Stefan Helander

Akeeba Backup for WordPress Internal Server Error 500 XHR ReadyState: 4

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I experienced this error when trying to run a backup on a site hosted at the One.com provider.

The solution is to manually adjust the JPA part size for split archives. Even if the configuration wizard had been used, it didn’t work.

  1. Go to Akeeba Backup -> Settings
  2. Scroll down to Archiver engine where JPA is selected.
  3. Click on the Configure button to the right of JPA.
  4. In my case the Part Size for split archives was set to over 2 GB. I lowered it until it worked, which for me was 100 MB.
Stefan Helander

Joomla! 1.5 menu items not visible

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I was moving a Joomla! 1.5 site to a new hosting server. The site had been running on PHP 5.2 on the prevoius server but on the new host only PHP 5.6 or later was available. Joomla! was version 1.5.14.

After installing the site on the new server, no menu items were visible, not in backend, nor in frontend. I checked the database tables and the menu items were present in the database, they just didn’t show up in Joomla!.

The solution was simply to upgrade Joomla! to the latest verion, 1.5.26, which is compatible with PHP 5.6 (something that I would have done anyway as the next step).

Joomla! 1.5 upates can be downloaded here.

Stefan Helander

Change sorting / position of products in PrestaShop featured section on the start page

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  1. In the PrestaShop backoffice (admin), go to Catalog -> Products
  2. Above the product list, tick the “Filter by category”
  3. Select the “Home” category in the category list that drops down under the “Filter by category”
  4. Now far to the right you will find a “Position” column where you can use the arrows to move the products up and down
Stefan Helander

Extend a wrapped div to full screen width outside it’s wrapper

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A very common design model for websites in fluid/reponsive design is to make a centered container taking up for example 80% of the screen width. It is not very unusual that the designer then wants the background on a header, footer, horizontal menu or any other similar object to have it’s background extended to the fulls screen width.

 

Website with wrapper container

Website with wrapper container

The problem with this quickly becomes pretty obvious as all objects are contained in a 80% wrapper. One solution is of course to close the wrapping container, then create a full width object with the background and the begin a new wrapper.

However, there is a neat trick that can be used to make an object “break out” outside the containing wrapper. It is done by using negative margins. To not get a horizontal scrollbar in the browser we add overflow-x: hidden to the body.

This is an example how to do it (click here to view the example live):

<html>
<head>
<style>
 body {
   overflow-x: hidden; /* to prevent horizontal scroll bars */
 }
 .container {
   width: 80%;
   height: 100%;
   margin-left: auto; /* center the container */
   margin-right: auto;
   padding: 10px; /* some padding inside the container */
   background-color: yellow;
 }
 .divider {
   line-height: 30px;
   background-color: grey;
   color: white;
   margin-left: -1000%;
   margin-right: -1000%;
   padding-left: 1000%; /* push content back in on the screen */
   padding-right: 1000%;
 }
</style>
</head>
<body>
<div class="container">
 <p>Some text inside the container</p>
 <div class="divider">Here is a section divider in full width</div>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Stefan Helander

Centering a horizontal bullet list

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Horizontal bullet lists are often used to create a horizontal menu. This is how to make the horizontal bullet list centered.

  1. Create a <div> container and set the text-align: center style on it.
  2. Create a <ul> <li> inside the div and set display: inline-block style on it.

This is an example of how it is done:

<html>
<head>
  <style type="text/css">
   div#container {
     text-align: center; /* center the horisontal list */
   }
   ul.list {
     list-style: none; /* no bullets */
     display: inline-block; /* this will cause the list to be centered */
   }
   ul.list li {
     float: left; /* horizontal list */
     margin-left: 10px; /* some space between items */
     margin-right: 10px;
   }
  </style>
</head>
<body>
<div id="container">
 <ul class="list">
   <li>Item 1</li>
   <li>Item 2</li>
   <li>Item 3</li>
 </ul>
</div>
</body>
</html>
Stefan Helander

QNAP TS-420 web interface not accessible over SSL

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After a reboot the web interface on a QNAP TS-420 NAS was not accessible over SSL. A nmap showed the NAS was not listening on the SSL port and it was configured to force SSL connections over the standard 443 SSL-port. So trying to access it over the non-SSL port just directed me to https://<ip-address of the nas> where there was no response.

To be able to access the web interface over the non-SSL port 8080 i had to ssh into the NAS using the admin account, then I issued the following commands:

/sbin/setcfg SYSTEM "Force SSL" 0
/etc/init.d/thttpd.sh restart

After this it was possible to access the NAS web interface over the non-SSL port, i. e. http://<ip-address of the nas>:8080

 

Stefan Helander

Start embedded Youtube video at specific time

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When you share a video on Youtube you can select to start the shared video at a certain point of time in the video. Like this (selected to start at 0:40).

Youtube share with start at

This option however is not availible when embedding a video. It can be solved manually though. The embed code from Youtube looks something like this:

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/6bHSP9Ddw5w” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

To start the video from a specific time, you add the ?start=XXX where XXX is the point counted in seconds. So if the start time includes minutes you have to convert into seconds. If I want the embedded video to start at 0:40 I add ?start=40 like this:

<iframe width=”560″ height=”315″ src=”//www.youtube.com/embed/6bHSP9Ddw5w?start=40” frameborder=”0″ allowfullscreen></iframe>

This is the embedded video starting at 0:40 (and yes, that is me reverse driving an articulated 18 meter bus – sometimes, when I’m not busy ruling Nerdia or working as an IT consultant I walk out into the real world where I sometimes work as a bus driver and it is great fun! :)):

Stefan Helander

Error 404 when trying to password protect administrator folder in Joomla using Apache htaccess

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When protecting the administrator folder in Joomla using Apache htaccess to increase the security of the website (which by the way is a good thing to do to prevent too interested individuals to peek where they shouldn’t), you might get an error 404 message when trying to access administrator and the expected password prompt never appears.

The cause can be that the server is configured to allow user defined error pages stored in for example the error folder. If some of the error files are missing the above mentioned problem can occur. Make sure you have the correct folder name and file names for your error files.

This particular problem occured for me when I moved a Joomla site from one hosting provider to another and by mistake also replaced the error folder with the one from the old hosting provider which had a completely different file name structure for the error message files.

Stefan Helander

Ubuntu 12.04 hangs in different stages of the boot sequence

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A server I am maintaining stopped during boot on the "Stopping userspace bootsplash" or "Configuring network interfaces". If Ctrl-Alt-Del was pressed the machine rebooted so it was not completely stuck. I tried booting in rescue mode and checked the /etc/network/interfaces syntax but no problem visible there.

The solution was quite simple. Boot in rescue mode and select package repair. After repairing my packages the machine was rebooted, then fsck was ran automatically (which took quite a while). After that the machine booted normally.

 

Stefan Helander

Copy of PrestaShop default-bootstrap theme from 1.6.0.6 doesn’t display submenus after upgrade to 1.6.0.9

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I made a customized theme by copying the PrestaShop default-bootstrap theme in version 1.6.0.6. After an upgrade to 1.6.0.9 the theme will no longer show the dropdown submenus.

The reason is that after the upgrade, the default-bootstrap has been updated but my customized copy hasn’t causing some needed JS files not being loaded.

The quickest solution is to go into Advanced Parameters -> Performance and enable Move JavaScript to the end

 

I found information about the problem here.