Technology

I run various websites, and I keep a distant eye on which bits of them are popular and things like that. I'm always on the look out for anything that's not right, or any errors. I'd want to fix them; if you're going to have a website it needs to work properly so that people can use it, otherwise why bother?

For years, I've been a fan of the internet filtering software Net Nanny. I'll explain why in a moment.

However I've just had to uninstall it, and I'm now looking for an alternative. (If you, personally, use something similar, please comment below with any recommendations of products to try or to avoid).

A friend recently asked on Facebook about whether to use a Facebook Page or a Facebook Group for his newest project — or indeed whether to run both.

For what it's worth, here was my advice (now elaborated upon):

General Rule of Thumb: Choose

My general rule of thumb (which may be flawed) is that groups and pages have different pros and cons.

Almost every Windows user is familiar with the problem. You have an external hard drive, or a pen drive, attached to your computer. You know the correct way to eject the device: Don't just yank out the lead, because it could corrupt data if the computer was in mid-write at the time. Instead, use the "Safely Remove Hardware and Eject Media" tool in the notification area of the taskbar.

But then comes the problem:

Spam is a problem that never goes away. Email spam. Comment spam.

This site has long used Mollom to protect the comment section and the contact form. They're closing down on 2nd April 2018, so lots of webmasters will be looking for alternatives.

I'd like to introduce you to Project Honey Pot.

The week before last, tragic events unfolded in London. It seems that a man drove a car at nearly 70 mph into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge before stabbing a policeman on duty at the entry to the Parliamentary Estate. 5 people died, including the attacker.

Not long after the event, Amber Rudd, the Home Secretary said this:

It is completely unacceptable, there should be no place for terrorists to hide.

I'll put this here, in case it helps anyone else.

I'm owning up to Drupal Schoolboy Error #1.

I was writing a very simple module. It did so little, that I wanted to keep things as simple as possible — just a .info file, and a .module file.

OK - I'll hold my hands up. The title of this post is misleading. I'm not going to give you an ABC on how to secure a Drupal site (maybe another day). I'm responding to a post on the Reseller Club blog entitled How to Secure Your Client's Drupal Website.

There is some good advice in that article, but it's mixed in with some bad advice, and in other parts it's just plain confused. In the hope that it helps people, I'm going to try and untangle things.

This is just a short post:

PHP released version 7.1 yesterday. Congratulations to all those who worked so hard to get this version out of the door. Especial congratulations to Davey Shafik and Joe Watkins, the release managers, and to Anatol Belski who mentored them.