After replacing my BT SmartHub with a pfsense router, I’ve been looking to upgrade the house WiFi as well. Most devices are wired as most rooms have wired connections I fitted for my parents years ago when wireless was barely a reality. However phones, tablets, e‑readers, and laptops really do work best with wireless (or only with wireless in some cases), and to work well need a wireless system that enables mobility.
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Posts Categorised: Web Technologies
2Replacing the BT Infinity SmartHub with pfsense
When I moved into a new home a year ago I was finally able to join the 21st century and ordered BT Infinity which is supplied with a SmartHub. The SmartHub is actually reasonably decent kit considering it comes for free, but as with most ISP supplied devices it is locked down in some ways, for example you can’t use your own DNS servers which I prefer to do. In the early days of ADSL (circa 2001) I ran a smoothwall box in place of a router, and for a range of reasons (including internet filtering controlled by me, rather than an ISP) I decided to go back to a linux-based firewall router.
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0VPS Tweaks to improve web performance
Whilst I haven’t written many new articles recently I have spent considerable time updating and revising the behind-the-scenes side of things, namely various security (TLS) settings on my VPS that hosts several sites including this one. Another thing I have also worked to enhance recently is to improve my use of gzip, and a new format called brotli
0How to avoid a domain name hijacking
Like many other people I own several domain names, and use the free version of google apps to manage the e‑mail for them. A few months ago I read a tale of woe by Naoki Hiroshima, who had lost control of his valuable @N twitter username thanks to a domain name theft.
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0Karoo ADSL settings
Having completed the migration of the site to the new server, and with the festive season upon us, I’m back being the family technical support. First challenge of this year was to restore service to my grandfathers broadband which hasn’t been working since he mistakenly pressed the reset button on his wireless router.
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2Pale Moon: Firefox enhanced and in 64bit
I’ve been looking for a 64bit Firefox for a couple of years now, pretty much since Java and Flash player became available in 64bit. Mozilla seem in no hurry to progress the minefield nightlies into a full release, but several third parties have taken the open source code and compiled it for 64bit. I’ve looked at several of these and the best supported and most regularly updated seems to be a build called Pale Moon.
0IE10 for Windows 7 finally arrives
Another item that we’re a bit late to cover is the arrival of Internet Explorer 10 for Windows 7 (and Server 2008 R2). As with past releases, older OSes are being left behind with no support for Vista or XP, which are stuck on IE9 and IE8 respectively. If you have Windows 7 we recommend upgrading (even if you don’t use IE) and of course there is no harm giving it a try. We’ll probably be sticking with Firefox and Chrome ourselves, but IE sometimes has its uses.
0Install a spellchecker for your browser
Let me start with an admission: I’m one of those pedants on Facebook who likes to correct your spelling, punctuation and grammar. Some of you will think this is perfectly reasonable, whilst others will probably want an explanation. If you are one of the latter read on.
The simple fact is that as a social species our existence depends on communication, the clearer the better. When their only contact with you is virtual other people will make judgements about you based on what is available to them — including your SPG. I correct spellings on Facebook for 2 reasons: 1. because I’m a teacher so it’s a habit; 2. because with modern web-browsers there is quite simply no excuse for incorrect spelling. So, to help everyone, here is a quick guide to enabling an automatic ‘Microsoft word like” spell-checker in your web-browser…
0HTML5 spec finished and published!
At long last, the W3C has published the final HTML5 specification. DIY Media Home is already written coded in HTML5, but the finalisation of the specification means that HTML5 compliance is no longer a moving target for either us, or the browser makers. Hopefully all the main players will provide fully HTML5 compliant browsers soon. In the meantime we’ll be working to ensure our site is fully compliant with the final spec.
0How to reduce spam with SPF, DKIM & DMARC
Since I set up contact forms on various websites I’ve had a slowly increasing volume of spam. Not direct spam sent to me, but bounces from non-existent addresses that were being spamme, apparently from my address. Unfortunately the spam wasn’t originating from my address, but my address was somehow picked up (probably from before I secured the contact forms on the site) and was being used as the “reply to” address. After some investigation I heard about SPF which is an e‑mail anti-forgery system.
“Hi James I realise it has been a long while, but I just checked this on windows 11 (build 23H2)…”