And then there’s OpenGoo. OpenGoo is an open source collaboration tool that is fully web-based, easy to use, simple to install, and free to use. But is OpenGoo for you and your company? This tutorial will show you how to get an OpenGoo installation up and running so you can kick the tires and find out if it is exactly what you need.

Features

OpenGoo offers all of the standard features of a business-level collaboration suite:

• Text documents
• Spreadsheets (coming soon)
• Presentations
• Task Lists
• E-mails
• Calendars
• Web Links
• Contacts

All you need to install an OpenGoo server is:

• Apache >= 2.0
• MySQL >= 5.0 (5.2 recommended)
• MySQL >= 4.1 with InnoDB support

Now, let’s get on with that installation.

Install

This installation will be done on a Ubuntu 9.10 setup. I have installed this on both desktop and server installation, but regardless of which you have installed, you will need a LAMP server running.

The first thing you need to do is to download the zip file from the OpenGoo download page. I downloaded and installed the 1.6 beta version which works nicely.

Once that file is downloaded, move that file to /var/www. Now, change to the /var/www/ directory and then unzip it with the command:

sudo unzip opengoo_1.6.beta-2.zip

NOTE: If you downloaded a different release, edit that command to reflect the release number.

Once that files is unzipped rename the directory with the command:

sudo mv opengoo_1.6.beta-2.zip opengoo

Now change into the /var/www/opengoo directory and issue the following commands:

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/config

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/cache

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/upload

sudo chmod -R ugo+w /var/www/opengoo/tmp

With all the right permissions in play, it is time to create the database. I like to use PhpMyAdmin to make database creation simple. For more information about installing this tool check out my article “Install PhpMyAdmin for easy MySQL administration“. Use this tool to create a database called “opengoo” (No quotes).

Time to begin the web-based installation.

Fire up your browser and point it to:

http://IP_TO_SERVER/opengoo

Where IP_TO_SERVER is the actual IP Address of your OpenGoo server. You will be greeted with usual welcome screen that will tell you exactly what is going to happen during the installation. Click the Next button to continue on.

The second screen will run the environment checks. If everything gets and OK (and it should be if your LAMP server is up and running and you’ve taken care of all the permissions) click the Next button to continue on.

Figure 1

The third page of the installation (see Figure 1) is the first step that should require you to input any data.

The information should be fairly self explanatory. There is one point of note: If you plan on allowing access to your local LAN you will need to change the Absolute script URL to reflect the proper IP address (or domain).

Once you have all of this information in place, click the Next button which will take you to the congratulations screen where you only need click the Finish button to assume you’ve completed the installation.

Figure 2

Ah, but there is one more step. Figure 2 shows the final step for the installation. Here you need to create an administrator for your installation.

Setup your administrative user and click Submit. You can now log in to your OpenGoo server with your administrative user.

The basic interface

You will log into your OpenGoo server by entering the same address you did for the installation. When you log in you will be at the OpenGoo Getting Started Page (see Figure 3).

Figure 3

The OpenGoo installation will offer a very simple information page that will help you get started on your decision. But as you can see, the interface is laid out quite well. The tools are accessible and very user-friendly.

After using OpenGoo for a while I can assure you if you like Google’s suite of tools, you will like OpenGoo.

Final thoughts

If you are looking for a very cost effect collaboration solution look no further than the open source OpenGoo suite of tools. Not only is it easy to use, it’s simple to install, and free of charge.

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There are a hundred and one thousand things that can go wrong with any web server installation. From a fresh installation to an installation that has been running for a long time, you never know when something is going to cause your web server to go astray. When it does happen, it’s always nice to know that, usually, Occam’s Razor applies.

In this tutorial you will find some advice that will help you through some of the more common issues that can pop up with an Apache web server.

Is your server actually running?

Believe it or not, this has happened to plenty of administrators. You take the server down, do some maintenance, and when you go to check out the server you’re getting errors. The first thing you do, naturally, is check out that /etc/apache2/apache.conf file to make sure your syntax is correct. But it’s perfect! What’s up? The first thing you might want to check is to make sure the server is running. But you don’t want to just issue the command to start the server or reload the server. Instead, issue the command:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 status

Which should return something like:

* apache is running (pid 9751).

If not, start the server with either:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 start

or

sudo apache2ctl start

NOTE: If you are using a distribution like Fedora, SuSE, or Mandriva you will need to first su to the root user and issue the above commands WITHOUT using sudo.

It’s not running and it won’t start

Did you just make changes to your Apache configuration file? Are the changes correct? If you’re not sure, you can use the apache2ctl command to check the syntax of your configuration file. This is done with the command:

sudo apache2ctl configtext

The above command should report:

Syntax OK

If you don’t get an OK, you will get information that points to the errors in your configuration file.

Apache wants to download .php files!

This is another common issue. When you add a new tool on your web server (such as Drupal), if your configuration file is set up properly, any .php file might not be displayed. Instead any attempt to view a .php file will instead have your browser trying to download the file. Why is this? Apache must be informed that certain extensions are to be displayed, not downloaded. This is done from within the Apache configuration file. Open up that file (in the Ubuntu server it will be /etc/apache2/apache2.conf) and first look for the following line:

DirectoryIndex index.html

If that file doesn’t include index.php nearly all sites that use php will be rendered useless.

