I just redeployed this website with Wordpress 2.7.1, an updated theme, and a re-focused business identity. I finished my ACSA exams on April 3rd, and since then I’ve been busy working on this new website — design is not my strong point! — and getting involved in some interesting projects at work.

The new site isn’t quite finished, but I felt that it is sufficiently better than the old site, so I decided to deploy it. I’ll be adding features and tweaking the design over the next little while.

This article will show you how to dramatically improve the effectiveness of the anti-spam system that is built into Mac OSX Server 10.5. After the upgrade, at least 99.9% of spam should be prevented from reaching your user’s e-mail Inboxes.

This process requires that the Developer Tools are installed on the system. As always, backup your server before making any changes.

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I recently set up an RSS-like feed for use with the iTunes store, for distributing media files as a podcast (or “vodcast”). I did some searching for existing PHP scripts to accomplish this, and came across Anis uddin Ahmad’s Universal Feed Writer classes. They can be used to create RSS1, RSS2 and ATOM feeds. I extended his classes so that they can produce iTunes feeds as well, which is a major departure from standard RSS (it has it’s own DTD). I’ll send them to Mr. Ahmad too, in case he wants to add my updates to his files. He didn’t specify any license, but did mention “Share and Enjoy” at the bottom of his blog post, so I’ll do the same: Share and Enjoy! Without warranty of any kind. :)

Here are the files.

The iTunes extensions to RSS2 are helpfully specified by Apple. The process of getting the feed set up and into iTunes is laid out in four easy steps by Derik Whittaker. Note that you can create an URL that will open in iTunes so that it connects directly to your site (without going through the iTunes Store), using this format: itpc://FEEDURL.

Although Apple published a helpful list of TCP and UDP port numbers used by it’s products, it’s a little unclear as to which ones Workgroup Manager needs.

You can figure it out yourself by enabling firewall logging on your Mac OSX Server and watching as you fail to connect. Or, you can take my word for it — here are the ports that you need to allow access to:

1. TCP 625 for “Remote Directory Access”, as mentioned on the above page.
2. TCP 8175.

For the last port, the only option in the Server Admin firewall interface is to enable ports 8000-8999 for “Web Service, iTunes Radio streams”. If you are running other services on those ports that you want to protect, or if you’re just paranoid, you’ll want to add a custom rule for port 8175.
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