Blackrock Networks, Inc.

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  • Current Performance and Availability Status

    There are many things that can happen in the world that effect the way the internet runs. A great site to keep an eye on if you ever want to know if a service you use is working.

    The Internet is made up of many thousands of networks and servers all linked together. If one of those networks is down or a DNS provider is having issues it may be  stopping you from reaching our servers. Here’s a quick way to check:

    http://www.downforeveryoneorjustme.com

    For many of our blog hosting clients who might access the WordPress Site for plugins and related items check out http://status.automattic.com/9931/135469/WordPress.com for their status.

  • What happened to Google Places?

    According to Google, “as a business owner, you can still use Google Places to manage your business. As a user, you can now rate, review and upload photos through our new local search experience, Google+ Local.” Learn More >

    CNN: Goodbye Google Places, hello more Google Plus

  • Outlook Social Connector

    Outlook Social Connector is a great feature installed with Outlook 2010 however you can now get this as a add-on for Outlook 2007.

    The social connector is one other way to keep connected with your clients in a more personal way.

    Learn More at: http://blogs.office.com/b/microsoft-outlook/archive/2010/07/13/use-the-outlook-social-connector-with-facebook-linkedin-myspace-and-windows-live.aspx

    Get it now: http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=7985

    Frequently asked questions about Outlook Social Connector
    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/2276763

    Learn more about Outlook Social Connector and privacy
    http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/outlook/learn-more-about-outlook-social-connector-and-privacy-HA101880243.aspx

  • BlackBerry Stopped Syncing Email, Calendar, Contacts

    BlackBerry contacts, calendar, tasks or memos stop syncing. This can be caused by a corrupted BlackBerry Service Book.

    We will use the address book for this example, the same action can apply to the contacts, calendar, task or memos.

    Go to the address book icon on the BlackBerry and click on the menu, then options. Under Wireless Synchronization change YES to NO and click save. Go back to the address book icon on the BlackBerry and click on the menu, then options. Under Wireless Synchronization change NO back to YES then click save. This action will force the folder to re-sync to Outlook

    If this action does not resolve the issue, try the following:

    Delete your Service Books and Resend Service Books and remove your battery. It should re-sync.

    If this still does not solve the issue try the following. These should be tried independently of each other.
    1)    Reconcile Now
    a.    Open the Messages Folder
    b.    Click the Blackberry Menu button
    c.    Click Reconcile Now

    2)    Turn off Wireless Reconciliation and turn it back on
    a.    On the device go into Messages
    b.    Click the Blackberry Menu button
    c.    Select Options
    d.    Select Email Reconciliation
    e.    Select Wireless Reconcile, change to “No” r “Off”.  Click the trackball and choose Save.
    f.    Then return to the desktop. Repeat the process above and change wireless Reconciliation to “On”.

    3)    Resend the Host Routing Tables
    a.    Go to Tools > Options
    b.    Select Advanced Options
    c.    Click on Host Routing Tables
    d.    Press the Blackberry button
    e.    Hit Register Now
    f.    Look in the Messages to see if it came back that says, “Your handheld has been registered on the wireless network”
    g.    When this is complete, restart the Blackberry (This will force an update to the host routing table)

    4)    Hidden option to turn off Wireless synchronization for BES on the handheld and back on
    a.     Go to Options
    b.    Select Advanced Options
    c.    Select Enterprise Activation
    d.    Type in the email field press and hold the ALT key and type CNFG.
    e.    Once you enter this a hidden menu will appear and you need to change “Wireless Sync” to No
    f.    Now exit this menu and wait 30 seconds and repeat the process but turn sync back to Yes.
    g.    Once you’ve changed this setting you will see a slow sync will automatically start and it will repair all the wireless sync settings.

