March 6th, 2010 — James
In Visual Studio 2008 you could just drag the toolbars around and dock it on any side. In Visual Studio 2010, the dragging is allowed only within the side where it is already docked. To change the docking location (top, left, bottom or right), open from the menu tools -> customize. Select the toolbar you wish to modify. Click on the modify selection button and select the docking location.

February 21st, 2010 — James
Before Windows 7, you needed multiple tools and keystrokes to get the screenshot of your WordPress theme. On Windows 7, it is very easy with the snipping tool.
Open the browser to a post or page on your website that you want to appear on your screenshot.
Click the start menu on Windows 7. The snipping tool is usually at the top. If you cannot find, just type snipping tool in the search box. Start snipping tool.
Make sure you have rectangular snip selected in the new drop down on the snipping tool.
Now move the mouse cursor to the browser window with your themed blog post on it and select the area you want it on the screenshot. Once you complete the selection, snipping tool will capture that area and show it on its own window. Save the image as either screenshot.jpg or screenshot.png. Note that snipping tool adds extensions in upper case. Convert it to lower case. Unix/Linux is case sensitive and may not serve up the file.
Place this file in the theme folder (directory).
That’s all to it.
January 21st, 2010 — James
As a software developer, there are times I need a file to be present in a folder. Instead of right clicking in Windows Explorer and then selecting create a file, I run the following from the command line.
copy x=>myfilename.ext
This is much easier for me because right click and NEW inside Windows Explorer takes a while. I also have a Visual Studio command prompt open all the time.
December 28th, 2009 — James
Windows gets the wpad after establishing a network connection. If you need to test changes to wpad or pac settings, disconnect and connect the network.
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/271361
http://www.computing.net/answers/windows-2000/how-to-set-proxy-in-registry/60689.html
December 25th, 2009 — James
Assumptions:
You have a D-Link router that supports saving information to syslog.
You have a SuSE Linux server or you are familiar with configuration locations on your distro. It is easy just search for syslog and your distro name. I didn’t know either.
Step 1: Open up /etc/syslog-ng/syslog-ng.conf in an editor. Most web sites refer to syslog-ng.conf.in or something like that. They seem to be out of date. There is only syslog-ng.conf
Uncomment the line
#udp(ip(“0.0.0.0″) port(514));
to
udp(ip(“0.0.0.0″) port(514));
Save the file and quit.
Step 2: Restart the syslog
rcsyslog restart
Step 3: Go to your DLink routers admin page. I assume you know how to get there. On my router the tab name is Tools and then click on SYSLOG. Check “Enable logging to syslog”. and then type the IP address of the SuSE box there. Click the “Save Settings” button at the top.
Step 4: A few minutes later check the syslog messages on the server. You can get there easily by opening up yast2 and going to Miscellaneous -> System log. Or just tail /var/log/messages.
Do not open that port on your router.
September 12th, 2009 — James
This setup is required to get the DNS queries for our domain to reach the DNS servers at zoneedit for name resolution.
Log-in to your 1 & 1 control panel. Click on the package link. Click on the manage domain option.

Select the domain name (check mark) and then click on the down arrow next to DNS and select “Edit DNS settings”. Set the general settings to DNS under domain data. For basic DNS settings, select “My name server”. In the advanced DNS settings type one of the name of the DNS server provided by zoneedit from our previous step in the primary name server option. Select “My secondary name server” for secondary name server option. Now enter the name of second DNS server name provided by zoneedit in the 1st secondary name server box. Leave 2nd and 3rd secondary name server names blank.

Click OK. It will take a while to propagate this setting. We will continue with other settings while this is being updated. When the update is complete, the status will show as ready in the domain overview page of the administration tab.
September 12th, 2009 — James
Computers on the Internet connect to each other using IP address. For someone else’s computer to connect to your server, that computer need to know the IP address of your server. Your domain name is usually associated with one IP address and that IP address can be the IP address of your server. DNS servers keep the information of what is the IP address of a domain name. Usually domain registrar allows you to specify a different DNS server than their own DNS server for your domain name.
We will use zoneedit as our DNS service. As of this writing, it is free for the first 5 domains. Signup here for free. Make sure to read and understand the terms and conditions.
Setup for one domain is called a zone at zoneedit. Log-in and add a zone. Once you add zone with your domain name, zoneedit will give you two name servers and their IP addresses. 1 & 1 accepts only the names. So, note them down. Use a password with upper and lower case letters and a few numbers in between. Avoid special characters because we will be using this password to update the information dynamically. Note down the password.
Click on the name of the zone (domain name). Click on Aliases (CNAME). In the box titled “Alias” type “www” and the box titled “Actual Name” type your domain name. The whole line should read like www is another name for your-domain-name. Click the “Add New Alias” button to create the alias. This will help others access our server by typing http://www.your-domain.ext.
If you have a static IP address, go ahead and specify the IP address under IP Addresses (A). If not we are ready for updating the IP address dynamically when ready with server setup.
September 12th, 2009 — James
I use 1 & 1 as my domain registrar for this website. One of the reasons why I use 1 & 1 is, they have free private registrations. This means that you can buy a domain name without exposing your personal information like name, address, phone number etc. Depending on what type of website you are planning to create, you may want to keep your registration private. For example, some people blog about their work without telling who they are.
Let us say you want a domain with your name your-name.com. You can check the availablity of the domain name here.

The check comes back with available domain names and suggestions. Choose one or search more. When ready click continue which gives you the purchase options.

