Usually such situations involve setting up a server or using virtualization. Both of these processes involve some technical know how and most of all – a considerable amount of time.

We previously covered how you can create a Virtual Machine from the operating system you are currently running, so that you can easily carry along the installed software and settings from your computer to any other computer or vice versa. Today let’s look at another alternative that spares you a lot of trouble of messing around with configuration files.

It is called TurnKey Linux.

TurnKey Linux is different from your regular Linux distributions. Unlike most distributions, Turnkey Linux offers a turnkey solution and lets you download TurnKey Linux appliances according to your needs that are ready to run. The components are called appliances.

There are tons of really good open source software and we have previously shown you plenty of them here on MakeUseOf.  However beyond regular day to day use, many open source software power the backbone of plenty of commercial establishments. Apache Web server is a great example, which is used on the majority of servers on the Internet today. Turnkey Linux gathers many such Open Source software and makes them available as turnkey appliances.

So what exactly is a Turnkey Linux appliance you might wonder? Well, let’s put it this way, an appliance is a combination of a base operating system and software, serving a specialized purpose. As an example, let’s say you want to start an online community site. phpBB is an excellent php application that you can use for the said purpose. You would start by getting the hardware, then install PHP, MySQL, set them up to work together and then finally install phpBB.

However, using Turnkey Linux’s phpBB appliance, all you need to worry about is getting some hard disk space that you can put on the World Wide Web! You can just as easily use your own computer, provided it would stay online.

In Turnkey Linux’s case, the appliances are created using Ubuntu 8.04 as the base system and bundling all the required software along with it. There are plenty of appliances to choose from. Almost all of the popular commercially used open source applications have been covered and are available as separate appliances. There are appliances for web development, issue tracking, content management systems (excellent for creating your sites), others for setting up a variety of servers and a whole lots of others.

The appliances are available as bootable ISO images as well as VMDK file to use with your Virtualization software. There is also a “Launch to Cloud” option which uses Amazon EC2 and lets you launch your server in a snap. You can also find a Amazon EC2 tutorial in Turnkey Linux’s documentation, if you would like some help with EC2. The details page also lists the various software that you will get with the appliance, so you can easily see if it is what you are looking for before downloading.

Using the turnkey Linux appliance is as simple as it can get. Depending upon the method you choose to download the appliance you can either burn the ISO image to a disk and then boot from it, or use the VMDK image with VMware or Virtualbox. The appliance and bundled software are preconfigured and ready to use, you wouldn’t have to do anything other than to boot the system and use it!

Take Turnkey Linux for a spin if you are thinking to setup a Linux server of any kind, or perhaps a dedicated development environment or site. Let us know what you think of it? Which appliance did you use?

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There are a lot of OpenID providers, but my favourite is chi.mp is because you can have yourname.mp and not a subdomain like many other OpenID providers. You can see mine here.

But what happens when you want to use your own domain name and not a third party? Well, there is an open-sourced script called phpMyID that you can download which turns your own domain name into an OpenID login.

I have turned my website Jack Cola into my own personal OpenID login. This enables me to log in to any OpenID enabled websites.

Installation is pretty easy. All you have to do is download a small file from the phpMyID website.

You can either download a tgz or zip file by clicking the highlighted links as seen in the image above.

In the files you have downloaded, there are the basic files such as readme’s and changelogs, just as you would find in any script you download. Pay particular attention to MyID.config.php and MyID.php. These two files are the important ones.

It is best that you upload the files to your server first and edit them online as a few settings need to be checked to make sure your web server is setup correctly. Once you have uploaded your files, visit your website where you have uploaded them. I suggest uploading them to http://yourdomain.com/openID/.

Once uploaded, visit the MyID.config.php file. You will be shown a screen with text similar to this. Click on Login and make sure you can successfully login with the username and password of test.

Make sure you take notice of your Realm. If there is anything after phpMyID, your server is running in safemode and you need to change it in auth_password section. (See below)

To set up phpMyID there are two steps. Edit the MyID.config.php settings and include two lines of code in your webpage’s root directory.

Editing MyID.config.php

Open up MyID.config.php to edit. The names of the settings are pretty self explanatory.

auth_username: This is your login username. Set it to a username that you will remember.

auth_password: This step is a little tricky. For added security, you need to encrypt your password using the MD5 algorithm. To do this, if you are an Linux or OSX user, you can use openssl. Just type in

$ echo -n 'username:realm:password' | openssl md5

and remember to replace username with your username you specified in auth_username, the realm that was shown on the MyID.config.php page when you viewed it in a web browser, and the password that you want to use as your login.

If you are a Windows user, you can download this app, or use this this website to encrypt your password. If you use the website, make sure you use the entire username:realm:password string is used to generate your password. Once you have your encrypted text, set the auth_username value appropriately.

