Uploading Joomla to your web server

After having developend and tested your website on a local server, the next big challenge is uploading the website to your web server, and updating the configuration such that you "go live". The tutorial below gives you the steps required to move your Joomla website from your local computer to a server. With a few tweaks these steps also apply to moving Joomla from one host to another.

Upload all files to your web server

The first thing you need to do is transfer the files to the web server where your live site will be hosted. To be able to do this, you will need FTP (FTP is a way of allowing easy transfer of files across the web) access to your web server. FTP access typically consists of:

• FTP Address - typically this is something similar to ftp.yourdomain.com
• FTP Login details - username / password to access the ftp area

This information is given to you when you apply for a hosting account with any hosting company. To access the FTP area you will need an FTP client. A free and easy to use ftp client is FileZilla. Download and install this client and then enter the information to your ftp area. These should be similar to the image below:

Once you have connected to your webserver, upload all the files to the host. This is done by selecting all the Joomla files from your local hard drive and dragging them to the window which is connected to the host. This will start transfer of all your Joomla files to your hard disk.

Note: if you host has already installed Joomla for you, do not overwrite the configuration.php files. This contains very important details regarding the your Joomla host. You should keep a backup copy of this file. All other files can be overwritten, such that you have all the configuration you have done on the local installation.

Export / Import the Joomla database

Warning: the following steps about exporting / importing the joomla database are significantly technical. Please be aware of what you are doing because you may create a real mess.

The next step to tranfer the site you have created locally to the web server is the transfer of the Joomla database from your local MySQL, to the webserver database. This consists of two steps

• Exporting your current local database
• Importing the exported database to the MySQL database on the hosting company's server

Export the local Joomla database

To export your current database you need to use the phpMyAdmin located on your local server and export the database. The phpMyAdmin URL differs depending on the local development server you are using. If you are using XAMPP to test and develop you website, you will find phpMyAdmin at http://localhost/phpMyAdmin

Choose the database which contains the website you want to upload, and export it to a file. This step depends very much on the phpMyAdmin you are using. However, there should be an Export link. Export all the tables. Once the database has been export to a .sql file, you should open the file with a text editor, and check that the file looks ok. It should contain the Joomla tables. Make sure there isn't a Create database line. The database should be created manually.

Import to the hosting MySQL database

Once you have exported the database, you need to import on the host. Your hosting company should be able to provide you with access to MySQL. If you still haven't created a database you should create it now. Take note of all details, especially the address of the server where the MySQL resides, the name of the database, username and password to access the database. If the Joomla database has already been created previously (using the Joomla installation procedure or otherwise) you should use the details given to you when creating the database.

Log on to the phpMyAdmin interface, find the import tab, and import the file you have exported above. Once again, the location of the Import link varies depending on the phpMyAdmin version being used, however this should be fairly intuitive.

Configure

Up to now, if you try to access your website, you will probably be given an error. This is because the configuration.php file you had on your local server does not contain the information related to your hosting account details. As stated previously, if your host has already installed Joomla for you, you should leave the configuration.php file created unchanged. Otherwise you will need to change the following critical details:

Joomla 1.5

• var $host = 'localhost'; - this is the address of the server which is hosting your MySQL database
• var $user = 'sqluser'; - this is the name of the username which will be used to access the Joomla MySQL database
• var $password = 'p@ssw0rd'; - password for MySQL database
• var $db = 'j15stable'; - MySQL Joomla database name
• var $log_path = '\home\logs'; - the path where any log files will be stored
• var $tmp_path = '\home\tmp'; - the path for tmp files

Joomla 1.0

• $mosConfig_host = 'mysql.youhost.com' - this is the address of the server which is hosting your MySQL database
• $mosConfig_user = 'joomla_joomla' - this is the name of the username which will be used to access the Joomla MySQL database
• $mosConfig_password = 'password' - password for MySQL database
• $mosConfig_db = 'joomla_joomla' - MySQL Joomla database name
• $mosConfig_absolute_path = '/home/xxxdomain/public_html/' - this the absolute path to your Joomla installation. This differs from host to host so you will probably need to contact your host to ask for this. This used because there are a number of core files / components files which use other files. These files are imported or referenced using the exact path to the file. If this setting is not correct, you will get a File Does not exist error.
• $mosConfig_live_site = 'http://www.your-domain.com' - this is used so that Joomla can create links links. If you want your site and links to have a www, then put http://www.your-domain.com, if you don't want a www, the put http://your-domain.com. These settings need to be supported by your host.
• $mosConfig_cachepath = '/home/xxxdomain/public_html/cache' - this is absolute path to the cache directory. The cache is used to increase the performance of your website. As you can see this is the same as the absolute path plus /cache (since this is the default directory where the cache files are stored.

