to the email you selected in Step 13 with the day, click the link in the email and paste the confirmation code that has been provided in the same message.
STEP 14: Then 1-2 days after providing the confirmation code your SSL should be ready, retrieve your SSL package, download and extract the archive.
This extracted folder will have four files in it. You will need to use the one that shows: yourdomain_co_uk in future steps.
Step 15: With the yourdomain_co_uk file handy log back into the Cpanel, click on SSL/TLS Manager in the Security section. (See Step 2 and 3 if you do not remember how)
You will now click on the link under the Certificates (CRT)
Step 16: On the new page scroll down to “Choose a certificate file (*.crt).” and click “Choose File.”
Locate the yourdomain_co_uk.crt file on your computer and click “Open.”
Enter a description and then click “Upload Certificate”
STEP 17: Now go back to the SSL/TLS Manager and click on the link under Install and Manage SSL for your site (HTTPS).
Step 18: You will select the domain that you are using and then click Browse Certificate and select your certificate. Also, be sure to click “autofill by domain” to load the certificate keys.
Then at the bottom of the page you will click Install Certificate
If you encounter any errors or problems with this process, please contact our technical support department. They will be happy to help resolve any issues you experience.