There are other settings in the config file that you don’t really need to touch (unless you want to). Just read the README file provided and it will explain what they mean.

If you want, you can edit your nickname, email, fullname, dob, gender, postcode, country, language and timezone, to use with the OpenID self registration component. Just remember to uncomment the lines out by deleting the # at the start of each line.

Once you have your auth_password, visit the MyID.config.php webpage and make sure you can log in with your new username and password. If you log in successfully, you will see a screen like this.

If it doesn’t work, have a read in the troubleshooting section in the README file.

Edit your website

Now the authentication is working smoothly, you just have to edit the index (or default) webpage for your website and add two lines of html of code to the head of the file.

<link rel="openid.server" href="http://phpmyid.com/MyID.config.php">
<link rel="openid.delegate" href="http://phpmyid.com/MyID.config.php">

Remember to change the href tag to the location of your MyID.config.php file. Note: If you are using a CMS such as Joomla, you will need to edit the template’s index.php file, and not the actual Joomla root index file.

The Final Step

Well maybe I lied. There is one more step. It is to log in to an OpenID-enabled website to check that everything works properly. I have a Wordpress plugin on my blog which allows you to register and log in using OpenID. If the website accepts your OpenID log in (and all is working) you will be prompted to enter your username and password. Remember that the OpenID login is your website’s URL.

You should now be logged into that site by using your domain name address. If it doesn’t allow you, try a different website, comment below, read the README file or ask in phpMyID’s forum.

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Another bonus is the support for a Linux client, but today we’ll be focusing on Windows to Windows streaming.

A couple of limitations:  one, you’ll have to pay to use resolutions higher than 640 x 480 while streaming. Two, the graphics quality will be reduced quite a bit as you’re streaming the game and you’ll be limited by your network. Three, they also ask you to pay to stream over the Internet beyond a trial.   You can see here what you can do with the free version versus the paid version.

Setting up the Server

• One of the first steps is that you’ll have to register an account to download their server and player software. They’ll ask for an email, username, and password.
• Download the server/player installer to both the computer that will run the actual game (server) and the computer that will be receiving the stream (client).
• Install the software. It’s a pretty straightforward installation, and all the options can be left as is. You’ll have to reboot your computer at the end of it.
• There should be a new icon in the system tray – a red circle with an S in it, and a green checkmark – this is the Streamer Server. To begin, we’re going to add a game. Right click the icon and hit Add Games:

  

• In the Add Games and Applications window you have two options – you can have the software scan your entire Program Files directory looking for applications, or you can add them manually. Since the scan is not particularly fast, we’ll be using the Select a Game or Application.
• I’ll be adding the game Crysis, which happens to store the game executable (by default) in C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts\Crytek\Crysis\Bin32\Crysis.exe. Double click it, and the name of the executable will be added to the list.  At this point, you can either select more programs, or you can click on whatever you added and hit Add Selected:

  

Using the Client

• On the client computer, browse over to your Your Games page. The game you added in step 6 under Setting up the Server should be listed.
• To play the game on the client computer, click on the second icon from the left under Start Streamer Service, which displays a house and the StreamMyGame logo in the corner. The tool tip should say Stream Game At Home:

  

• You’ll be directed to a page where you can choose the various settings, including video bandwidth, audio bandwidth, and resolution. For free accounts, the max resolution is 640 x 480. You should experiment with the various video/audio bandwidth settings – my laptop on a wireless network operates at 5Mbit/s for video bandwidth.  Hit Save Settings once you think you have acceptable streaming settings:

  

• To play, click the big button above the Local Area Network Streaming Settings (the house with the StreamMyGame logo) and allow your browser to start the application:

  

• A window should pop up asking for your login details and an option to save them. Login with your StreamMyGame account, and the game should start on the host computer, while the client computer receives a stream. That’s about it to stream games from one computer to the other:

  

  And a view from the host:

  

Few Notes

• If the game has a noticeable lag between the input and what is shown on the screen, you may need to reduce the allotted video bandwidth, or make sure that no other applications are taking up your network bandwidth. Switching from a wireless to a wired connection will also help.
• No sound? You’ll need to enable Stereo Mix or “What U Hear” or other similar recording functions on the host computer. Head to Control Panel, double click Sounds and Audio Devices, and on the first tab under Device Volume, click the Advanced button. In the new Master Volume window go to Options > Properties, and change the Mixer Device to “Line in/Mic in” (if you do not have this option, browse for the selection that allows you to adjust volume for recording). In the selection below, make sure that the box for Stereo Mix/What U Hear/similar terminology is checked, and unmuted. StreamMyGame has a little quick tidbit on this if you need more help.

Image Credit: shanewarne60000

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What you will need:

• The address of the FTP server you wish to communicate with. This can be an IP address or a domain name.
• The login credentials for a FTP account on the server (you don’t need this for anonymous or public FTP).
• An FTP client.