Once all these entries in the configuration.php file have been given the correct values, Joomla should be able to access the database and code, and thus if you go to the address of your page, you should have a working Joomla website with all the customisation you have done. If not, one of the above settings is probably incorrect, or you might need to configure some settings further.

Test and secure the website

Go through all the website, to make sure that everything has been setup correctly. Since you should have uploaded the website, most of your settings should be correct. However, you might still have some minor configurations to do, so go through each page and area to test the everything is working correctly.

You should also take all the steps to secure your Joomla website.

The Easy Way Out

As you can see, the steps are fairly complicated and require quite some knowledge of various technologies. This is not something which should be attempted by someone who does not have experience or who does not understand what is going on. If you think these instructions are too difficult to follow, use a third party component which will do all the dirty work for you. A recommended tool for this is the JoomlaCloner component. This allows you to move your Joomla installation easily.

Installing Joomla on local computer (localhost)

Installing Joomla on local computer (localhost)

First to install joomla you need a webserver, php and mysql installed on your computer. If you don't have these installed..download WAMP (Windows Apache MySql PHP) server and install it. I am writing this tutorial using WAMP
as my server. But these steps are almost same in all other servers.

Follow the steps below

1. First you need joomla package. Goto joomla website and download the latest version of joomla.
Follow this link download joomla. This tutorial is based on Joomla 1.5.x

2. unzip(extract) the file and rename it to joomla.

3. Then place it on www directory of the WAMP server.(or htdocs directory if you are using XAMPP server)

4. Now type http://localhost/joomla on your browser address bar. You'll see the installation page of joomla...

5. select your language and Click on next.

6. you'll see a pre-installation check page. Click Next.

7. You'll see the licence page. Click Next.

8. Database(MySQL) configuration page.

Database type: leave it mysql

hostname: type localhost

username: type root (or your mysql username)

password: type password of your mysql account (the default is empty for root)

Database name: type joomla (or anything you wish)

(Now the database joomla will be automatically created in your mysql.)

Click Next

9. Ftp configuration page. Leave it and click Next.

10.Main configuraion page.

Site Name: anything you like

Your email: type your email address.

Admin password:type any password you like (this will be the password for the admin account)

confirm password: type the above password again.

Next, click on Install Sample Data. You'll see Sample data installed successfully.

Click Next.

11. Finish.... Now go to "joomla" folder in www directory and delete the "installation" folder. This is for security reasons.

Note: If you don't delete the installation folder, you can't access joomla home page.

Success...Now type http://localhost/joomla in your browser and you'll see the joomla home page.


Editing the content..
Login as the administrator.
To login as administrator go to http://localhost/joomla/administrator.

You'll see a login page. Type "admin" as username and type in your admin password you used at registration. Now you will see administrator page. Now you can edit cms, install templates and extesnions etc...

Installing Templates and extensions:
In the administrators page, move your mouse over exentsions link, you'll see a drop down menu. Select "install/uninstall". Extension manager will open. You can upload templates and extensions from this page.

After installing a template....go to Extensions at the top....and click on Template Manager from the drop down menu. Now select the template you install and click on "default" to make it the default template.

14 Essential Plugins for WordPress

Plugins offer custom functions and features so that each user can tailor their site to their specific needs. WordPress plugins are tools to extend the functionality of WordPress. The core of WordPress is designed to be lean, to maximize flexibility and minimize coding. So it so easy to add a plugin or remove a plugin from your blog site. WordPress Plugins are available from several sources. The “official” sources for WordPress Plugins are:

• Official WordPress Plugins
• WordPress Plugin Database

There are hundreds of WordPress plugins available in the Internet, but you may not require all of them for your site. I selected 14 essential plugins which I am currently using.