The second line to look for is:

AddHandler application/x-httpd-php .php

If you find this line, and it is commented out, make sure you uncomment it by removing the “#” character. If it is not there add it to the bottom of the configuration file.

And, as always, when you make a change to the configuration file, restart Apache.

Know where to look for problems

Finally, it is crucial that you know where to first turn when the above doesn’t help you out. Any time I have an issue with Apache where Occam’s Razor does not apply, the first place I turn is the log files.

If you look in /var/log/apache2 you will find, at least, the following files:

• access.log: This keeps track of any connection made to your server.
• error.log: This keeps track of any errors that occur with Apache.
• other_vhosts_access.log: This is where virtual hosts will log when the virtual host has not been prescribed its own log file.

Of course, as your site evolves so will your available log files. Regardless of what you find in /var/log/apache2, that is where you should always first turn when you have problems. Even before you google.

Final thoughts

Now you should be able to handle some of the more common issues with the Apache server. And if your problem isn’t common, you also know where to turn to find clues that will lead you down the right path to correction.

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The Domain Typo Generator aids the webmaster and business owner in the research. The online tool will check for available and registered domains based on the search term entered by the user. It will include popular typos like qwerty typos or look alikes in the domain name lookup.

The domain name registration checker offers three different view modes. The registrant view mode will display the domain names that have been discovered, their registrants and the number of domains that are owned by the registrant.

The top level domain view on the other hand displays the domain names and their com, net, org, info, biz and us registration status. This list contains significantly more domain names than the registrant view mode.

The DNS view mode finally displays the domain names, their name servers and their IP address. This mode uses the same domain name list that the registrant view uses.

Results can be exported into a csv file. Some results contain links to other tools offered by Domain Tools that will display detailed information. Webmasters who are interested in the domain name registration lookup can visit the Domain Tools website to use the service.

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Among other things, it allows you to add category lists, show comment ID-s, show comment authors, display next image links, add a dropdown box of categories anywhere, useful, and basically “drag and drop”. There is however another great Wordpress reference which is a bit more obscure, but also contains a huge load of functions for some other tasks you might have around your site. The Wordpress Function Reference section of the codex lists at least 250-300 functions for pages, authors, plugin usage, comments, users, etc, in short, encompassing the whole blog platform, as opposed to more blog post oriented functions in the Template Tags section.

The page is chock full of things like “in_category()”, which if passed a post ID and a category, will tell you if that post is in the category or not. Great if you want to display category specific content on your main page for example. It also gives you real power, with functions like “wp_insert_post()”, which you can use to insert posts “manually”, by passing an array of info to the function. Similarly you can use wp_insert_user() to add a user, with the parameters you want. Very useful for creating some custom sign up forms, custom permissions and so on.

What I’ve come to appreciate while using these functions is how very well Wordpress is thought out. I sort of knew this 3 years ago when I started, but when I began to use these functions I realized why. For example, wp_insert_user() will insert a new user, and will return the new user’s ID. It returns 0 if there is an error, but more importantly, if you pass an existing user’s ID, it will update that user, instead of creating a new one. There is a separate wp_update_user() function, but the action they perform is so close, it’s very handy that inserting a user is so flexible.

If you’re just jumping into these functions you’ll find them quite easy to use, while giving you a lot of control. If you’re an experienced PHP programmer you’ll find you’ll program less, and you’ll also appreciate the work going into Wordpress a lot more!

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1. Comment moderation and spam

Comment moderation and spam are two of the most time consuming aspects of a webmaster’s workday. A high profile blog can get thousands of spam comments a day which are then queued up in a spam folder somewhere. Even the best antispam tools do not offer a 100% protection against spam. Another trade-off is that false positives tend to increase with every new antispam plugin and script installed which can frustrate visitors so that they either stop posting comments or leave the site to never come back.

2. Email Support

Most websites have a contact form or other means of contacting the webmaster or a person responsible by email. These emails can contain tech support topics, requests (either for new articles, help, guest blogging or advertising), comments, spam or rude remarks. Tech support questions are usually the most time consuming to answer especially if it is not possible to test the problem locally. Webmasters obviously do not have to answer emails but it is good behavior if they do in a timely manner (except for spam and the rude remark emails). It is still a time consuming process especially on high traffic websites.

3. Updates and Security

It is of uttermost importance to run the latest version of scripts and software on a website. Old versions can contain security or memory holes, incompatibilities or missing features. Many hackers wait for security releases and start searching for websites that still run an older version on the day the new releases get announced. Updates on the other hand are only one part of the security concept. Scripts on the server side can improve security by preventing brute force attacks or notifying tech support. Webmasters do not necessarily have access to these features especially on shared hosting but some security add-ons and features can be installed by them as well. This includes setting the right access rights for directories, making sure to use non-standard usernames, directories and database prefixes or installing scripts and plugins that increase a website’s security.

4. Features and Plugins

Webmasters have to keep an eye on the development of new plugins and features. Wordpress webmasters for example have thousands of plugins at their disposal that get constantly updated. Additions are posted in the dozens daily and it can be quite hard to keep up with them. There is however always the possibility to find a plugin or script that adds a new interesting feature to a website or is able to replace an existing script by providing an increase in performance or functionality. One of the main reasons why many webmasters stick with one content management system is that it is easier to keep an overview of the advancements (and other things including security) that are made.