Assuming you know the address and the login credentials, let’s straight away hop over to the FTP client. As I mentioned before you can either use your browser as a client or use dedicated FTP software. If you want to download the occasional file or two from FTP sites you are good to do so with a browser, just type in the address of the file and make sure you use ftp:// instead of the usual http://.

If on the other hand you are managing a site or required to constantly upload/download files and manage accounts on the server you should use a FTP client designed for the task. Here are your choices:

• Most operating systems have a built in command line FTP client with which you would have to get familiar with the commands.
• You can also use one of the GUI FTP clients: Firefox users can try FireFTP, or you can use FileZilla, built specially with FTP in mind.

It is easier to find your way around the GUI tools. A typical GUI client would have two panes, one showing the remote FTP directory and the other showing directories on your computer. There are buttons representing transfer between the two panes. Browse to the directories you want to transfer to/from like you would do inside Windows Explorer, click on the appropriate transfer button and the client takes care of the rest.

All the commands are issued transparently by the client without requiring you to issue them explicitly. While this may seem easier, it is always handy to know what is going on behind the scenes, which you can by trying out the commands yourself.

Let’s touch up the basic FTP commands, shall we?

First and foremost you need to connect to the host. Use ftp to connect to the host. The server would respond with some information including if anonymous access is allowed.  If it isn’t, you will be required to enter a username and password for the FTP account on the server.

Go ahead and enter those details. If you don’t know your username or password, you would have contact the administrator of the site or create a new FTP user (if you are the administrator).

After a successful login you can perform any desired operations on the files. You can always use the help to get a list of available commands or get help on any command as well.

Let us now see how you can perform the basic file operations over FTP:

1. Moving around

• To get a directory listing both ls and dir work.
• You can change directories using the ubiquitous cd command. e.g. cd www changes to the www directory, To change to a local directory (i.e. a directory on your computer) instead use the lcd command.
• To know which directory you are currently working in use the pwd (present working directory) command.
• You can create directories using the mkdir <dir-name> command, remove directory using rmdir <dir-name> .
• To delete a file use the delete <filename> command, rename files using rename <old-name> <new-name> .

2. Set File Transfer type

• If you are going to transfer text files (includes txt, html, shell scripts, css files etc) you need to set the file transfer mode to ascii using ascii command.
• On the other hand if you are going to transfer binary files (like images, pdf, MS office files, compiled code or executables etc) you need to set the file transfer mode to binary using binary command.

3. Transferring files

• To upload files to the server use the put command. e.g. put style.css would upload style.css from your local directory to the remote directory. Not that put doesn’t allow you to use wildcards, use mput instead, if you want to use wildcards.
• Similarly to download a file you can use the get <filename> or the mget <filenames/wildcards> commands.

4. Creating your own FTP server

If you pay a hosting company for server space, they generally have things configured beforehand and some even create accounts for you. You can always use the management panel to create and edit FTP accounts and some settings. You would have to poke around the management panel your hosting company is providing you with.

If you want to create an FTP server on your home network some configuration is needed. Windows user can try the Filezilla server. Its great and simple to use. Linux users have plenty of options out of which vsftpd is pretty straighforward and feature rich.

Once you have configured the server you can access your files from any computer on your home network, using the IP address of the FTP server. If you want to be able to access your server from across the Internet you would require a static IP or perhaps you could look into something like dyndns (which we discussed briefly while configuring remote access to your torrents).

That’s it, you have enough knowledge to get you started and help you along whenever working with FTP. Let us know if you use some other tools for similar purposes.

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We’re going to show you how to start your own Internet radio station with SHOUTcast – and help you set up a player on your website.

To start off your own Internet radio station, you’ll need the following:  SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server, Winamp, and the SHOUTcast Radio DSP Plugin.

Also note that there are various legal implications for playing copyrighted works, which you can read at the bottom of the SHOUTcast download page.

Setting up the SHOUTcast Server

• Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DNAS server.
• Browse over to C:\Program Files\SHOUTcast\ and open sc_serv.ini in your favorite text editor (I prefer Notepad++).
• You’ll need to edit a couple values:
  • On line 21, edit the MaxUser value. The comment above it tells you how to calculate your possible number of listeners – take the upload rate of your connection in kbps and divide it by the bitrate you intend to broadcast at.
  • For example, my upload speed is approximately 993kbps, and if I wanted to broadcast at 96kbps, I could fit in roughly 10 listeners at once.
  • On line 29, choose a password for the Password value. This will be used so Winamp can connect to your server, and for the web administration.
  • On line 37, PortBase can be left alone unless you have an existing server that utilizes port 8000/8001.
• Download and install Winamp. Make sure to uncheck any offers to change your search engine, etc.
• Download and install the SHOUTcast Radio DSP plugin.
• Open Winamp, head to Options > Preferences, then scroll down to DSP/Effect under Plug-ins. Click on Nullsoft SHOUTcast Source DSP and a small window should open:



