http://www.kindermemories.com.au.

The problem - 12,000 old emails
I have kept pretty much every email since 2003, that’s when I set up my first POP3 account to download mail to my desktop. Previous to that I was using webmail and had to carefully pick and choose which emails to keep so that I wouldn’t go over my 200Mb limit. Downloading all my email to the inbox worked fine until 2005 when the volume of emails I was receiving increased dramatically, space wasn’t a problem but the usability of my email client dropped significantly - Outlook just didn’t like searching through a few thousand emails at a time. So I switched to Thunderbird which generally handles search better, but it too became swamped, so in 2006 I began moving my old emails into folders marked 2003 Archive, 2004 Archive etc and exported them to an external hard drive and that was that… until I need to quickly retrieve an email from 2005, in which case I import the archive then search then delete … ugh.

So what I needed was somewhere to stuff all my mail, it had to have quite a bit of room because my archive mail and current mail was already tipping 5Gig, and it had to be searchable, fast. And for this GMail fits the bill perfectly.

The solution - GMail
Obviously we need a way to get the mail into GMail, ideally Google should include an option to import your mbox or pst files and suck in all your email at once … but they don’t have that option yet, so we will have to use a slightly more painful, but nonetheless effective solution: IMAP.

You have probably heard of IMAP and POP3 as ways to get your email from a server, there are differences between the two protocols, but put simply POP3 is used when you want to download and remove email from a server and IMAP is used when you want to sync your local email with the server email. Using IMAP we can get GMail to ’sync’ with our archives and suck up all that email.

Step 1: Make sure IMAP is enabled in GMail by going to your settings menu.

Step 2: Set up your favourite email client (Outlook, Thunderbird etc) to access your Gmail account. There are instructions on how to set up a range of email clients on the Google Support website. Make sure your email client is not going to store a copy locally which would defeat the purpose. Mine is set to not download messages over 1kb.

Step 3: Once GMail is set up on your email client you can add folders, for example, 2003 Archive, 2004 Archive etc. In Thunderbird my folders looked like this:

Step 4: Drag and drop your email into the appropriate archive folder. You could try dragging whole folders at a time but I found this troublesome; every now and then GMail would throw up an error which means you have to start again. I found it safer to drag and drop a few hundred emails at a time, starting with the smallest emails and then working up to the large ones. Email over 10Mb might have to be done in smaller batches still, and there seems to be a maximum size limit of around 30Mb; I had one email with attachments that was 36Mb and it threw an error everytime … I guess at that size you should be archiving the attachments separately.

The syncing process is not terribly fast so it will require a little patience (it took me about 2 days to get all the email up, chunk at a time), but eventually you should have something like this:

2.69Gb, around 12,000 email messages, easily searchable and stored for free.

The form worked as expected in Firefox, Safari and Opera (I develop on a mac), but when I tested in IE 6 & 7 nothing happened - you’d click the submit button but the form would not be processed… a rather serious usability issue you might say.

Turns out the issue was to do with the image input type:

<input type="image" src="path/to/image.gif" name="submit" value="Submit" />

In PHP, I had set my form up to start processing on a $_POST['submit'], however IE will append _x and _y onto the image input giving $_POST['submit_x'] and $_POST['submit_y']. A small change to the PHP code and everything was working fine across all browsers:

// start processing on submit or submit_x
if (isset($_POST['submit']) || isset($_POST['submit_x'])) {
  // run code here
}

It is a little embarrassing to admit that I hadn’t noticed this difference before now, but in my defence I will say that I rarely use the image input type for styling my submit buttons. For sites that contain more than one button, a much better solution is to separate the style from the content. I prefer to use the <button> tag in combination with the <a> tag, eg:

<button>Submit</button>
<a href="#" class="button">Submit</a>

which can then be styled with something like:

button, a.button {
  background: url(path/to/image.gif) no-repeat top left;
  width: 100px;
  height: 40px;
  display: block;
}

Some tasks you may consider hiring me for;

• Professional PSD to XHTML/CSS/JS work.
• HTML email templates, tested on all major email clients.
• SEO consulting and Google AdWords consulting.
• Website maintenance, from adding an image to recoding an entire site.
• Wordpress plugins, theme creation and training.
• PHP scripting, from custom forms and surveys to complete online applications.
• … and pretty much anything to do with the internet. Try me :)

Please contact paul@kilbot.com.au for more information on availability and rates.

#!/usr/bin/perl
# You may need to change this path to /usr/local/bin/perl

print "nRunning postwwwacct...";

# set up variables
my $user   = $ARGV[0];
($name, $pass, $uid, $gid, $quota, $comment, $gcos, $dir, $shell, $expire) = getpwnam($user);
$statsdir   = "/home/".$user."/public_html/stats";
$webalizer   = "/home/".$user."/tmp/webalizer";
$tmpdir   = "/home/".$user."/tmp";

if(eval 'symlink("","");', $@ eq '') {
  mkdir($webalizer, 0755) unless -d $webalizer;
  symlink($webalizer, $statsdir);
  chown($uid, $gid, $webalizer);
  chmod(0755, $tmpdir);
  chmod(0755, $webalizer);
  print "nPublic stats added for ".$user;
}
else {
  print "nPublic stats not added for ".$user;
}

exit;

You can then update existing accounts through the command line using:

/scripts/postwwwacctuser username

Where username is the account username you wish to update.

Please note: My knowledge of Perl is pretty basic, so use this script at your own risk. Please post any questions/improvements in the comments.

Most impressive for me is the upgrade to the rich text editor, Wordpress still uses TinyMCE but they’ve upgraded to v.3 which seems to have ironed out a lot of the bugs. Anyone familiar with the old rich text editor will know it was frustrating at best, for most clients I would switch it off and tell them write in code view… not the best solution but much easier than trying to explain/teach the quirks of visual mode.

