Poor application programming is usually the cause of these apps retaining system resources and the usual fix is to perform a soft reset of the device – although a Task Manager is included on Windows Mobile 5 and later, it usually only assists in closing difficult to exit programs.

CleanRAM therefore is a vital tool in managing memory resources on Windows Mobile devices, and is available free from FreewarePocketPC.net. We’re going to look now at how to use CleanRAM in different ways to control allocated memory.

Getting Started

Once installed, cleanRAM displays two icons in your Windows Mobile programs view – the basic launch/clean app and the cleanRAM Config app.

cleanRAM Config determines the type of clean up that will be performed when the cleanRAM app is launched, with three cleaning “depths”:

Level 1 is a “Basic Purge”, best for closing non-responding tasks without resorting to Task Manager. Some versions of Task Manager – particularly that found in Windows Mobile 5 and 6 – are slow to respond when instructed to close the application in question, and fail to fully end all related processes. Basic Purge is quick and is the default setting on cleanRAM.

Level 2 is known as the “Quality Purge”. This option is recommended for best performance – in reality it cleans deeper than the basic option, but in around the same sort of time frame. Quality Purge is a good option to choose to save you performing a soft-reset. It will exit virtually all Windows Mobile apps and non-required processes, leaving your device to run as if it had just been switched on.

Level 3 is the maximum clean up option, “Fundamental Purge”. This option is vital for cutting ties with bad applications, perhaps online services that are hanging due to a poor data connection or those that the Quality Purge option failed to end. Fundamental Purge can take a bit of time to complete and as such should only be used in the most extreme cases.

These three options provide the best memory cleaning available to a Windows Mobile user free of charge, and using cleanRAM is a simple case of selecting the purge option, setting it as default and launching the clean up via the cleanRAM app button.

Advanced Customization and Scheduling Options

Along with these three options, cleanRAM offers a variety of options for customizing and scheduling your Windows Mobile system clean up.

The Customized Processes List allows you to select the running processes you wish to clean up (or end) whenever the cleanRAM tool is used. These processes can be added to the Customized Processes List, which means they will be the only ones cleaned when cleanRAM is run. The Customized Processes List is disabled by default, and must be enabled via the check box.

Conversely, the Exceptions List allows you to select processes that are never cleaned. The Exceptions List is activated via the check box.

Scheduling is accessed via the cleanRAM config menu and must also be enabled via the check box.  Using scheduling you can choose your purge level, set a time (hourly, every 4 hours, etc) and choose which days of the week of the cleanRAM runs.

Finally, it’s a simple task to backup your cleanRAM settings. This means rather than resorting to careful reselection of exceptions and scheduling following an uninstall of the tool or a hard device reset (restoring the factory settings of your Windows Mobile device) you simply restore your cleanRAM configuration settings from a backup stored on your Windows Mobile device memory card.

cleanRAM is one of the best utilities available for the Windows Mobile platform. If you do use it and gain benefit from it, remember to consider contributing a donation to the developers at www.htcaddicts.com.

Clean Up Your Windows Mobile Easily With CleanRAM originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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Before you start to upgrade your existing blog to the latest version of WP, you might want to create a maintenance holding page so that your readers know that your site is temporary down and will resume service in a short time. The last thing that you want to see during upgrading is your site showing a ‘404 error page‘ and all your readers start emailing you to ask what happen.

For basic maintenance/troubleshooting, the Maintenance mode WP plugin works fine to create a Maintenance splash page. But if you are upgrading your WordPress version, the plugin will not work. Here’s a easy way to create a Maintenance holding page that you can use while upgrading to WP2.7.

Creating a Maintenance holding page

Open a text editor. Copy the following code to it and save the file as maintenance.php

<?php
header(”HTTP/1.1 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable”);
header(”Status: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable”);
header(”Retry-After: 3600″);
?>
<html>
<head>
<title>Site upgrade in progress</title>
<meta name=”robots” content=”none” />
</head>
<body>
<h1>Maintenance Mode</h1>
<p><a title=”Your site” href=”your-site-url”>Your Site name</a> is currently undergoing scheduled maintenance.<br />
Please try back <strong>in 60 minutes</strong>.</p>
<p>Sorry for the inconvenience.</p>
</body>
</html>

If you want to style up your Maintenance page, feel free to do so. The above is only a template that you can use quickly.

Upload it to the parent directory of your site. You’ll need to use a FTP program to upload it. Make sure that the page can be accessed on http://yoursite.com/maintenance.php

Redirecting your readers to the Maintenance page

Next, download your .htaccess file. It is found in the parent directory of your site.

Open it with a text editor. Add the following code to the starting of the page

Options +FollowSymlinks
RewriteEngine on
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.php$
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^127\.0\.0\.1
RewriteRule $ /maintenance.php [R=302,L]

Go to http://www.whatismyip.com and find out the IP address of your network connection.

Replace the 127\.0\.0\.1 with your IP. This will ensure that you still have access to your site while other people are directed to the Maintenance holding page.

Save the .htaccess file. Upload it to your site.  When it prompts you if you want to overwrite, select Yes.

That’s it. When your readers visit your site, they should see something like

Note: When you visit your own site, you won’t be able to see the above maintenance page because you have configured your network to allow your IP address.

You can now perform your WordPress upgrade.

Remove the Maintenance holding page

When you are done upgrading your site, you need to remove the redirect so that your readers can access your blog again.

In the .htaccess file, put a # in front of the code that you inserted just now. It should look like

#Options +FollowSymlinks
#RewriteEngine on
#RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !/maintenance.php$
#RewriteCond %{REMOTE_HOST} !^127\.0\.0\.1
#RewriteRule $ /maintenance.php [R=302,L]

Upload it to your site (if prompted whether you want to replace the file, select Yes).

That’s it.

Note:

1) In the future version of WordPress, you may no longer need the Maintenance holding page as there is a feature in WP2.7 that allows you to upgrade your WP right within your dashboard.

2) Although this tutorial is meant for WordPress blog, it will work for any sites and platforms

How To Create A ‘Maintenance’ Holding Page When Upgrading Your WordPress Blog originally published on Make Tech Easier (RSS)

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