How To

Oct 18 2010

Using Windows Live Writer With Joomla

Windows Live Writer is a great application for creating blog posts on your computer and then uploading it to your web site. I find this editor works much faster than a web-based one and gives you greater control over content formatting and working with images.

It’s possible to use Windows Live Writer with Joomla if you install an XML-RPC plugin for it. Then it will be possible to compose articles on your PC before uploading it to your site. The following tutorial shows how to do this. Keep in mind that Windows Live Writer was designed to work with blogs, so where the word blog is mention, its referring to your Joomla site.

Install the Plugin

1. Download the MovableType XML-RPC Plugin.
2. Install the plugin in your web site:
   a) Open Extensions in administration panel and select Install/Uninstall.
   b) Browse to the plugin and press the “Upload File and Install” button.
   c) You’ll get a confirmation message that the plugin was installed.
3. Open the Extensions menu and select Plugin Manager.
4. Browse to the XML-RPC – MovableType API plugin and set it to enabled.
   
5. Open the Site menu and select Global Configuration.
6. Click on the System tab and enable web services.
   

Add a Site to Windows Live Writer

1. Open the Tools menu and select Accounts.
2. Press the Add button.
3. Select Other blog service.
4. Press the Next button.
5. Enter the URL of your web site and the login information for the administrator.

   

6. Press the Next button
7. Select Movable Type API for the type of blog being used. The Remote Posting URL is your web site followed by /xmlrpc/index.php, i.e. http://www.website.com/xmlrpc/index.php.
   
8. Press the Next button.
9. Windows Live Writer can’t use Joomla themes, so press the No button.
10. Choose a name to use for your web site.
11. Press the Finish button.
12. Press the OK button to return to editing in Windows Live Writer.

Windows Live Writer can now post to a Joomla site. There is no option to post to the front page in Joomla. You will still have to login and edit this information.

By Johan • How To • 0

Sep 10 2010

Accessing the Documents and Settings Folder in Windows 7

When you try to view the Documents and Setting folder in Windows 7, an “Access is denied” error message will be displayed. In order to view this folder, you need to set the folder view options so that system files and folders are viewable. Once you can view the folder, you will see that the folder icon has a pad lock image added to it (see below).

This folder doesn’t exist in Windows 7. Its a symbolic link to another folder and was included here for compatibility with Windows XP. When you save files to Documents and Settings, they are actually saved in the C:\Users\username folder.

If you delete temporary files manually in Windows, you will find most of these are in the C:\Users folders. The Local Settings folders is now called AppData (just like in a Visual Studio project). You can find temporary files to delete in these folders.

By Johan • How To • 0

Aug 17 2010

Changing Report Server URL in DFS

Adenium Systems tech support recommended that an internal URL for the DFS report server is used as opposed to an external one. This is likely due to increased performance in accessing the URL.

To change this URL, open Library Manager and right click on the Library and then select the option to edit. Go to the Settings tab and edit the Report Server URL (see below) so that it has an internal URL.

Go back to the Description tab and add an internal URL (i.e. 192.168.147.7) here. If you leave this blank, DFS will use the external URL for the Internal Portal URL when you preview the planroom in the Library Manager. Each time you edit something in the library settings, you need to set the IP here or it will save as blank. The Internal IP Address always starts off as a blank and it will save like that if you press the OK button.

By Johan • How To • 0

Aug 17 2010

Setting Up URL Rewriting for Apache in Linux

Search Engine Friendly (SEF) URL’s are very common today with the widespread use of content management systems (CMS). These are URL’s that look like http://www.website.com/about as opposed to the conventional http://www.website.com/about.html. An SEF URL in a CMS would replace something like http://www.website.com?id=34.

The advantages of SEF over conventional URL’s is that they are shorter and easier to send to people, and they also increase the security of a web site by hiding components are being used on a page. In its webmaster guidelines, Google recommends caution in using dynamic web pages:

If you decide to use dynamic pages (i.e., the URL contains a "?" character), be aware that not every search engine spider crawls dynamic pages as well as static pages. It helps to keep the parameters short and the number of them few.

CMS users need to take extra steps for content presentation:

If your company buys a content management system, make sure that the system creates pages and links that search engines can crawl.

A CMS may generate a long and complex URL which can prevent a search engine from indexing it. An SEF URL will shorten the URL and remove the ? character which sets off warnings with web crawlers.

The first thing that you need to do is determine if mod_rewrite is installed in Apache. You can find this by using the phpinfo () function (see phpinfo.php for example). This function will display a long list of settings that PHP and Apache are using. Scroll down to apache2handler and check if mod_rewrite is in Loaded Modules.

[== Code: phpinfo.php =================================]

<html>
  <head>
    <title>PHP Info</title>
  </head>

  <body>
    <?php phpinfo (); ?>
  </body>
</html>

[== Code ==============================================]

If the module is installed, but URL rewriting doesn’t work, you’ll need to make minor changes to the httpd.conf file located at /etc/httpd/conf/. Change AllowOverride to All (see httpd.conf below). You may need to change this in several place in the configuration file before URL rewriting works.

[== Code: httpd.conf ==================================]

# AllowOverride controls what directives may be placed in .htaccess files.
# It can be "All", "None", or any combination of the keywords:
#   Options FileInfo AuthConfig Limit
#
    AllowOverride All

[== Code ==============================================]

After you made the changes, you’ll need to restart Apache. If your not sure how to do this, see How to Start, Stop, and Restart Apache in Linux.  Test mod_rewrite by loading the following files (.htaccess, one.html, two.html) on your web server. The RewriteBase setting in .htaccess should point to the subfolder in your web server (i.e. /rewrite/) if the default setting below doesn’t work. When you browse to one.html, you should be redirected to two.html.

You can download the code below here.

[== Code: .htaccess ===================================] 

RewriteEngine On
RewriteBase /
RewriteRule ^one.html$ two.html

[== Code ==============================================]

[== Code: one.html ====================================]

<html>
  <head>
    <title>One</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>
      This is the number one.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

[== Code ==============================================]

[== Code: two.html ====================================]

<html>
  <head>
    <title>Two</title>
  </head>
  <body>
    <p>
      This is the number two.
    </p>
  </body>
</html>

[== Code ==============================================]

By Johan • How To • 0

Aug 12 2010

How to Start, Stop, and Restart Apache in Linux

At various times, you will need to manually start and stop Apache. This could be due to making changes in the httpd.conf file which requires a restart, or the web server could be experiencing problems. You can perform these commands in a Linux terminal with httpd.

1. To start Apache, type
   /etc/init.d/httpd start
2. To stop Apache, type
   /etc/init.d/httpd stop
3. To restart Apache, type
   /etc/init.d/httpd restart

Setting the ServerName

One problem that you may encounter when you start or restart Apache is that the domain name may not be defined. This can easily be fixed by opening the httpd.conf file in the /etc/init.d/conf/ folder and editing ServerName (it may have been commented out). See below for error:

Give a meaningful name to this variable and the warning will no longer be displayed when starting Apache (see below):

# ServerName gives the name and port that the server uses to identify itself.
# This can often be determined automatically, but we recommend you specify
# it explicitly to prevent problems during startup.
#
# If this is not set to valid DNS name for your host, server-generated
# redirections will not work.  See also the UseCanonicalName directive.
#
# If your host doesn’t have a registered DNS name, enter its IP address here.
# You will have to access it by its address anyway, and this will make
# redirections work in a sensible way.
#
ServerName webserver

By Johan • How To • 1