Akismet

Akismet checks your comments against the Akismet web service to see if they look like spam or not. You need a WordPress.com API key to use it. You can review the spam it catches under “Comments.” To show off your Akismet stats just put in your template. See also: WP Stats plugin.

All in One SEO pack

Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines (Search Engine Optimization).

Some features of this plugin are:

• Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines
• Generates META tags automatically
• Avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs
• For Wordpress 2.3 you don’t even have to look at the options, it works out-of-the-box. Just install.
• You can override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want.
• You can fine-tune everything
• Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.

DMS GuestBook

DMSGuestbook is an easy configurable guestbook with a lot of features. You can customize the whole DMSGuestbook to your desire

The plugin features are:

• Simple work on the attitudes over front-end (e.g. text color, guestbook width, border color…)
• Extended attitude possibility over the css file
• Preset DMSGuestbook caption text in german, english and swissgerman
• Make your own language template in few minutes
• Set mandatory fields where user must be filled out
• Set text hidden in the DMSGuestbook (e.g. ip address)
• Captcha antispam (image, mathematically)
• Manage the DMSGuestbook user entries. (e.g. name, message, url, ip adress)
• Sidebar widget
• Administrator can review posts before shown this
• Create your own guestbook template (beta)
• Administrator can search entries in guestbook (beta)

Embed It

Embedit is one of the most useful plugins made for Wordpress which allows publishers to put all pieces of embeddable code, (widget, javascript, adsense) inside their blog post, by allowing to overcome any number of obstacles about this problem. It been developed by Matteo Lonescu. This truly simple plugin resolves what for many has been a frustrating problem for any type of “embeddable” objects to add to any post. Instead, EmbedIt allows you to embed any html code in a post, by deciding precisely where you want to put it, allowing you freedom of coding your html without being annoyed by the wysiwyg editor.

Key Features are:

• embed Youtube videos into wordpress
• embed ustream into wordpress
• embed a custom Google Map into wordpress
• embed whatever html code into wordpress
• embed specific Adsense code into wordpress posts deciding WHERE it should go inside an article

FeedSmith

FeedBurner have taken over the development of the Feedsmith Wordpress plugin that removes the worry from Wordpress user about visitors requesting their RSS feed. When using Wordpress there are a number of ways a user can request your RSS feed by clicking on different links. The Feedsmith plugin handles these requests to ensure the visitor is directed to your Feedburner RSS URL.

Global Translator

Global Translator automatically translates your blog in the following fourteen different languages: English, French, Italian, German, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Arabic, Russian, Greek, Dutch and Norwegian. The number of available translations will depend on your blog language and the translation engine you will chose to use.

Main features are:

• Four different translation engines: Google Translation Engine, Babel Fish, Promt, FreeTranslations
• Search Engine Optimized: it uses the permalinks by adding the language code at the beginning of all your URL
• Fast Caching System: a built-in cache is provided in order to reduce the online connections to the translation engines
• Fully configurable layout: you can easily customize the appearance of the translation bar by choosing between a TABLE or DIV layout for the flags bar and by selecting the number of translations to make available to your visitors

Google Analytics

The Google Analytics for WordPress plugin automatically tracks and segments all outbound links from within posts, comment author links, links within comments, blogroll links and downloads. It also allows you to track AdSense clicks, add extra search engines, track image search queries and it will even work together with Urchin. In the options panel for the plugin, you can determine the prefixes to use for the different kinds of outbound links and downloads it tracks.

Show-My-PageRank

If your wordpress blog has a better page rank, here is a better chance to reveal it to your blog readers. That is Wordpress Page Rank Plugin Show-My-PageRank. What you want to do is just download this plugin and activate it. All of your wordpress post automatically tagged with your google page rank. This will increase your readers interest. More page ranked articles / post get more readership. Just try. Remember , you DON’T need to enter your page rank manually; This plugin automatically pull up your page rank directly from server each time (Live Results). You can also add your page rank any where in your blog by .

