In this article we will take a look at the necessary configurations to get osTicket up to speed for your help desk needs. You should find, upon completion of these configurations, osTicket is quite the useful help desk tool.

Assumptions

This article will assume your support staff is not terribly large and that you already have the necessary tools setup to take advantage of osTicket’s features. Such tools include an SMTP server for the outgoing alerts responses and a POP or IMAP server for incoming mail. And, of course, this will assume you have osTicket up and running. Finally, I will assume you took care of the initial configurations upon installation. These configurations are handled in the Settings tab and should be completed when you bring the site online after installation. NOTE: If, after you fill out the web-based installer, you get a blank screen – most likely you do not have php5-mysql installed. Install that and re-run the web install and you should be fine.

First things first

Figure 1

The first thing you will want to do is set up your departments. By default osTicket has two departments: Billing and Support. You may find this plenty. But for some consulting firms there may be more necessary. For example, you might need Residential Support and Commercial Support. Or you might want Remote and On Site. To set these up click on the Departments tab and then click the Add New Dept link.

If this department wants to have its very own email address, you will need to first create an email address for it. That includes both on your email server and in the Emails tab in osTicket (this is why it’s important to understand the flow of configuration for osTicket).  If the department just needs to use the same email addy as another, umbrella, department you can select it here. This is, after all, just the outgoing email address (which will probably want to be something like support@yourdomain.com.)

Figure 2

Once you have finished creating all the necessary departments you will want to the Staff tab and create the necessary elements here. In the Staff tab (see Figure 2)  you can set up both groups and staff members. Again, this will depend upon your needs. You might, for example, have certain staff that only do one particular type of work (say Residential vs. Commercial). Before you create those staff members, make sure you create any (if needed) groups they would belong to.

You will also notice there are groups. By default there are three groups: Admins, Managers, and Staff. These groups determine the permissions a staff member has. Use caution when you give a staff member Admin rights. You can, of course, add a new group and give that group specific permissions. Take a look at each group to see what their permissions are before you do this.

Finally you will want to take a look at the Help Topics tab. This is a very nice feature added to osTicket. What you can do with Help Topics is create a particular topic that has a specific Priority. Say you have a few clients that always get top priority. You can create a VIP (or such) category that has Emergency priority. This will always bump them to the top of the list. Is it fair? Not really. But when you have VIP-type clients, they expect VIP-type treatment.

Final thoughts

I hope that, upon setting up osTicket, you come to the same conclusion that I have drawn – this tool is the equal to some Help Desk tools costing quite a bit of your IT dollars. If you find a tip or trick that takes osTicket to the next level, share it with your fellow Ghacks readers.

• Get course information
• Contact the instructor
• Read or download lecture notes
• Get assignments
• Ask questions and get answers
• Communicate with other students

CourseForum is incredibly easy to “install” on Linux, Windows, Mac,? FreeBSD, or Solaris and can be accessed from any web browser. Let’s take a look at this classroom software from the Linux point of view.

Getting and Installing

Since CourseForum even has its own server built in you can install CourseForum anywhere on a Linux machine. CourseForum comes in a single executable binary that starts and runs CourseForum on port 3455. So after you download the demo follow these steps (as either the root user or using sudo):

Untar the package into your servers’ document root (i.e. /var/www/html for Fedora /var/www in Ubuntu)

Change into the newly created directory (courseforum-linux) and issue the command:

./courseforum &

The CourseForum daemon will start and you can now point your browser to:

http://IP_OR_DOMAIN:3445

Where IP_OR_DOMAIN is either the IP address or domain the server is on.

CourseForum Admin Page

This address will take you to the front page of CourseForum. The first thing you will need to do (before you can do anything else) is set an administrative password. Once you do that you can access the administration page and start building your course. NOTE: The demo is restricted to only a single course. If you purchase the full version you can create unlimited courses.

As you can see (in the image to the left) all administration tasks are taken care of in one window. There isn’t a lot of admin work to do with this software which makes it an even better solution for busy instructors.

Some of the more important tasks your instructors will want to do are:

• Messages: This is really just the welcome message displayed on the front page of CourseForum.
• Custom Links: This isn’t really what it sounds like. What this feature does is allow you to create custom? commands that can do any number of things like formatting or integrating third-party content. There is a good how-to page on the CourseForum site to illustrate how these are created.
• RSS/Email Notification: If you want to enable RSS feeds and/or email notification on your CourseForum site you will have to enter the information for your SMTP server here.
• Web Views: This allows you to create a read-only version of the CourseForum. Since the basis of CourseForum is a wiki, any registered user will be able to edit pages, so you will want to be ablel to serve up versions of pages (such as Syllaubus, lectures, etc) that are read-only for the public to view.

