With such a strong track record as our webhosting supplier I could not recommend Pluto media high enough.

Evan Lawrence, Managing Director – Fine Line Marine

We have been able to contact Steven at all times.  He has always been quick to respond and very obliging, helping and advising on all IT issues.  This demonstrated to us his company’s commitment and knowledge of the IT industry.

When we have been unsure or indecisive Steven’s computer knowledge has been invaluable, he is able to offer creative and sustainable ideas and solutions.

We have no hesitation in recommending Pluto Media for any of your  IT requirements.

I am happy to be contacted on the below contact details for any further information needed.

Paul Leslie, Pet Express – www.petexpress.co.nz

Graham Brown – www.vibco.co.nz

New Zealand Bird Rescue Charitable Trust have been hosting their website with Pluto Media for a number of years now and have always found the Pluto media team to be quick, responsive and willing to go that extra mile.

We have been really pleased with the changes and improvements to services over time and found the Pluto website and Management tools to be constantly improving, with things getting easier with each revision.

We primarily cater towards New Zealand visitors (being a registered New Zealand Charity) and the locally hosted servers are really fast, compared to off-shore hosting companies, delivering a great experience for people visiting our site within New Zealand.

We would not hesitate in recommending Pluto Media to anyone looking to host their next website!

In addition to hosting services, New Zealand Bird Rescue have had the Pluto media team work closely with us to design our first site in Joomla, and our follow up site in WordPress, and even building mail templates for Mailchimp. The end-results were cohesive, well designed and the team at NZBR couldn’t be happier with the results (and the positive feedback we receive from people visiting our site is testament to this).

New Zealand Bird Rescue Charitable Trust – www.birdrescue.org.nz (please make a donation to support these guys!)

Just sending an email through to advised that I would like to cancel my services as of the 26th of November (the day before my hosting renews). I am cancelling as I have found I don’t really use the hosting as much as I thought.

Thanks very much for the excellent customer support (on the 2 occasions I have ever had to use it) and for the great service you provide. If I ever need hosting for a bigger project again then I will deffinatley sign back up

Cheers

Tane (retired customer)

I currently manage many websites and Pluto has ticked all the boxes for me when it comes to my quick briefings and tight deadlines, I’m not going anywhere.

Ryan Mclachlan – www.breaksdesign.co.nz

As a customer, WotWorx demands the same high standards that we deliver as a supplier, and Pluto has far exceeded our expectations in the way they approach customer service.

It is fair to say that there have been a number of times when we have required the assistance of the technical team at Pluto, and they are always very prompt in their replies, courteous and technically savvy.

I would reccomend Pluto Media to anyone that is looking for a cost effective and robust service to host their web site.

Stephan Williamson – www.wotworx.co.nz

We would like to share our list.

Mac

First of all, we’re Mac users. We just love the way our macs never crash, just work, no viruses, no hiccups, no stress. But we’d be best to leave this topic for another day. The following software all work on Mac, and some are available on Windows.

Firefox

We love Firefox not because it’s free and open source, but because it’s way ahead of internet Explorer and seems to be the best browser to test new websites on. The firebug plugin speeds up web development, allowing you to inspect HTML and CSS wonderfully. You can check which JS libraries are being loaded, what’s not being loaded, and troubleshoot errors with ease.

Transmit

Guessing that most people who design/develop websites would be familiar with any sort of FTP program, used for transferring files to and from the server. We chose Transmit by Panic, it just works! It has bookmarks so we can FTP quickly into any of our servers, and it supports the latest protocols. Works really well.

Navicat for MySQL

For database administration, we enjoy using Navicat for MySQL. Most of the time we are backing up, dumping, importing, restoring and running queries, and this program allows us to do that very easily.

MAMP Pro

When you’re designing websites locally, there’s the speed, there’s the productivity. There is MAMP Pro for setting up your computer with a local server environment which includes Apache, PHP and MySQL.

Espresso

And while we’ve got our local server environment, we can edit databases and transfer files, we need something cool to edit files with. Espresso by MacRabbit is the perfect tool for writing code. It’s THE text editor we recommend. With support for entire projects, you can easily navigate around your files and get the work done. Lots of shortcuts you can learn too.

Codekit

Codekit is special in the sense that although it does a lot more than we require, it certainly makes life a dream with CSS. We write in LESS CSS, which saves a lot of time styling elements on a website, this program compiles it into optimised CSS on the fly.

Snap N Drag

SnapNDrag is the easiest screen capture software we have used in decades. It supports PNG, timed captures, window mode, just plain and easy.