Features:

• Live Page Rank : You need not to specify your page rank. Plugin automatically checks google server each time
• Cute Page Rank Show : Greenish-white combination
• Fast loading : It never affect your normal page loading speed
• Auto Embedding : All of your post automattically get embedded with its page rank (You can also disable this)
• Replaceable : You can place your page rank anywhere as you wish
• Readablity : Your user get more enthusiasm when he/she read your blog post if you have better pager rank for that post

Google XML Sitemaps

This plugin will create a Google sitemaps compliant XML-Sitemap of your WordPress blog. It supports all of the WordPress generated pages as well as custom ones. Everytime you edit or create a post, your sitemap is updated and all major search engines that support the sitemap protocol, like ASK.com, Google, MSN Search and Yahoo!, are notified about the update.

Increase Sociability

The best way to increase your traffic from Digg.com and StumbleUpon.com is to get more votes. Often you may have a great blog post, and people do visit via these websites.

My Page Order

My Page Order allows you to set the order of pages through a drag and drop interface. The default method of setting the order page by page is extremely clumsy, especially with a large number of pages.

Share This

The ShareThis WordPress plugin provides a quick, simple to use, and unobtrusive way for users to add your post to many social bookmarking sites, or to send your post link via email, AIM, Facebook, MySpace and more. ShareThis makes a WordPress plugin that provides an unobtrusive way for your visitors to post your site content to various social bookmarking sites, or send a link via e-mail & other communication channels (like Facebook and MySpace) to a friend.

Subscribe Me

The Subscribe Me plugin for WordPress adds buttons at the end of your sidebar so your visitors can subscribe to your blog via services such as Bloglines and MyYahoo!.

Yahoo! Shortcuts

Yahoo! Shortcuts for Wordpress plugin intelligently enriches your blog post with great content from Yahoo! Maps, Finance, and beyond. Yahoo! Shortcuts plugin for Wordpress available under the BSD license. The images, designs, logos, modules (including the content and services that flow through the plugin) are provided under the terms located here, which you have to agree to activate the plugin.

How to Backup your WordPress Database

Considering what happened on this incident , I think it's fitting to write up a tutorial on how to backup your wordpress Database. There are a couple of ways to backup your database, I'm going to show you how to do it using WordPress Database Backup Plugin .

1. Extract wp-db-backup.php, upload it into /wp-content/plugins/ and activate it under the Plugins menu.
2. Click the Manage menu in your WordPress admin area.
3. Click the Backup sub-menu.
4. The plugin will look for other tables in the same database. You may elect to include other tables in the backup.
   ** NOTE **
   Including other tables in your backup may substantially increase the
   size of the backup file!
5. Select how you’d like the backup to be delivered: Save to server :
6. this will create a file in /wp-content/backup-*/ for you to retrieve later Download to your computer :
7. this will send the backup file to your browser to be downloaded Email :
8. this will email the backup file to the address you specify
9. Click “Backup!” and your database backup will be delivered to you.

   When having the database backup emailed or sent to your browser for immediate download, the backup file will be deleted from the server when the transfer is finished. Only if you select delivery method “Save to server” will the backup file remain on your server.

Differences Between Conventional Data Backup Systems and Rollback RX

Historically, our defense against a hard drive crash has been a complete disk image kept at a physically separate location - this image is copied back on to a replacement hard drive. This is the foundation of all Data Backup Software (MS Backup, Ghost, etc.) – the physical imaging of data.

But image-based backups have two major problems: they are very resource-hungry and they require a lot of manual intervention. So arduous is this that even disciplined IT shops do it as infrequently as is possible. Most small businesses and individuals seldom get around to doing backups.

But when the time comes to restore – the older the backup, the more work is lost. There is some “logging” software that tries to maintain continuous change tracking, but again, it is very demanding on resources.

As disk hard ware is very stable, the impulse to defer a backup is high. But content corruption has become a major issue. Spyware, Adware, faulty “Upgrades”, incomplete Uninstalls, Key Loggers, Root Kits, and Viruses hit us almost daily. Firewalls, anti-viruses and intrusion detectors lessen the risks, but it is a question of “when” security will be breached, not “if”. The need for a frequent, fast, and efficient backup and restore has never been greater.