There is one administrative task I would highly recommend. When you create a new course you will have to administer that course independently of the site administration (In other words it has its own admin page). Within the course administration page you will want to take care of at least two things:

• Check the “Only course administrator can create projects” check box.
• Under the Require Password dropdown select “To edit pages” otherwise any registered user can edit your course pages.

And that’s pretty much it. The rest of the tool works like a standard Wiki page.

Final Thoughts

If you have been looking for a tool to allow students (of any type) to not only stay current in your classroom but also be able to interact, CourseForum might very well be the solution for you. I have deployed it for a few teachers who have been very pleased with the results. It’s remarkably seasy to install, simple to use, reliable, and it’s a fairly cheap solution ($119.00 USD).

If you’ve already used a previous version, the most prominent change you’ll notice is the UI differences. I am not a huge fan of changing a UI that already looks and feels good, but they did a great job here, everything is a bit bigger, easier to use, and logically arranged into tabs. My favorite new visual feature can be observed right here in a project’s summary menu, where there is a big “Actual hours vs estimate” representation with a horizontal bar filling up as you go along. Visual stuff like this helps me tremendously, it instills more “panic”, so I will probably get a move on if I see the estimate being overshot soon.

Of course this isn’t a hugely useful feature otherwise, but some great time tracking and usability issues have been addressed as well. You can now reorder your projects using drag and drop, which was something I really missed, now you can push subtasks between main tasks, so if you work in a project oriented workspace (as opposed to a client oriented one), you can easily move subtasks here and there. Another great feature implemented is better exporting capabilities. If you click on a summary you can now simply drag and drop an Excel icon onto the desktop to export to a file (along with comments), but if Excel is open, you can simply drop it in there to open it right away. So simple, yet so elegant, I love it!

Apart from these, smaller issues were addressed, for example renaming was a bit clunky in previous versions, it wasn’t updated automatically, you had to click update for it to get updated, which is not a huge thing, but having it all done without needing to commit the changes can save you a boatload of time when adding a lot of projects.

I’m really hoping a lot more development goes into the app, as I can think of a lot of features that could be helpful. I would welcome some client management options. Since I organize Klok projects on a client basis, it would be great if contact people for all subtasks would be the same as the contact for the main entry by default. I would also have use for a sort of client management page separate from tasks where I could assign a project to a client and the appropriate structure would be created. A wonderful feature implemented is the option to give a project code to a project. I actually do this anyway, so inputting it here too is a great help, but it would be even better if you could set some rules to create these numbers automatically. I know its a long shot, but I actually manage my projects in a mysql database because I have a project management site for my clients, so exporting and interacting with mysql would be awesome, but I think I personify the one and only unit of demand for this feature.

All in all I would recommend Klok to anyone, freelancers, young mothers staying at home, office workers, anyone can benefit from a little time tracking, maybe only for fun to see what you waste time on? On another note, does any of you know if there will be a paid version of Klok? The download link says “Free personal edition”, although there is no payment option. I am guessing there are some plans to add extra features later, anyone have some news on this?

A particular one I found was the WikiU Film School Course. At first I though this would be a 30 minute read with explanations of the storyboard, camera angles and so on. I love film making so I delved in. There are 12 lessons, and after 30 minutes of glancing over (not even reading), I was still in the middle of lesson one.

These lessons also require you to do, not just to read, so in reality I would still be happily working on page one. Essentially the course takes you through one scene from pre-production to rolling out the film on your very own PC. Detailed is a huge understatement, but despite this, it doesn’t loose the fun factor. You will be doing activities, learning insider stuff all the way.

You will be writing the script initially, creating the storyboards, learning about editing, creating the final animatic and much more. I quickly looked at the camera lenses part, since it always intrigued me that they use so many different ones. There were great explanations and some pics showing the same subject with 10+ different lenses. I have only begun this course and it’s so amazing, if you enjoy films and film making take a look.

Freecycle is the website for the Freecycle Network, which is made up of 4,342 groups with 4,921,000 members across the globe. The purpose of this network is that if you have something to give, there’s someone out there who wants it. The catch is that it has to be given for free.

How do you join? You start by finding a Freecycle group that’s close to your home. Then, you can join and post about whatever it is you want to give away. If you find an item you like and would want, you simply mail the owner and tell him you’re interested. It’s first come first serve so be quick.

So, is Freecycle worth it? I’d say yes. There’s plenty of things to be found in these groups and the idea itself is quite philanthropic. It’s not perfect though. There are no guarantees about the merchandise you get. Plus, you usually have to make your own arrangements to pick up the item.

