Wednesday, August 6th, 2008
I know this is not a new service, but the fact that I am offering it now is new.
Kindly notice the yellowish box in the upper right-hand corner of this new and beautiful template. In this yellowish box, you will see a “Want to subscribe?” heading. Please place your email in the box to the right of where it says, “Enter your email address:” to receive my posts via email. If you do this, you will never miss another post. They will be delivered right to your inbox. How? By robots and aliens.
I entered my own email address and completed the sign-up process. Then, I wrote a post. I haven’t received it via email yet, but I’m sure I will. It may just take a few seconds.
Enjoy.
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Friday, July 18th, 2008
Ok, so on to the installation of Joomla 1.5.
Before I did anything, I bought a domain name and pointed it to my server. That is basic stuff. I set the domain up on my server and created a mysql database for this application. That’s more basic stuff.
After that was all good to go and the domain resolved to the server, I went over to Joomla for the latest download, which happens to be version 1.5.4. I clicked the link in the left navigation column and downloaded the “Joomla_1.5.4-Stable-Full_Package.zip” file and saved it to my desktop. I unpacked the zip file and placed the contents of it in my website folder. Since I already had the FTP account set up on my server, I uploaded to contents of my website folder to my server. Here is a word of warning…there are almost 4,000 files. If your host has file limitations, you should find out what they are. Since I have a dedicated server, I am not worried about that. Also, remember that your database is still empty. That will be populated during the install.
After all the files were uploaded, I headed back over to Joomla and clicked on the “New Installation” link about half way down their homepage. Since I am familiar with these types of installations, I skipped past all the upper links and clicked right on “Installation.”
Apparently, there are two different types of installs…one being the web browser method and the other being the manual install. In this case, I did the web browser installation.
In my case, I am did a remote installation to the domain root directory. I did not use a sub-domain, a local install or install the package in a sub-directory. If you would like to, there are instructions on how to go about this on the Joomla website (the same instructions I am using). Basically, you have to visit your domain and, if you have done everything correctly so far, you should see the first Joomla installation screen.
The first screen asks you to choose your language. Simple enough. Since I speak English, I kept the default “English” setting and hit the “Next” button.
The next screen checks the server to see if everything is set correctly and if Joomla is able to utilize it’s resources. In my case, everything checked out fine, but I was told that the “configuration.php” was not writable. After reading the instructions, I found out that this is a regular occurance. I actually didn’t see a “configuration.php” file. I clicked to the “Common Issues & Error Handling” page and read about it. The page gave a few options:
* Do a manual installation
* Create a completely empty file, name it as configuration.php and upload it to your joomla_root/ directory before commencing the installation. Joomla! will then enter the details as the installation proceeds as normal.
* Wait until the end of the installation when at Step 7 the Finished Screen is displayed a list of the variables and settings for the configuration.php file will be displayed. These should then be copied and pasted into a new text document and saved as configuration.php
* As with the last suggestion wait until the end and using the information provided in Step7 manually alter the content of the configuration.php-dist file (this is simply an example file and not a part of the functioning installation) included with all Joomla! installations. There is clearly a greater chance with this method of making mistakes so greater care should be taken. Once the variables have been correctly edited, change the name of this file and save it as configuration.php
I decided to go with creating an empty file named, “configuration.php” and upload it to the root directory. I also chmod the file to 777.
This time, everything checked out, so I clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is nothing but the license agreement. I read the entire thing and understood it. Then, I clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is the database configuration. Remember that empty database you have sitting there? Well, you have to fill in the required information.
I entered the information and clicked the “Next” button.
The next screen is the FTP configuration. This is the first time I have come across something like this, but I filled in the FTP information. They suggest to create a local FTP account and not use one that can control the entire server.
Since I am getting slow in my old age, I placed in the FTP username and password and then clicked the autofind path button. That worked and filled in the path automatically.
The next screen is the main configuration. I placed in the main (Super Administrator) email address and password. Then, I clicked the “Install Sample Data” button. I was told that the sample data imported properly.
A word of warning: My first attempt at installing this application gave me an error message that read, “Error: the XML response that was returned from the server is invalid.” on the FTP page and when I tried to install the sample data on the main configuration page. The reason for this had to do with the “configuration.php” file. I needed to upload one and set the permissions correctly. After I did that, I was able to pass those pages. You can read more about the issue here.
The last page looked like this…
Basically, the page gives you the option to view your site or log in to the admin section. I always like to log in to the admin section so I can get the URL. Also, the system says to delete the entire “installation” directory. Lastly, I like to download the now populated config file for backup.
To log in to the admin area, the username is “admin.” Obviously, you should change this.
You can take a look at the site I just set up at http://www.fiixer.com. Next up, configuring and customizing Joomla. Ye haw.
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Thursday, July 10th, 2008
Well, I decided to upgrade my old Treo 700w for a nice, new BlackBerry Curve 8330 Smartphone. I thought it was about time to jump on the email-on-your-pda bandwagon. We are planning some activities and vacations this Summer, so this will cover one base.
So, let me tell you about my experience.
I have many email addresses, all forwarding to one Gmail address. It makes life a bit more simple. When I got the phone, I went through the quick setup. After that, I went in and configured an email address. It was basically inputting the email address and password. After that, I logged into Gmail and clicked “settings.” I clicked “Fowarding and POP/IMAP.” There, I enabled POP.
Then, I sent myself an email. Low and behold, I received it in my Gmail account and my Blackberry. Truly, I thought this was amazing. Then, I clicked delete on the Blackberry. I had the option of deleting the message from just the phone or both the phone and the Gmail account. I deleted it from both the phone and the Gmail account. A few seconds later, I noticed it disappear from Gmail. Again, I was stunned.
After that, I did the whole thing again, except this time, I deleted the message from Gmail first. I waited and waited for the message to disappear from the Blackberry. After a little research on the web (and customer support), I found out this is not possible. The messages stay on the Blackberry until they are deleted from there. Why? I have no idea. This is going to be kind of a pain in the butt, but I’ll figure something out. I did a search for “blackberry curve won’t reconcile” and I think I read somewhere that if you are using the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (or something like that), you can reconcile your messages with your email client. Until I find some information, I don’t know how to reconcile the email on the Blackberry with Gmail, or Outlook for that matter.
The other issue I was having was that whenever I would send an email from the Blackberry or from Gmail, I would receive a copy of that email on the Blackberry. I needed to find out how to stop that. I called customer support and, while on hold, did a search for “blackberry getting copies of sent email” on Google. I found a nice website that instructed me to login to the Verizon Wireless Blackberry Internet Service (BIS). No one seems to tell you these things from the company. At this point, customer support picked up and we both created an account and created a filter for my email address. Basically, the filter stops my own email address from sending me email. This forum post will tell you exactly how to do that.
Otherwise, everything is very smooth. The Blackberry syncs up with my Outlook 2007 so I can have my tasks, contact list and calendar on both my PC and the Blackberry. This is not too much different from the Treo 700w.
I’ll let you know how it works on the streets when I have had it for a while.
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