Fred Mac Donald
Fred was born and raised in South Africa during the complicated “apartheid” years. He completed school at the age of 17, joined the South African Airforce and qualified as an Aircraft Maintenance Engineer at the tender age of 21.
After 10 years of service received an honourable discharge and a career change to IT. Learned the trade in the days of DOS 5.1 and NOVELL Netware. Became proficient in desktop support including the different versions of DOS up to the finale version 6, Windows and various Financial Accounting packages.
Left South Africa for Northern Ireland in 2002 to start a new career in Health Care and as a hobby, web application development.
XMS Systems is the result of this new hobby.
mod_expire and cookies not working
Problem with not being able to refresh some cookies while having mod_expire set in your htaccess file?
Posted in: GeneralTabular data with TCPDF and Internal Server 500 error
How to avoid the dreaded Internal Server Error (500) when trying to generate a PDF file using TCPDF with table tags and 1000's of rows of data?
Posted in: Development and Change LogGeneric dynamic SSL site seal
Generic SSL site seal that will certify your site SSL certificate is functioning while displaying real-time certification information to your users.
Posted in: XMS Systems SecurityWhy and How to set a Facebook company page username
This is a short article discussing why you should set a username for your company Facebook page and how to do it.
Posted in: Social NetworkingPhishing scam - PayPal Support - Resolve Your Account Problems
Phishing scam to get hold of your PayPal information.
Posted in: Scam AlertScam Alert from The South African Reserve Bank
Scam that got past our email scanners this morning.
The South African Reserve Bank
370 Helen Joseph Street Pretoria 0002
CLARIFICATION FOR PAYMENT
Attention: Fund Beneficiary.
How do I post as myself on our company facebook page?
Most Facebook page managers does not seem to realise they can post and like as themselves to their company Facebook page. In this tutorial we going to take a look at how to do just that.
Posted in: Social Networkingdomain sales scam alert
Beware of getdom.net trying to steal your money for registering a domain with them.
Posted in: Scam AlertHow to make responsive data tables with CSS only
Short discussion and example of using css and media queries to render a data table responsive.
Posted in: Development and Change LogFilterable or Searchable Drop Down list
Basic idea behind how to make a dropdown list that are filterable and searchable
Posted in: Development and Change LogThe invalidemail.info is Running Out of Time for Search Engine Submission
The invalidemail.info is Running Out of Time for Search Engine Submission. Luckily Exelwebs blocks this kind of emails...
Posted in: Scam AlertHow to get a Google Review link?
This bugged me for some time. I needed to get reviews but just could not figure out how to send users to the Google review form.
Posted in: Search Engine OptimisationWhy are my uploaded pictures displaying sideways or incorrect orientation?
Here is the answer to a question that has been asked 1000's of times online. "Why is some image uploaded from my mobile device the right way up and others are not?". This article also includes a way to easily fix this problem.
Posted in: Image manipulationFacebook auto-reports content in groups
When a group member posts something that might be inappropriate or offensive, group admins may automatically be notified to review and manage the post.
Posted in: Social NetworkingWhy I need a site map and how to create a site map?
Why do I need a site map and how do I create a sitemap that google and other search engines can access? This entry also discusses how to let google know you have submitted a sitemap and invite them to come and visit your website.
Posted in: Search Engine OptimisationEmail address or Contact Form or Both
What is the best solution for user experience? To only have an email address on your contact us page or to use a Contact Form?
Posted in: Front EndWebsite navigation user experience
Giving your visitor a good user experience and making your website usable is important. Yet even the big boys get it wrong and frustrates me endlessly
Posted in: GeneralMy twitter card is not displaying the image
My twitter card configuration is 100% accurate but the image is not showing.
Posted in: Search Engine OptimisationAutomatic Twitter Cards and properly formatted link posts to Facebook and Google Plus pages
Part of a SEO strategy would be to ensure any links shared on Twitter, Facebook and Google+ are properly formatted and display a related image to ensure it stands out amongst all the other 1000's of posts.
Posted in: Search Engine OptimisationMicro Data or Structured Data one of the XMS Systems automatic SEO features
A short summary of the "hidden" SEO features integrated into XMS Systems
Posted in: Search Engine Optimisation