.::output >> /dev/null::. : Category site-updates, everything about site-updates

Updated to Typo5

Thu, 20 Mar 2008 17:37:00 -0700

So I discovered that my web host just upgraded to Rails 2. How did I make the discovery? Well, both my blogs were malfunctioning. And when a rails web application malfunctions, it is usually a good idea to check if they had upgraded it. Previous experience with Typo should have taught me that but sometimes I forget such things.

I should definitely freeze the rails version right now so that I don't encounter such problems in the future.

Anyway, I grabbed the latest version of Typo and installed it. I must say the latest version really looks slick. I chose to use the same Scribbish theme for this blog but there are two new themes that are pretty nice too.

One caveat is that some of the plug-ins have been removed from the base Typo installation. This caused me some problems as I migrated my blog over. I could have just installed the old plug-ins following the instructions from here but I decided to stay fresh. I am not sure whether there is an easier way to do this, but I basically went into the database and remove the sidebars table:
DELETE from sidebars;

I am going to upgrade the softwareengineering.vazexqi.com blog in the next few hours so it should be back up by tonight.

vazexqi.com updated

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:36:35 -0700

After delaying for a very long time, I have finally updated the root vazexqi.com site and turned it into something that reflects more of what I am doing as a Ph.D. student. I was only compelled to do it because the CS department demanded a curriculum vitae from each of its students. I wanted to put a web address on my CV so that people can keep up with what I am doing and find. However, I did not feel that it was appropriate to put my blog address directly on it; after all, a website that starts with the word "blog" might not sound professional enough to some academic peers (it should be fine for a developer's blog though).

I was too lazy to actually write everything from scratch so I decided to give RapidWeaver a try. I had used it before for various tasks but I am only needed to use the demo version since I would just borrow (and credit) their templates and then code everything up by hand. But this time, I decided that since vazexqi.com was going to be mostly static content, I needed a convenient way to easily update it using some application. Also, I am not really a web designer so I would like to be able to quickly change the template without having to do too much work on my part.

Overall, I think the new look is pretty decent. There are things that still need updating but overall it's a good start. There are two things now that I must remember to do: constantly update the static pages and upload a picture of myself to the front page....

I don't really subscribe to the idea of putting yourself out there on the web for everyone (like this guy) but I do think that it is important to have a clean web page where your peers can easily find you.

vazexqi.com updated

Sun, 16 Mar 2008 21:36:35 -0700

Spam measures for this site

Mon, 06 Aug 2007 19:22:48 -0700

Seems like I was hit by some comment spammers this afternoon which cause this site to be down.

As as a precaution, I have disabled trackbacks site wide and also limit comments so that they can only be entered via the web interface (meaning that you need to use the Ajax interface). This should not be a problem since I get very little feedback anyway and I definitely do not want the site to go down again because of spam.

I do have Akismet protection but it did not seem to protect against the kinds of spam that were hitting me.

Updated to Typo 4.1

Mon, 19 Mar 2007 16:29:00 -0700

I just updated to Typo 4.1 today. It seems to have fixed the theme issues that I was having. Either way I just defaulted to using the scribbish theme until there is a compliant theme for Typo 4.1.

Typo 4.2 is going to be out in the next couple of months. One feature that I look forward to is the support for multiple blogs with a single Typo instance. Hopefully the developers add the ability to easily merge existing blogs into one single instance. You can read about the rest of planned features here.

Typo theme is not working

Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:12:27 -0800

The theme for Typo is not working correctly. I am not sure what is wrong. I have tried selecting different themes (even trying the defaults ones: Azure and Scribbish) but to no avail. I have even tried reinstalling Typo but that does not work also. I am using Typo 4.03 and I am not using the unstable versions from Typo trunk so I am really not sure what is going on. It just stopped working one day. I don't think the upgrade to Rails 1.2 broke anything since my other blog at softwarengineering.vazexqi.com is still working fine.

Testing trackback in Typo

Tue, 31 Oct 2006 23:14:00 -0800

I am going to refer to my post at softwareengineering.vazexqi.com and see if Typo successfully sends the trackback to the article.

Update: This works so I at least know that Typo is not broken. I was just curious to test out its trackback system since there is no field to put the trackback URI. Instead, Typo is supposed to automatically scan the articles that you write for Trackback URI and send a ping to them.

Installed Lightbox 2.02

Wed, 23 Aug 2006 20:00:03 -0700

Lately, I have been seeing all those cool effects on other people's blog that shade the entire web page in dark grey while the picture that the visitor just clicked is displayed prominently in the middle. Not only is that really cool, it's pretty useful as well especially if you just want to view a larger image without leaving the page. In other words, I think it is efficient use of screen estate.

Also, I just realized that Typo 4 actually ships with a version 1.0 of Lightbox. The effects are simpler as compared to version 2.02. You can get a nice preview of it here. So, here are the steps I took to upgrade Lightbox.

Grab the latest version of Lightbox from here.
Unzip the file to get all the good stuff.
FTP/SFTP to your Typo 4 blog and navigate to your /public folder. Replace the lightbox.js file in /public/javascripts with the one you just downloaded. Do the same for the lightbox.css file in /public/stylesheets
Also, upload the images found in the folder you just unzipped to /public/images. You need to upload all the images except image-1.jpg and thumb-1.jpg.
Navigate to /themes/<your theme >/layouts. Modify default.rhtml so that you includes the following 4 lines (if they are not there already)
<%= javascript_include_tag "prototype" %> <%= javascript_include_tag "scriptaculous" %> <%= javascript_include_tag "lightbox" %> <%= stylesheet_link_tag "/stylesheets/lightbox.css" %>

As an added bonus, you can also use the built-in filter for Typo to quickly generate the html to overlay the image. This is the easiest way to try out Lightbox. Here is a sample that loads an image from Flickr. The magic number is the UID for the picture on Flickr.
<typo:lightbox img="201524385" thumbsize="medium" displaysize="original" alt="Jacking up the car" />
Just a quick reminder. If you do not have a Flickr Pro account, you should not set the displaysize parameter above to "original" since you do not have that feature. Instead set it to "large" or something else.

