I’ve reported this problem to Dreamhost and they are already working for a fix. For now, if you still want to use Railgun and be able to login to your Dashboard while “Extra Web Security” is enabled, the work-around is to use Cloudflare’s Pagerule:

On your Cloudflare account, create the following Pagerule on your website.

Pattern: www.yourwebsite.com/wp-login.*
Rule: Apps: Off, Performance: Off, Security: Off, Cache level: Bypass cache

Pattern: www.yourwebsite.com/wp-admin*
Rule: Apps: Off, Performance: Off, Security: Off, Cache level: Bypass cache

If you are using SSL on your Dashboard, you can set this rule instead of the rules above:

Pattern: https://www.yourwebsite.com/*
Rule: Apps: Off, Performance: Off, Security: Off, Cache level: Bypass cache

After setting these up, you’re good to go after 60 seconds. You will be able now to login to your WordPress Dashboard while your visitors are being served fast with Railgun.

Based on my experience, Vaultpress is also having problems connecting to your site when you enabled Railgun and “Extra Web Security” is enabled. If you are using Vaultpress and encountered 500, 502, or 503 errors after enabling Railgun, set this Pagerule and everything will be back to normal:

Pattern: www.yourwebsite.com/wp-load*
Rule: Apps: Off, Performance: Off, Security: Off, Cache level: Bypass cache

These settings work for me. It is configured on this blog. As you can see, I can login to my Dashboard and post this post and Railgun is enabled on this blog. I can’t guarantee that it will work for you too. Hopefully, it does.

That’s all folks.

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Image Credit: Cloudflare

See TLDR below if you are in a hurry.

Now, let’s start first with my story…

The past few days, I’ve been trying to setup SSL on BatangasToday.com for extra security using Cloudflare’s Flexible SSL. After several days of trial-and-error, I finally nailed it!

The instruction on the WordPress.org website is simple. Just add the following code on wp-config.php file and it will work.

define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);

Well, it will work if you have a Full SSL setup. (Refer to the image on the right to know the difference, ok?) But for a Flexible SSL on Cloudflare, setting it will result in infinite redirect loop error.

However, according to that same instruction, you need to put additional code on wp-config.php if you are on Reverse Proxy, just like Cloudflare. The code looks like this:

define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);
define(‘FORCE_SSL_LOGIN’, true);
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO'] == ‘https’)
$_SERVER['HTTPS']=’on’;

Tried the code. The result is the same infinite redirect loop error. That’s because maybe, Cloudflare is not setting up HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO properly.

When I contacted Cloudflare asking them to check if they are setting up HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO properly, they instead suggested me to go the Full SSL route.

So I asked them, “Can’t you fix this without advising us to go to the Full SSL route?” In which their support replied, “I can most certainly have us check it out. I am curious, however, if choosing the full option gets rid of the loop.”

Well, I don’t know if choosing the full option can get rid of the loop, since I don’t have the ability to go Full SSL since I don’t have SSL setup on my host. Setting up my own SSL on my host costs $3.95/month for self-signed certificate. I’m a cheap a$$ so I insisted that they set HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO properly.

Then, after some more googling, I found this forum post. Analyzing the code there made me think that Cloudflare might not be setting up HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO properly, but they are sending HTTP_CF_VISITOR with “https” substring on its value when the site is being accessed on https.

So, instead of checking for HTTP_X_FORWARDED_PROTO, I checked HTTP_CF_VISITOR on wp-config.php file. I added the code below instead of the code suggested above:

define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);
define(‘FORCE_SSL_LOGIN’, true);
if( isset($_SERVER['HTTP_CF_VISITOR']) && strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_CF_VISITOR'], ‘https’) )
$_SERVER['HTTPS']=’on’;

And bang! No more infinite redirect loop. And I can access all admin pages on https. And everything works fine! Except for the mixed content error, which simply means that I am showing pages on http and https, mixed, since some CSS files are taken from the http.

To fix that, I installed the WordPress HTTPS plugin, to remove the mixed content error and see the “green lock” on the browser when I’m on the WordPress Admin panel.

Everything works fine now.

=======

TLDR. If Flexible SSL is already setup on your Cloudflare account, you just need to add the following code on wp-config.php file.

define(‘FORCE_SSL_ADMIN’, true);
define(‘FORCE_SSL_LOGIN’, true);
if( isset($_SERVER['HTTP_CF_VISITOR']) && strpos($_SERVER['HTTP_CF_VISITOR'], ‘https’) )
$_SERVER['HTTPS']=’on’;

You can optionally install WordPress HTTPS plugin to remove mixed content warning on your browser and see the “green lock”.

That’s all folks!

BTW, I’m using Dreamhost’s Cloudflare Plus option, cheaper than the Cloudflare Pro option.

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So, why did I delete my account then? Because I signed up on Friendster for social networking, not for any new service they are planning to offer. Having my account already with them makes me subscribed to their planned service already, whatever it is. And I don’t want it that way. I want to see the service first and sign-up with them if I like it. I signed-up for a social networking service, not a gaming or music service.

