Recently changed to virgin media for my internet and then found i could not access my website at https://www.gcs3.co.uk at all, but if i switched off my wifi and used 4G or used a VPN I could connect no problem. After some faffing about I changed my wired pc to use google DNS rather than virgin media DNS and followed the guide here https://www.androidpolice.com/use-preferred-dns-server-android-tutorial/ so my wireless devices used google DNS rather than virgin media DNS. All works ok now. Really not sure what happened locally to cause this issue in the first place……release renew and flushing DNS didn’t fix the issue
Category Archives: Uncategorized
Massgravel
massgravel github m*crosoft-activation-scripts
very very useful
Chrome not offering to save passwords
Free SSL update
Previously i had posted about using zerossl which was ok until I realised I needed an SSL cert for a 4th domain and had already used the 3 domain limit. Fixed this by using a free let’s encrypt SSL generator on punchsalad
Punchsalad has been a little glitchy recently so i have also tried SSLfree which has worked well for me. After verifying I owned the domain it generated the certificate as a big downloadable txt file – use the first of 3 certs as the certificate and certs 2&3 as the ca-bundle.Then add the private key and install the certificate
sorted for 90days at least…..
update – can use html verification and filezilla for all domains except gcs3 – use DNS verification for this
update #2 – downoad the details then copy/paste rather than trying to copy/paste from punchsalad. Don’t need to fill the CA-Bundle field either
update #3 – remember to use wildcards *.site.com, site.com
Contact Forms 7
This is a simple contact form for your website. I am using it alonside the Flamingo plugin to save messages. If you want to prevent spambots then use a recapcha plugin for it – I am using the Google service which requires a gmail address https://www.google.com/recaptcha/admin/create
Free SSL certificates
Really useful service from zeroSSL for up to 3 free certificates – only 90 days validity though. Verify you own the domain and then download and install your free cert
I use cPanel – https://help.zerossl.com/hc/en-us/articles/360060119773
pros- free and takes 5 mins to do, gives your site a browser padlock
cons – i need to do it every 3 months per domain
I had been using letsencrypt which had an autorenew feature with my hosting provider but new hosting doesn’t support this, hence zeroSSL
W10 reinstall on new SSD
Just upgraded laptop HDD to a speedier SSD and reinstalled Windows
Some useful things – Rufus
How to get the uptodate Windows version for Rufus to create the bootable USB – here
Massgravel MAS on GitHub
Job done
NAPS2 (Not Another PDF Scanner2)
Great free scanner program https://www.naps2.com/
Simple and worked straight-off with my elderly canoscan Lide100
Affixa
Such a great plugin to open up gmail when you click on ’email to’ in a program (in my case foxit phantom pdf)
Implementing https
Spent a while trying to sort out SSL certificates for my websites as fed up of chrome reporting ‘not secure’ beside the address bar. (basically changing http to https for the web address) I didn’t know that SSL certificates can cost 40 quid upwards a year.
I’m with Tsohost. I followed a very simple guide here for installing a free SSL certificate that is fine for small sites without any e-commerce like mine – the free certificate is called ‘Let’s encrypt’ and can be installed from your tsohost control panel with a few clicks.
You can also check your site’s status at whynopadlock.com which has a really neat feature in the results bit for ‘force https’ – click on the more info bit of this and it gives you the code to copy/paste into your htaccess file to force all traffic directed at http to https for your site