• Switch to the Output tab and under Address put “localhost” without the quotes. For Port use 8000 unless you changed the value in step 2, and Password uses the password you configured in step 2:



• On the same tab, click where it says Yellowpages and configure the settings, which should be fairly self explanatory:



• Switch to the Encoder tab. Set Encoder Type to MP3 Encoder, and choose an Encoder Setting. Keep in mind the number of users you intend to be able to broadcast to at once – multiply the number of users you chose in step 2 by the bitrate you select and make sure the resulting number doesn’t exceed your upload speed:



• Start the SHOUTcast DNAS. Make sure to let it connect to the Internet.



• Switch back to the Output tab on the Winamp SHOUTcast window, and hit Connect. Head back to the Winamp library, and pick a random song. The SHOUTcast plugin under Status should start showing a quickly increasing number. You’re free to close the plugin window now that it’s connected:

Broadcasting on the Internet

At this point, your server is accessible anywhere on your local network. You’ll need to port forward to make it Internet accessible, and there are a few solutions to get your broadcast playing on a webpage.

• You’ll need to port forward ports 8000 and 8001 to your local computer. If you need help port forwarding, select a router from this list, and select ShoutCast when choosing an application. To find the port you need to forward to, follow the first step of Ryan’s FreeProxy article here.
• To verify that your server appears on the Internet, switch to the SHOUTcast server window, and wait for the following to appear:
  

  [yp_add] yp.shoutcast.com added me successfully

  If it fails for any reason, see the error it provides, double check the steps, and consult this forum thread if all else fails.

Embedding in a Webpage

Assuming everything has worked perfectly up to this point, we’re assuming you need a way for people to listen from a webpage. For all of this to work, you’ll also need to grab your external IP address, which you can find at WhatIsMyIP. There are a couple of solutions at this point:

WaveStreaming Player: This player requires you give them a name and an email address – but it’s pretty straightforward and requires no editing of code:

Once they give you the code, just copy and paste anywhere you want the player to appear.

StreamSolutions.co.uk Embedded Player Generator: Another simple solution, but doesn’t ask for your name or email. Simply give your station URL and port as directed, and select a version of the player. Note that this player is rather unwieldy in Firefox if the appropriate plugin is not installed.

Minicaster: Download Minicaster and unzip the archive. Edit minicaster.xml in your favorite text editor. Replace all the code in the file with the following, replacing your_ip_address, your_port, your_website_url, and Your Title Here:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”iso-8859-1″ ?>
<config version=”1T” xmlns=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/config/ns/1T/”>
<mp3cast>
<mount>http://your_ip_address:your_port/;</mount>
<website>your_website_url</website>
<title>Your Title Here</title>
</mp3cast>
<init autoplay=”0″ volume=”80″ reload=”5″ xfade=”0″ />
</config>

Upload minicaster.xml, minicaster.swf, and to be utterly simple, EXAMPLE2.html. You could alternatively embed the following code in a web page that shares the same directory (or edit the parts in bold to reflect directory structure):

<object id=”fmp256″ type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” data=”minicaster.swf” width=”180″ height=”70″>
<param name=”movie” value=”minicaster.swf” />
<param name=”wmode” value=”transparent” />
<div>
<h4>Minicaster Radio Playhead</h4>
<p>To listen you must <a href=”http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer/”
title=”Click here to install the Flash browser plugin from Macromedia”>install Flash Player</a>. Visit
<a href=”http://www.draftlight.net/dnex/mp3player/minicaster/” title=”Draftlight Networks”>Draftlight Networks</a>
for more info.</p></div>
</object>

That’s about it to starting a basic SHOUTcast server. If you have any comments or questions, please direct them below.  Also, let us know where to find your newly created radio station so we can come over and listen!

Image Credit : LoopZilla.

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The application is installed on your computer and then it acts as a server and allows for your computer to be connected to. You can then access your iTunes library through your browser and stream any song that you have or share your iTunes library with others.

Since it acts as a server you will need to keep the computer turned on that you wish to access. If it is turned off then the application is not running and therefore you won’t be able to access your library. If you want to be able to access your iTunes library all the time but not leave your computer on, then the best solution would be to purchase a cheap computer that you can leave on all the time.

Installation and Setup

To download pulpTunes simply go to the pulpTunes website and click the Download Now button to being downloading the application. The file that will be downloaded is a zip file so expand it then open up the application named pulpTunes in the folder that is created.

The first time you start up the application a window similar to the one pictured below will be displayed. This is telling you how to access the library within your browser and to open port 15000 on your firewall so that you can access your library from outside your network. If you do not know your IP address then this will also be shown so take a note of it.