5. Design

Not all webmasters have to be design-aces. It is perfectly possible to download templates and themes for many different types of content management systems or websites and use these with little modification. Another option is to order a custom theme from a designer. Small changes on the other hand are usually performed by the webmaster. This includes changing a logo, adding a graphic or other elements.

6. Performance

A slow loading website does not necessarily mean that the server the website is hosted is not capable of delivering the performance the website needs. Other things can play a role here including scripts and plugins installed. External scripts, like advertisement or third party widgets, can slow down a website tremendously. Even more so if the domain the data is loaded from is experiencing technical problems as well. A webmaster needs to make sure that the website can be loaded as fast as possible. While third party scripts are usually in the top list of elements that slow down a website the problems can also be caused by large multimedia contents like unoptimized images, broken scripts, not optimized loading sequences or not making use of compression techniques or image concatenation.

Many tools can help in the analysis including the XHTML Validator over at W3C, Firebug or YSLOW.

7. Testing and Compatibility

A website has to be tested with various web browsers to ensure that the user experience is similar in all cases and that it is possible to connect to the website with all popular web browsers. Webmasters also do a lot of testing that include testing advertisement, plugins, scripts or element positions on their website. A classical example is to test various advertisement positions on a website to find the one that is yielding the highest earnings for the webmaster. Other possibilities include testing various positions for content to increase pageviews or decrease the number of visitors who leave a website on the first page without visiting a second one.

8. Advertising

Not all websites and blogs run advertisements. Webmasters who do place ads on their websites open a new can of worms. Statistics have to be checked regularly to make sure that the ads perform well. Ads need to be tested (if possible) in various ways including different positions, color schemes and even different advertisers. Monitoring various webmaster forums and blogs for new advertising opportunities and tips is a must do.

9. Hosting, Domain and Billing

Webmasters using free webhosts do not have to worry about these. But webmasters with their own domain name and web hosting account need to keep an eye on a few things including expiration dates and paying subscriptions in time. This is usually not a big issue and not that time consuming unless hundreds or thousands of domains are hosted at dozens of different web hosters or web servers.

10. Networking

Networking is probably the most important aspect of being a webmaster. You tend to get the best tips from a network of webmasters who work in the same niche. I consider the day I met Everton from Connected Internet one of my luckiest days in my life. Not only have we exchanged information that helped us get rich (haha) and improve our websites; No, we also decided to run a joint project which turned out to be very profitable.

Not everything is about being profitable of course. Some tips are only passed around in close circles because many webmasters do not post their findings and experiences on forums or websites. This can be a better way of placing ads on a blog, a new plugin or script that a website benefits from or general tips.

Verdict:

I’m not sure if this article covered all the aspects. There are probably more including tax reports, law suites and the like. Please post a comment if you have something to add or would like to voice your opinion on the subject. Being a webmaster is more than meets the eye.

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It is therefor essential for webmasters to regularly check the links that are posted on their websites and blogs to make sure that they are still pointing to the initial resource and do not return a 404 not found instead.

One of the best ways for Wordpress webmasters is to install the Wordpress plugin Broken Link Checker which will automatically check all posted links in all blog posts regularly to ensure that the links are valid. The initial lookup can take between a few minutes to several hours depending on the amount of posts and links on the blog. It took about 10 hours to find and check all links that have been posted at Ghacks.

The broken link count will be updated all the time and it is possible to deal with those links right away even if the plugin is still having links in the work queue. A click on the broken link count will open a table that displays 20 broken links per page.

The webmaster can display details about the link which will list the date of the link check and the error code that was returned. It is possible to delink right from the table which will remove the a tag from the link and keep the anchor name. Other possibilities are to exclude the link from future checks (good for false positives), to edit the url or to edit the post itself.

The plugin will automatically line-through broken links that have not been dealt with by the webmaster to inform visitors that the links are not working. The Broken Link Checker plugin is an excellent way of finding and removing broken links from a Wordpress blog.

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Sticking to standards can therefore lead to issues with certain web browsers, which lack support for the latest tags or render pages wrong.

The W3C therefore has its own web browser and editor which adheres to standards more than many browsers and supports certain new technologies others don’t, such as RDF annotation. This browser is Amaya, an open-source and cross-platform browser.

Amaya can handle a wide-range of open file formats, including HTML, CSS, XHTML, SVG and MathML.

The software integrates the browser and web editor: when you go to a web page, it can be edited inside the browser. It also instantly displays syntactic errors.

It also integrates the mark-up languages. For example, in a web page, one can write formulae utilising MathML or add SVG shapes inside the software.

Amaya is a reasonable WYSIWYG editor and a good web browser for developmental purposes. It is also good to produce rich web-pages, which include other pieces of mark-up than HTML.

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The benefit of this solution is that it allows to place more tools on the screen without forcing the user to scroll or change pages. The page will only load in web browsers supporting canvas which includes Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome for example while Internet Explorer 8 (and likely all other Internet Explorer versions as well) throw an error and do not display the page.