I’m a member at my local Freecycle group and I’ve scored a good deal or two. In one case, I met up with the owner close to my house to collect my item. Overall, I’d say give this network a try. After all, you never know what you might find.

What is your opinion on Freecycle? Are you a member of this group? Do you think this idea is worth exploring? What other similar sites have you come across? Do let me know.

The great thing about a mind map is that it shows you the relationships between separate entities in your though process really well. It is in a form which you can overview and comprehend easily, even if you’re looking at someone else’s map. We have seen out share of offline mind maps, but bubbl.us has brought the technology to the web, injecting it with sharing goodness in the process.

In a very clean environment you can add balloons under or next to each other, create/delete links between them and change the layout and color in a jiffy. You can create a beautiful mind map in a few minutes, with lots of detail and value. The best part though is the ability to share them.

You re able to share and participate in other mind maps, bringing an extra round of creativity to the table. Effectiveness and productivity increases, since you can not only share your thoughts, but the trail of though, linking, back linking and so on between balloons. If you have a small project to manage, or a whole life I recommend you try this out, but as I said, I don’t think this works for everyone.

The app gives you project, task and resource management, a calendar, wiki projects and issues. I really love the way that it handles resources and issues. The reason I haven’t transfered my real work to an online app is that it is very rare that project management software supports adding someone t your team, without actually having them come and accept and then working with you inside the app. I don’t want to colaborate with my people through apps, I just want a way to track who’s doing what. ProjectOffice does require the name and email, but you can just enter a dummy email and you’re off.

Apart from that, issues is something that is very unique to this program, I may just start using this app because of this. The feature is very closely related to bug tracking, a special type of management module that programmers use.

You can create an issue, much like a task, but from there on, you can very easily track the phases of it, through a very well though out menu. You can change the status from opened to analyzed, closed and so on. This is really handy if you have actually completed a task, but you find out it’s not perfect. You don’t have to create the task again, just put it in issues. It is also great if you have a lot of problems you need to look into and track.

The only problem I had was that you can’t create indefinite projects. You can only add a project if you specify a start and end date, while may of my projects aren’t tied to dates. If you can get past that problem, I think you’ll find a pretty useful app. Enjoy!

Write an article for ghacks.net

Write an article that has a minimum of 200 words and submit it to my email address (will be listed at the end of the article). The article that you submitted will be posted on ghacks.net if it meets the guidelines (no spam, illegal, gambling, sex and the like). I will contact you asap if the article was rejected and will state the cause.

If the article gets approved it will be immediately published, full credits will be given to the author at the end of the article. This is a great way to promote a website as well. I post your name and a link to your website if you have one on my site.

I will select the three best articles who will receive each 50$, 30$ and 20$. The money will be transferred using paypal because this is the system I´am using. I can also send it to you by snail mail, highly insecure but nevertheless a solution if you are not using paypal.

The competition ends 02.10.2006, one day before the first anniversary. Winners will be named on the day of the anniversary. Everyone else will be thanked for their contributions as well. That is, if I receive more than three, hehe.

email to send contributions to: ghacks (at) mysega (.) de

If you have further questions or need advice on an article feel free to contact me at the same email address.

Let the Games Begin.

Kenny did it again, he and a new project member named Fr0zen created the first version of Goolink Scanner. It removes the cache information from your searches and only collects and displays the links, like you see in the image below, this is very handy for finding vulnerable sites wide open to google and googlebots.

Your first option is to load the provided Googledork list which is basically a list of vulnerability searches. After its loaded you click on a line and a search is automatically performed, showing you the results in the mentioned format, one result a line.

The second option is to chose a general search like inurl:administrators.pwd and perform a normal google search using this search string. The results show like every other google search you´ve ever done. You can of course add new search strings and googledorks to it.

Update: Goolink Scanner, previous versions of the program and versions that have been released after this article has been posted are no longer available. The project has been discontinued and the versions do not work anymore due to changes that Google has made to its search engine in the meantime.

It is still possible to run the commands manually though in Google as well as other search engines that support them. I suggest you look at Google’s search help page to get started. The page explains all the basic and advanced search commands that are supported on the site.

Microsoft’s Bing search engine has a similar page available which you should check out if you prefer to use it to search on the Internet. You can access it here.

Your first option is to load the provided Googledork list which is basically a list of vulnerability searches. After its loaded you click on a line and a search is automatically performed, showing you the results in the mentioned format, one result a line.

The second option is to chose a general search like inurl:administrators.pwd and perform a normal google search using this search string. The results show like every other Google search you´ve ever done. You can of course add new search strings and googledorks to it.

