Can't seem to install statusnet

Ever since Bluehost wasn't so friendly to my statusnet script and wordpress bad plugins causing server spike in their hosting server, I shifted my personal blog and other web projects to another web hosting company. I still wanted to experiment with Statusnet but now try as I might, I couldn't get it to install. I wonder what is wrong. I even downloaded an older version of Statusnet, but it was no go. All I got was 500 internal server error.

Granted the hosting was very cheap. I think Anjung Cafe Hosting is the cheapest paid hosting that I have ever come across. Of course the cheapest would be free hosting but that is a different class altogether. Nobody can provide free all the time, they need an income to maintain their hardware and provide for themselves too. Funding must come from somewhere. Even bloggers also need funds, it takes time and effort to research and write. Some small measure of returns via advertisement to fund for domain name and web hosting and a little extra for a treat now and then isn't asking too much, no?

Anyway, I wanted to experiment with Statusnet but it just wouldn't install. Mayhaps will have to try it on another web hosting company and see if I get the same error or whether it would be smooth sailing. Could be the way the Apache / Linux server is configured. Since I'm just renting the hosting space at such low cost, cannot expect too much from it lah! (update: yep, I could install it on other web hosting, so definately Anjung Cafe Hosting is missing some plugins, so no Statusnet installation here for now.)

Will have to find time to blog about the various Malaysian web hosting that I research on while looking for an alternate to Bluehost and looking for hosting space closer to home. Especially for those who want lower cost hosting at good value, no need to go so expensive like Exabytes with the unlimited storage and unlimited bandwidth. Although my personal blog has a lot of website traffic it is still within range of
the cheaper web hosting.

For now, I think I better not waste too much time trying to get my experimental Statusnet installation to work. I'm rather behind in my more serious web posts.

Pivot Blog

One thing about script list in the webhosting software section, they have a list of interesting software for content management, blogs, forums, online calendars, and other interesting software. Some of which you never think about searching online for it. So I happen to bump into this Pivot blogging software that don't even use SQL database management! Intriguing. Will install it and have a look see. Of course my ultimate blogging script is still Wordpress, but there are a lot of CMS cum blogging script software out there to experiment with.

In case you choose something not so well known, do note that some project actually died! So don't choose a less well known project for your main or major blog website. Because when it loses support, you won't get the needed updates especially to clog up any vulnerabilities against pesky hackers attempting to break into your website and deface your contents!

Making website

I guess for newbie when making website may be difficult to grasp certain concept. But if got soem guidance better than none. I may not be expert but having maintain one for 5 years and several others for many years there is indeed a lot of things to learn. Mind you, you can't just learn them overnight. It takes time to understand why some ways are better than others.

The most basic concept that I learned was from the SBI system. Using the long time tested C-P-T-M idea it has nevered failed and works just as well on a non-SBI hosted website. Although it may missed some amout of automation process I still get interesting results.

So learn the SBI system for making website. It sure works and gets good returns!

Wordpress installation

I wonder what my friend did to his wordpress installation that left it ended up with just a blank display. Can't do anything now as I'm away from my PC. I wonder what he did. Could be a faulty wordpress plugin. Unlikely to be htaccess file misconfiguration. With so many wordpress plugin this could be the fault too.

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Finally found out why his Wordpress page disappeared. Nope it wasn't my fault! My Wordpress installation was fine. I found out that one of the plugins was causing havoc to Wordpress. It was just a simple matter of trial and error by activating and deactivating each plugin to find out who was the culprit. Turn out to be one of the three the Photoshelter plugins. Switching it off and the Wordpress homepage reappeared. No problemo. Just don't use that plugin, darling.

Wordpress installation

Wordpress installation is one of the easiest to do. But it can a little tedious sometimes. So what I usually do is to use the provided installed scripts by th webhosting company. For Bluehost they have Fantastico and Simple Scripts of which the latter is far more superior. For Exabytes which uses the same cPanel interface only provides Fantastico. While IPServerOne which is quite a nice budget webhosting provides the Installaron auto installs.

Of course when choosing a web hosting do try to find one which has auto install scripts. Those scripts sometimes provide interesting software that you would otherwise not be aware of. Like say a forum software instead of using the overly popular phpBB which by the way has a lot of security issues and poor spam buster you might discover other little gems like BBpress and PunBB.

Anyway I needed to reinstall a Wordpress installation for a friend and using the Installaron software provided by IPserverOne makes for a speedy Wordpress installation. Configuration took a little longer but that's a different issue altogether.

Buddy Press

This is an interesting open source software from Wordpress, the Buddy Press which is a little like a multi-purpose, social website like software that you can build a free website for blogging and running a forum and groups. Well open source software is free. Your cost is the time to install and explore the software and see if it is what you like or fit in to your website strategy.

While looking through the software offering in my Bluehost Simple Script list, I noticed they provided some new software under the heading of Social Networking. There were two software listed, Pligg and BuddyPress. Intrigue, I decided to give them a spin.

The Pligg installation went badly, and I decided to chuck it to another day for testing. So that left me with Buddy Press. Like Wordpress, the installation was smooth. The interface was similar with that of Wordpress and it has some interesting features. Not only could you blog just like Wordpress, it has a forum system build into it. And for socializing, it has group function, I think similar to Yahoo groups for posting and sharing information within a group.

However this Buddy Press software is still new and trying to find a nice Buddy Press theme is not so easy at this moment as there are not many choices around to choose from. In the meantime, I think I will not use it for now from the lack of Buddy Press themes as well as from lack of good plugins. The few Buddy Press themes that I tried looked funny and weren't very functional either. Eventually there would be more of these when it becomes more popular.