There are obviously some negative aspects as well. Missing descriptions or information on the screen are probably the most noticeable ones. The only source of information are the icons. A click on an icon will display a hovering box that contains a short description and a link to the homepage. The problem here is that you need to click on each item that you do not know to receive information about it. It would have been better to display the information on the page or while hovering the mouse over the entry.

It is possible to filter the tools by category. Possible categories include debug, code, design or deploy. A search in the footer is available as well which can be used to find specific tools.

The team admits that only a fraction of the tools are already listed on the website. Webmasters and developers can submit tools which are then reviewed by the team and put on the website if appropriate. They have also plans to create a generic website that is accessible by all web browsers. Web developers and interested users can visit the page here.

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The programming language, Ruby, was created in the mid 1990’s in Japan, by Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto. Ruby is based on Perl, Smalltalk, Eiffel, Ada, and Lisp and was written to create a programming language that, according to Matsumoto, “was more powerful than Perl, and more object-oriented than Python.”

One of the goals of Ruby is to allow the simple and fast creation of web applications. The language itself satisfies this goal. Because of this, there is much less tedious work with this language than many other programming languages. Ruby is also free of charge. It is also free to copy, use, modify, and distribute. Since Ruby can be modified, programmers can make necessary changes and can code without feeling restricted. Another feature of Ruby is its mark-and-sweep garbage collection which allows programmers the ability to code without having to worry about the need to maintain reference counts in extension libraries. Also, if an operating system allows for it, Ruby can dynamically load extension libraries. Ruby currently ranks as the 9th most popular programming language in the world. There are many online guides where Ruby programmers to-be can learn how to program in Ruby.

Ruby on Rails, often simply called Rails, is an open source web application framework that was designed for Ruby by David Heinemeier Hansson and was released in July 2004. Ruby on Rails makes use of an object relational mapping layer known as the ActiveRecord. Because of this, programmers do not have to specify database column names in class definitions. Rails will retrieve this information on its own from the database based on the class name. Rails also has a testing framework built in which allows programmers to write test cases which helps them create more reliable, robust code.

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You’ll need to do some research on web hosting companies first. While most companies offer generous bandwidth, disk space, and email accounts, variables such as cost and availability of technical support increase in importance. Here are some ways to begin your search for the perfect web host.

First, determine what you need. You probably wouldn’t walk into a shoe store and say, “I need shoes.” You’d give some specifics, like your shoe size, what type of shoes you want, how much you’re willing to pay. The situation with buying website hosting is similar. Are you a one-person shop, or do you have a dozen employees? Will you be selling things on your site, or is it purely informational? Will visitors to your site download large files? How many visitors do you expect or hope to have on a given day?

There’s nothing wrong with asking someone you know who runs a website how they went about it. In fact, it’s an opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes. But there are also plenty of resources online. The home pages of web hosting providers should give you some ideas, and there are user forums where you can read and learn some real world experiences with various hosting companies. If you are able to join these forums, it’s OK to ask questions, such as, “I see you chose Company X for your web host. Do you think they would work well for my site? My site will offer downloads of video training materials, and I’ll need quite a bit of bandwidth.” The user forums are where people tend to tell it like it is.

Speaking of bandwidth, while that and disk space are important considerations, you should know that most hosting providers will offer sufficient resources unless you will have a bandwidth hogging application, or a 10,000 visitors per day. It is important, however, to make sure that you will be able to upgrade your service if your business outgrows its original website. The answer is almost always “yes,” but it’s a good idea to make sure.

If you plan to have extra features, like extensive photo storage, database support, or other add-ons, ask up front if your hosting package will accommodate these things.

One thing that you should never consider as an “extra” is live tech support by email, live chat, and phone. Web hosting companies are coming around to the fact that there are no “regular business hours” for online businesses, and that their clients want to talk to an actual human regardless of time or day. Again, don’t take it for granted; make sure upfront that you’re getting true 24/7/365 support services.
Many clients enjoy having a web based control panel. This will allow you to add or modify email accounts, tweak your site’s configuration, and do basic file editing. These control panels often are graphical user interfaces that make it easy for you to make changes to your site without having to know HTML.

Round the clock FTP (file transfer protocol) access is another very handy thing to have. This will allow you to make changes to your site no matter what time it is. Web based email is another near necessity in today’s business environment. This will allow you and your employees to check their email anywhere – not just from their own computer.

Beyond these basics, here are some other questions to answer before signing on with a hosting company.

Will you share a server or will your site have one dedicated to it alone? For most businesses, shared hosting works fine. But larger businesses may need to flexibility and control that comes with having an entire server devoted to their website. Fortunately, shared hosting can now be quite generous with disk space and bandwidth, and security measures between websites hosted on the same server minimize the chances of technical problems. And shared hosting costs much less than dedicated hosting.

Does your hosting provider have e-commerce capabilities? Many come with ready-to-use shopping cart programs and Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) protection for online credit card transactions. These features allow you to configure your retail site quickly and with minimal costs.

Some hosting companies provide other goodies, like blog software, content management, and picture galleries. Fantastico is the name of a package of software that contains over 40 free programs that are easy to install from your site’s control panel.

While price is still important in determining which webhost you choose, tech support and a good reputation are more important factors. You need to get your site up and running, and you need to be able to grow on the web as your business takes off.

