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Install Google Sitemap Generator beta1 on Debian x86_64 Lenny GNU/Linux

By PC Tips on Sunday, September 5th, 2010 | No Comments

Did you look up a good quick way to have an automatically generated sitemaps on a number of websites?
If you do as I have, then what you’re looking for is probably Google Sitemap Generator .

Though the software is yet in beta stage it looks promising and could be used to automatically generated sitemaps for your websites using the access logs of each of the websites as a basis for the links to be included in your sitemap.xml and from thence to sitemap.xml.gz

I decided to explain about my hurdles and pains throughout installing and configuring Google Sitemap Generator.
Since officially there is no explanation on how to install Google Sitemap Genreator beta1 on Debian Lenny Linux andpossibly some other Debian based distributions like Ubuntu.

So here is the exactly how I installed googlesitemapgenerator

1. Download the sitemap_linux beta for x86_64 if you’re running an amd64 server architecture as I am :

- Be sure to be running with a super user, otherwise the install won’t proceed

linux-server:~# wget http://googlesitemapgenerator.googlecode.com/files/sitemap_linux-x86_64-beta1-20091231.tar.gz

2. Untar the archive

linux-server:~# tar -zxvf sitemap_linux-x86_64-beta1-20091231.tar.gz drwxrwxrwx maoyq/eng 0 2009-12-31 01:24 sitemap-install/ -rwxrwxrwx maoyq/eng 5530 2009-12-31 01:24 sitemap-install/apache.sh -rwxrwxrwx maoyq/eng 1218 2009-12-31 01:24 sitemap-install/autostart.sh -rwxrwxrwx maoyq/eng 1145 2009-12-31 01:24 sitemap-install/google-sitemap-generator-ctl ...

linux-server:~# mv sitemap-install/ /usr/local/src
linux-server:~# cd /usr/local/src/sitemap-install/

3. Launch the google sitemap generator installer script

linux-server:/usr/local/src# ./install.sh

Next few you will be required to answer few trivial questions.

************************************************************ Welcome to Google Sitemap Generator (Beta)!

For more information, please visit:

http://code.google.com/p/googlesitemapgenerator/

************************************************************
PRIVACY WARNINGAny Sitemap information that you send to Google, including Sitemaps created
using the Sitemap Generator, should be consistent with commitments you make to
your users in your site’s privacy policy. If your site contains or generates
URLs that contain user information, you must filter the user information out of
the data that you send to Google. Instructions for filtering such information
can be found in the Sitemap Generator configuration instructions.

In addition, you must add language to your privacy policy substantially similar
to the following: “This site uses a tool that collects your requests for pages and passes elements of them to search engines to assist them in indexing this site. We control the configuration of the tool and are responsible for any information sent to the search engines.”
The product Terms of Service follows. …………………………

now press q

Do you agree with the Terms of Service? [N/y] y
This installation updates the Apache configuration file. To find that file,the installer needs the location of the Apache binary (httpd) or controlscript (apachectl). The binary or control script that you specify mustsupport the -V option.

What is the location of the Apache binary or control script? [/usr/sbin/apache2]/usr/sbin/apache2ctl
Can’t determine Group directive for Apache./usr/sbin/apache2ctl is not a supported Apache binary or control script.Do you want to enter a different location for the Apache binary or control script? [Y/n]

This warning is about to prevent you of properly installing the google sitemap generator on Debian Lenny or Debian Testing / Unstable Linux.

– To get around the issue and continuing with the installation, you will have to edit google sitemap generator install.sh script

Therein set or change the following variables in install.sh:

HTTPD_CONF="/etc/apache2/apache2.conf" arg_apache_binary="/usr/sbin/apache2" arg_apache_group="www-data" arg_apache_conf="/etc/apache2/apache2.conf" arg_apache_ctl="/usr/sbin/apache2ctl"

For your convenience I’ve also provided the working copy of google sitemap generator install.sh you can just download the install.sh and overwrite the original install.sh bundled with google sitemap generator beta1.

Further on start it up again and answer the required questions, from thence the install should succeed.

