How to block Spam Trackbacks in WordPress

Trackbacks are a great way for other blogs to notify your blog about a link back to you. Many blogging platforms support this feature, including WordPress. But sometimes it’s very obvious that those trackbacks aren’t coming from a legitimate source, especially when you get several dozen of them every day from the same source. No … Read more

How to enable automatic logins in CentOS 6 and GNOME

I was researching auto login options for CentOS today. I thought those would come in handy when GNOME is used as a standard desktop, so that the computer starts straight into the desktop environment without the need to provide a password. It’s also a handy feature to have if the machine lives in another room … Read more

How to fix ProFTP Handshake Trouble in Plesk

I fixed a problem this morning which wouldn’t let the latest version of FileZilla v3.10.1.1 connect to one of my client’s servers anymore. This had not been a problem in the past. The connection itself worked, but FileZilla failed due to a problem with the TLS Certificate. Here’s the error: Status: Initializing TLS… Error: Received … Read more

How to set firewall rules from a GUI in CentOS

Sick and tired of countless command line statements to set your firewall rules? Me too. No matter what I try, I never get the results quite right. There’s always some switch I forget and ultimately something isn’t working. For years I was thinking, “there has to be an easier way, like there is in Plesk”? … Read more

FIXED: WordPress refuses to send you a Password Reset Link

I ran into an interesting problem today: on a CentOS 6 server a colleague of mine wanted to reset her WordPress password via the handy link provided in the login dialogue. But rather than sending an email, WordPress got back to her with the following error message: The e-mail could not be sent. Possible reason: … Read more

How to fix “This file is damaged and can’t be opened” in Mac OS X

Yesterday I was trying to open an installer which was offered as a .dmg file. That’s a disk image which mounted itself fine, but when I ran the installer contained in the disk image, all I got was an error message: “ZBrush to Keyshot Content Installer is damaged and could not be opened”. At first I … Read more

How to install Java SE 6 Runtime on Mac OS X Yosemite

When you’re trying to open any of the Adobe CS5 or CS6 applications in Yosemite, you’ve likely encountered a friendly message such as this: This happens because CS5 and CS6 applications were relying on Java 6, and the current version at the time of writing is Java 8. I’m not an expert on Java, but … Read more