I haven’t had a chance to put Wordpress 2.5 through it’s paces, but let’s just do a quick test. Here’s the code:

<table border="1">
  <tr>
    <td>Row 1</td>
  </tr>
  <tr class="alt">
    <td>Row 2</td>
  </tr>
</table>

And the display:

No great woop there, but in previous versions of Wordpress the rich text editor would have deleted (yes deleted!) any table rows with a class selector - try explaining that to a client. Then there was the endless quirks of mysterious p tags, disappearing line breaks… a nightmare.

At first dig it seems that Wordpress 2.5 (and TinyMCE 3) have addressed most of these problems and that alone is worth the upgrade. Perhaps even worth the extra time you’ll need to find your way around the new admin.

You can test connections to port 25 using the Telnet command. On PC, go to the Start menu, then select Run, then type

telnet mail.domain.com.au 25

telnet mail.domain.com.au 25

220-host.kilbot.com.au ESMTP Exim 4.68 #1 Thu, 18 Jun 2007 12:58:25 +1000
220-We do not authorize the use of this system to transport unsolicited,
220 and/or bulk e-mail.

Now see if you can connect to your ISP’s outgoing mailserver. Repeat the process above but exchange mail.domain.com.au the appropriate outgoing mailserver, below are some server settings for popular Australian ISPs.

Telstra Bigpond: mail.bigpond.com
OptusNet: mail.optusnet.com.au
iiNet: mail.m.iinet.net.au
Internode: mail.internode.on.net
Netspace: mail.netspace.net.au
TPG Internet: mail.tpg.com.au
Netlink: smtp.netlink.com.au

If you can connect to your ISP’s outgoing mailserver please change the setting in your email client. If you can not connect to any server on port 25 you may be blocked by a firewall on your local network, in this case you will need to adjust your firewall settings to allow outgoing TCP traffic on port 25.

• Stripped out the old table-based layout and started from scratch with a fresh, modern design.
• Installed Wordpress as a content management system for easy updating.
• Integrated Google Calendar and Flickr to increase community involvement.
• Brought members and participation to the fore with feature boxes and quick links.

We think the results speak for themselves, so please check out the Waterkeepers Australia website and help protect Australia’s precious waterways.

http://www.waterkeepers.org.au/

If you need assistance adding nameservers to your domain name please contact support@kilbot.com.au.

http://www.gisbornegolf.com.au

http://www.pressuredynamics.com.au

The role of the web developer will vary from agency to agency and from project to project. Most commonly, the web developer refers to the person responsible for the code component of the development process. In a small web development agency, a web developer may be responsible for all aspects of development, including design. Indeed, a good developer should have experience in all aspects of the development process so that good practices are built into the web site as a matter of course.

As the internet industry matures there is a need for more specialised roles in web development. Large agencies will usually include a project manager who takes care of the site planning, wireframing and manages the web developers and web designers. Specialist SEO firms are springing up all over the internet (although most of them are charlatans in this humble web developers opinion :p ). Web developers themselves will usually pick one or two languages to specialise in.

For more information about my specialities, please visit the About page.

On a semi-related note, Whirlpool.net.au is having their annual Australian Broadband Survey, you can give your view on the state of broadband in Australia by going to http://whirlpool.net.au/survey/. The survey will take around 10 minutes to complete.

<IfModule mod_php4.c>
php_value max_execution_time      120
</IfModule>

The Kilbot Factory has released a brand new site for Brooks Hire Service. The site uses a Content Management System for easy site updates and expansion, standards compliant XHTML and CSS, and quite a few keyword tweaks to get the best search ranking possible.

Google fills first and second places, which fits with data collected on my sites. Yahoo are next and then MSN.

Interesting to note Yahoo tops the rankings in the United States. I would suspect the figures are a little skewed to the type of web user would would install the Alexa tool bar.

/* hide from MacIE */
* html #sidebar { margin-right: -3px; }
* html #content { margin-left: 0; }
/* end hide */

## add to .htaccess

php_value session.use_only_cookies 1
php_value session.use_trans_sid 0

A DDNS Server Using BIND and Nsupdate

A host will generally provide the following:

• Storage space for your website and email.
• Bandwidth for transferring data to and from the server.
• Technical support.
• Server software and security.
• Ongoing hardware maintenance and upgrades.

The quality of these services naturally varies from web host to web host. For information on our hosting packages and support please visit our Hosting page.

A domain name contains an extension called the TLD. The most common TLD is the .com (short for commercial). The equivalent TLD in Australia is the .com.au. Functionally there is no difference between a .com and a .com.au - the internet will deal with each equally - however you do need an Australian Business Number (or similar) to register for a .com.au. Other TLDs have similar restrictions, for example a .org.au can only be registered by a non-profit organisation, a .edu.au can only be registered by an educational institution etc.

The Kilbot Factory is not a Domain Name Registrar, but we do offer to register domains on your behalf, this proves convenient for some clients as we can handle the technical and billing management. If you would like to register a domain name with us please visit the shopping cart. If you would like to register and manage domain names on your own, we recommend visiting NetRegistry for Australian TLDs and GoDaddy for most others (including .com).

The Kilbot Factory was contracted by Mintox Design to create a Content Management System for Melbourne artist Brett Coelho. The CMS allows Brett to add, edt and delete the content and also add new galleries so that the site can expand in future years.

The Kilbot Factory was contracted by Mintox Design and Ewen Coates to provide an interactive Flash animation for three of Ewen’s installations.

Click here to explore the installations.