    Additional Resources: https://wikis.uit.tufts.edu/confluence/display/exchange2010/Troubleshooting+a+Blackberry+that+Stops+Syncing+with+BES

  • Delete Email account on BlackBerry

    From the device:

    1. Click on the Setup Internet E-mail Icon

    2. Click on E-mail Accounts link

    3. Click on the email address you want to delete user@donain.com link

    4. Select the Delete link

  • Features with our WordPress Hosting

    Features with our WordPress Hosting

    When you sign up with us you get some of the most reliable and tested plugins pre-installed.

    1. Jetpack is a WordPress plugin with the awesome cloud power of WordPress.com.

    • Email subscriptions for your blog’s posts and your post’s comments.
    • Social networking enabled comment system.
    • Simple, Akismet-backed contact forms.
    • The WP.me URL shortener.
    • Hovercard popups for your commenters via Gravatar.
    • Easily embedded media from popular sites like YouTube, Digg, and Vimeo.
    • For the Math geeks, a simple way to include beautiful mathematical expressions on your site.
    • A widget for displaying recent tweets.
    • Your readers can easily share your posts via email or their favorite social networks.
    • Your writing will improve thanks to After the Deadline, an artificial intelligence based spell, style, and grammar checker.
    • With Carousel active, any standard WordPress galleries you have embedded in posts or pages will launch a gorgeous full-screen photo browsing experience with comments and EXIF metadata.

    2. Akismet Spam Filter (requires subscription)

    3. SEO Plugin

    4. WP Database Backup with DropBox.com  (requires subscription)

    and many more…

  • How to clear my browser cache

    Also try these helpful articles from Google related to Chrome Boowser

  • Is Invalid W3C CSS bad for SEO

    The truth is most SEO professionals use Validation errors as a way to say your site is not SEO friendly. I believe it is more of a sales tactic than anything else.

    As with anything the basic answer is, “it depends”. It depends on the location of errors as well as the type of error.

    Assuming the validation errors are not semantic related, and most are not, it usually isn’t the end of the world. More often than not the errors come from non-standard attributes or values in your CSS. This can happen if values are not read by some browsers but are by others and you need both in your CSS to make sure your site displays well across all browsers.

    Googles homepage isn’t even valid and as far as I can tell they don’t read CSS for SEO.

    If you want to spend time and money fixing all these you can but your budget for SEO is better spent on things that truly matter for SEO like the content of the page itself.

     

  • Why doesn’t Outlook 2010 underline spelling errors anymore?

    So you have upgraded to Outlook 2010 and all of a sudden you have become the top speller in the world. At least by Outlook standard, no more wavy red lines are indicating spelling errors.

    Well it is unlikely that you became a grade A speller overnight so it is most likely a setting that is turned off by default in Outlook 2010.

    To confirm you weren’t granted some great spelling powers overnight following the instructions below:

    Go to File/Options/Mail, Always check spelling before sending is selected.

    Check to see if “When correcting spelling in Outlook” is not grayed out. If it is you most likely have an older version of Office and only the recent version of Outlook.

    Some of the spelling options are available only when you have the same version of Word installed. If spell check on send works, the spellchecker itself is working.

    Features Missing in Outlook 2007/2010 “Standalone”

    The Solution:

    When users upgrade just Outlook, not the whole Office Suite, it doesn’t know where to look for Word as its editor, since it is also looking for Word 2010. This means the auto correct features won’t work. Here is the fix:
    Copy Winword.exe from here C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice12
    to
    C:Program FilesMicrosoft OfficeOffice14

     

  • Dealing with Comment Spam in WordPress

    Dealing with Spam Comments

    Comment Moderation is very effective in addressing unwanted comments. The best defense against comment spam is just watching your comments.

    Still if your blog is popular among people it will be popular among comment spammers as well and you may not be ale to do the heavy lifting all by yourself.

    Luckily there are some great tools that can help. Akismet which comes installed with each of our WordPress hosting plans is a great service. Just sign up at http://akismet.com/ and send us the API key and we can do the rest.

    Click here for even more documentation.