I highly recommend you do the same. We don’t know what they are going to those account information anyway. After they deleted the reasons we have the Friendster account in the first place, don’t expect that we’ll just stay there and let our information be used on any way they want.

So, how do you delete your Friendster account? Simple, after downloading your information using the Friendster Exporter app, go to Settings on the upper right hand corner of your account. Then click Cancel Account. See screenshot below. Click the image for a larger view.

And that’s it! Goodbye Friendster!

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So, how do you setup MaxCDN on a WordPress blog? Here’s how.

1. Create a pull zone on MaxCDN and a CNAME record. I’ll just refer you to an easy to follow tutorial on how to do this on WPVeda. Just follow that guide up to step 3 (Creating a CNAME record) then come back here.

2. By this time, you already created a pull zone and a CNAME record. Setting the CNAME record varies from registrar to registrar. If you are still confused, here’s how I created the CNAME record for macuha.com on Dreamhost.

Click image for larger view

Wait for 24 hours to make sure your settings are propagated already. After 24 hours, configure WP Super Cache.

3. Simply go to CDN tab of the WP Super Cache settings, check the Enable CDN Support and input your CDN URL on the Off-site URL.

Click image for larger view

4. Check your site’s source code and make sure that images and css files are now served using the CDN URL. For example:

http://www.macuha.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

is now served as

http://cdn.macuha.com/wp-includes/images/smilies/icon_smile.gif

5. Clear your WP Super Cache contents to make sure all your pages will now start uploading files on the CDN pull zone and start serving CDN files to the visitors.

That’s all folks!

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To back-up the database, you need to install a WordPress plugin. This plugin will automatically e-mail a copy of your database to your chosen email address using the schedule you set. You can set it up to email the back-up everyday, every week or every month, depending on your needs.

So, here’s the simple process.

1. Download, install and activate the WP-DBManager Plugin on your blog. Plugin Download and Installation Guide.

2. Go to Database > DB Options on your WordPress sidebar. Set your schedule and you’re done! Use GZIP to lessen the file size. Of course, you need to check your email if it successfully received the back-up file. (Click screenshot below for a full size view)

3. Optionally, you can also do an automatic optimization of your database as you can see from the screenshot above. This is highly recommended for high-traffic and often updated blogs to keep your database healthy.

To make life easier for me, I created a dedicated email address for my back-up as you see on the screenshot. I did this so that it does not clutter my existing email, and if I need a back-up of my WordPress database, I’ll just open that email address.

That’s all!

Wait there’s more! Learn how to automatically back-up your WordPress files here.

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Ideally, you must back-up all the contents of wp-contents folder to have a full back-up of your WordPress files. However, that would consume a lot of time, CPU and memory resources. In my case, I just made a one-time back-up of my plugins and themes folder and made a scheduled back-up of the uploads folder. Contents of plugins and themes folder don’t change a lot. You can even download them from the plugin and theme maker when you lost your copy. Uploads folder contains all your images and other uploads when you make a post. This is what you should back-up regularly.

So, how do I back-up my uploads folder regularly and automatically? I use SyncBack. It’s an award winning back-up software. Best of all, it’s a free software! No nag screen. No advertisement. No registration. No payments. No expiration. A completely free software that does the job very well.

Syncback is a flexible back-up software. You can configure it to connect to your FTP server, check the files there, compare the files to your local back-up and download only the new files and files that are modified. You can schedule this task to run automatically every day, every week, every month depending on your needs.

Initial running of the software might consume so much time depending on your internet connection speed and the amount of files in your FTP server, since it will download ALL the files from your server to your local folder. Mine takes at least an hour to finish. But after that, it will just download the new and modified files on the next scheduled run. During a scheduled run, it runs in the background consuming less CPU and memory resources. So, you can do your work on your computer while it is backing-up your files.

Now, let me guide you on how to setup Syncback in your computer so that you can back-up your WordPress files automatically.

Download Syncback software here. Just download the free version which is only 1.77MB. Then, install it on your computer. Then, follow the instruction below to back-up your files from your server to your PC automatically:

1. Prepare your back-up folder. Create a back-up folder in your PC.

2. Run the Syncback software.

3. Create a new Profile. Click Profile > New. Choose Back-up when prompted. Create a descriptive name for your profile.

4. Click the Expert button below.

5. Specify the Source by clicking the folder icon beside it. Use the one you created on Step 1.

6. For the Destination, DON’T click the folder icon yet. Click the FTP tab first.

7. On the FTP tab, check “The destination directory is on an FTP server.” Then, input your FTP credentials. Click Test FTP settings to make sure that everything works fine.

8. Now, click the folder icon on the Destination. It will now connect to your FTP server. Browse until you find the uploads directory and click OK.

9. Now, you have defined the Source as your local folder and the Destination as the uploads folder in your FTP server. However, what we want is the other way around, your Source must be the FTP server and the Destination must be the the local folder in order to have a successful back-up. To do this, follow the next steps.

