The 100% Open Source Intra-Extra-Web-CMS site: Part 7 February 3, 2006
Posted by techandother in HowTo, My Projects, OSS ÜberSite, Web Applications.1 comment so far
At this point, we have a perfectly-functioning web site:
http://intranet.domain.com/joomla
with a great backend:
http://intranet.domain.com/joomla/administrator
username: admin
password: whatever you put in when you installed Joomla
We’re looking pretty good with all of our sample data in there, but it’s time you learned how to administrate Joomla. Lucky for you, they have a manual for the Administrator backend. (more…)
The 100% Open Source Intra-Extra-Web-CMS site: Part 6 February 2, 2006
Posted by techandother in HowTo, My Projects, OSS ÜberSite, Web Applications.add a comment
Getting a little stressful now – I’ve used up about 3.5 hours getting a machine set up with the Ubuntu OS, setting it up to be a web server, and finding all of the Joomla packages that look like they might be remotely helpful in my situation.
This last step is actually pretty important to the ‘Rapid Prototyping’ that I’m doing. By grabbing 3 or 4 calendar modules, for example, I won’t have to waste time going and looking for another one if the first one is junk. I can just throw all four of them into the site and see which one fits the site best. This is where having a popular and modular Content Management System like Joomla is helpful.
The 100% Open Source Intra-Extra-Web-CMS site: Part 5 February 1, 2006
Posted by techandother in HowTo, My Projects, OSS ÜberSite, Web Applications.1 comment so far
Setting up Ubuntu to be a web server
In the process of configuring Ubuntu to be a web server, the soon-to-be-boat-anchor machine I was using died. That’s probably why it was pulled from production… (more…)
The 100% Open Source Intra-Extra-Web-CMS site: Part 4 January 31, 2006
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Operating System Installation
Ok, I have my machine ready to go.. er, well, as ready as it will ever be. This machine was previously known as a Win98/2000 lab machine, rocking out a 400mhz P3, 256MB of ramdom memory modules I stuffed in there, an aenemic 4.3GB hard drive, a 10/100 NIC (with BNC connector!) a 54x CD drive (seems like the best part of the machine) and a 4MB video card (woo!). (more…)
The 100% Open Source Intra-Extra-Web-CMS site: Part 3 January 30, 2006
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The Content Management System / Website core
OK, so while the Ubuntu CD is still downloading (using my open-source Firefox browser, of course), I need to find an open-source Content Management System (CMS) that has a frontend, an administrative backend, and enough community support and add-on modules that I’ll be able to do everything I want to do. There are a lot of these out there, and a lot of great sites to demo a lot of these CMSs. (more…)
The 100% Open Source Intra-Extra-Web-CMS site: Part 2 January 27, 2006
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Internal IP’s and External Subdomains
OK, so before I do anything, I need a machine to build on. It needs to be in the DMZ, so both external and internal computers can find it. That means assigning it a static IP address, which I can look into while the OS is loading. (more…)
The 100% Open Source Intra-Extra-Web-CMS site: Part 1 January 26, 2006
Posted by techandother in HowTo, My Projects, OSS ÜberSite, Web Applications.add a comment
The concept of Rapid Prototyping in manufacturing is fairly simple: get an idea and bang it out to see if it fits your application.
In the same sense, for someone as myself who has to be a jack of many trades (NetAdmin, TechSupport, WebDesign, HelpDesk, etc.), I don’t have a lot of time to develop anything substantial as far as web applications are concerned. The bad part, though, is that I see an enormous potential for web applications at my organization. (more…)
Consider diagonal size when going to a widescreen TV January 5, 2006
Posted by techandother in Hardware, HowTo, My Projects.add a comment
Here is some advice when looking into some of the newer widescreen-format TV’s… with excel sheet data, of course…
(by the way, 16:9 (for example) is a type of measurement in how the sides of the screen relate to each other. 6 inches tall for every 9 inches wide. This is called aspect. Aspect is marketer’s little weapon against you when they try to make you move from one aspect to another. (more…)
How to pay off your credit cards and get paid to do it January 4, 2006
Posted by techandother in Free Money, HowTo, My Projects.1 comment so far
If you’re sick of high interest rates, or fearful of how the new laws designed to protect you from yourself will most likely bankrupt you, you’re probably feeling pretty stressed, like I am.
I don’t like having credit card debt, but giving a good vacation to the wife/girlfriend, trying to not have a disappointing Christmas, or buying furniture for that new house usually forces most people to put some amount on the credit cards. Since the credit card companys want you to stay in debt, and have made an entire industry out of doing just that, it’s difficult to get out from under that stress.
I have an idea. Haven’t tried it yet myself, but I wanted to open it to the blogosphere and get some feedback, because technically it makes sense… (I think) (more…)
How to lower your credit card interest rate January 2, 2006
Posted by techandother in Free Money, HowTo.add a comment
If you’re like me, you’ve probably noticed that your credit cards charge you between 20-30% interest. This is crazy. What this means is that for a 30% interest rate (Capital One), for every $100 I have on the card, they charge me an annual $30, billed monthly. Over the course of a year, I could be paying $2.50 per month for every $100, just to pay the interest. That’s $25/month per $1000!
Since the average American has about $8500 in credit card debt, that means they will pay about $212.50/month just to stay even. That’s $2550 per year!
That’s ridiculous, and as with all things ridiculous, it set me out on a quest.
The first thing I did is call up the credit card company and say that I just got a great deal in the mail for another company’s credit card (I didn’t), and although I really liked being with them (I don’t), I can’t afford not to go with the new company’s rate of 13%. A short conference call with a supervisor (probably just filing their nails), and they ‘offered to match the other company’s offer’.
Deal. The average American’s payments (just to stay even) just went to $92.08/month and $1105/year. 2 minutes on the phone and a little bluffing just bought $120.42/month, or $1445.04.
The key here was picking a rate that didn’t sound too ridiculous. I did some research online and found out that Capitol One operators are allowed to authorize rate reductions down to 13%, but any more than that takes special oversight. Since a manager would try to keep me at the same rate (read: “would know I’m bluffing”), I wanted to rely on the minimum-wage operator who is more likely to give me a break.
It worked.
