Category Archives: Weblogs.us

Create PayPal subscription buttons [SOLVED]

Since PayPal came up with their new ‘streamlined’ interface, it seems to have made some core features very difficult to find 🙁 A prime instance is the subscription buttons and links. These tools are very useful for webmasters and anyone offering recurring services online. Here is how to find the subscription tools: #1 Login to PayPal: https://www.paypal.com/ #2 Go to the ‘Buttons for subscriptions and recurring billing‘ page #3 Click ‘Create your button now‘ (you must be logged in for

[Err] 2006 – MySQL server has gone away Navicat/WordPress [solved]

Recently I tried upgrading to the latest version of the WordPress Download Monitor plugin. It did not go well 🙁 Thus, I tried to revert from a backup made using Navicat. Unfortunately, the restore would fail every time while trying to import my wp_posts table (a pretty important table!) I tried exporting the backup to a SQL dump and importing that. No luck. Finally, I tried resolving the actual ‘MySQL server has gone away’ issue itself and I had success. This tip

Dell PowerEdge 1950 III Drivers and Firmware Updates (2013)

I recently set up two new Dell PowerEdge 1950 III servers. One for Weblogs.us (free blog hosting) and one for Branson’s Nantucket (a lakefront resort in Branson). Dell makes very nice servers but their support pages can be a bit confusing. Therefore, here are the latest updates/drivers for the PowerEdge 1950 III, as of July 2013: Latest Dell PERC 6/i Integrated Update, v.6.3.1-0003, A14http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/04/driverdetails?driverid=W83M2Fixes: 1. Fixes an issue where the Perc battery does not always charge up properly, causing Virtual Disks

Download the latest version of ESXi for Dell

Today I needed to download the latest Dell customized ISO of VMWare ESXi. It took me a moment to find the latest version, so here is a link to help you find it faster: http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/driverdetails?driverid=RD5JN This is VMware ESXi 5.1 Update 1 and it was released on April 29th 2013. You can burn it to a CD or mount it via an IPMI/DRAC interface if you so desire. Also, you will need a USB thumbdrive to install ESXi to as you

Determine if TRIM is supported and enabled on an SSD!

Today I was installing a Samsung 840 Pro 512GB SSD in a new server. Everything went smoothly, but I wanted to make sure that TRIM was actually working. This turned out to be slightly trickier than one might imagine! 😉 First Samsung’s SSD Magician Tool was of no use. CrystalDiskInfo reported that my SSD supported TRIM (which I already knew) but really gave no indication that Windows 7 and the SSD were working in concert to accomplish TRIMming. Nothing really

Use your own Domain Name with Weblogs.us

  One of my favorite features of Weblogs.us is the ability to use your own domain name. No extra fees, no forced advertising, just the free ability to use a domain name of your choosing 🙂 Here is an updated guide that shows the process of setting up blog to use your down domain: Status » Archive » Using your own Domain Name with Weblogs.ushttp://status.weblogs.us/archives/240NOTE: Thank you to Kate at KateReads.com for submitting this updated domain name setup FAQ entry

Drastically improved search for jdhodges.com (WordPress based blog)

While using the internal search feature on my blog recently, I realized how worthless it was. As an example, searching for ‘exede review‘ came up with a bunch of mildly relevant results but by far the most relevant search result was on the second page. Not good. 🙁 Default WordPress search stinks The reason this happened is that by default WordPress sorts search results by date. So if you happen to have some recent posts that contain a keyword, they will