For more help, refer to the documentation at http://< your blog >/admin/textfilters/macro_help/lightbox

Right now, if you click on any of the images on this main page you will be able to see the effects. I am not going to update the previous images I have posted since that will take too much time.

Upgraded to Typo 4

Thu, 03 Aug 2006 02:29:22 -0700

Typo 4.0 seems to be a major release from Typo 2.6.0. I remember the panic that occurred when Rails 1.1. was released and how it broke my Typo installation. Fortunately, freezing the version of Rails was a good solution that has sustained my blog until today. Anyway, Typo 4.0 was released a couple of days back and there was no major bugs reported for the past few days. So, I took the plunge into upgrading my blog. And in the process moved it over to a new subdomain.

Upgrading Typo is a relatively pain free process especially since there is now a ruby gem for first time users. However, there are some issues that deterred me from using the gem. First: railsapphosting.com does not have that gem installed (yet?). Second: the gem wants to use sqlite as the database backend. I much prefer using MySQL since I will save myself the trouble of converting my previous blog entries into sqlite format.

Anyway, here is how I upgraded. Some of these steps might not be necessary especially if you have a decent backup of everything. However, I am using the safe route here because I really do not want to lose any of my previous blog entries.

Create subdomain
I created a subdomain called blog.vazexqi.com from the CPanel interface. This is probably specific to railsapphosting.com but all other hosts should have some web-based interface for doing this. Anyway, the steps are clearly described here .
Create new database
I plan to keep my old database around for the time being so that the original website can still access it. I noticed that Typo 4.0 has a new schema compared to Typo 2.6 so there is no way to share the same database between different installations. Again, the CPanel in railsapphosting.com offers a good way to set up a new MySQL database. Make sure that you remember the database name, username and password. You will need them when you fill in the database.yml file in Typo.
Transfer old database to new database
There must be an easier way to do this but I did it using two commands.
1. mysqldump -u <username> -p <database_to_export_from> > <filename>.sql
2. mysql -u <username> -p <database_to_import_into> < <filename>.sql
Originally, I wanted to use CocoaMySQL but it was not able to do it and keep throwing NULL errors at me.
Obtain Typo 4.0
Get it and untar it into the directory that we created from Step 1. We must be careful not to overwrite the dispatch.* files inside the public folder.
Fill in config/database.yml
Use the fields from Step 2 above. This should be fairly simple. For the time being, we are going to run it in development mode. So make sure you fill in the right fields in the development slot. Also, fill in the same details for the production mode slot.
Do a rake migrate
In the Typo folder that you have untarred, execute rake migrate. This will migrate the database from version 2.6 to the newer version. Make sure that there are no errors.
Edit config/environment.rb
Uncomment the line that allows you to run your rail application in production mode. This is one way of forcing your application into production mode. And it seems like the easiest way.
Initial login
Since you upgraded from a previous installation, your username/password will still work. Log in to <the_domain_from_step1>/admin. You can tweak around with whatever settings you want. However, the MOST important step is to go to the Themes tab and activate one of the two themes included by default. Without doing this, your blog will not render and will throw a Rails Application Error.
Visit your blog
Try opening your blog at this stage. It should appear with no problems. Also try posting a new entry.
Finishing touches
Install a new theme, configure your domain names and do whatever else it takes to make you satisfied with your new Typo blog.

In conclusion, upgrading to the latest version of Typo is not as hard as it seems. In fact, it was rather painless for me except for the problems copying my previous database over using CocoaMySQL.

One new feature of Typo 4.0 is support for macros. One of those macros allow nicely formatted code! At the moment, it only supports ruby, yaml and xml so for Scheme code I will still have to revert to vi for the 2html.vim. Here is a sample of the syntax-highlighted code blocks:


  1
2
3
4
5

  class Foo
  def bar
    "abcde"
  end
end

The Sparklines macro is also cool. Here is an example:

Here is a link to another site detailing how to get Typo 4.0 to work on DreamHost.

Here is the guide from the railsplayground wiki. Replace the file with wget http://rubyforge.org/frs/download.php/12330/typo-4.0.2.tgz if you are upgrading to Typo 4.0.2 to fix the issue with Rails 1.1.4

Wireless service set up

Wed, 07 Jun 2006 04:58:39 -0700

Went back to Malaysia and had to bear the slow internet speeds that we have here. Finally managed to install Streamyx, the only broadband connection that is being offered in Malaysia. Online registration is available but it takes three days for the service to activate. Moreover, even with the online registration, you have to go to the store to pick up a completely useless piece of CD that contained some video tutorials on how to connect the ADSL modem.

In the end, everything went alright. The DSL connection is a bit flaky in my area and it takes a couple of minutes for the handshake to be established. I signed up for the 1 Mbps option but was not able to get much more than during normal times. Probably the situation will improve when I use the connection in the wee hours of the morning.

Fortunately, I also opted for a wireless router. That way I need to go bury myself in the small room where the computer lies. The wireless connection is pretty steady and at least it provides a better alternative compared to connecting - or god forbid, taking turns to plug into the ethernet port - three notebook computers into a hub.

Well, the speed is decent and I am able to actually use the service with my MacBook Pro which does not come with a modem so dial-up is not an option. Back to reading my articles and getting all the latest updates. With this decent connection, I will probably be able to post more often to this blog.