Since we are planning to host our site from home, select the Instant Domain option which costs only the yearly registration fee. That fee depends on the extension you selected. Lowest is $8.99 but first year may be cheaper.
Once you sign-up and pay, the domain name is yours for the period of registration. If you do not want to loose the domain name because you forgot to renew, you can setup automatic renewal. You get renewal notices from 1 & 1 by email as well.
It can take up to 48 hours before you can start using the domain name. But in the mean time you can start working on other steps.
September 10th, 2009 — James
Disclaimer: Use this guide at your own risk. The setup is based on my own expertise and experience and your mileage may vary or may even not work for you.
The idea of this guide is to show you a way to host your own website from your home. This may not be the cheapest setup but should be close. The hosting will be on a Linux server specifically on openSUSE distribution. If you are completely new to computers or do not want to bother with black or green screens with lot of text, a better option is find a cheap hosting solution.

This cheap solution requires some expertise on computer setup and confidence in figuring out simple computer settings. Almost all the pieces are free open source components. The only pieces I identified as where you need to pay are for the domain name which is less than $10 a year as of this writing and for the server hardware. I assume you already have an Internet connection and will not paying anything extra for this setup.
I host this website on a server at home. It took a lot of research and effort to get this setup working. I thought I would share the knowledge I gained so that someone else will benefit. I assume that you are not overwhelmed by Linux and its text based configurations. If you use any other Linux distribution than openSUSE, you may have to lookup where the configuration files are and such. This is one gripe I have against the whole Linux ecosystem. They should at the least standardize on locations of executables and configuration files.
- You need a broadband Internet connection. You do not want to host it on a dial up connection even though technically you can do it. Serving up anything other than text will be too taxing on a dial up upload speed. Here is the guide to choosing your connection. It also will tell you how to setup your router (D-Link) for handling web requests from outside.
- Get a domain name from a domain registrar that allows you to host your website on your own servers. I use 1& 1 as my domain registrar. I will be using the control panel on the 1&1 admin web site to explain registrar related steps. Here is how to get a domain name using 1 & 1.
- Get a free account at a DNS service like zoneedit or everydns. I will start with zoneedit examples and may add everydns examples later. Here is how to setup the DNS service at zoneedit. Here is how you set the DNS for your domain to Zoneedit. If you have a Cable or most DSL connections (no static IP address) you will need a way to update the DNS lookup whenever your ISP changes your IP address. We will ddclient in our example.
- You need a computer that can run Linux. Since I picked up openSUSE after some research, this guide will use openSUSE as the Linux distribution of choice. I am not a Linux expert and my experience is that different distributions work differently and have file and configurations located in different places. I will try to use the cheapest possible configurations for this guide. For a cheap hardware search Google for “cheap bare bones PC”. I got links for PC’s that are cheaper than $200. They probably won’t have any OS installed on it and is perfect for our setup. Not having an OS installed on it and not having a support other than just the warranties makes the hardware cheap. I suggest that you use a mirroring RAID solution using Linux. I do have this setup but don’t know how it works in case of failure. Keep at least 2 hard disks in the mirror RAID like RAID 1. To setup RAID1 you need at least 2 hard drives and make sure the bare bones PC has slots for at least two hard drives.
- Get a router that can forward port traffic to a computer in the home network. Right now I have a D-Llink router and here is the guide to using D-Link router interface.
- How to setup ddclient to update your domain IP at zonedit.com. Coming soon…
- How to install and configure a Linux server for web hosting part 1. Coming soon…
- How to configure Apache web server for hosting one or more web sites. Coming soon…
- How to configure MySQL for hosting WordPress blog on your website. Coming soon…
- A google applications account for email, calendar and contacts. Coming soon…
- Setting up google adsense for monetizing traffic to your website. There is no guarantee that you will make money from the website. I did it because it was easy and free to setup. Coming soon…
September 10th, 2009 — James
A good broadband Internet connection is needed for serving a web site to your users and give them an acceptable experience. Get the best upload speed that fits your budget. I use Comcast cable. Cable broadband is not known for good upload speeds but good enough to get us going. It is easier to upgrade your connection speeds without disturbing the setup, choose what you feel is affordable. I prefer a DSL connection with static IP address.
Try not to connect your server or other computers directly to the modem provided by your ISP. Avoid routers from ISP. Use a stand alone router. This way, if you switch ISP, you will still have your settings intact. You can get wireless routers as cheap as $20.
Refer to your router manual for how to setup your router to establish an Internet connection and to setup a network. Once your router is ready with Internet connection, connect your server to the router. Connect using an Ethernet cable instead of a wireless connection.
I am going to assume that you have a D-Link router and it has an IP address 192.168.0.1
I am going to assume that we will setup the Linux server with a static IP address: 192.168.0.50
Connect your computer (not the server) to the router using an Ethernet cable. If you do not have extra Ethernet cable, just pull it from the server and connect to the computer that will be used for configuring the router. At this point the router need not be connected to modem or the Linux server.
Open a browser and type in the address http://192.168.0.1
When prompted, enter the user name as admin and the password. If you haven’t changed it yet, the default is blank (no password).

Click on the SETUP on top and then click NETWORK SETTINGS on the left. Enable DHCP server and provide IP address range. See the image below for complete settings. Don’t forget to click “Save Settings” before clicking other buttons or links on the page.

Setup the virtual server so that web server traffic always goes to our server at 192.168.0.50. Click on ADVANCED and then VIRTUAL SERVER. See image below for values. On older D-Link routers you may have only port forwarding option. I think that option doesn’t allow you forward the WAN port to different port on LAN. But that should work for our setup since we are not going forward to a different port on LAN. Don’t forget to click “Save Settings” before clicking other buttons or links on the page.

At this point the router is ready to send web traffic to our server.