When you click OK if you go to http://localhost:15000 you will see all of your songs and playlists. Your iTunes server has now been setup locally – you’ve now shared your iTunes library, and anyone on your network should be able to access it if they know the port number. If you do not want everyone to be able to access it then you can setup an admin username and password by clicking on the icon in the tray and then selecting User Management.

When the window opens up check Enable User Management and then enter the username and password that you would like then hit save.

If you return to http://localhost:15000 you will now notice in the upper right corner that there is a hyperlink called Log in.

When you click the hyperlink you will be asked for the username and password that you have just entered into the User Management window.

If you successfully log in you will now notice a hyperlink in the upper right corner called User Management.

If you do not want anonymous users to have access to any of your library then uncheck the Has access box. If you want anonymous users to only access certain playlists or songs then you can do this by clicking All Playlists and selecting the playlists and songs that you want to allow an anonymous user to listen to.

To add a user that you do not want to be an Admin you must first create a group. I created a group called Users and I will allow them to rate songs so I check the Can rate songs box. To create a user, click on the Accounts tab and then press Add User. I named my user user1, the group Users and other required information. When I click save it is now possible to log in as user1 and listen to my library.

Advanced Settings

By default when the page loads, the first song automatically plays so to stop this, click on the pulpTunes icon in the tray and press Advanced Settings. If you uncheck Start playing songs, hit OK, then restart pulpTunes then the first song will no longer automatically play when the page has loaded.

The Advanced Settings window also allows you to change the port number that is used to access the library, so for example if port 15000 is used by something else on your router you can change it to a port that is unused.

If your iTunes XML library file is located somewhere else than the default location you can also change this here.

If you want to see who is accessing the pulpTunes server and what songs they are listening to, you can enable logging to keep track of this. Click OK and restart the pulpTunes server and the changes will be applied.

Please let us know what you think of sharing your iTunes library with pulpTunes by posting a comment below. If you know of a similar application feel free to discuss this below with other readers.

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RoundCube Webmail is a browser-based multilingual IMAP client packed with plenty of AJAX goodness. It comes with an application-like user interface and provides full functionality you expect from an email client, including MIME support, address book, folder manipulation, message searching and spell checking.

The best thing about RoundCube is that it is lightweight, simple to use and lightning fast. As long as your web host supports PHP 5 and MySQL, you will be able to install in your site and access it on your domain. A point to note here: while the installation is relatively easy (and fast), you will need to obtain the email server information from your web host and setup a database in your phpmyadmin before you can configure it to work.

You can configure your RoundCube account to access any of the email accounts out there as long as you have the IMAP configuration information. I am able to access my Gmail account and receive/send emails from the RoundCube inbox.

Once you have got it up and running, everything else will be a breeze. Just point to the designated URL and login with your email username and password.

The inbox is just like any of your email client, except that it is cleaner and neater. When you open a message, send a message, check new message, everything is achieved via AJAX interface which make it elegant and interactive. At the moment, the search function does not supports on-the-fly searching, but that doesn’t reduce any of its functionality.

RoundCube Preferences

Other than the basic inbox layout and management stuff, you won’t find too many superfluous features in RoundCube. Even so, it still comes with excellent management options such as creating of folders to store various mails, compact inbox on logout, daylight saving time etc. One useful feature that I found is the ability to create multiple identities. The identities allow you to send emails using different username (and email account) and signatures. This is useful if you are using RoundCube to manage several email accounts.

Skinning and Plugins

A software is not complete if it does not support skinning and plugins. The good news is, RoundCube supports both. The latest beta comes with a Plugin API that allows third party developers to create plugins for the software. RoundCube plugins can be found at the repository, though most of them are already included in the download package. You can also find and download some of the beautiful themes at the Roundcube forum, or simply searching for them in Google or Bing.

Conclusion

Is RoundCube Webmail for everyone? Most probably not, since not everyone owns a domain or have multiple email accounts to attend to. However, if you are one of the those Webmasters that are looking for a simpler and more elegant way to manage your emails, I am sure RoundCube Webmail will fit the bill well.

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Podcast Generator is an open-source Web-based podcast CMS that you can use to manage your podcasts. With Podcast Generator, you can easily upload your podcasts (be it audio or video), enter your episode information, publish it in your home page and have it automatically create podcast w3c-compliant feed, including iTunes specific tags.

Podcast Generator doesn’t require any database to work. As long as your Web server supports PHP, you will be able to run it.

The installation is extremely easy. Once you have uploaded the whole Podcast Generator folder to your web server, navigate to the Web URL in your browser and follow a simple 5-steps procedure to set up the software. The whole process will not take you more than 5 minutes.

Once you have set up the software and login to the Admin screen, you will be prompted to configure the details for  your podcast.