Gas Mask

When you’re running local sites, you need to be able to access them in your browser. The easiest way to your HOSTS file (sorry guys, Mac only here) is Gas Mask.

http://mydomainname.local = Local development address

http://mydomainname.co.nz = New Domain name

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘http://mydomainname.local’, ‘http://mydomainname.co.nz’) WHERE option_name = ‘home’ OR option_name = ‘siteurl’;

UPDATE wp_options SET option_value = replace(option_value, ‘http://mydomainname.local’, ‘http://mydomainname.co.nz’);

UPDATE wp_posts SET guid = REPLACE(guid, ‘http://mydomainname.local’,'http://mydomainname.co.nz’);

UPDATE wp_posts SET post_content = REPLACE(post_content, ‘http://mydomainname.local’,'http://mydomainname.co.nz’);

UPDATE wp_postmeta SET meta_value = REPLACE (meta_value, ‘http://mydomainname.local’,'http://mydomainname.co.nz’);

 Make sure you’ve made a backup first!

Finding The Password

• Log in to your Joomla database (via phpMyAdmin for example)
• Click to edit the _users database (will be preceded by your account name, for example: example_users)
• Edit the entry for where usertype = “Super Administrator” (should be the first record)

Resetting The Password

In the password field you’ll notice a string of characters. Joomla uses a one-way encoding method, which means you won’t be able to retrieve your old password. However, you will be able to reset the password to a new one using mySQL’s built in MD5 function:

UPDATE jos_users SET password=MD5(‘new password’) WHERE usertype = “Super Administrator”;

Voila – you just successfully reset your Joomla password Go to your joomla domain at example.com/administrator and try logging in with the new password. You should be logged in as Super Administrator.

Reset Using cPanel

For those not familiar with mySQL, you should also be able to login with cPanel, click on the “SQL” tab, and enter the above query there.

Copying The Password From Another User

An alternate method to reset your password, if you’re not comfortable with SQL commands, is to simply copy and paste the password hash from another user (to which you know the password) over to your admin user. You’ll then be able to login as the admin user using that password. If you don’t have another user, you should be able to register as one, and then copy the password over.

Applying The Email From Another User

Yet another alternate method to retrieving your lost Joomla admin password is to change your admin user’s email address to one you are familiar with. Then use the lost password retrieval function (the “forgot password” link in the login section) to have your Joomla password emailed to you.

Troubleshooting

Thanks to feedback from our web rockers we’ve been able to add various user based suggestions in addition to our own. Please use caution when trying these optional suggestions!

AlphaNumeric Only

If for some reason the above method does not work try encoding a password that contains only alphanumeric (a-z, 0-9) characters. This method may not work if your password contains special characters (@!#$).

Joomla User Plugin

Another possible reason that you’re unable to login is that you may have inadvertently deleted the Joomla User Plugin. You can remedy this by logging into you backend, and locating the jos_plugins table in your database. Edit this entry and set the published status of user joomla to 1 (enabled). Once you’ve done this, try logging in again.

Temporarily Remove PHP Authentication

This is another potential approach you can use to recover your Joomla admin password, but proceed with caution. Also note that this has only been tested in Joomla 1.5. Locate the file plugins/authentication/joomla.php, and change the line

if ( $crypt == $testcrypt) {

to

if ( $crypt == $testcrypt || $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'] == “Your IP Address”) {

Replace “Your IP Address” with your IP address (your IP address is: 83.104.228.210). Now anyone from your IP address (ie. your PC or local network) can login with any password. After logging in and changing your password, remember to restore the original code.

Can’t Login And No Errors

If you can’t login and Joomla is not giving you any error messages, it could be that your sessions directory doesn’t have the correct permissions. They should be set to 755 (you can login via FTP, find your sessions directory, and adjust the permissions (CHMOD)).

Invalid Session Error

If you’re getting an invalid session error when you try and login, you probably need to clear your browser and or site cache and cookies. Refer to our browser cache clearing instructions for details on clearing the cache your browser. For Joomla, you can clear the cache tables in your database (if you were able to login, you could browse to Tools > Clean Cache).

How To Reset Joomla 1.5, 1.0 And Earlier Passwords

In each of these examples you’ll want to follow the above instructions, but then modify your SQL query to the following, which will reset your password to the one you specify.

UPDATE `jos_users` SET `password` = MD5( ‘new password’ ) WHERE `jos_users`.`username` = “admin”;

If this doesn’t work, try changing jos_users to mos_users.