SSl Certificate error in latest chrome problem

I thought it would be a good idea, to post a few notes of the current problem we are experiencing with the latest chrome browser error we are getting using our updated ssl cert purchased from rapidssl.

With our updated ssl certificate purchased from rapidssl for another 2 years, our green padlock disappeared from chrome replaced by the warning message instead.

We installed the certificates as usual and tested on all other major browsers, Firefox, Internet Explorer and Safari. The result in those browsers was the normal padlock secure connection.

Why in chrome was it not working? I contacted rapidssl support via their chat, upon testing the certificate initial tests showed nothing wrong.

They thought it may be my own browser i am using
Version 39.0.2171.71 (64-bit)

We left the error with them and they have emailed back with this reply as of Monday the 1st December 2014.

"The course of the error is domain Vetted SSL certificates. The only certificate type that will not come up with that Error message are EV certificates.

This is Chrome pushing this.

http://www.certificate-transparency.org/

http://www.trustico.com/news/ct/chrome-certificate-transparancy-plan.php

The choice going forward will be that everyone will need to have an EV certificate or have that error message in Chrome.

There is nothing wrong with the certificate itself and the connection is secure and Trustico as stated in Chrome. Just that it gives more information to the customer about the connection now."

and a follow up reply to to my reply

"At the moment just leave it with me in regards to the upgrade and I will certainly let you know the procedure. We are waiting for more information from Chrome and Symantec on the issue before we start forcing customers to upgrade to the EV certificates."

For the moment we are having to wait on the solution i will post as soon as we get a reply, hopefully this may help with anyone else suffering the same fate .

Not all chrome browsers will be displaying this error just the very latest chrome updated versions.

A Further thought has just occurred to me looking at the bigger picture,  Google have in 2014 stated that using https or a ssl website will have a ranking boost for a website.

The question that has gone unanswered is to what level of security would benefit?

Is this the first indication that a website using EV ssl (Extended Validation Certificate) will gain higer ranking and trust than those that do not?

An EV Certificate is where you will actually have your certificate verified by phone confirming your address and company name etc.

This does feel like it is an opportunity for Google to start streamlining out a business owner who are not serious about their website, thus demoting their website easily, compared to someone that is prepared to go the "whole hog".

It is an easy algorithm for them, a verified website paid for by the owner, a "we are who we say we are" algorithm.

Quote from chrome
"HTTPS sites whose certificate chains use SHA-1 and are valid past 1 January 2017 will no longer appear to be fully trustworthy in Chrome’s user interface."

*2015 update*
Latest chrome is now displaying a green padlock will keep an eye on it over coming months, not sure if it has been fixed by chrome or rapidssl

Outlook 2013 empty address book after contacts csv import

Found an unusual problem with outlook 2013.

I had to export contacts from windows live mail in a csv file (comma seperated values).
After importing to outlook 2013 contacts (people folder) the address book was empty.

Tried all suggested methods out there including creating a new profile etc
Also tried using contacts as address book was ticked, still no joy.

Phoned microsoft and found out that importing csv in 64bit outlook on windows 7 will not work only in windows 8, so downloaded 32 bit version of outlook 2013.

Then after the import still no email addresses had gone over to contacts.

So redid it and had to map custom fields

Making sure by dragging from left hand side to right hand side of custom fields box that, name goes to name, first name to first name, middle name to middle name, last name to last name and email address to email address, all then works fine and the contacts now populates with email addresses.

I suspect that Microsoft have change field mapping for csv files in outlook 2013 so that it no longer matches the colums/fields of older csv exports.

Please make sure that when you export contacts as a csv file that you tick first name middle name and last name if you use all these fileds so that you can match them on your import.

Hope this helps somebody, wasted hours on this.

Panasonic ncp500 asterisk sip trunk no audio issue

Just a simple note to myself for the next time i forget, the dsp card, must be given an ip on the same network as panasonic.
In my scenario the ncp500 has a network address of 192.168.17.101
the dsp card should be 192.168.17.102, this will enable the codecs on the same network.

The setting then if a sip extension is setup on the ncp500 for example 404 on the asterisk piaf is as follows

incoming
username=404
type=peer
secret=404
qualify=yes
port=5060
nat=no
insecure=very
host=192.168.17.101
fromuser=403
dtmfmode=rfc2833
dtmf=rfc2833
allow=ulaw
disallow=all
context=from-trunk
canreinvite=no
maxexpiry=3600

outgoing

type=user
secret=404
allow=ulaw
disallow=all
context=from-trunk

then on inbound route for that trunk set
Pause Before Answer to the amount of time to ring before voicemail cuts in eg 17 seconds, about 3-4 rings

Freepbx - Asterisk multiline pstn same number setup

I had to setup a multiline on a asterisk PBX the other day for the 1st time, the VoIP was so bad because of the poor broadband, we decided to opt for the multiline pstn option.