Uploading your podcast

When you upload a new episode of your podcast, you are required to fill in the podcast title and its description. Same as WordPress, you can categorize your podcast and sort them according to their category. Extra information that you can provide include podcast image, iTunes keywords/tags, Author’s name and email address.

As soon as your podcast is uploaded, the software will auto generate the podcast RSS feed and iTunes feed to allow your readers to subscribe.

Other features

Some of the other useful features found in Podcast Generator include:

Creating Categories

This is where you can manage your podcast categories.

Themes

At the moment, there are only two themes for you to choose from, buit you can easily create your own themes as long as you have some html and CSS knowledge. Unlike WordPress that have a complicated themes structure, Podcast Generator uses only an index.html and a stylesheet, so it is easy to customize it, or even create your own.

iTunes Settings

What good does it do if you run a podcast site that doesn’t support iTunes? In Podcast Generator, you will find lots of support for iTunes and plenty of options that you can configure.

Selecting the iTunes categories for your podcast. You can choose up to three different categories.

Using WordPress and Podcast Generator

Most of you could still be using WordPress and have no wish to migrate to another software. In this case, you can still install Podcast Generator in a separate folder (such as http://www.yoursite.com/podcast). Use it to manage your podcast, then promote the RSS/iTunes feeds in your WordPress blog. In this way, you won’t have to worry that the podcast plugin will break everytime you upgrade your blog.

Conclusion

If you are comparing Podcast Generator to WordPress, Podcast Generator is definitely not up to the marks, but if you are looking for a software to better manage your podcast and serves as an addon functionality to your existing site, then I am sure Podcast generator will easily do the job well.

Image credit: thevoyager

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PHP Speedy is a WordPress plugin that cleans up and compresses your code so that it can load faster. There are few technical configurations that you need to make, but it is definitely manageable, even when you don’t have any coding knowledge

The details…

There are many factors that can cause your WordPress blog to slow down. One of them is having too many javascript and CSS files in your site that choke up your bandwidth. This often happens when you installed too many plugins, or placed too many advertisements on your site. The more javascript/CSS files you have, the more HTTP requests that your site has to make and the longer it take for the page to load.

What PHP Speedy does is:

• Consolidates all the javascript and CSS and combines them all into two files, one for the javascript code and another for CSS (only applies for those files listed in the <head> tag). This includes all the javascript and CSS file introduced by any of the other plugins.
• Minifies and compresses the combined file and saves it to the cache.
• Removes all the javascript and CSS link in the <head> tag and serves the combined file from the cache to the readers.

With PHP Speedy, your site now makes less HTTP requests and serve a smaller compressed version of the file to your reader. I have used it on my site together with the SuperCache plugin. The result has been impressive. I am able to shave three seconds off the loading time, and that is a whopping 40% improvement.

Installing and configuring PHP Speedy

The PHP Speedy plugin is not found in the WordPress plugins repository, so you have to download it from the developer’s site.

Install the plugin just like any other plugins.

On the plugin setting page, there are several options that you can configure.

Javascript libraries

This is the part where it lists down all the Javascript libraries used by the WordPress software. Although it is unchecked by default, it is wise to check them all and let PHP Speedy handle them.

Ignore list

If you have javascript or CSS files that you don’t want PHP Speedy to handle, here is where you list them all down.

Minify Options

This is the part where you specify whether PHP Speedy should minify your file. As before, it is better to choose Yes for all.

Compression

I would strongly recommend you to use the htaccess or the WP-SuperCache plugin to activate the compression function for your server.

Expires header

The Expires header informs the server that the content is still fresh and the clients (browsers) should load the files directly from the cache. There is no need to retrieve the files again from the database.

Some limitations

While PHP Speedy is very useful, there are some issues that it cannot solve:

• If you are using external javascript of CSS files, there is no way that PHP Speedy can handle them.
• It does not support javascripts that use the document.write feature. In such cases, it is better to include that particular javascript in the ignore list.
• PHP Speedy only sets the expiration for your CSS and JS files. It doesn’t (yet) handle the images, which would further reduce the site’s loading time.
• If you are using @import syntax in your CSS file, PHP Speedy won’t be able to support it.

If you can live with the above limitations, then I am sure PHP Speedy will be very handy to you.

What other plugins do you use to improve the performance and speed up WordPress blog?

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The main reasons: it’s very good and very free – not to mention very expandable in functions and very flexible in looks if you use the self hosted Wordpress.

Given those facts, it surprises me that lots of people are still afraid of the (self hosted) Wordpress. “Wordpress is for geeks,” they say, “It’s too difficult for me.”