Afterwards be sure to enable port 8181 in your firewall, otherwise you won’t be able to access “googlesitemap generator web interface”.
Thereon to access google sitemap generator web interface and configure it for which domain names I desire to generate sitemaps as well as some other data relating the automated sitemap generations for my websites I pointed my IceWeasel browser to:

http://my-server.net:8181

Instead of a the nice login interface of google sitemap generator I faced:

Remote access is denied.

Make sure https is used if you want to access Google Sitemap Generator from remote IP. You can go to help center for how to enable https.

If you are on local machine, make sure you are not using proxy.

After some research online I was able to enable the remote access to Google Sitemap Generator web interface, I achieved that following the prescriptions in:
googlesitemapgenerator’s documentation Enable Google sitemap generator remote access

I have enabled the remote access to googlesitemapgenerator on Debian Lenny Linux via the command:linux-server:~# /usr/local/google-sitemap-generator/bin/sitemap-daemon remote_admin enable

- Now access again the Google Sitemap Generator web interface, I’m convinced you will love it, since it’s heavily “google unified”.
I suggest you also take a look at a nice similar article to this one called Easy Google Sitemap Generation with SitemapGen

Hopefully this article is about to shed you some further light on how googlesitemapgenerator works and will help you to better understand Google’s program’s web interface.

How to Install Apache on Linux

By PC Tips on Friday, September 3rd, 2010 | No Comments

Before You Begin Installing Apache

Apache is one of the most popular web servers, and part of its charm is that it’s free. It also has a lot of features that make it very extensible and useful for many different types of websites. It is a server that is used for everything from personal web pages to enterprise level sites.

This article will discuss how to install Apache on a Linux system. Before we start you should be at least comfortable working in Linux – changing directories, using tar and gunzip, and compiling with make (I’ll discuss where to get binaries if you don’t want to mess with compiling your own). You should also have access to the root account on the server machine.
Download Apache

I recommend downloading the latest stable release. At the time of this writing, that was Apache 2.2. The best place to get Apache is from the Apache HTTP Server download site. Download the source files appropriate to your system. Binary releases for some operating systems are available as well.
Extract the Apache Files

Once you’ve downloaded the files you need to uncompress them:

gunzip -d httpd-2_0_NN.tar.gz
tar xvf httpd-2_0_NN.tar

This creates a new directory under the current directory with the source files.
Configuring Your Server for Apache

Once you’ve got the files, you need to tell your machine where to find everything by configuring the source files. The easiest way is to accept all the defaults and just type:

./configure

Of course, most people don’t want to accept just the default choices. The most important option is the prefix=PREFIX option. This specifies the directory where the Apache files will be installed. You can also set specific environment variables and modules. Some of the modules I like to have installed include:

* mod_alias – to map different parts of the URL tree
* mod_include – to parse Server Side Includes
* mod_mime – to associate file extensions with its MIME-type
* mod_rewrite – to rewrite URLs on the fly
* mod_speling (sic) – to help your readers who might misspell URLs
* mod_ssl – to allow for strong cryptography using SSL
* mod_userdir – to allow system users to have their own web page directories

Please keep in mind that these aren’t all the modules I might install on a given system. Read the details about the modules to determine which ones you need.
Build Apache

As with any source installation, you’ll then need to build the installation:

make
make install

Customize Apache

Assuming that there were no problems, you are ready to customize your Apache configuration. This really just amounts to editing the httpd.conf file. This file is located in the PREFIX/conf directory. I generally edit it with text editor.

vi PREFIX/conf/httpd.conf

Note: you’ll need to be root to edit this file.

Follow the instructions in this file to edit your configuration the way you want it. More help is available on the Apache website.
Test Your Apache Server

Open a web browser on the same machine and type http://localhost/ in the address box. You should see a page similar to the one in the partial screen shot above. It will say in big letters “Seeing this instead of the website you expected?” This is good news, as it means your server is installed correctly.
Start Editing/Uploading Pages to Your Newly Installed Apache Web Server

Once your server is up and running you can start posting pages. Have fun building your website.

Article last updated: July 18, 2010.

