Automate Your Business

Archive for the ‘Miscellania’ Category

I loved Evernote… I hate Evernote.

(Evernote is a note-taking application – somewhere to store all those ideas, tips, and other useful info that you pick up online – or offline – complete with tagging, categorisation, etc).

Evernote 2.2 was fantastic. I foolishly upgraded to Evernote 3, which (like  most people) I assumed would give me extra benefits. But no! It’s essentially:

1. The capability to centrally store your data with Evernote.com (which you can then access via other PCs, online, via your iPhone, etc)

+

2. A missing set of features (removed whilst they adapt to the centralised data).

A few of those missing features were ones that I used regularly, which was disappointing. However, before I noticed this, I uninstalled evernote 2.2 and I no longer have, nor can I find, the installer for 2.2. So I’m stuck with version 3.

Well, I would be stuck, but I’ve found an alternative. It took me a long time, trying many, many note-taking apps to find one I liked. Then I was playing around with a piece of software, and realised it had all the features I like:

- Category-based notes + a richer tagging facility
- Date-based notes
- Short preview vs the “full view” capability
- A rich and ongoing development cycle to resolve issues, add features, etc.
- A stable platform
- An open and easy-to-use (for me) API (so that I can import all my old Evernote files into it).
- The ability to link between notes
- The ability to (relatively) easily transfer my data between PCs (or to a central web or FTP location)
- The ability to backup automatically.

And much more that I don’t use now, but will do in future, such as:

- The ability to change the view of notes to show titles only for lots of notes, as opposed to titles + previes for a few notes.
- The ability to create handy shortcuts in the side bar or in the “menu” area to frequently used notes
- The ability to auto-capture different versions as I update old notes
- The ability to create draft notes that aren’t visible in the main view.

And what was this wonderful software?

Was it Microsoft OneNote? No.
Was it any other formal note-taking application? No
It was…

Well, see if you can guess. Read that list of features again, and replace with word “notes” with “posts”. What do you end up with?

That’s right. WordPress.

Neat, eh?

Obvious, when you think about it.

I need to do a quick straw poll on how you access your Windows PCs, whilst I’m planning a possible software project for the future. Can you spare a few seconds?

1. What platform are you running on your PC: XP, Vista, something else?

2. When you turn your PC on, do you have to log in, or does it just to straight to your desktop without requiring a login?

3. I’m looking at writing a piece of desktop software that needs to change some of your user settings (like clearing all cookies) . The easiest way of managing this is by setting up a separate user on your PC, and having the software run as if it was that new user running it. Which means it will clear the new user’s cookies, not all the ones you’ve set up so that you don’t have to keep logging in to forums etc.

It won’t mean that you have to log on as that user - that’s all done behind the scenes. You just access your PC in the usual manner, and the software will run as if it’s that new user logged in, with no other impact to you.

That new user has to have admin rights, otherwise the software won’t run. If I gave you precise instructions on how to set up that user (with helpdesk-based support where needed), would you have any other concerns about doing this?

If you’ve recently changed your blog’s theme, you might find that somehow you can’t add widgets to the new theme.

That’s because WordPress sometimes gets confused over which themes are using which widgets.

Widgets Reset can fix your issue for you.

As noted previously, I’ve just released my cpanel backup script.

My primary reason for this was due to the unreliability of the backup offered by a succession of hosts.

For example, one hosting company (SLHost.com) stated that they offered backups.

I had an issue – I was housekeeping some obsolete accounts that I hosted with them, and accidentally deleted a domain I wanted to keep), so I submitted a support ticket asking them to restore the last backup.

Here’s the response I got:

Envelope-to: andrew@xxxxxxxxxx.com
X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.2.0 (2007-05-01) on
server.xxxxxxxxxx.info
X-Spam-Level:
X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.6 required=5.0 tests=AWL,RDNS_NONE autolearn=no
version=3.2.0
To: xxxxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxx.com
Subject: [SUPPORT #XXX-XXXXX]: Backup required?
X-Mailer: Kayako eSupport v3.00.13
Cc:
From: “SLHost.com Support”
Reply-To: support@slhost.com
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2007 03:21:31 -0500
X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report
X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname – zeus.slnoc.com
X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain – xxxxxxxxxx.com
X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID – [99 99] / [47 12]
X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain – slhost.com
X-Source:
X-Source-Args:
X-Source-Dir:

Andrew,

Unfortunately we do not have a backup of the server, since we are on the transition to a new backup system. There is no way we can restore the deleted domain.

-Thomas

Ticket Details
===================
Ticket ID: XXX-XXXXX
Department: Technical Support
Priority: High
Status: On Hold

Surely, the whole process of changing to a new backup system should include a small window when backups are available via both the original system AND the new one? Not a window where neither system has a backup.

And the whole point of customer service is that when you have planned outages of any part of the hosting infrastructure, you proactively tell your customers BEFORE the issue happens.

So, the beauty of the Cpanel Auto Domain Backup script is that I can set up something like the following:

1. Some FTP space on my PC.
2. Some FTP space on a remote server (not my domain host).
3. A schedule to copy each domain to my PC.
4. A schedule to copy each domain to the remote host.

That way, I actually have potentially 4 backups in place:

1. My PC
2. The remote server space.
3. A local copy of each domain on the actual host, which is created as part of the cpanel backup.
4. Any special backups that the host has put in place.

That’s pretty safe.

But there are other horror stories that I’ve been through, and I’ll share them over the next few days.

I’ve been using GetResponse for a long time now for my mailing list management, but every so often I realise that they seriously lack a decent reporting suite.

For example, late last night I sent an email announcement to some of my lists about the Cpanel backup script I just released.

And I did it at about 12:30 in the morning, when I was tired. When I logged in this morning to see the response, I couldn’t remember whether I had only sent it to the generic updates list for this site, or to other, more targetted lists.

And GetResponse couldn’t tell me. The broadcast details were available (subject line, content, etc), but nothing about which lists or how many people it was sent to.

That’s pretty poor.

So my solution is as follows, and I’m hoping you find it useful if you use GetResponse or another mailing list provider.

The Easy Solution:

First, set up a domain to allow catchall email address.

Second, add email filters for addresses like “webmaster@domain.com”, including ‘admin’, ’support’, and ’sales’. Keep adding to this list as time goes on and you find specific addresses getting a lot of spam

Third, to each of your mailing lists, add a new subscriber with a name of “TEST ADDRESS”, and emails like the following:

thislist@yourdomain.com
thatlist@yourdomain.com
thirdlist@yourdomain.com

where the bit before the ‘@’ is the name for the list in GetResponse.

Then obviously set up your email client to read the catchall email address.

And then save all those mails. That way, to know which lists got a broadcast, you simply loop through all the emailed copies of the broadcast, and check the “To” address to find out which list that address was on.

The Harder Solution:
Don’t set up a wildcard address.

Then for each list you set up at GetResponse, create a forwarder with an address like the examples above, and forward those mails to one of your regular email accounts.

Hope that all helps!