Well, you can’t love what you don’t know. So, the first step is to get familiar with it and what better way to know more about Wordpress than to install Wordpress locally on your own computer? Be it a Windows, Mac or Linux PC. Plus, this is also the best way to check out plugins and themes before using them in the real live online blogging world (and start building your own Wordpress themes and plugins – should you choose to go that far).

Here’s how you do it :

Step 1: Building The Local “Web Server”

In order to install Wordpress locally, you need to have a SQL database and a PHP environment in your computer. Before you ask with fear what creatures they are, let me clarify that these days you can easily summon them just by downloading and installing one of these:

• For Windows: XAMPP or WAMP (Read MakeUseOf review)
• For Mac: MAMP
• For Linux: LAMP

I use a Mac so the steps below are explained using MAMP. But the steps are valid under any OS and so slight differences are to be expected.

Step 2: Creating The Database

Open your AMP app and the server will automatically be on.

The web interface will show up in your browser. Choose “phpMyAdmin” tab.

Find “Create New Database” box, put a name there, then click “Create”

Step 3: Getting Wordpress

Download the latest build of Wordpress (at the time of writing is version 2.7)

Extract the zip file into the htdocs folder inside the AMP folder. It will automatically create a “wordpress” folder there.

Step 4: Configuring The Wordpress Database

Go inside the Wordpress folder, then find and open file wp-config-sample.php using any text editor.

- Find these lines:
–> ‘DB_NAME’ and change ‘putyourdbnamehere’ with ‘the database name from step 2’
–> ‘DB_USER’ and change ‘usernamehere’ with ‘root’
–> ‘DB_PASSWORD’ and change ‘yourpasswordhere’ with ‘root’

Save the file as wp-config.php

Step 5: Installing Wordpress

Open this address in your browser: http://localhost:8888/wordpress/wp-admin/install.php

You’ll be asked to put in a blog name and an email address. Click ‘Install Wordpress’ after filling in those boxes.

Wordpress will generate a username (admin) and a random password for you. Please keep the password safe until you have the chance to change it later. Click ‘Log In’ to continue.

Fill in the username and password and click ‘Log In’ one more time.

Step 6: Changing The Password

Congratulations, you’ve just built your own local Wordpress blog to experiment with. But there’s still one more crucial step to take: changing the randomly generated password to something you can remember easily.

Go to menu Users –> Authors & Users –> Admin –> Edit

Find the two password fields down at the bottom of the page, fill in the empty boxes with your preferred password.

Click ‘Update Profile’.

That’s it! Why not start experimenting with your Wordpress blog and see how you like it. If you have any problems, leave a comment and we’ll see if we can help.

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This part of the Linux media series will cover the various software that you can use to convert your Linux machine into a media server.

1) Sockso

Among all the media server software, Sockso is the easiest to use. There is no installation or any configuration required. You just need to download the file, double click the application to launch it and there you go, your media server is up and running in less than 5 minutes.

Sockso comes with all the necessary tools to allow you to enjoy your music over the air. It does not support video streaming as yet, but for audio files, it supports MP3, WAV, FLAC and Ogg. There is also an on-the-fly transcoding feature that converts the audio file from one format to another while streaming.

For those who want a click-and-go solution, Sockso is the best for you.

2) Jinzora

Jinzora is a Web-based media server written completely in php. It supports both audio and video streaming and is able to play a huge library of audio/video formats, including AAC, M4A, Midi, MP3, MP4, Ogg Vorbis, RM, WMA, AVI, WMV, MPEG and MOV. It also supports on-the-fly transcoding.

Since it is Web-based, that means you have to set up and configure your own LAMP server before you can get Jinzora to run on your Linux machine. Installation is not as straightforward and there are quite a number of steps that you have to do. Luckily, all the steps are well documented and you simply need to follow the instructions to complete the installation.

Some may find it difficult to install and configure Jinzora, but I can assure you that it is all worth the effort. Once you get it running, you will appreciate its slick interface and the extensive features that it supports.

One thing good about a Web-based software is that it can be easily customized for the Web 2.0. When playing a track, Jinzora does a great job in retrieving the meta-data (such as lyrics, album covers and ID3-tags). There is also a social-networking module which you can use to build a social music site.

If you are willing to shell out that extra effort to set up and maintain the LAMP server, then Jinzora will be a great choice for you.

3) SqueezeCenter

SqueezeCenter (formerly known as Slimserver) is originally a software from Logitech to power their SqueezeBox devices, but it is now an open-source software that you can use to stream MP3 music from your machine.

Configuration is easy. Once you have it installed, go to your browser, type in http://localhost:9000 and follow the instructions to configure it. You should be able to get it started in less than 5 minutes.

The interface of SqueezeCenter is like your local music player where it displays the songs on one side and the playback on the other side. I find this setting familiar, simple and nice.

At the moment, SqueezeCenter only supports mp3 streaming and can be listened to from any computer using a MP3 software player, such as Winamp, iTunes and Totem movie player. You can also get it to play in your browser via a hack by Charles. You will need a Netvibes account for that.