Update:Goolink Scanner has been discontinued. It is no longer available for download. Interested users still have options to run advanced search parameters manually on Google or other search engines to find files and other information that they are looking for. Some search engines on the other hand, like Google Search for instance, have made a modification to their search results recently that filter results from many of the most popular file sharing sites on today’s Internet.

You may still find files and data on other sites though and more general search terms may yield plenty of results. Try the following guides to get started:

Using Google to find Free Mp3 files
Using Google to find free Ebooks
Using Google to find Movies

These three will get you started. They explain the concept and the most important search parameters that you need for your file searches. Keep in mind though that they have been tailored for Google, and that other search engines may use slightly different terminology.

Its of course perfect for our search strings that let you find various files like mp3, movies, images aso. I added the links to the most prominent topics that we wrote on the subject. I suggest you take a look at these as well if you have not already. New entries have been marked with *new* in front of them for your convenience.

Please note that the megabyte range could mean the maximum file size OR the maximum size of the account.

1. Searching through files on upload sites general image movie etc
2. Using Google to find movies
3. Using Google to find free mp3 files
4. Using Google to find free ebooks

Recommended File Host:

Diino

Recommended Image Host:

Imageheap

file hosting sites

0-10 megabyte:

*new* http://www.albumtown.com/
http://www.bestupload.com
http://www.flypicture.com
http://www.uploadx.net
http://www.webfilehost.com
http://www.wirefiles.com
http://www.zippyvideos.com

10-100 megabyte:

http://www.11mbit.de
http://www.35mb.com
http://www.da_insane.boo.pl/d/upload/
http://www.filebuffer.net
http://www.filecabi.net/free-video-hosting.html
http://www.filesupload.com
http://www.fileupyours.com
http://www.freeuploader.com
http://www.myfilestash.com
http://www.mytempdir.com
http://www.picapic.net
http://www.putfile.com
*new* http://www.rapidsharing.com/
http://www.ripway.com
http://www.savefile.com
http://www.sendmefile.com
http://www.swiftdesk.com
http://www.turboupload.com
*new* http://www.uploadfront.com/
*new* http://www.uploadsend.com/
*new* http://www.uploadtown.com
http://www.ultrashare.net
http://www.ushareit.com
http://www.yourfilehost.com

100 – unlimited megabyte:

http://freespace.filefront.com
http://www.4shared.com
*new* http://www.bigupload.com/
http://www.come2store.com
*new* http://www.content-type.com/
http://www.dropload.com
*new* http://www.filebull.com/
http://www.filecache.de
*new* http://www.filefactory.com/
http://www.myfilehut.com
http://www.megaupload.com
*new* http://www.mysharebox.com/
http://www.rapidshare.de
*new* http://www.rapidupload.com/
http://www.sharebigfile.com
http://www.spread-it.com
http://www.transferbigfiles.com
http://www.updownloadserver.com
http://www.yousendit.com

unknown:

http://up.li.ru
http://www.webfile.ru

image hosting

Recommended Image Host:

Imageheap

Others:

http://app02.bonpoo.com/file.htm
*new* http://xtremeimages.armed.us
http://www.filehost.to
http://www.fotopic.net/
http://www.freefotofile.com
http://www.freeimagelibrary.com
*new* http://www.image-bound.com/
http://www.imagedropbox.com
http://www.imageheap.com
*new* http://www.imagelime.com
http://www.imagerage.com
http://www.imageshack.us
http://www.imagesubmit.com
http://www.imagexoom.com
http://www.imgsharing.com
http://www.imgzone.info
*new* http://www.myimagebuddy.com/
http://www.iuploads.com/free_image_hosting/
http://www.myimagedepot.com
http://www.myimagehosting.com
http://www.myphotohost.com
http://www.picvault.info/
http://www.photoserver.us
http://www.picsplace.to
http://www.realimagehost.com
http://www.sighost.us
http://www.simpload.com
http://www.solisstyle.com/ims/
http://www.thefreeimagehosting.com
http://www.thepicturebin.com
http://www.tinypic.com
http://www.upload4free.com
http://www.uploadimages.net
http://www.uploads.biz
http://www.watotron.com/watupload/
http://www.webdevote.com/webservices/imagehost/
http://www.xs.to
http://www.xtra-image.com
*new* http://www.YourUpload.com

Here is a list of what the tool can do:

• includes 12 search engines
• includes XP Theme flat button look with mouse over effects
• includes a highlite browser keyword
• includes latest 100 exploit articles and code
• includes latest 100 advisories
• includes Keyword Search
• includes parse links and click to view
• includes save and open
• includes edit text.. edit share.txt contents
• includes google for research
• includes Bugtraq mailing
• includes mouse over effect help support… place cursor over a box for hints
• includes Google search and edit string ..like share.txt
• includes mass image downloader
• includes share.txt with ready made strings
• includes a individual site browse with parse in mind

To download this version use this link, its only 400k big, un-rared around 1,1 MB. If you like the tool please digg it.

