Setting Safe Search as the default home page across your whole school

Creating a Group Policy Object (GPO) to set Safe Search as your Homepage

  1. Open Group Policy Management Console – It is found under Administrative Tools on the server Start Menu

clip_image002

  1. Right click on Group Policy Objects and select New

clip_image004

  1. Name the policy “Users – Set Homepage” – This will be a user policy rather than a computer policy, using a meaningful description will help administration later on.

clip_image006

  1. Right click on the policy and select Edit. The Group Policy Editor will now open.

clip_image008

  1. Browse through the tree structure to display Important URLs in the right hand side of the browser

User Configuration > Windows Settings > Internet Explorer Maintenance > URLs

clip_image010

  1. Right click on Important URLs and select Properties

Enter the following address for the homepage URL into the dialogue box

Http://www.primaryschoolict.com

clip_image012

  1. Click on Ok and close the Group Policy Editor

  1. Within the Group Policy Management Window browse to the Organisational Unit containing your school users
  1. Right click on the Organisation Unit and select Link an existing GPO.

clip_image014

  1. Select your new GPO from the list and click Ok

clip_image016

  1. Your new GPO is now linked and will be applied to the users contained within the Organisational Unit you selected

clip_image018


Please be aware if you have another GPO applied at a higher level, for example in the Default Domain Policy settings may not be applied as anticipated. This can happen if you have two conflicting GPO’s. For example if you have two policies to set the homepage, one using www.bbc.co.uk and another using www.google.co.uk, one of the setting will take precedence.

Remote / Off-site self hosted backup comparison

Every 2 years Primary Technology re-engineers all of it’s services and this year I have been tasked with re-engineering our School offsite / remote backup service. Our current service works well but there are a few things we would change and we feel our current provider isn’t really giving us the support we need to make these changes.

The first part of any successful re-engineering job is to gather a comparison of all the available products on the market.

I reviewed these products/pieces of software:

  • Ahsay
  • Attix
  • Bacula
  • Crashplan
  • Dropbox
  • iDrive Backup
  • Intronis
  • One Safe Place
  • Remote-Backup.com
  • Rysnc.net
  • SOS Online Backup
  • Vembu
  • XZBackup
  • Amanda/Zmanda

And I reviewed them based on this following requirements of functionality:

  • Can the client transfer data and config over HTTPS?
  • Does a Windows client Exist?
  • Is the software brandable?
  • Can I perform a system state backup on the clients?
  • Can it export database bricks / incremental / differential backups
  • Does the client have a scheduler?
  • Can the client stop itself at a specified time
  • Can the server push changes to the client backup set?
  • Can the client easily select which files to upload?
  • Does the server save old versions of files?
  • Is the software open source?
  • Does the server have overview reporting?

And my notes which probably contain the most important informative information:

Enhanced by Zemanta

Primary Technology on twitter

Are you a twitterholic? Do you want to find some of our brothers in arms on twitter?

If so here are some accounts we would love for you to follow so we can follow back :)
Jack — @JackLambe
Duncan – @Duncan_PT
Adam Mc – @adamMcevoy
John – @JohnMcLear
Chris – @PrimaryTophski
Ed – @Coopeh
Adrian – @Banjoprimary
Mark – @markfisher7
Josh – @joshfreemanftw
Dave – @DavidJonFirth
Rob – @TheFurniss
 

Here are some of our product accounts.
PrimaryBlogger – @primaryblogger
PrimaryPad – @primarypad
Primary Technology – @primaryt
Primary School Teaching – @psteaching
Primary Games Arena – @prigamesarena
My School Holidays – @myschoolholidays