Good plugins for bbPress

After digging around online for awhile, I finally settle on a few plugins for bbPress than does a good job at weeding out web spammers. Sheesh, these people really cause a load of headache for any would be webmasters, fortunately there are many tools created by very smart programmers to weed out these bad people online.

I finally found some good plugins for my bbPress that could do just what I wanted:
1. Weed out bots from humans during the registration phase
2. Mass delete the existing spammers who now number about 5000!

The few plugins that I settled for are:
a. mass delete users
b. recaptcha for bbpress
c. human test

After giving a quick spin after installation it worked flawlessly! So one more up against those pesky web spammers.

If you plan for a lightweight software to build a forum website, bbPress is a very good recommendation with its Akismet spam busting ability and a little help from the plugins above, making it one of the best new free forum website application around!

To get bbPress goto http://bbpress.org

The plugins are in the "Extend" tab.

Cheers!
Jan.

Akismet for punBB

I have been looking around for a good forum application to build a website forum. When building a forum website, one of the most important criteria for me is the banishment of spam. This is a headache just for about every webmaster who attempt to build a website forum. I have installed several forum apps into my website just to study its interface, ease of use, etc. All I did was put in one little link from my main site and before long, I start to see spammers getting into their terrible act of stuffing links into my testing forum!

How on earth did they find my little unknown for testing only forum website, I wonder? Anyway, web spam is a big issue.

When it comes to choosing a forum for website, most people will suggest phpBB as it is the most well known and widely used bulletin board web application software around. Having tried it, I don't like it at all. It is a very heavy application, rather slow because it tries to do so much making it very code heavy. With all its sophistication it has some very bad flaws resulting in many security issues. And for such a sophisticated forum software it doesn't even have Akismet anti-spam build-in. Well you can plug it in yourself. But heard that it was a nightmare to put any plug-ins at all.

So far the only forum software that I found that has Akismet build in is bbPress. But this is a fairly new bulletin board. From the creators of Wordpress, bbPress is build from the gound up. It runs pretty fast, very lightweight, but still lacks many features. But from what I see, I think it will do very well in the future. I have started using this for one of my travel forums and it does a very good job at weeding out those web spammers. The only thing left which I hope they will provide in future is an en-masse deletion of users who are marked as spammers or better yet auto deletion of inactive members. Already as of writing there is 4,000 users and 99% of them are spammers!

Currently I'm looking at another lightweight website forum software, punBB. It looks nice and seem to have a good interface. Unfortunately it does not have a build in Akismet anti-spam feature. This resulted in many spammers logging in and doing their misdeeds. There is plug-in but unfortunately their website has been hacked in and just visiting their website would result in virus installing into your PC. The link is here but I would suggest you tread very carefully here.

http://www.punres.org/viewtopic.php?id=1850

I won't download the plugin just yet until they clear out the malicious code from their website. From those who did install the plugin, it seemed to work very well.

But for now, I'll stay off this code for fear the malicious code has infected the plugin too. But I will give this code a look see in the future one they have solve the virus infection problem.

For now, I guess I will just have too look around and see what other forum software that are easy to use, lightweight, and can especially solve those pesky web spammers!

Simplepie

I have been using Simplepie for some time. It is great for streaming RSS feeds into your web page. A great way to stream information around when you build your own website.

So what is Simplepie? It is a PHP script that you can install in your web host and configure it to get RSS feeds not only from other website and also from within your website. It also a good way to re-feed the various website and blogs that you have and stream them into one easy to access web page too.

For example if you have Twitter, Flickr, Blogger and your very own website, it would be difficult for your visitor (including yourself for that matter) to keep track of what's happening, so why not provide a single page where all your feeds are channelled into it?

So here comes Simplepie to the rescue! Head on over to the Simplepie.Org website and download the latest PHP script.

I liked Simplepie in the sense that I don't have to set up a SQL database. It is also fairly easy to use, though it may be a little bit more complicated than Feedburner. Between using PHP script vs JavaScript, I would prefer going the way of PHP. The content is both visible to visitors and robot crawlers alike and that is a plus point because the search engine thrives on content.

Upload the simplepie.inc file into your Webserver plus the various files as per their specification.

Then it is time to hack your web page. The file needs to be saved with a .php extension and your server must be able to handle PHP files.

Before the main HTML codes add these php lines

require_once('http://www.example.com/folder/simplepie.inc');
require_once('http://www.example.com/folder/idn/idna_convert.class.php');
$feed = new SimplePie();

Then you need to tell it where to find the feed:

$feed->set_feed_url('http://exampleblog.com/atom.xml');

If you got several feeds, you have to use this line instead. Make sure you do not comma the last feed or you will get errors.

$feed->set_feed_url(array(
'http://www.example1.com/feed1',
'http://www.example2.com/feed2.xml',
'http://www.example3.com/rssfeed3'
));

Init the feed with this line and ready for next step.

$feed->init();

Somewhere in your main page add in the following PHP codes and you are good to go. Modify where necessary for the CSS to format the display.

<?php
foreach ($feed->get_items() as $item):
?>
<div class="item_simplepie">
<h3><a href="<?php echo $item->get_permalink(); ?>" ><?php echo $item->get_title(); ?></a></h3>
<p><?php echo $item->get_description(); ?></p>
<p><small>Posted on <?php echo $item->get_date('j F Y | g:i a'); ?></small></p>
</div>
<?php endforeach; ?>

Easy, yes? That's why it is called Simplepie!