Write your thoughts in the comments or take a look at the support thread at deny.de

Update: I have removed the download link to the program as it has not been updated for a while now. Search engines like Google, Yahoo or Bing have since then changed the way results are displayed and delivered to search engine users, which has rendered the program incompatible.

You can still use advanced operators directly to run file searches on Google to find the types of files you are looking for.

You can try the following tutorials as a start.

• Use Google To Search For Mp3
• Use Google To Find Ebooks
• Use Google To Find Movies

A few changes have been made in the final version. First, we included another torrent search engine, you now have the choice between four prominent torrent search engines to find torrent files.

We added three new “translate” proxies who let you surf the web anonymously by hiding your real ip to the site you want to reach.

Three additional bonus features have been implemented, Domain Dossier check (for site details check), DNS Tools whois ( for a quick check) and DNS Ping (to see if target is up and running)

Update: Please note that the software has not been updated for a long time. We have removed the program from the server, as it is no longer usable on today’s Internet.

Search engines have also started to limit the results that are displayed when users search for files on the Internet. This mainly includes searches for files that are hosted on popular file hosting sites such as Rapidshare. A Google Search for instance returns only a handful of results total, whereas before thousands of pages were returned by the company.

The only viable option to search for files on the Internet is to use specialized file searching web services for that purpose.

I suppose you want to know about the changes since Beta 1, there are some. The most prominent one is that we included a bonus section. In there you can surf the web anonymously without the need to use proxies and all the proxy hassle like verifying them etc.

You can also check a site for vulnerabilities using the bonus section, simply enter a site url and click on Check It to do so.

We fixed some bugs and provide the program now without an installer. Just unpack it using winrar and your clear to go, no registry entries nothing. 100% spyware free :P

Take a look at the following screenshot:

Update: I have removed the link to the file download from the web page, as it has not been updated for a while now. The program has been discontinued, it is no longer available for download.

We first do not have time to update the application anymore, which needs to be done on a regular basis as search engines tend to change the way they provide access to their data regularly.

More pressing than that are changes that search engines such as Google, Bing or Yahoo have made in recent months. File search results are now filtered by all major search engines, which means that a program like ours would not be that effective anymore anyway.

The only viable option at this point in time is to use a web service that maintains their own file search engine or file database. These sites tend to come quickly though, which is why we won’t post links.

The tool is also able to test websites for security holes using the google cache. You can search for webstats, usernames, passwords, logs and much more.

A nice feature is that you are able to test and add your own findings to it by simply clicking a button. You can also import searches from other websites. The tool grows with its community.

Enjoy the program, remember to read the Help file first.

If you find errors or bugs or have ideas on how to improve it then tell us about them in our support forum located @ Deny.de

yours truly
Martin and Kenny L

Update: The project is dead. We have not updated the application for a long time, and Ghacks has since then turned to technology related news. We are currently posting an average of five new articles per day, bringing the total article count to more than 1600 articles per year, and the overall count to more than 11,000 articles.

You can use the links at the top of the page or the sidebar to find articles that have been posted in specific categories. You can alternatively use the search to find specific articles or subscribe to our email newsletter or RSS news feed to get regular updates whenever we publish news on the tech blog.

We quickly decided to design and code a program that makes use of those advanced features and presents them to the user without the need to understand how the searches are done.

Advanced users have of course the possibility to alter existing searches and add more searches. We encourage everyone to post their results here in the comments or send us an email so we can have a look at them and implement them in our program.

The program will be soon released in a first version.

Stay tuned, there is much to come.

Update: The program is no longer available, but the web blog itself is up and thriving. We recently celebrated the site’s six anniversary with many more to come in the future.

Ghacks has grown from a new tiny site to a popular technology news blog on today’s Internet. The site is highly popular and publishes roughly five articles per day. Up until now, more than 11,000 articles have been posted on the site, with roughly 1600 being added to the site every year.

The majority of articles are software reviews, tutorials, troubleshooting guides, web browser reviews and tools, as well as general Internet related news topics.

You can check out some of our popular categories by following the links at the top of the page or in the right sidebar. The most popular categories are listed at the top. They include Windows, Firefox and Google Chrome.

You can also use the site search at the top right to find specific articles of interest, or subscribe to our newsletter or RSS feed for your daily dose of technology related news.