azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins: SMTP

ClassicPress PluginsThis is part of the azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins which introduces the plugins I have available for ClassicPress.

The plugin I am going to cover in this post, is a brand new one written for ClassicPress; SMTP.

Functionality

Simple Mail Transport Protocol (SMTP) plugin will intercept the standard wp_mail and send emails via an SMTP server using PHPMAILER.

This plugin is multisite compatible; each site will need settings to be configured in the admin dashboard.

Download

The plugin can be downloaded via my Development site.

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azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins: Maintenance Mode

ClassicPress PluginsThis is part of the azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins which introduces the plugins I have available for ClassicPress.

The plugin I am going to cover in this post, is a brand new one written for ClassicPress; Maintenance Mode.

Functionality

Enable maintenance mode to disable the front-end of your ClassicPress site for non-administrators.

Users will only see the configured message; administrators will have full access to the site, but a prominent configurable warning that maintenance mode is enabled will be displayed at the top of every page.

This plugin is multisite compatible with each site having its own settings.

Download

The plugin can be downloaded via my Development site.

Click to show/hide the azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins Series Index

Outlook Not Sending Emails

Microsoft OutlookWe recently had anew consultant join us at ISC Software which meant building a new laptop. As she lives fairly near me the laptop and other kit was delivered to me and I did some setup. Once she was logged on there was one unexpected issue with emails not sending in Outlook.

I did some checking of settings and found that there is a setting which needed to be enabled for sending of emails; I’m not sure why it was not set as I don’t recall having set it previously.

The setting is in (File » Options); select the Advanced tab and, under Send and receive, mark the Send immediately when connected checkbox:

Outlook Options

Once the options were saved, emails were correctly sending.

Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: Installing No-IP Client

Useful ApplicationsThis post is part of the short series on using Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address.

With a No-IP account created with No-IP the next, and final, step is to install the Dynamic DNS Update Client. This does updates on a paeriodic basis to keep your current IP address in sync with your No-IP host or domain.

The client can be downloaded from here:

Download client

Continue reading “Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: Installing No-IP Client”

Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: Creating An Account

Useful ApplicationsThis post is part of the short series on using Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address.

Signing up to No-IP for a free account is nice and easy to do. Using the browser of your choice, navigate to https://www.noip.com, enter the hostname you want and select the domain from the list of free ones and click the green ,em>Sign Up button:

Sign Up

Continue reading “Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: Creating An Account”

azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins: Update Admin Menu

ClassicPress PluginsThis is part of the azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins which introduces the plugins I have available for ClassicPress.

The plugin I am going to cover in this post, is a brand new one written for ClassicPress; Update Admin Menu.

Functionality

Allows the reorganisation of the ClassicPress admin menu allowing you to move more often used menu entries to the top of the menu.

Download

The plugin can be downloaded via my Development site.

Click to show/hide the azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins Series Index

azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins: From Twitter

ClassicPress PluginsThis is part of the azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins which introduces the plugins I have available for ClassicPress.

The plugin I am going to cover in this post, is a brand new one written for ClassicPress; From Twitter.

Functionality

Automate the retrieval of tweets from Twitter and create posts on your ClassicPress site

From Twitter includes the following functionality;

  • Search Twitter and create tweets as posts or as a Tweet custom post type.
  • Specify the title and content in posts for retrieved tweets.
  • Choose whether to save tweet data.
  • Choose cron frequency (hourly, twice daily or daily).
  • Choose how many tweets to return each time the cron runs (max 100 as per Twitter api).
  • Choose whether Tweet images should be downloaded.

Make sure that once all the settings have been configured, you enable the cron job to run on the Cron Settings tab.

Download

The plugin can be downloaded via my Development site.

Click to show/hide the azurecurve ClassicPress Plugins Series Index

Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: What Is No-IP?

Useful ApplicationsThis post is part of the short series on using Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address.

No-IP is a service which has been around for quite a long time now (I remember using a competitor of theirs back in 2004 (and possibly earlier) to use an external DNS entry to access a web server I was running at home on a dynamic IP address (my ISP at the time didn’t offer static IP addresses and I didn’t sign up for one wit my current provider).

No-IP as a company have several offerings, but the one I am looking at in this series is the Free Dynamic DNS offering which allows for 3 hostnames on a limited set of domains and requires you to confirm the DNS every 30 days. There are two paid offering with more hostnames, domains and which do not expire, but I only need one hostname so the free option is sufficient and I don’t mind clicking a link on an email to renew every 30 days.

As well as my use case of remotely accessing a NAS or computer, No-IP can allow you to access any Internet enabled device on your home network even when you have a dynamic IP address (if you have a static IP then you could connect just using the IP address, although using a hostname is easier to remember); there may be configuration required on your router to forward ports to the devices on your network.

I’ve also had my dad sign up and install No-IP so I can easily access his system remotely to help out with any problems he is having.

Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address: Series Index

Useful ApplicationsI do a lot of travelling for work and often want to connect to my home system to access a NAS or a computer which has been left on. Unfortunately, I have a dynamic IP address which means the IP address changes whenever the router restarts and, living in rural England, glitches which cause a router restart are not uncommon.

The solution to this is to use No-IP; a service I will introduce over the next few posts starting with what it is and how it works trough to setting it up and installing the update client.

The series index (below) will automatically update as each post goes live over the next few days, unless you’re reading it via a syndicated feed, in which case check Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address for the new posts.

Using No-IP For External Access With a Dynamics IP Address
What Is No-IP?
Creating An Account
Installing No-IP Client

Finding Missing Security Privileges Encountered When Starting Microsoft Dynamics GP

Microsoft Dynamics GPI’ve been doing work with a client recently to refrsh their security in Microsoft Dynamics GP. We used the Microsoft Dynamics GP Security Matrixc from Fastpath to get the core security tasks assigned to the relevant roles. However, after security roles were created and testing was done, one user role was received errors when logging into Microsoft Dynamics GP:

Microsoft Dynamics GP seurity error

You don't have security privileges to open this window. Contact your system administrator for assistance.

Continue reading “Finding Missing Security Privileges Encountered When Starting Microsoft Dynamics GP”