Now, Horizon DataSys has come out with RollBack Rx Pro™ that takes a bit-level snapshot of your hard drive in 1 to 3 seconds. You read that correctly, that’s seconds! Rollback Rx is based on a groundbreaking new technology called “incremental sector mapping”. This technology gives it its blazing snapshot speed. And, as only changed sectors are snapshot – the more often you use it, the faster it works. I can’t think of a better encouragement to use it more often.

At Horizon DataSys for example, all the machines in their network are set on an automatic hourly snapshot. When asked why they were doing such frequent backups, President Lyle Patel’s answer was, “’…because we can!” There is literally zero impact on productivity - machines marginally slow for about one second an hour.

And that’s not all. The Rollback Rx Restore function is a true bit-for-bit recovery of the complete hard drive. Pick any snapshot and get back everything as of that point in time: the programs, the drivers, the data, the Registry settings, everything. Rollback Rx even recovers the contents of your Recycle Bin! And how long does that take? Try about 3 seconds plus a restart.

Also, Rollback Rx will store 60,000 snapshots in less than 0.1% of your disk. Multiple restore points are available to you. So, even if you don’t know when your drive was infected, you can step back gingerly until you are clear.

Back from the future

But, if you have to revert a day, a week or a month, what about all the lost work? Believe it or not, Rollback RX recovers data from the future! Let us say that you go back to a snapshot from a month ago. You can ask Rollback Rx to “recover data to latest image”. Rollback RX will hunt forward and update data files (only) from any later snapshots you have taken! If you do hourly snapshots – well, you get the picture.

Here is how you would recover even more. You get an error or discover an infection. Close out all open documents and take an immediate snapshot, infection, error and all. Use Rollback RX to go back to the last clean baseline and ask it to recover data forward. Now, you’ve got every last keystroke back.

A Real Example

Rollback Rx’s performance sounds almost miraculous, but I can personally attest to it. Here is my (Robin Chakravarti) actual experience of my first Snapshot and a Restore.
Using MS Backup: As a benchmark, I backed up my work system: (XP Pro SP2, Kaspersky, MS Office and some data files – altogether around 6 GB). It estimated 4 hours and 40 minutes and an additional 4.3 GB to back up to a second internal hard drive. I tried to work, but the machine just crawled during the backup so, around 2 hours in, I cancelled the job. Does this sound familiar?

Using Rollback Rx Pro: With the same 6 GB system, I did the first snapshot – it took 3 seconds, 400K used. I then immediately took second snapshot – it took 1 second, zero K used. It was so fast that, frankly, I had my suspicions that Rollback was really doing anything.

Then, at my boss’s urging, I deleted the following: MyDocs, MS Office and almost all of \System32 (!).I cleaned all the icons off y Desktop. He wanted me to continue deleting things till I got a BSoD. By this time, I thought I was totally toast anyway and to go on till a BSoD would be overkill. I then took the “restore” option on Rollback. The machine restarted, and offered me a choice of restore points. I selected one and 3 seconds later, EVERYTHING was back- my icons, \System32, MyDocs, MS Office, everything. My “recently opened files” lists were restored into every application. Even my Recycle Bin was back!

Differences from MS System Restore

XP has a built-in System Restore function, but this is restricted to recovering (some not all) system files only. This means that you can uninstall a failing driver or update, but nothing else. Now newer malware survives a System Restore. In addition, System Restore has a certain (ahem!) unfortunate reputation.

Rollback Rx recovers every single bit on the drive. It will recover a system from BSoD, the Blue Screen of Death. It will even rescue a PC whose drive has been formatted AND Fdisked!

Enterprise version

Rollback Rx Pro comes in an Enterprise version that permits remote management of snapshots and rollbacks. Working through a web interface, the security manager can manage any machine in a network from anywhere. This version is popular with large commercial Customers.

Public Access Machines?

Rollback Rx also comes in a “Standard” version that permits only a single snapshot, and not the 60,000 permitted by the Pro version. This snapshot can automatically be restored on logoff or restart; so the next user can have a clean baseline system. This version is popular with institution with a lot of Public Access machines such as School Districts and Libraries. Incidentally, if you take the Enterprise version, you can have any mix of Standard and Pro clients that you please.