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Other concerns were that Akismet was not really a free anti spam plugin as webmasters who made more than $500 per month had to order a commercial version for $55 a year. The last concern was probably the most important one as data is send to Akismet servers including the commenter’s IP, user agent or referrer.

One of the main advantages of Antispam Bee is that it does not have to communicate with external servers for the anti spam protection. It is an all in one solution that detects spam not only in comments but also in trackbacks and pings.

The anti spam plugin runs out of the box after activation in the Wordpress interface unlike Akismet which requires the Wordpress api key. A few options of the free anti spam plugin can be configured in the Wordpress settings. Antispam Bee will delete spam messages automatically when they are detected. This can be changed to mark them as spam and keep them for a limited time in the Wordpress spam folder. Great for the first time of usage to monitor the performance of the anti spam software.

The main benefits of using Antispam Bee are twofold. It does increase the privacy of the users who comment on the blog as it does not submit data to third party servers which in turn reduces system resource usage which could be noticeable for blogs that receive many spam comments per day (Ghacks receives about a thousand a day).

We have been testing Antispam Bee for the last days and like the performance and spam detection rate a lot. Only one legit comment was flagged as spam by the anti spam plugin. Even better was the fact that comments from users who were usually flagged as spammers (jojo for example) were not moved to the spam folder at all.

Antispam Bee can be downloaded from the website of the developer. The Wordpress plugin itself is multi-lingual (at least German and English).

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You can think of web hosting as being divided into two types: virtual web hosting and dedicated web hosting. Virtual web hosting is often favored by small businesses because of its cost effectiveness. With virtual web hosting, you rent space alongside many other businesses on a server. While it sounds as if all the businesses are jumbled up on one piece of hardware, what is actually the case is that each client in a virtual web hosting environment has its own server resources blocked off from everybody else’s, including processor, memory, and disk space. This works well for businesses that don’t need a lot of disk space or bandwidth to operate their web site. It is also a great choice for clients who want to manage a number of separate web sites at a low cost.

The reason that this type of web hosting is so cost effective is that despite their unique functions, the web hosting requirements are very similar among small businesses. Hosting vendors who can offer nearly identical services to a large number of customers efficiently are able to multiply small profits by large numbers of customers.

Dedicated hosting is an option that midsize and large businesses may consider if they need the control and flexibility of having a server (or servers) dedicated to their website. This type of web hosting is expensive, but allows greater control over security, support, and maintenance. Web hosting vendors who offer dedicated hosting have redundant resources in their data center that can nearly eliminate downtime.

Dedicated hosting often means that your business can write and run custom scripts and applications, or just manage the web site and leave the upkeep of the network and hardware to the hosting company. You can buy a server and host the site yourself, but this is an expensive option and means you have to either know how to manage the hardware, software, and connectivity or you have to hire someone who does. Some businesses already have a dedicated IT staff and data center, and if this is the case, then it probably makes sense to buy and operate another server.

However, for companies without their own IT department and budget, renting a dedicated server from a hosting provider is the most cost effective option. There are many web hosting vendors who offer dedicated server packages. Once you know how much of a hands-on approach you’re willing to take, you can examine the offerings of several hosting vendors and see if their operations complement yours. Some vendors provide tools for creating and managing your site by providing a web based control panel that you can use to tweak your site. Some vendors let you use your own HTML authoring program and upload pages as you make them.

Web hosting vendors know they have to compete for your business, and most try to make your choice easy by offering services that are popular and packaging them together into specific web hosting plans. Most of the plans out there have you pay an upfront set-up fee, and then a monthly fee for your plan and any additional a la carte options (like extra storage or extra email accounts) you purchase.
There are so many web hosting vendors around that it can be overwhelming for a business to choose who they want to host their website. If you know your requirements, or can broadly estimate them, you can almost certainly find a web hosting vendor with a hosting package that is right for you and allows for your site to grow along with your business.

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There are several web hosting directories, but as one example, http://www.webhostdir.com/ works like this. At the very top of the home page are two tabs, one for “Web Hosting” and the other for “Dedicated Server.” If you don’t yet know whether your businesses website will require a dedicated server, chances are good that it will not. Most business websites are small enough that shared web hosting offers adequate services for their website needs.

Underneath those two tabs is another row of tabs: Home, Web Host Search, Request a Quote, Web Hosting News, Guides, Hosting Forums, and Web Host Awards. The hosting forums are where you’ll find a lot of firsthand knowledge about what works and what doesn’t in web hosting. This is where the clients get together to discuss their web hosting experiences and to ask questions. You can sign up to participate in the hosting forums, but before you start posting, you should go through the FAQ section to see what answers are already available, and to learn the dos and don’ts of participating.

After looking through a hosting directory, and maybe participating in forums, you may have a good idea which hosting company you want to use. The directory will give you contact information for web hosts, and this is valuable information in your search. You should be able to go to your short list of web hosts with your requirements for disk space, bandwidth, and amount of traffic you need it to handle, and from their responses you’ll be able to gauge a bit about the web hosting culture at different hosting vendors as well as their eagerness to answer your questions and help you find the right hosting package.

In addition to presenting your needs in a web host, you should also ask hosting providers about basic things like how long they’ve been in business, and what methods of customer support they employ. Between these factors, your needs, your budget, and what you’ve learned from hosting forums, you should be able to make a wise choice in hosting providers. A web hosting directory can be your key to sifting through the many companies out there to find the one that suits your needs best.

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More recently, shared hosting has evolved into what is called “virtual dedicated hosting.” This treats every sector of the server as if it was an entire, standalone piece of hardware, so that if one site crashes, the others are unaffected.

For those sites that do need an entire server, dedicated hosting is available. This means that an entire server is devoted to one website and all its sub domains. If you are just starting out with your website, even if you plan to have e-commerce features, shared hosting, or virtual dedicated hosting will probably be your best bet, mainly because true dedicated hosting is more expensive. The average web site does just fine with 1 to 3 GB disk space, which is well within the capabilities of shared hosting setups.

The main reason a site might need more is because it offers downloading services of audio or video, or if a site regularly receives over 5,000 visitors per day. Those situations require plenty of disk space and bandwidth. Otherwise, a typical shared hosting package will almost certainly be sufficient and cost effective for you.

You need to know what type of server operating system will work with your site. Don’t panic. You don’t need to know how to program the servers. There are people who do that for you. What you need to know is what kinds of software you will be using, and if that software has to be run on Windows or on Linux, or if it will work on either. The operating system you use for your own personal computer has little to do with whether your site will require Linux or Windows hosting. All you have to be able to do is use your web publishing software.

Linux is widely considered to be the best operating system for web servers. It is reliable, efficient, and stable. If your website is hosted on a Linux system, it will likely have very high uptime, which is crucial for any e-commerce sites.

If you plan to use Microsoft proprietary software such as FrontPage, Windows Streaming Media, or MSSQL, then you will probably require a Windows based host. Most anything else will work with either Windows or Linux platforms. Unless you will be using features that require either Linux or Windows servers, you can most likely worry about other things, like making sure you find a good hosting service with the technical support you need.

Most hosting packages come with email addresses on your own domain in the format you@yourdomain.com. A “catch-all” email, such as mail@yourdomain.com, is a good thing to have, as are a generous number of other email accounts for your employees. Often, hosting providers throw in things like auto responders for when you’re out of pocket, and the ability to access your mail over the Internet, so that you or your employees can check it when they’re away from the office. These are fairly standard features these days, and with the web hosting industry as competitive as it is, you should have no trouble getting decent email service as part of your hosting package.

Uptime and downtime are two words you hope you don’t ever have to use when talking about your business website. Hosting providers have a number of contingency plans up their sleeves to eliminate downtime or at least keep it as brief as possible. They have the ability to distribute the traffic to your site over more than one server if it should reach a level where it’s overwhelming the hardware. If one piece of equipment has a problem, they can begin using a backup server almost immediately. The good web hosting providers can offer you at least 99.8% uptime, and you should accept no less. If they back that with a guarantee, so much the better.

You can check out what others are saying about a hosting company by simply typing the name of the company into a search engine. You sometimes find a treasure trove of information that you couldn’t get otherwise about the company. One word of caution, though: every hosting company that’s been around for any length of time will have a few bad reviews. Sometimes it’s the fault of the company, and sometimes it’s the fault of the client for expecting something different from what was negotiated. The point is, don’t let one or two scathing rants cause you to cross a company off your list. What you should look for is a pattern of complaints over time. Also, if you see nothing but glowing reviews, perhaps you should be a little suspicious. No web hosting service is perfect, and less than scrupulous companies have been known to overload customer feedback sites with planted positive reviews. Most companies are more honest than that, however.

Of course, price is a major consideration. If you’re starting a new business, you definitely don’t want to waste money, either for substandard service or for fancy features you’ll never use. A rule of thumb is to weed out the hosting companies that are very high priced and the ones that are very low priced (or free), and work with the ones that don’t seem too extreme pricewise. Cheap or free hosting isn’t always a good choice for a business site (though they can work fine for personal or hobby sites), and expensive hosting doesn’t always mean you get the best of everything. It may just mean that you’re buying a lot of stuff you don’t need.

Finally, perhaps the most important consideration when choosing a web hosting company is their level of customer and technical support. You should expect real 24/7/365 support from a hosting company that has experience hosting e-commerce sites. This doesn’t mean that they have a voice mail tree that you have to navigate through before having any hope of talking to an actual person. It also doesn’t mean that messages are taken during non-business hours, but addressed during business hours. If you’re the owner of a business website, there are no such things as “business hours.”
The kind of support you should expect is from a real human who is either physically at the server farm or who can hook you up with someone who is. And it shouldn’t matter if you’re calling on a weekend or a holiday: somewhere on the planet, a person may be trying to get on your site and having difficulty, and that needs to be fixed no matter where they are and no matter what time it is. Downtime is money out of your pocket, and you need to work with your hosting provider to eliminate or nearly eliminate it.

Don’t be intimidated at the thought of choosing an Internet hosting provider. They all want your business, so you’re in a relative position of power. Just be aware of those that promise what sounds like too much (such as “unlimited” bandwidth), and steer clear of sites that have histories of poor service or support. That’s the great thing about the Internet: if enough people have trouble with any company, whether it’s a car rental company or an Internet hosting provider, they will talk and put the information out there, hopefully saving you some trouble, too.