How To Stop an Apache Web Server (Linux)

By PC Tips on Thursday, September 2nd, 2010 | No Comments

If your Linux Apache Web server is started, you can stop it with just a couple of steps.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 1 minute
Here’s How:

1. Login to your Web server machine using SSH or telnet.
2. Su to root.
3. Run the apache control program:
apachectl stop

Tips:

1. This command shuts down the server immediately.
2. Any existing connections are terminated immediately.

How To Restart an Apache Web Server (Linux)

By PC Tips on Wednesday, September 1st, 2010 | No Comments

If your Linux Apache Web server is started, you can stop and restart it with just a couple of steps.
Difficulty: Easy
Time Required: 1 minute
Here’s How:

1. Login to your Web server machine using SSH or telnet.
2. Su to root.
3. Run the apache control program:
apachectl graceful
4. You can also run the apache control program in this way:
apachectl restart

Tips:

1. graceful reloads the configuration files and gracefully restart. Any current connections are allowed to complete.
2. restart reloads the configuration files and restarts. Any current connections are terminated immediately.
3. If the server isn’t running, these commands will start it up.

Easy Steps On How To Build A Website Using Dreamweaver

By PC Tips on Wednesday, July 28th, 2010 | No Comments

Some people may have the idea that building a website is a painstaking task for novices especially upon hearing technical names like Dreamweaver. However, what they don’t realize is that there are steps you can follow that even beginners in the web designing field can learn immediately. Learning how to build a website using Dreamweaver is not difficult if you have easy to remember steps you can follow.

Dreamweaver is a very handy tool for both novices and web professionals. It supports various web technologies and other server-side scripting languages. You can use it as a stand-alone software program or use it along with other web designing tools.

To get you started on how to build a website using Dreamweaver, here’s what you should do:

Step 1 ‘“ Install the Dreamweaver program on your computer. Once the program is properly installed, open the program to start using. Begin by clicking on file and then select new from the drop-down menu. A pop-up window will be seen that would ask you what type of website you want to create. Click on “Basic Page” then click on “Create.” This will now be your opening page.

Step 2 ‘“ You may save this file by clicking on File and selecting “Save As” from the drop-down menu. Create a folder with the name “index.htm” which will then contain all the files to be uploaded on this page. Save your opening page using the filename “index.htm” in the same folder.

Step 3 ‘“ Now you may begin building your website. You may start by typing the title at the upper middle side of the page. Highlight the title and choose the color, font and size that you want to use.

Step 4 ‘“ Fill your website with whatever you want to appear on your site. Your contents should be pleasing to look at and should be fun, informative and relevant to your target viewers. Again, you may change the style of your text by clicking on Window and then Properties.

Step 5 ‘“ You can make use of the toolbar to make alterations to the visual effects of your website. You may add background color that is complimentary to your text as well as create links to other websites. Then, repeat the same process with other alterations and additions you would like to perform on your site.

Step 6 ‘“ Add some pictures to liven up the image of your website. Save these image files on the same folder where you saved the webpage, “index.htm.”

Step 7 ‘“ To make your website searchable through the search engines, you must create metatags. To do this, first click on “insert” and then select “head.” When you see “description,” click on it and type a description of your site. Use the same procedure to start adding keywords or key phrases. Make sure you add comma and single space after each keyword to separate them from each other.

As you can see, the process on how to build a website using Dreamweaver is really not that difficult. Just make sure to save your file after performing each step and your website will be all set and ready to be uploaded on the internet.

Things To Remember Before Buying Twitter Followers

By PC Tips on Tuesday, July 27th, 2010 | No Comments

With the increasing members of the so-called social site Twitter, everyone wants to know the latest happenings in town has become a trend; buying Twitter followers is not a thing to be mocked about; increasing one’s popularity by soliciting to sites to look for potential followers are just some of the things that is now happening in the “Twitverse” page.

Twitter works by updating your status called tweets and letting people read your post. You can also reply on their posts in return if you are following them. Following people is actually letting them make random tweets over some nonsense stuffs in your wall. As a result, you will see everything that they tweet which is annoying especially if you don’t know the people you are following.

But there are different ways to increase your popularity on Twitter. Other stars and celebrities are making hundreds and even thousands of followers per day. Because of their popularity, they are able to gather as much as a million followers in just a few days time. They are popular, no doubt about that. And if you have enough money, then you can advertise yourself in a billboard like what Ashton Kutcher did.