  • Changing Gmail From Address

    Although we suggest that you add your other email accounts to our business class webmail user interface, complete with spam filters, ad-free, user friendly features and up to 50mb attachments  (See image below)

    addexternalaccount

    Some may still wish to use other webmail interfaces. To use Gmail as the interface for your email accounts you can choose to add a from address that will display the correct business address you have hosted with us.

    Step 1: Go to Settings

    Step 2: Select Add another email addressGmail Settings

    Step 3: Complete the required information in the dialog boxes.

    Untitled-2

    Step 4: Change your default “reply-to” address. You can also change this later on in the main settings.

    Step 5: Verify Your email. Check your email account for the email with the verification code and enter it in Gmail.

    Untitled-3

    Step 6: If you didn’t do this in Step 4 you can now change your default “reply-to” address here. For the default email click > edit infoUntitled-4

    Step 7: Update the reply to address with the desired email.

    Untitled-5

    Step 8: If you need to change the email while replying or composting an email select the drop down from the From field. Choose the email address you want and continue on with your email.

    Untitled-6

  • Why do downloads time out?

    There are a number of reasons why downloads can time-out. The most common is the file size. The next most common is idle time. In order for files to accomplish a task prior to download, let’s say zipping a file before download there can be idle time. If your router is set to reset after a specified idle period you may see your connection time out. Check your documentation for your router or contact your ISP and they may be able to help you change the time out setting.

    If it is relating to your browser and not your router try this article for IE settings.

    http://www.ehow.com/how_5915953_change-download-timeouts-internet-explorer.html

     

     

     

     

  • SSL

    Although having an SSL certificate can present certain user errors in regards to notification from older browsers certificate-authenticated SSL is considered mandatory by all security guidelines whenever a web site hosts confidential information or performs material transactions.

    WildCard Domains:

    Unfortunately there has never been a good RFC on how wildcard matching works so the different implementations (SChannel and NSS mainly) are slightly different. However, here’s the draft standard which will pin this down:

    http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-saintandre-tls-server-id-check-09#section-4.4.3

    And here’s Microsoft’s take on it:

    http://support.microsoft.com/kb/258858

    Accepted wildcard examples

    • www.example.com matches www.example.com
    • *.example.com matches www.example.com
    • w*.example.com matches www.example.com
    • ww*.example.com matches www.example.com
    • Www.Example.com matches www.examPle.cOm

    Nonaccepted wildcard examples

    • *www.example.com
    • *w.example.com
    • w*w.example.com
    • *ww.example.com does not match www.example.com
    • www.e*ample.com does not match www.example.com
    • www.*ample.com does not match www.example.com
    • www.ex*.com does not match www.example.com
    • www.*.com does not match www.example.com
    • example.com does not match *.com does not match www.example.com
    • www.example.abc.com does not match *.abc.com
    • example.com does not match *.*
    • example does not match *
    • abc.def.example.com does not match a*.d*.example.com
    • www.example.com.au does not match *.*.com.au
    • www.example.com.au does not match www.*.com.au

    Basically, a wildcard may appear as the left-most label and it matches exactly one label. So *.example.com matches www.example.com, but not example.com (because that would mean matching zero labels).

  • I have multiple Google Accounts. Can I merge them?

    http://support.google.com/adwords/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=44500

    You can move your AdWords account to a different Google Account

    You can move your Google Analytics account to a different Google Account by making that Google Account a second administrator to your Analytics account.

  • WordPress featured image issues

    You may have noticed that some themes that used to display the header image on a page or post as the featured image are no longer showing up and defaulting to the primary header. At first this was thought to be a bug with the latest WordPress update but according to WordPress it is actually a bug fix.

    WordPress decided that cropping is ok but enlarging the image isn’t. In a staff reply, this was called “a long time standing bug” that has finally been fixed:

    “Actually, that has been a long time standing bug with the way we processed images. This has been fixed now. Previously, images that were smaller than what a theme specifies as the size for a featured image would be upscaled and distorted. This should never happen by default.”

    The only problem is that there was little communication about this and many people were unprepared for this change.

    If you need help getting all your old images sized properly contact us and we can help.