4) Simplifymedia

If you have heard of Orb, then SimplifyMedia is something similar, just that it works on Linux as well as on Mac and Windows platforms. What SimplifyMedia does is to create a shared path from your local machine to the remote computer that you are on so that you can access your music files easily.

For the Linux version, there is no installation required and running the application is as easy as double-clicking the downloaded file.

To use SimplifyMedia, you will need to install the application on the remote computer that you are working on and sign in to your account. It does not have its own player and uses your system’s music player (Rhythmbox, iTunes and Winamp) to playback music. If your version of Linux does not come with Rhythmbox pre-installed, you will have to install it before you can playback music from SimplifyMedia. Read more about SimplifyMedia and see its features here.

5) Gnump3d

Gnump3d is a MP3 and OGG streaming server mainly for the Linux platform. Although the development stopped 1 year ago, by far, this is still one of the best native Linux media servers around.

Gnump3d is simple and easy to use. Some may find it limited in features, but if you only have MP3 files and need just a simple server. Gnump3d could be a good choice. If you are using Ubuntu (Hardy and below), Gnump3d is found in the repository, which makes the installation a breeze.

In part 3 of this series, I will discuss using your Linux computer as a Universal Plug and Play (uPnP) AV Server.

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While there are plenty of scripts (both free and paid) that you can use to run your own social network, there are only a few that are stable, good and easy to use.

Here we have handpicked 5 of the best open-source social networking software for you to choose from.

1. Elgg

Elgg has just won the best open source social networking platform for the year 2008, so there is no doubt about the usability of this software. Overall, Elgg is a powerful software that offers blog, networking, community, collection of news using feeds aggregation and file sharing features. In fact, it is one of the most versatile pieces of software that offers almost everything you need to start a social networking site.

Elgg operates on a LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql and Php) environment and it is easy to install and configure. With a little php knowledge, you can get your social networking site up and running in no time.

Before you install Elgg, try out its demo site.

2. Mahara

Unlike the rest of the social networking software that is meant for general use, Mahara is designed as a platform to allow its users to demonstrate their life-long learning, skills and development to selected audiences. With Mahara, you can create an e-Portfolio platform and set up an online learner community. Features in the software include blogs, a resume builder, a file manager, institutions detail and the social networking aspect where you can add and maintain your list of friends.

Mahara runs on LAMP, although Postgres is preferred over MySql.

Check out the demo site

3. Lovd by Less

Lovd by Less is among the first and only few open-source social networking platforms built on Ruby on Rails. Some features of Lovd by Less include blogs, photo gallery with captions, site search for friends, activity update and user-to-user messaging. Other things that are built into the software include Flickr and YouTube integration.

One thing good about Lovd by Less is that it is easy to use and contains most of the applications that you need. For those who prefer Ruby on Rail rather than php, this would be a good alternative.

Try out the demo site.

4. Xoops with Yogurt extension

XOOPS is an extensible CMS that allows you to build sites based on your needs. You can first start off as a personal blog and expand later to include social networking, forum and much more via the use of appropriate modules.

Yogurt is the particular module that allows you to build a social networking site with XOOPS. You can setup your personal album of pictures, videos from YouTube, mp3 files, add your list of friends, a public wall for messages (scraps), to create communities (tribes) and many more useful features.

XOOPS and Yogurt are based on php and work well in the LAMP environment.

5. AROUNDMe

AROUNDMe is slightly different from the others. Instead of building a social networking site, it allows you to create your own collaboration server which enables your users to setup their own social networking site, community or webspace (like Ning, Google Groups, Snappville, CollectiveX).

With AROUNDMe, your users can have access to a guestbook (a wall), a group blog, a forum and a wiki which they can drop into web pages. Every single group is fully customizable using xHTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP and the user can decide if the group is private or public.

Other Candidates

Here are some of the candidates that didn’t make it to the top 5:

Phpizabi – works fine for a small network, but could become buggy as your network get bigger.
Dolphin – while it is free to download, you will have to pay to get the ad module removed.
Insoshi – a new social network software built on Ruby on Rails released only early April this year. It could have be better if some of its features are more polished.

Have you built your own social networking site before? Which software did you use? Which one would you recommend?

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It is a tried and tested trio which works phenomenally well. Usually to gain access to this trifecta, you need to purchase hosting, and this hosting is usually run in a far away datacenter running on a Linux server. However, not many people know that it is available locally, and for Windows as well. You can use these services for running your own applications, and also for locally testing software you are writing, before uploading code to a production server.

WAMP stands for Windows Apache, MySQL and PHP. Compare this to LAMP, which is Apache, MySQL and PHP on Linux.

There are several ways to get these services running locally. