ArtbyHerbie.com » Technology

WordPress and Contact Form 7: Blank Emails from WordPress Blog

Herbie Hysteria — Mon, 04 Apr 2011 11:53:40 +0000

Stop Blanking Me

One morning whilst checking my emails I noticed a ‘phantom’ email that had come from my blog which was just blank. Yep, as blank as plain paper. It just said ‘From: WordPress’ and ‘To: You’, which doesn’t really give that much away. I pondered a bit, and just proceeded to delete it and think nothing of it. I just put it down as a random harmless side-product of the various php-crunching algorithms, xhtml and css code whirring away under the bonnet of my blog.

The week after, I got another one. Again, I just deleted it and didn’t bother to investigate further. I usually get a daily email from the WP Database Backup Plugin I use, and even fobbed the anomally off as something to do with this plugin.

Enough Blanking, Already!

This carried on for about a month and on my sixth random email, I opted to open the bonnet and have a good poke around. What was causing these random gremlins to pop-up in my inbox every-so often? I try to keep my blog bullet-proof with all the security loopholes closed and all plugins and themes updated, but this was bugging me now.

I likened the situation to a pristinely-engineered and finely-tuned F1 car running good and working as it should, but spitting out a massive blob of oil from the back, once every forty-or-so miles. It HAD to be sorted.

Contact Form 7

F1 - highly engineered, but still precarious...

As part of my investigation, I decided to test the main contact form I use for my readers to get a quote in regards to the services I offer. I’ve used the Contact Form 7 plugin, by Takayuki Miyoshi, for over a year now and it’s been flawless. I filled in all the fields, correctly entered the CAPTCHA details and submitted it. Everything seemed fine, it said the message had been sent so I headed on over to my inbox to check.

Voila! Literally seconds after I logged into my email client, I got a new message in my inbox. Yes, it was blank, my F1 car had just spat out a blob of oil and I had personally orchestrated it. I felt a sense of relief at diagnosing the problem but also a sense of curiousity as to the cause. I re-tested to be sure.

I headed into the settings for Contact Form 7 and viewed my form. Everything seemed fine, all the tags and code was correctly in place and the form worked on the site, but I noticed the ‘Message Body’ area of this particular form (I have a few!) was blank. I couldn’t remember changing anything myself so I just re-entered the tags in the ‘Message Body’ section, saved and re-tested the form. It worked fine, no more blank emails! :)

I put it down to maybe a plugin update somewhere had stripped the code from the section, but I can honestly not say what caused the data to be wiped from the ‘Message Body’ section of the form. I suppose I had become accustomed to the plugin working great in the background that I didn’t notice when the handful of enquiries I get through it every month dried up! The remedy was quick and painless, but what isn’t is that I will never know who them six blank emails were from, and what wierd and wonderful projects/work they required me for.

So…

To all others who use Contact Form 7, I recommend it’s worthwhile just giving it a quick check-up in the settings every week, because as like what happened with mine, the contact form itself could be working fine, except you’re not receiving the details when the moment comes!

To the potentially six ‘lost clients’ who filled and submitted the form and were excitedly expecting a reply from me, now you know why you didn’t get one. Please re-submit if this has jogged your memory. A deep and heartfelt ‘sorry’ from me. No matter how highly-engineered the technology, sometimes it spits out blobs of oil(!)

You can find the Contact Form 7 plugin here.

Salute.

Desktop PCs: How To Change The Power Supply On a Dead PC

Herbie Hysteria — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 13:45:11 +0000

The Dead Body

I came into work a couple of days ago and went to switch my main PC on. Nothing. No life at all. Unfortunately, between the night before and this morning, my PC had died(!) It was an emotional moment for me because it had been a reliable companion since 2006! A true work-horse, modified and improved as and when required during my ownership. I quickly did a mental ‘trial and eliminate’ sypnosis and concluded all may not be lost…

You see, the symptoms were err… absolutely nothing. When I pressed the power button, there were no lights or whirring noises or any kind of output on the monitor. It just stared back at me in complete silence. The light on the monitor was still amber coloured, which told me there was no power going to it from the PC.

It seemed totally dead to the world. I booted up the ‘reserve-’chute’ (my laptop, actually) and set about doing some primary research online on the subject. It didn’t take long for a ‘plan of action’ to firmly register itself in my wayward head.

The Diagnosis

Usually, PCs have a power switch on the back of the actual power supply itself. Mine didn’t but your best-bet is to check this isn’t accidentally switched off before switching your PC on! It could be something as simple as this, give yourself a ‘kick in the shin’ if it applies to you.

The first thing I tested was the power cable. I replaced it and tried the switch-on, but nothing happened. This was the ‘best-case’ scenario because a power-cable is easy to replace. I double-checked all the various USB/peripherals connections and even tried the PC with only the power cable attached – again, nothing.

Next, I used a multimeter to see if there was any voltage coming out of the 3-pin power connection on the back of the PC. Nothing registered. I was onto something, now…

I rang one of the homies who’s an ‘expert’ in I.T., and he advised me that the most likely component to have failed was the power supply itself. If other things such as the motherboard, RAM or CPU had failed, the computer would have shown at least SOME signs of life, ie: lights flashing, errors shown on the monitor etc.

I learned that the first thing to fail on older PCs is the power supply and the symptoms matched to a T. The multi-meter test registered no voltage, which meant the power supply was dead. Bingo!

The Doctor

I opened the PC’s cover and peered inside. The power supply is usually towards the top of the unit if it’s a tower, or towards the back if it’s a ‘proper’ desktop. I noted down the manufacturer and model numbers of the power supply and other details such as wattage etc. Armed with this, I went to my trusty ‘PC-man’ in my local town-centre. (I totally rejected the idea of buying it online because of the delivery delays due to Christmas). I needed my PC back ‘firing-on-all-cylinders’ NOW!

The engine-bay..

The good news was that there are now available generic power supplies that would replace my original perfectly. Mine was a 300W unit and my-man opted to sell me a 400W one, telling me it’d be better performance-wise. A quick performance-boost whilst we’re at it was certainly welcome!

The new unit cost me £24 which I thought was a great price, since this was me losing my ‘power-supply-virginity’. I had never in my life had to do this before, so I was kinda excited but anticipated a straight-forward replacement job.(!)

The ‘Triple Heart-Bypass’ Surgery

Back in the office, with everything disconnected from the PC and myself ‘earthed’ to prevent electric shock (touch the PC metal cover, work barefoot or wear a special, I dunno, however you do it), I set upon the ‘operation’.

The first thing I did was to note down all the various wires and connections coming from the power supply to the different areas in the computer. If you forget ‘what goes where’, you’ll be ‘up shit’s creek without a paddle’. There’s a main 24-pin connector which you can’t really miss(!) Then there were about six other smaller 4-pin connections including the optical drives, hard drive and so-on.

The old power supply (RIP)

It was just a case of disconnecting the old power supply, unscrewing it from the case and putting the new one in. It can get fiddly with the wire-loom but if you take your time and make sure you do it properly, it’s about half-an-hour’s work – max. There’s no software or BIOS settings to adjust.

I made sure all the connections were properly seated, and routed the wire-loom neatly around the other components. If you’ve got fingers like sausages, and you’re the type who has difficulty pressing a single button on a mobile phone, get your homie to do it(!) I also took this chance to give the whole inside a good dusting.

The Re-Birth

The moment of truth came and I connected everything back up and pressed the power button. Everything lit up like Las Vegas (well, it did to me…) and the machine whirred and buzzed back into life and booted first time. The fan in the new power supply gave off a deeper humming ‘tone’ which sounded fresher than the tone I was accustomed to. Kinda like comparing the different sounds of a V6 and V8 engine on a car. Bravo! The problem was sorted within TWO days and I gained some new learnings. Can’t complain.

Hopefully, as you’ll see, some things in life are more simple than they seem. So, the next time your computer ‘dies’, it just might not be dead.