Conclusions

I don’t quite know how to phrase this but Rollback Rx is a “complete new thing”. It’s not just another “me too” backup product, offering to work marginally faster and take marginally less space than the competition. Rollback Rx Pro works in seconds and restores in seconds and restores a complete bit-image. Now backup and restore has become a trivial thing.

I had actually begun to dread going the Internet, as it had so many traps for the unwary – but now I lost my fear. I feel like I am back to the first careless days of the Net, when you could safely browse everywhere and hardly ever end up with a virus. And even if I do get infected, it is a trivial matter to back out cleanly.
Of course, you still have to be identify nasty-ware in order to remove it, but hopefully spyware identifiers and firewalls will continue to do a good job. Rollback RX Pro, however, does a much better job of backing you out from an infection.

Cryptainer LE - Free 128 bit file and disk encryption software

Cryptainer LE encryption software was developed as a freeware 128 bit file/disk encrypting tool.

It a simple, easy to use software that creates encrypted "vaults".
One can store any kind of data in them It creates a 128 bit "vault" that encrypts all files by simply dragging and dropping them into this vault.

Additionally it lets you create secure e-mail files that you can send to anyone.

The free, fully-functional Cryptainer LE version uses a 128-bit implementation of the powerful Blowfish algorithm while the registered versions Cryptainer ME, Cryptainer PE and Cryptainer 6 offer a choice between a 448-bit implementation of Blowfish and a 256-bit implementation of AES (Rijndael).

Cryptainer LE Free encryption software encrypts all files by simply dragging and dropping them into the vault.

Cryptainer LE ensures absolute complete security for your data making sure that only you and nobody else can access your data. Cryptainer LE creates an encrypted volume that can be accessed only with your password.

Once mounted, the volume behaves as a standard windows drive. and the files can be read, changed, as well as moved from one place to another.

Any kind of file - from word and excel documents to movies and pictures, can be encrypted. You can also send secure email attachments.

It runs on most 32 bit versions of Windows (95/98/ME/2000/XP).
The best part - this package is totally free to use. A must have for every desktop.

Here are some key features of "Cryptainer LE":

· Creates an encrypted container (vault) to store any type of data.
· 128 bit strong encryption
· Simple drag and drop operation
· Easy to use, Impossible to break.
· Works on all versions of Windows.
· Works on all Media including removable (USB Drives, etc)
· Send Secure E-mails

How to create a backup of all drivers and restore them - easy way

Double driver v2.1

It really gives many people headaches and troubles when it comes to re-installation of your Windows operating system. After the Windows installation, you need to find and install all hardware drivers again. You may get into troubles if you don’t have the Driver CD or you have lost it or they are unavailable on the net?

Double Driver is a freeware Windows application that allows you to backup hardware drivers on your system for restoration purpose at a later time. This driver backup utility can save you a lot of time and comes in handy especially when you need to reinstall your Windows. Instead of going through all kind the troubles, you can use Double Driver to get all your hardware drivers restored in one go.
How to use Double Driver?

First of all, launch Double Driver after successful installation. Click the scan button to scan for drivers on your system. You can check specific drivers or select them all for backup.

It really gives many people headaches and troubles when it comes to re-installation of your Windows operating system. After the Windows installation, you need to find and install all hardware drivers again. You may get into troubles if you don’t have the Driver CD or you have lost it or they are unavailable on the net?

Double Driver is a freeware Windows application that allows you to backup hardware drivers on your system for restoration purpose at a later time. This driver backup utility can save you a lot of time and comes in handy especially when you need to reinstall your Windows. Instead of going through all kind the troubles, you can use Double Driver to get all your hardware drivers restored in one go.
How to use Double Driver?

First of all, launch Double Driver after successful installation. Click the scan button to scan for drivers on your system. You can check specific drivers or select them all for backup.

To restore drivers, click the restore button. Locate the directory containing your drivers backup and click Restore.

You can download it from: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/System-Info/Double-Driver.shtml