I could not really find much on the internet with any help to setup.

So i installed my new fxo card to sit alongside the other that i already had.

The Important settings.

You have to create two Dahdi  trunks - call them say Mulitiline1 and multiline2

My setup in the PBX was actually for 3 pstn dahdi lines incoming and i had 1 fxs card.

Line 1 FXO - Dahdi trunk = channel 1 (original spare bt number)
Line 2 FXO - Dahdi trunk = channel 2 (1st of the multiline channels)
Line 3 FXS - not used at the moment = channel 3
Line 4 FXO -- Dahdi trunk = channel 4 (2nd of the multiline channels)

On my setup it sends to the ivr then queues the calls to the two office phones.

Actually the owner wanted 3 options on the ivr, you may ask how do you know what the call is for if it rings the same two phones at the same time.

What i did was to make an announcement, for example if one is press by the caller for sales, the announcement  tells either phone sales and they then know what the call is for. Two is for enquiries and information etc etc

The first trunk should go through to the ivr, followed by the second which is automatically switched at the phone exchange.

The outgoing rules are very important  to make this work.

In your outbound route
where the section at the bottom for
Trunk sequence for Matched Routes is
add multiline1 then add multiline2 for your failover.

Finally back to the trunks edit your multiline1 and set max calls to 1
this then tells asterisk that the line is busy when in use and it drops through to multiline2.

Of course to keep the the multiline as free as possible, you may want to use another line for outbound calling or VoIP if your broadband is better than ours.
 

My new Electric Bike, Kudos Tornado e-bike review

Last Saturday - the 24the May, was a day i had really been looking forward to. After spending weeks of trawling for information on electric bikes or e-bikes as they are more adequately named, i had drawn a blank on what exactly to buy.

The terrain in the Cotswolds is extremely hilly, my local areas that i really need to get to may only be 4-5 miles away most of the time and some are actually quite flat to get too.

My need for and electric bike is quite simple, i can no longer drive as i have been diagnosed with macular degeneration and my eyesight no longer meets the visual fields requirements needed for the DVLA.

With an electric bike the simple requirement for not needing a licence is that it can go no faster than 15 mph either by throttle or pedal assist, well let me paste the gov.co.uk regs below

EAPC requirements

The requirements are:

• the bike must have pedals that can be used to propel it
• the electric motor shouldn’t be able to propel the bike when it’s travelling more than 15mph
• the bike (including its battery but not the rider) must not be heavier than 40 kilograms (kg) if it’s a bicycle, or 60kg if it’s a tandem or tricycle
• the motor shouldn’t have a maximum power output of more than 200 watts if it’s a bicycle and 250 watts if it’s a tandem or tricycle
• the bike must have a plate showing the manufacturer, the nominal voltage of the battery, and the motor’s power output.

 Ok thats out the way

I purchased a Kudos Tornado, it has a battery with the samsung cells in, which after research seemed a good idea.

The battery is cheap to replace from Kudos at £200, so thats another bonus.

The Kudos Tornado has 5 speed assist, at the moment because my level of fitness is very low i am using mainly assist level 5, heres the thing though, you have to remember that if you are descending a slight hill the battery cuts out at 15 mph and you can either carry on pedalling or roll, so the battery is not always being used.

I have made 2 journeys so far to the extent of what i want it for, both around 12 miles in total, each journey has used i would say 25% to 35% of the battery. Now if you had bought a throttle e-bike and was not pedalling this would easily use up more, for me the idea is to get fit as well as be able to get to places that i just could not with a normal bike.

The brakes are fantastic, just touch them and i am stopping like i request them to do.

Going up hills so far is not bad, because the tornado is very light, this leaves more power from the motor to help you with the assist you need.

I still have to get used to the saddle, i am sure this is just a bike thing that i am not used to.

Next test is to go a little further afield when i am a bit fitter.

How did i decide on the Kudos Tornado, well i did speak to a few places, i ended up speaking and then going to Fosse Electric Bikes, near Leicester who advised me on what the right e-bike would be right for what i needed it for.

At £1095 it has proven to be excellent value, so much that my fiancée now wants her e-bike, so time to put on our saving hats and get another.  

I will include Fosse Electric Bikes video review until i get my own done.


I will also add that so far my 6.2 mile return journey took 25 minutes and getting there took 30 minutes (slighty uphill) will post results of times as fitness level hopefully rise.

Keyword not provided or not defined google seo solved (sorta)

For ages i have been running Anaytics on websites, either using Google Analytics or Piwik.
Piwik is my preferred methos of measuring website traffic and stats as for me it has a much more friendly user interface.