With the above mentioned ways to increase your popularity in Twitter, it seems like you need to be a celebrity and have a lot of money to gather a huge amount of followers. Don’t be discouraged yet. There are some ways to increase your followers in a short span of time. One is through blog sites. If you have a blog site, you can post a link that says “Follow Me”. Eager readers in your blog would like to know more about you and one way to do this is by following their favorite writer. Other is through some social sites. Posting random statuses in your other social sites will increase your possibility of gathering followers. Stick to your Twitter username. By doing so, you are promoting your Twitter account in such a simple way. You can as well retweet (RT) your followers Tweets making an impression that you are friendly and takes time to read their tweets. That particular person will somehow interest your friendly approach and will eventually follow you. RT some popular celebrity’s status and let other people know you exist. You can also advertise your Twitter account through websites links when commenting and on your messenger status.
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But if you do not like to undergo such tiresome way of persuading others to follow you, you can easily find some site that sells Twitter followers. This gives you the easy way of gathering followers in a much reliable way if you are into promoting your companies name.

7 Questions to Ask a SEO Company

By PC Tips on Saturday, July 3rd, 2010 | No Comments

Now, anybody who has been following my websites over the years should know by now that I like to go down the, do it yourself route most of the time. However, if you are a company with a budget to spare, hiring a search engine optimization expert or firm might be a worthy investment.

However, before you sign on the dotted line and hand them over your hard earned cash, I would suggest you go over these seven important factors when it comes to the search engine optimization business.

1. Don’t Fall for Getting Listed
If a company simply says they will get you listed in X number of search engines, run away. You can simply do that yourself for free at each search engine’s website.
2. Know What You Are Paying For
Be sure they you get it in writing, each service that they are doing to be doing for you, and get details on each as far as how exactly it will be helping you become more optimized for the search engines out there.
3. Beware Link Exchanges
Stay away from any company that says they will do link exchanges for you. Most of the time you will just become a part of a large network of websites that link to other websites, and the search engines don’t like the whole link farming idea.
4. Stay Within Your Budget
Do not get talked into spending more money than you have put aside for search engine optimization. Stick to your budget, and find an SEO firm that will work with you and you financial status.
5. Ask for References and Results
Always be sure to ask for a list of clients websites they have done work for in the past, and where they were able to help. This is another way they can prove to you they are a legitimate operation.
6. Stay Away from Guarantees
Do not do business with people who guarantee things that sound too good to be true. Nobody can promise the number one spot in Google for your favorite keyword. If they do offer a guarantee, ask for proof and examples.
7. Read Customer Reviews
Make sure you read all the reviews you can from the company and from other resources around the Web about the company to see if they have ever had any complaints about them. Now you have to take each review with a grain of salt, but overall you should be able to get a good idea of if they are a good or bad SEO company.

Last but not least, expect to pay a hefty price when it comes to hiring an SEO expert or buying into a SEO business’s services. They don’t come cheap, and that is why most of the time I personally like to go down the “do it yourself” route when it comes to optimizing my own websites for the search engines out there.

Want More? – Check out the rest of the SEO conversation in Podcast 209!
Add me on Twitter! Come follow my daily antics, links, tips and more @mitchkeeler on Twitter!

Apache Exploit Revealed

By PC Tips on Friday, July 2nd, 2010 | No Comments

A major benefit of using Open Source software is that extensive and vocal user communities and analytics groups tend to form around the most popular applications — including around the sweetheart of adult (and mainstream) webhosting, the Apache HTTP Server.

This critical piece of software underpins countless adult websites and thus supports the daily availability of the adult Internet in no small way — so a swift response must meet any threat to it.

Sense of Security recently revealed one such threat, when it demonstrated a dangling pointer vulnerability within some Apache installation’s mod_isapi module.

“mod_isapi is a core module of the Apache package that implements the Internet Server extension API,” the SOS warning states. “The extension allows Apache to serve Internet Server extensions (ISAPI .dll modules) for Microsoft Windows based hosts.”

“By sending a specially crafted request followed by a reset packet it is possible to trigger a vulnerability in Apache mod_isapi that will unload the target ISAPI module from memory,” the report elaborated. “However function pointers still remain in memory and are called when published ISAPI functions are referenced.”

The resulting dangling pointer exploit allows the execution of arbitrary code.