Salute!

Dell 3100CN – How I Fixed The Colour Streaking Problem

Herbie Hysteria — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 14:36:38 +0000

Dell 3100CN – A Slick Piece of Kit

Dell 3100CN - Bigger is best(!)

My Dell 3100CN colour laser printer has been good to me ever since I forked out £350 back in 2006. It’s a great big hulk of a thing that weighs more than my fat cousin, but the print quality is second-to-none. However, in early 2010, I started noticing colour streaks on my prints and thought ‘Oh my God, is the ‘big-daddy’ about to die?’. The streaks were always in the same place on the page and running the direction of paper travel. This problem remained for a few weeks until I finally decided to do something about it, so I started by poking about and trying to see if I could see anything physically in the way. No luck.

The Problem

I noticed the smudging and streaks were only appearing amongst the colours, excluding the black areas. Initially I thought my ink levels were down. It wasn’t the ink, it seemed, however, like something was rubbing against the paper as it was fed out after being printed. The streaks were in the direction the paper was fed, so I started investigating further. I thought it could have been my drum cartridge packing up (usually should be replaced after 100,000 prints but I was nowhere near the limit). This would also have ended up costing me an arm, a leg and possibly a testicle too(!) Dell drum cartridges don’t come cheap, people!

The Solution

After scouring a few forums here and there, I came across one particular thread (which I have forgotten the URL to, so apologies to the person who issued the fix) where other 3100CN users had the same problem. The fix was quite surprising, it meant I had to dig out my screw drivers and tools.

This fix, by the way, also fixes the problem of lines running the direction of paper travel on colour prints. The drum unit’s lid is attached with six screws. The whole drum unit needs to come out of the printer first, so grab the blue handles and carefully pull it out:

Open the printer from it’s top panel and unsecure the drum unit by lifting the blue lever on the right.
Place the drum unit on a clean and level surface and avoid touching the transfer belt (the decal with the four arrow points).
The top cover, where the blue handle is attached, has six screws attaching it. Remove the screws (two screws located at the top next to both ends of the blue handle, next two are in the middle, and the final two screws are at the lower corners of the big decal).
Carefully lift the cover from the drum unit and cover the transfer belt with some clean paper, to protect it from bright light.

At this stage, you can choose to carefully re-install the drum unit back into the 3100CN. Run some colour-prints and see if your problem has disappeared. Voila(!) Mine disappeared and I chose to leave my drum unit in the printer whilst I carried out the following steps:

The Suspect

The problem was the ridges on the back of the cover. These cross sections of plastic are there to add rigidity to the cover. However, theyr’e also the culprits to the streaking problem. You may notice toner build-up on these ridges, especially the cross-sections. Toner build-up suggests these sections are too high and are dragging the toner that is applied to the transfer belt. The trick was to sand these sections down so that they wouldn’t be as close to the transfer belt. Follow the steps below:

Place the cover down on a level surface, upside-down.
Using a palm-sander with 320-grit sandpaper and light pressure, sand the ribs going in both directions.
Confirm the areas have been sanded by checking the areas (they should be less ‘glossy’ than the non-sanded areas).
Switch to 600-grit sandpaper and do a lighter sanding.
Rinse the cover in cool water, making sure all the excess has been washed away from between the ridges. Hot water could cause the cover to bend, use with caution.
Dry completely. Use compressed air if you have to, just make sure it’s dry before you put it back in the printer.
Re-install the cover with it’s screw screws and carefully install the drum unit back in the printer.
Secure the drum-unit by pressing the blue lever on the right.
Try some colour prints. If your problem is there, try sanding down further.

Let me know if this sorted your problem, or how you went about solving it. I’ve printed 1000s of sheets since this fix and I have not had the same problem since.

Your Comments and Feedback

Do you also have a Dell 3100CN? How has the printer behaved with you? What do you think? I’d love all your feedback and responses to this project. If you’re from Nelson, Burnley or the surrounding areas, or even if you’re half way across the world, your comments are much appreciated.