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Once you have a written business plan, it’s time to do some research on which hosting firm is most suitable for your website. You will need to know, obviously, if you plan to sell products from your site, or if it will be strictly promotional. Do you plan to have video? Elaborate graphics? Or just text? Will your chosen host provider help you set up your web site? How many email accounts will you need?

There are a number of things you need to know about the hosting companies you choose among. Perhaps the main thing is how reliable their service is. If you have a business website, you can’t afford for it to have downtime. After all, it’s always normal business hours somewhere. Closely tied to the need for reliability is the need for technical support. Many hosting services say that they have so-called 24/7/365 tech support, but their definition of what that comprises may be different from yours. You don’t want to find out the hard way that calling tech support late at night or on a holiday only gets you to an answering machine and that you’ll have to wait for regular business to resume before getting any actual help.

Of course you should ask your candidate hosting companies directly about these things, but you should do something else too. There are forums all over the Internet where people will meet online to talk about such issues. Read these discussion threads. Ask questions. You should be able to get a more objective assessment of an Internet hosting provider than you would from the company itself.
There are, however, two things you should be aware of. The first thing is that every web hosting company that’s been around for any length of time will have some negative feedback. One or two rants about a certain hosting company shouldn’t put you off. It is possible that the user was the one with the problem, and it is also possible that the company has fixed the problem.

The other thing you should know when reading forums is that sometimes hosting companies plant people on them to say good things about them. The rule of thumb should be: discount the overly positive posts on a company, and discount the overly negative, too. Any post filled with capital letters and exclamation marks is suspect. Take your information from the saner posts you come across, and if you’re allowed to join a forum, don’t hesitate to ask questions, particularly about free web hosting companies.

The reason these companies are able to offer free hosting is that they will run ads on your site. These might be unobtrusive ad links, or they may be pop-ups, or they may be the really annoying ads that follow the reader as he or she scrolls down the page. You have to decide if you can live with the annoyance, and if you think your customers will stick around long enough to buy something.
The obvious advantage of free web hosting services is price. You won’t have to register a domain name or pay for hosting. A free web page can serve as a training site for you as you learn how you want your site to look, or test out new promotions. There are free services like sitemeter.com that will gather basic statistics on your site that can give you valuable information on your visitors. You can find out where most of your visitors come from, what time of day they visit, and how many page views they amass.

You could, if you had the time and motivation, use multiple free hosting providers to set up your site, and then monitor all of them to see if one outperforms the rest. You will likely see differences in the different hosts, and quickly learn which ones are the easiest to work with. You may find that one hosting company gets your site indexed by search engines sooner, and therefore drives more traffic to your site.

Or you may decide that free web hosting just isn’t going to be good enough. All you will have lost is time.

The biggest disadvantage to free web hosting is the ads cluttering up the site. Many visitors are turned off by pop-ups that suddenly materialize as they try to enter or leave your site. And a few will click on those ads and leave your site without looking at anything at all.

Even if you eventually choose paid web hosting for the control it gives you over your site, the free websites you set up may still work to your advantage. You never know where your web traffic will come from. Some of it might come through an old free site you set up when you were just starting out. So, while free website hosting may serve you well as you learn how to be a webmaster, if you have any kind of e-commerce function, you’ll almost certainly want to switch to paid hosting at some point.

But if you’re broke and just starting out, or just learning the basics of having your own web site, then free hosting providers may be exactly the right thing for you.

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Not so with Font Friend, a bookmarklet that simplifies the font selection process greatly. A click on the bookmarklet on any website will display it in an overlay in the lower left corner of the browser window. The font selector can be used to change various characteristics of the fonts used on a website. The options are divided into font family, font variant, font weight, text transform and a html element selector.

The html element selector defines the elements on the page that will be affected by the font change. Included are headline tags, body, paragraphs and the option to select a custom element.

The font family offers a selection of 23 different font families including the popular families arial, verdana, times new roman and georgia. Font variants can further change the appearance of the fonts on the active website.

Webmasters who are currently testing various fonts for their website might want to check out the bookmarklet which can be simply added to the bookmarks and executed by left-clicking it on the right website.

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Of course Linux and web design go hand in hand. So it makes perfect sense that there be a tool for the Linux operating system that can handle this task. There is, and that tool is called Agave.

Agave does one thing: It helps you create color schemes that match. But like any good Linux application it takes this a few steps further by giving nods to web designers with Hexadecimal and interior/graphics designers with RGB and HSV color equivalents. Agave is as simple as it is helpful. Once you start using this tool, you will quickly grow to depend upon it. Let’s get it installed and see how it is used.

Getting and installing

Agave should be in your distributions repository. You can either fire up your Add/Remove Software utility, do a search for “agave” (no quotes), select the results, and click Apply. Or you can open up a terminal window and issue a command like:

sudo apt-get install agave

or

yum install agave

Once installed you can fire up Agave by issuing the command agave or you can find a menu entry in the Graphics submenu of your Main (KDE) or Applications (GNOME) menu.

Using Agave

Figure 1

When you first start Agave you will be greeted by a random triad of complimentary colors (see Figure 1). NOTE: When you start Agave the second time it will start up with the last color you used.