“The vulnerability means that you can take complete control of the web server remotely with system privileges — which is the highest privilege on Windows,” Jason Edelstein, a Sense of Security spokesperson, stated. “An attacker could gain access to, modify and take away data.”

The recommended solution is for affected Apache users to upgrade to the software’s latest version.

Distinct Custom Logo Design Can Help You To Avoid Mistakes

By PC Tips on Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010 | No Comments

Many entrepreneurs and businessmen are divided about logo design as reckoning on situations or a reason or business because logo design is either important or it’s a trivial thing at the early stage and either way of thinking can lead to re-evaluate if company’s logo design is hurting business.

Content: A bad design is not appreciated but there are business leaders as well as your graphic designers and not every people can be both also there are bad judgments about how a logo design comes out because the ultimate responsible person to have the say on this is the one who ordered it.

How To Convert Leads Into Customers With Automated Email Marketing Campaigns Step-By-Step!

By PC Tips on Saturday, May 8th, 2010 | No Comments

As an entrepreneur or business owner, you know its critical to be in touch with your customers. Thats how you stay top of mind with them, and how you build trust. And as I am sure you have heard many times, if people trust you, they will buy from you. Email marketing also increases your chances of getting word of mouth referrals, because people can easily forward your email to their friends and family, which is a beautiful and effective recommendation of your business by someone’s friend or family member!

The easiest and most effective way to stay in touch with your list of existing customers and prospects is through email marketing. The way to make it automatic so that you do not spend hours and hours emailing all of your leads is to use a service called an autoresponder. Thats just a fancy name for a service that sends emails automatically on a certain predetermined timeline to your list. If you wanted to, you could sit down one day and write thirty different emails, and then tell your autoresponder service to send a different one each day to your entire email list for an entire month! That’s probably overkill and you would annoy a lot of customers if you bombard them every day, but this example shows you the power of autoresponders. Imagine if you had to write a separate email every day to each of the hundred or thousand people on your email list for thirty days. You would never get it done, but you could get it done with an email autoresponder system. If youve ever signed up for something online, its likely that youve been on the receiving end of an autoresponder email. So many internet marketers use them because they work so well.

There are several inexpensive email-marketing services, such as iContact, Constant Contact and AWeber. They are in the range of $10-15 a month and its incredibly easy to set up your account. I personally recommend iContact, as I have used all three that I mentioned in this article plus another one called 1ShoppingCart in my own businesses, and have found iContact’s system to be the easiest and most user-friendly. Then, if you have a bunch of existing customer emails, you can upload your list of existing customer email addresses from an Excel file to your new account, and youre ready to go! As you add new names to your list using strategies like squeeze pages or opt-in pages, those new leads will be automatically entered onto your list so you can market to them in the future.<

Now that youve set up your account, and have uploaded your list, its time to begin communicating. It’s okay if you only have ten people on your list, just start communicating with them and providing value to them a couple times a week. Daily emails are generally too often and get annoying, unless people specifically signed up for a daily tip. However, if you are communicating with your list any less frequently than once every two weeks or so, you run the risk of people forgetting about you entirely in this age of information and short attention spans! Another helpful tip: dont use ALL CAPS or exclamation points in your email subject lines, because Spam filters will likely identify these emails and pull them out before your customers can read them.

When thinking about content for your emails, keep it short, to a few paragraphs at maximum, and keep your content focused on one primary message. You are trying to deliver one important message in your email, not tell them everything about your industry or everything you can do for them. Remember, youll be communicating with your audience again soon enough! And, make sure you keep your content interesting and useful, so that your customers get in the habit of opening your emails and not just deleting them as useless promotion. Useful, funny and/or entertaining is so much more powerful for growing your relationships with your prospects and customers than dry, information overloaded, or overly promotional.

Now that youve written the first email, you can create an autoresponder series in your email marketing account, and make this email the first one in the autoresponder series. Then, you can draft as many follow up messages as you would like, and set them to be sent automatically to this list on, for example, day 4, then day 7, then day 12, etc. This way you can knock out a months worth of marketing in one shot, quickly and easily! You have now enabled your business to communicate with customers and prospects instantly and continually, for only a few dollars a month. Email marketing should pay for itself very quickly, as it usually only takes one new customer or add-on sale to pay for the service itself.

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