How to change the screen resolution on Remote Macs
It’s easy to remote control your Mac, no matter if it’s hosted in a data centre far away, or if it sits in your bookshelf across the room. But when you do, you’ll notice that the screen resolution is often not what you’d expect on the monitor you control your Mac from. This is a bit of a puzzle at first, because quite clearly the integrated graphics card can power various resolutions – including your 27″ Thunderbolt Display or your 1080p television set. Yet by default, OS X only volunteers very limited...
read moreHow (and when) to disable Plesk Mail Services
Imagine the following scenario: A website is hosted on Server 1. Let’s call it domain.com. The email services for domain.com are hosted on another server, let’s say with Google (via MX records set at the domain level). Email sent from other servers gets through fine, but when you send email from a domain also hosted on Server 1 to client@domain.com, Plesk returns an error message – such as “there’s no such mailbox”. Or mail is delivered, but it never reaches client@domain.com. What’s going on? And how...
read moreHow to enable the root user in Mac OS X (Mavericks and Yosemite)
root is the most powerful user in Linux and UNIX systems, from which OS X is derived. The root user can read, write and delete every file on the system and – when placed in the wrong hands – destroy the entire system in a flash. Even power users on a Mac have very little reason to use root – which is why it’s disabled by default. To enable it, head over to System Preferences – Users and Groups and select Login Options at the bottom left. If any of the following options are greyed out, simply click that little...
read moreHow to reduce the Progress Bar in Yosemite
A new “improvement” in Yosemite is the progress bar that comes up when you start your machine. What you Mac does under the hood hasn’t really changed from Mavericks, but the progress bar implies that a long running operating is happening the background. It can look grey with a black background, or dark grey with a lighter grey background, depending on your hardware. It’s been familiar to us before only when firmware updates were applied, but now we get it even when the computer starts normally. It looks like this: If...
read moreHow to test the RAM in your Mac
Every Mac has an integrated hardware test called – not surprisingly – Apple Hardware Test. When you get a new device, or if you’ve recently upgraded your memory, it’s worth checking if everything is working as expected. Otherwise you may encounter weirdo bugs sometimes down the line. To start the test, simply shutdown your Mac, then reboot it, holding down the D key. First you’ll see a cute little retro icon, followed by a blue screen with three tabs, much like this one: On the Hardware Tests Tab you may only...
read moreHow to allow additional file type uploads in WordPress
You can upload a lot with the WordPress Media Uploader, but depending on the file extension the system will not allow everything on your server by default – for security reasons. ZIP files and PDFs are fine, but something more obscure – particularly non-standard extensions or executable files – are not. I like it that way too! One way around this limitation is to simply ZIP up your obscure file and upload the archive – but that’s not always an option. Besides, you may need your file to be openable directly. In...
read moreHow to recalculate statistics in Plesk
Plesk recalculates all usage statistics once every day as part of a daily maintenance script. Sometimes however you’ve made a change and would like to see statistics updated immediately rather than “sometime tomorrow”. The solution: run the statistics recalculations script manually. On CentOS the path to the file is /usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/statistics. When used on its own all statistics are recalculated on the spot. You can use the script with options too, for example to update a single domain only. Use the –help...
read moreHow to install and secure Dovecot in Plesk 12
I’ve just installed the Dovecot Mail Service on one of my Plesk 12 servers. It’s an alternative to the old favourite Courier IMAP/POP and a new addition in Plesk 12. Dovecot does more or less the same as Courier (i.e. lets you receive mail), but it’s a bit more configurable and debug friendly. It also offers server-side mail filtering which is accessible via the Plesk Webmail services Roundcube and Horde. In this article I’ll show you how to install Dovecot in Plesk 12, and how to add your own SSL certificates for...
read moreHow to find your starred questions (favourites) in Stack Overflow
You can mark questions in the Stack Exchange network simply by clicking the little star icon. A yellow star means you’ve marked it as a favourite, a grey one means you haven’t. It’s a convenient bookmarking system. But where can you see a list of what you’ve starred? It’s not exactly obvious, so let me show you how to access your favourited questions and up voted answers. I’m using Stack Overflow as an example, but the principle is the same on all Stack Exchange sites. head over to your Stack Overflow...
read moreHow to change your DNS Servers in Windows
DNS is a service that translates a domain name into a numeric IP so that one computer can talk to another. We deal with it all the time, but most mere mortals are not aware of their importance. In this article I’d like to show you how to change your computer’s DNS entries in Windows. Why change DNS Servers? In a nutshell, if all works well on your system, perhaps you don’t need to tweak those settings. However, if you can consistently see some websites but not others, or you get weird intermittent connection problems,...
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