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 … Read more

How (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 … Read more

How 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 … Read more

How 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, … Read more

How 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 … Read more

How 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 … Read more

How 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 … Read more