Halleynet Headspace

I being a web developer (amongst other things!) take great care to back up my PC daily, as I have thousands of lines of code belonging to numerous websites that i need to be able to work on and update.

My workstation runs Vista Home Premium. Now really  should have Vista Business but its a long story that I am not going to go into here why I have Home premium.

I do my backups two ways, I run Sync Toy every day to an external drive and I run Windows Vista Backup to an internal drive.

Following a recent crash with my Raid array (a striped set) I went to restore my user data from a back up. I was surprised to find that none of my files with php extensions were there.

Fortunately I had the copies from by Sync Toy images so I was OK but its worth stating that unless all your interested in is the back up of “personal” files- ie images, mp3s and common file extension docs like xls or doc files you cannot rely on the back up tool for Vista to save you. Somewhat oddly it does save html files- probably due to the fact that many programs can generate html files as an output format, that are not deemed as “professional” file types.

Be warned! 

If you install Dreamweaver 8 onto a Vista pc and accept the default file associations, due to the way Vista handles XML you will find the Vista help system becomes inoperable . An error that it cannot reach / and unable to download will come up. Adobe have supplied a patch and for convenience I have attached it here. Its a small registry fix and correct the xml file association.

dw8_fix_help_and_support.zip

The Adobe Knowledge base article is 400789 and can be reached here: http://www.adobe.com/go/kb400789

Been soo busy recently. Since the rehost of all my managed domains to the new server platform I have been run off my feet. Between the transfer itself which was a big job but very successful, creating a new website for a new client- Power & Control Solutions, building a new site for my own stuff- time for a face lift I think, and some updates to some other clients sites, it non stop.

PCS are a company specialising in Datacentre room mtce and support for big network providers and people with data centres, switch rooms and the like. They are getting into the equipment room deep cleaning game too, so might be worth a look if you have such premises yourself. 

Also been using Dreamweaver 8 on some of the newer projects and I think I may well need to go over- though I grudge the appaling upgrade charge being levied by Adobe (formerly macromedia) I notice the UK prices have a 1:1 relation ship witht he US price- so £199 or $199. Their licensing also makes the options fairly limited in what you can do so getting the code from the US isn’t and option.

Pah! Need a few more projects before I think I can afford it… any offers!