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The Imporance of Backups

Written by Mat Collins on February 20, 2008 – 1:40 pm

When I’m helping people with computer issues and they ask about their missing documents, I always (even if I know they don’t back things up) ask them where their backups are. The response seems to be the same every time. “I don’t know” or “Where are they normally?”. Backups this day in age are important. Everything we do on computers today is prone to viruses, trojans, user error, and hardware failures.

Mozy Logo

Backups are typically hard to configure and manage. Swapping tapes, cd’s, dvd’s, etc is annoying, and often never done. Mozy takes all the hassle out of backups. Simply install the software, configure the directories to be backed up, and forget about it! And best of all, a 2GB personal account is FREE!!

Mozy works by backing up your data to their servers. The best part about the Mozy backups is the fact that it’s encrypted. When installing, you can configure Mozy to use their encryption key, or specify your own.

I’m a coder. I can’t tell you how many times I lost files due to my own ignorance. Edit a file, save it, close the program and then forget that you deleted an entire section of the code! No problem with Mozy. Restoring files takes just minutes through their website or the virtual drive that’s added to your system.

If you don’t currently have a backup system in place, you should think about doing so. It may just save your life one day!! Check out Mozy Today!


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Posted in programming, technology | No Comments »

Send a Private Message on Group Request in phpBB3

Written by Mat Collins on December 6, 2007 – 3:52 pm

Check out my phpBB3 development board for directions on private messaging leaders on a group request!


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Posted in programming | 1 Comment »

Display a phpBB3 Avatar on a Custom Page

Written by Mat Collins on November 26, 2007 – 5:48 pm

In your php file, you will need to run a database query, for example:

$sql = 'SELECT user_avatar, user_avatar_type, user_avatar_width, user_avatar_height
            FROM '
. USERS_TABLE . "
            WHERE user_id = "
. $user->data['user_id'];
$result = $db->sql_query($sql);
$row = $db->sql_fetchrow($result)

Now that you have the required data, you can use the [url=http://area51.phpbb.com/docs/code/phpBB3/_includes---functions_display.php.html#functionget_user_avatar]get_user_avatar[/url] function that’s in includes/functions_display.php

$avatar = get_user_avatar($row['user_avatar'], $row['user_avatar_type'], $row['user_avatar_width'], $row['user_avatar_height']);

Assign $avatar to a template variable.

$template->assign_var('USERS_AVATAR', $avatar)

And finally, add {USERS_AVATAR} into the template page, where you want it to show.

<!-- IF USER_AVATAR -->
            {USER_AVATAR}
            <!-- ELSE -->
            {USER_AVATAR_NONE}
<!-- ENDIF -->

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Posted in Onovia, hardware, programming | No Comments »