10. Click the Advanced tab. Copy the settings below. As you can see, we instructed the Destination and Source to do the reverse of their function.

Destination overwrites source always (restore). This means that your FTP server will always overwrite your local folder.

If the file is in the source but not in the destination, do nothing. This means that if it found a file in your local folder but not existing in your FTP server, don’t do anything. This is to protect your FTP server from getting unnecessary files from your local PC.

If a file is in the destination but not in the source, copy file to source. If a file is in the FTP server but not in your local folder, copy it to your local folder. This is the ultimate back-up command. When it find files in your FTP server that is not yet in the local folder, copy it!

11. Click OK. It will prompt you to do a Simulated Run. Click Yes. It will show you a report of what files it will copy if you actually run your settings.

12. If you are satisfied with the result of the Simulated Run, click Run. It will start copying those files from the FTP server to your local folder. This might take time depending on the contents of your uploads folder and your internet connection speed.

13. When everything is finished, click Schedule to make a schedule on when you want to run the settings automatically from your PC. Schedule uses your Windows Scheduled Task. Simply fill it up with your desired schedule and you’re done.

That’s it! Just make sure your computer is turned-on on your scheduled time. It will automatically start in the background while you are watching Youtube, Facebooking, or simply reading this blog.

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Obviously, I already solved this problem that’s why I’m blogging about it. So, what did I do to allow users with Author and Contributor roles to embed Youtube videos on their posts? Again, Capability Manager plugin saves the day!

I simply checked the “Unfiltered html” option on the Capabilities for Contributor and Author roles. That fixed the problem. Now, Authors and Contributors can embed Youtube videos on their posts.

Here’s the screenshot of the settings (click for a larger view):

Capabilities Manager Settings

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Well, I tried googling for a solution and I found one. Use the Capability Manager plugin. With Capability Manager plugin, you can easily define the capability of each user roles by simply clicking on check boxes.

After installing and activating the plugin, I simply checked the “Upload files” check box for Contributor users. It fixed my problem instantly.

Here’s the screen shot of the settings I’m talking about (click for a larger view):

That’s all.

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Anyway, here’s a fast way of rotating your Facebook photos. After uploading, look at the lower right corner of your photos. You will find this:

Simply click those buttons to rotate your pictures to the left or to the right. Keep on clicking until you get your desired angle.

It’s not that hard, is it?

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These steps only need your mouse, your keyboard and your presence of mind. No soldering or hardware changes will be made. Just simple change of settings. These steps are for Motorola Canopy setup of Smart Bro.

1. Access the canopy web admin. This can be done by opening your favorite web browser (I used Firefox) on the PC with Smart Bro and visiting http://169.254.1.1 Here’s the screenshot of the main page:

Canopy Home Page (click image for a larger view)

As you can see on the screenshot above, I labeled the sidebar and the tabs for easy instructions and navigation on the succeeding steps. Basically, the sidebar is the main menu and the tabs are the sub-menu. The tabs change when you click a menu on the sidebar.

2. Check the available access points (AP). You can do this by clicking Tools on the sidebar, then clicking AP Evaluation on the tabs. You’ll see a list of access points similar to this:

Access Point List (click image for a larger view)

Let me explain to you some of the things you need to check on this list based on the example above.

AP List Current entry index: 0 – this means that the access point with the index 0 is the one in use. On the above example, there are 2 available access points with the index of 0 and 1. The access point with index 0 is the one currently in use. This is the intermittent access point you want to change.

Jitter – this is the interference. The lower the number, the better for your connection.

SectorUserCount – this is the number of users using the access point. The lower the number, the better.

Color Code – Just take note of this number. This is a unique code you will use on the next step. Take note of the Color Code of the access point you wish to use. In this example, I’ll take note of 161 Color Code since I wanted to use access point index 1 instead of access point index 0.

Note: Usually, you’ll see 3 to 5 access points on the list. Simply check the Jitter and SectorUserCount and select the access point that you think will give you better connection. Low Jitter and low SectorUserCount is the best since you’ll have low interference and low number of users. But usually, AP with low Jitter already has many users. I prefer using AP with a slightly high Jitter (4-8) but with low number of users. Take note of the Color Code of the access point you have chosen and proceed to the next step.

3. Use Your Chosen Access Point. On the sidebar, click Configuration. Then on the tabs, click Radio. You’ll see the screen shot below.

Radio Configuration (click image for a larger view)

On the Color Code input box, input the Color Code of the access point you have chosen on step 2 above. Click Save Changes. Click Reboot.

After clicking reboot, your canopy will reboot and will apply the new settings. Wait for about 30 seconds and surf the internet. See if there’s an improvement. If you want to change back to the original configuration, simply go back to step 1 and use the Color Code of the original AP. Or you can try other access points to get the best connection available for you.

Warning: I highly discourage you from changing other settings on the web admin aside from the Color Code above because I don’t know what will happen if you do so. Don’t change any settings if you are not sure of what you are doing. Ok? Ok!

That’s all!

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