How to display categories in Automattic’s P2 Theme
By default, Automattic’s phenomenal P2 theme does not support posting into categories from the front page, it only supports tags. My fork of the theme called P2 Categories does that though and lets you conveniently select a category from a drop down menu right there on the front page. I wrote an update to it last week, and in so doing my article from 2013 came in handy that explains how to add this functionality to P2. Nothing much has changed in the source code, so it’s still relevant and accurate. What the above article did not...
read moreHow to hide the Promo Box in Plesk Customer View
There’s a small Promo Box on the right hand side in Plesk’s Customer View. This box can be a little confusion for users – especially when it shows products and extensions with highly cryptic names. Here’s an example: Lucky for us, there’s an easy way to remove it. All we need to do is create a vile called /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini and add the following content to it: [promos] ; Disable other products promotions enabled = off This file is read by Plesk every time the panel loads, telling Plesk...
read moreHow to install PHP 7.x on a CentOS LAMP Stack
By default, CentOS 7 comes with support for PHP 5.4. Sadly that version has reached the end of its life in 2015and is no longer updated by the developers. If we want to stay up to date with the latest software, we may want to upgrade (if our applications are working with newer versions of PHP). For CentOS users this either means to compile cutting edge versions from source and tweaking lots of scary system configurations – or dipping into the power of Software Collections. These are official pre-compiled packages by the software vendor,...
read moreFinding your current MAC address in CentOS
I had an issue with one of my servers the other day: its power supply died unexpectedly during a scheduled restart. The poor thing never cam back up again. Lucky for me, the data centre could simply swap out my hard disks and put them into another server. Although my data was save, the server wouldn’t connect to the network anymore – because it had a new MAC address. CentOS stores this value in two of its files, and when it changes (which is hardly ever the case), those files need to be updated. Here’s how I fixed the...
read moreHow to hide the social links at the bottom of Plesk
By default, Plesk displays several links in its footer. Two of them are links to Plesk’s Facebook and Twitter pages. Sometimes less is more, and thankfully there’s an easy way to suppress those links if we don’t want to see them anymore. Simply create a file called /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/panel.ini and add the following content to it: ; Hide Like link showLikeLink = off [twitter] ; Hide the Follow Us link showFollowLink = off Plesk reads this file every time the admin interface is displayed, and if it finds the above...
read moreTesting Incremental Backups in Plesk Onyx
From time to time I get crazy ideas, and last week that crazy ideas was to test how well incremental backups can be restored in the latest version of Plesk. Specifically I wanted to know how Plesk would react in times of a crisis, which usually happens at the worst of times. Up until recently I’ve always done full backups – but incremental backups are a lot more space saving on the target device, plus it reduces the load on the server and data traffic significantly. Let’s see what these incremental backups are all about....
read moreHow to remove OSSEC Agent on macOS Sierra
I’ve been trying to find a way to remove OSSEC on one of my Macs. Most documentation is a bit outdated and references files from yesteryear, so here’s how to do it on macOS Sierra in 2018. These instructions were written with OSSEC 2.8 in mind. I’m not familiar with later versions. Removing the three system users The OSSEC Agent creates three system users that come up when your Mac is started. They’re called ossec, ossecm and ossecr. OSSEC uses these to run its various scrips and services. To remove them on macOS, head...
read moreHow to enter C64 Mode on a Commodore 128
The Commodore 128 was marketed as being “three computers in one”. I guess technically they were correct when they made that statement. Although I’m very find of the native 128 mode, the system saw its uses mostly as a games machines in C64 mode. I don’t recall anybody ever looking at CP/M mode longer than half an hour (if that). There are three ways to put the C128 into C64 mode. Two of which I always knew about, ever since my friend Frank Jagow bought himself a whole C128 system from his paper route money in 1986. But...
read moreDiscovered: Commodore 64C used in an auto repair shop (2018)
I’ve recently discovered a tweet that showed a Commodore 64C complete with green monitor and 1541-II drive, heavily dust covered, but still working and being used in a Polish Auto Shop. The picture itself was fascinating enough, but I’ve also discovered that it was a screen grab from a video – which I’m including here as well (had to replace the music with something royalty free). You can find the original article here:...
read moreHow to write a text input routine in Commodore BASIC
In this screencast I’ll show you how to write your own INPUT routine in Commodore BASIC. This comes in handy when you want to reject certain keys from being used when asking users for keyboard input. In my example I’m going to allow all alpha characters (A-Z), as well as SPACE, RETURN and the DELETE key. Here’s the code:
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