This category is our site blog. Much of the content in here is somewhat out of date. It would perhaps be more accurate to describe it as a “change log”. Those seeking Mr Goose’s blog should click here.
As you may have noticed, quite a lot has changed here on Garfnet over the last few weeks. Biggest change of all is the decision to dump Joomla as our main CMS in favour of WordPress. I will go into more detail about the decision in another post. Suffice it to say that WordPress is…
Regular visitors will notice that quite a few Garfnet features are looking a bit tired. And you have probably encountered quite a few 404’s too. The reason for this is that Garfnet is undergoing a fairly major overhaul at the moment. Moving to a new, better designed and much faster server Dumping dead or unsupported…
1995-08-18 to 2013-08-18 Editors note: quite a lot of this article is obsolete. The site has changed quite a lot since 2013! GarfNet is penguin-powered and full of unixy goodness! Yep! we’re “open source” and enjoying every moment of it. GNU/Linux is serving us so well that there is hardly a whiff of the mighty…
Editors note: Gerfnet radio tuner was effectively made obsolete by the fact that most modern browsers play media directly. However, some reader may find our static Internet Radio page helpful for finding stations and addressing other problems that may arise. The internet radio tuner is cross-platform compatible and should work on any modern operating system….
GarfNet’s upgrade to Joomla 1.5.x is now complete. Even better, the rather nasty “$live_site” bug reported in our last site blog item is now fixed. Many thanks to Joomla developer, Ian MacLennan for providing us with a timely patch:- http://joomlacode.org/gf/project/joomla/tracker/?action=TrackerItemEdit&tracker_item_id=16930 We still have our doubts whether Joomla 1.5.x should be deemed to be in its…
LAMPP – sometimes written as “LAMP” – is an abbreviation for Linux | Apache | MySQL (database) | PHP ((Pretty) Hypertext Pre-processor) | Perl (programming language). Today, many Linux distributions come with Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl & Python anyway – or they are very easily added from the distributions software repository. If you want to…
Editor’s note: this article dates back to 2009 and is VERY obsolete. It is here for historical interest only. Currently we are evaluating a number of quite different Content Management Systems. For the main part of the site it was a battle between Joomla & PHP-Nuke. Both are good systems. However Joomla’s administration tools are…
We believed it would make managing GarfNet much easier. However, recent issues upgrading to Joomla 1.5.x have brought this decision into question.
Editors note, as of June 2024 this web server, and indeed most of our web servers now run Debian. As do many of our desktop and laptop machines. In 1995 our ISP set us up on a server running FreeBSD. Then in 2005 we built our own server, moved to Linux and chose a ‘live…
At time of writing, Debian 5.0 Debian stable is arguably one of the most stable platforms upon which you can build a web server. It’s also free and so are its frequent updates. http://www.debian.org
Our old server ran since 1995 with only a handful of reboots. Needless to say, it was not an M$ Windows machine. It was a FreeBSD box and it served us well. When our ISP said we could build our own server, we had two choices; 1. Windows 2003 Server with IIS (Micro$oft Internet Information…
I am working on a new ‘Friends’ area where I plan to list most of the old team and their current projects. However there is plenty of work making this new Joomla release function properly, so the ‘Friends’ area may not happen for some time!
Yes. Fully searchable archive currently lives here http://www.garfnet.org.uk/new_mill
The ‘Milly’ as we affectionately called it was an experimental but slightly dysfunctional quarterly ezine that ran from 1995 December 27th through to 1999 December 25. It’s quirky but honest view of the world attracted contributors & readers from all around the planet. The New Millennium was a big project, undertaken on a shoestring budget….
More astute observers may have noticed that GarfNet has changed a bit lately. You may also have observed that some features are missing and some don’t work at all. We’re really sorry about this. Trouble is that Garfnet is currently upgrading its main CMS (content management system) from Joomla 1.0.x to Joomla 1.5.x. This task…
Garfnet has become a huge site with many component parts. Here are some of the more useful bits, complete with nice, short URL’s you can bookmark, scribble down on a stick-it note or (heaven forbid) memorise! All things Linux:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/linux Depth of field (DoF) calculator:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/dof Earthquake info:- http://www.garfnet.org.uk/earthquake International weather from 3000 METAR stations…
There are several ways to stop Google and most other search engines indexing a page. The simplest is to use a “noindex” metatag on any pages you don’t want indexed. Here’s the HTML code, in context. (Obviously the text between the <title></title> tags is just there for show and is not relevant to the workings…
Before you read any further, you need to ask yourself some questions. What do you actually want? A social networking site such as Myspace? A freebie site such as Moonfruit? A freebie to host pictures like Flickr, Photobucket or even GarfNet Pictures? Or do you want a fully functioning business website that you can edit…
Editors note 2024-07-06: The old Coppermine gallery is closing shortly and we are no longer hosting users’ images on GarfNet. It has been replaced with a NextGen Gallery instance that is closely integrated with our WordPress based CMS, and only manages images pertaining to this site. We have a fairly large picture site over at…
Singapore vs SimpleViewer vs Coppermine? All three of these are excellent products. However, the expression horses for courses leaps to mind here. These are quite different in they way they work and are aimed at very different markets. Just because a particular product is better for me, it doesn’t mean it is neccessarily better for…
Editor’s note 2018-01-01: Coppermine has been deprecated and we are no longer actively adding to it, nor are we accepting content on it from third-party users. The following text is kept here purely for historical purposes. We’ve been using Coppermine (a free, open source PHP/MYSQL gallery & database system) for several years here on GarfNet….
Editor’s note 2018-01-01: Coppermine has been deprecated and we are no longer actively adding to it, nor are we accepting content on it from third-party users. The following text is kept here purely for historical purposes. Whilst most of this is already covered in the “General rules for posting material on GarfNet“, I would like…
Apologies to readers who had difficulty accessing this site between 2007-07-12 & 2007-07-20. We suffered several simultaneous technical issues including a cock-up on the part of British Telecom and a hard disk failure in the GarfNet server. We also had some essential maintenance that needed doing, including to upgrading the operating system and various content…
Editor’s note: this article was written when GarfNet first changed from a hand-written HTML site to a CMS driven one. Sadly, Joomla failed us in many ways, not least the fact we went through several soul-destroying upgrades that took longer to sort out than if I had coded the site by hand. Today we use…
Hey there all you happening geese out there in Internetland. Don’t watch this rubbish. Come visit my new blog. It’s really good… http://www.garfnet.org.uk/wordpress You know it makes sense! Trust me, I’m a goose…