There are a few tools to take advantage of in Agave. The first thing you will notice is the dropdown. This dropdown allows you to select from various types of compliments. You can select from:

• Compliments: This will show you the complimentary color of the color you have chosen.
• Split Compliments: Colors that are on either side and exclusive of the true color.
• Triads:  Three colors equidistent from each other on the color wheel.
• Tetrads: Color harmony based on four colors.
• Analogous: Three colors adjacent to one another on the color wheel.
• Monochromatic: Three hues of the same color.

With those different color types you can pretty easily create schemes for any design. So how do you choose a color? One of the easiest methods is to click the Random button. This will give you a random color and, based on your color type selection, will scheme to that color. This tool is great if you’re trying to design something, from the ground up, but are a facing a block when trying to choose a color scheme.

Figure 2

If you know your starting color you can click on the color button (this is the small square of color to the left of the dropdown) which will open up the color palette. From within the palette you can choose a specific color in a number of ways:

• Change Hue/Saturation/Value/RGB:  Either enter the number for the value or click the up or down arrow.
• Color Name: Enter the Hex of the color you want.
• Color Wheel: Drag the color wheel around to find the color you want.
• Dropper: Is there a color on your screen you want to use? Click the dropper tool and then click on that color you want – it will automatically appear in the palette.

Once your color has been chosen, click OK and your color scheme will update on the main window. If you need more colors (or different scheme types) change the dropdown to select the scheme you want.

Color type

You can also switch from Web-safe colors, Visibone colors, Tango icon theme palette, or GNOME icon theme palette. To change the type simple click on the dropdown at the bottom of the window.

Save your color

Once you have found a color you like you can save that color by clicking the “+” symbol at the bottom right. You can also rename the saved colors by right clicking a saved color. This will come in handy when you are working with color palettes for different design projects.

Final thoughts

If you do any design work, you need to use Agave. Not only will it save you crucial design time, it will ensure that all of your color schemes are, at least, pleasing to the eye.

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Displaying valid markup code in websites, forums, blogs and any other page is not difficulty. The only thing that needs to be done to achieve this is to convert all entities before pasting the code. This can be done manually or by using a script like that offered at Spacefem.

All that needs to be done is to paste the code into the form and click on the Make Code button at the bottom. To display the following code on a website

<a href="http://www.ghacks.net/">Ghacks</a>

one would have to paste the following code into the form on the website where the code should be displayed

<a href="http://www.ghacks.net/">Ghacks</a>

This is actually the easiest way to ensure that the website will not interpret the code and that the code will be valid markup code.

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One of the better scripts to display cached RSS feeds in a website is SimplePie. It might look a bit intimidating at first glance as it provides lots of options to customize the display. It is however very easy to display a feed with just a few lines of code. Start by downloading SimplePie from the website. Extract it to the computer system and upload it to the root folder of the website. You should also create a directory called cache in that root folder and make it writeable (chmod to 777).

Now add the following two lines to the top of the php file where you want to display the feed in. The first line defines the location of the simplepie.inc file on the web server (which is in the simplepie directory in root), the second the feed that you want to display on the website.

<?php
include_once $_SERVER['DOCUMENT_ROOT'] . '/simplepie/simplepie.inc';
$feed = new SimplePie('http://feedproxy.google.com/Ghacksnet');
?>

Now place the following code in the location on the website where the feed should be displayed. This will fetch the five newest feed items and display them in the selected location.

<ul>
<?php foreach ($feed->get_items(0, 5) as $item): ?>
<li>
<a href="<?php print $item->get_permalink(); ?>">
<?php print $item->get_title(); ?></a>
</li>
<?php endforeach; ?>
</ul>

And that’s it. SimplePie offers a wealth of additional functions and settings to display more than one feed or mix feeds. The default caching time is 60 minutes.

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TiddlyWiki is one such wiki, which you can download as a single file to your hard drive, or your can host it online using TiddlySpot. I recommend you visit the site and download a copy for yourself, there are easy to follow instructions, and no real set up is required.

To organize your notes you can use tags, and the whole database is easily searchable from the search box at the top. For example, I usually think up my designs as a single HTML page, without any PHP, just laying out the design. Depending on the general structure of the design I have a few templates at the ready, all in my trusty wiki. To get the one I use for a “content on the left, sidebar on the right” layout I just type “template sidebar right”, and the first note will be the one containing this layout, I can just copy paste the code into my file.

There are a number of other uses you can put your Wiki to of course. If you’re learning to code, you can simply copy the snippets you find and you want to study, and tag them by language, for future reference. You can also store some helpful links, ideas, project plans and so on.

You can use this is a regular notebook too, the real use of a Wiki is that it is very unobtrusive. You can use the same file for your personal notes, your diary and your coding organizer. Since you can use tags and search, you can display only the tiddlers (or notes) you want, so your coding stuff doesn’t have to get in the way of your other notes.

The see the power of a Wiki you really have to take a look yourself, so head on over to TiddlyWiki and grab yourself a copy. Wikis are not everyone’s cup of tea though, so you may not like it as much, but it is a bit different than most systems so give it a chance, try forcing yourself to use if for a week or two, you’ll definitely see the benefits.

If you’d like to get some more tips and tricks for web development and specific languages like HTML, CSS, PHP and the rest, head on down to Scriptastique for yumm coding treats!

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