The problem has occurred from Google that they hide keywords that land on your website when web users search Google.

Their policy has been to use https or ssl on Google searches, thus encrypting the data when searched so that analytics programs cant see them.

Bing do not do this and thus  you can see keywords searched on Bing.

The result is seeing a keyword not provided in Google analytics or Keyword not defined in piwk.

Now you should have a general idea what keywords are being searched to find your pages on your website, simply using the on page seo that you have titled and described your pages with.

The Key now is to use Google Webmaster Tools, this lets you see searches that are being made to find your website, although not as accurate as it appears, it does give you a very good clue to how people are finding your website.

Morally im not sure that this information should actually show on Webmaster tools either but at the moment it does, so make good use of it before Google pull the plug on this too.

What it wont do is show which pages the keywords are landing on, so you will have to assume which pages are associated with which keywords are being searched.

Feel free to watch my video on this subject

Making mailchimp archives value for seo, dofollow links

Well i sat on my pc the other day, and was looking at the mailchimp archives that have been created when we do our newsletters periodically throughout the year.

For our client we have been running a promotioonal offer on their website, of course we are trying to attain a high ranking on google for that offer.

So always as ever looking for a way to get good quality backlinks back to that offer page, as you probably already know Google have tightened down the hatches with it's latest algorithms, it will not have spam links but also now low quality backlinks are of no real value.

So how do i make real use of those mailchimp archives, after all they are web pages, or are they, when delving into the code i could see that the links that you have created in your newsletters did not have a nofollow attatched to them, i began to get excited.

This got my brain ticking but alas the actual archive page seems to be a noindex a complete noindex so the page will never show on search engines and then no link value.

More thinking required.

I have all these juicy newsletter articles with fresh content which is original with backlinks to offers and packages and i really want to utilise these.

Step two.

After having ignore feedburner for a while, google rss sydication service, i did notice that can create folder in mailchimp and create RSS feeds from each archive folder.

So over to feedburner and to pull in those feeds.

The big thing here, the way i see it is to turn off noindex in feedburner in the rss feed in the publicize settings. This way i am pulling in the whole newsletter with it's fresh content and i may add not written by me but by their marketing team.

You can see what i am trying achieve here with the dinner bed and breakfast deals we are promoting for the Inn in the Cotswolds.

Thats my feedburner feed that i want to index with Google, not sure if it actually will or not yet but one can hope.

Indications are that Google no longer index feedburner pages, so i may need to find somewhere else with high page rank that can display my mailchimp rss feeds.

Remember this is original content as it is not indexed anywhere else on the web, so it is worth a bash.

Any other ideas please comment, always welcome to suggestions.

Actually a very quick edit now trying freepress to see if that indexes, so changed the link in the content accordingly, now off to ping it.

Another update
A few days has passed and it looks like google does not index rss feeds at all, or avoids them as best as it can, so in the end , i am now using a wordpress plugin to pull in rss feeds, wp-o-matic, but still have to tidy it up some what afterwards, as it pulls a lot of garbage code in.

Please comment if you have had more success.

A busy Winter and Spring

Its been a rather hectic Winter and Spring working for the two delightful Inns that i am very lucky to have as clients. The Kings Head Inn in Bledington and The Swan Inn Swinbrook.

My role at these two pubs is to look after all their IT needs from tills to computers, broadband and WiFi.

One of my ideas some time ago was to implement a WiFi Hotspot at the Swan Inn. Access is free but the client has to input their email address to use the Free WiFi.
In aroud 18 month we have gained over 2,500 email addresses to add to the newsletter list. you can view my Mikrotik Hotspot setup article here.

We use can use emails from the accommodation booking system and customers who come to lunch and dinner, to send out promotions for current offers etc. We use mailchimp as our mailing list sender.

Traditionally of course as you would expect in the hotel sector, Trade is harder to come by in the Winter, especially accommodation. Summer we dont have to promote quite so much.

This Winter we all put our heads together after many years of just running discount accommodation, which we felt had come a little stale, this year we came up with dinner bed and breakfast deals. An all inclusive package deal including a 3 course dinner with accommodation. 

So far so good, a freshening up of the old guard as such. We sent out the first push on dinner bed and breakfast deals with the Kings Head Inn only, using mailchimp, response was good, so we then add the promotion to the website, which got received really well.

We now have introduced, after its success at the Kings Head Inn Bledington, dinner bed and breakfast offers at the Swan Inn, and although in its early stages, the offers again seem to have been received very well.

Although sometimes fighting with a computer trying to rid it of a virus, or removing Jammed paper from a printer, It can be great fun to be involved with the marketing and advertising, and the final reward is to see happy customers leaving for home with a big smile.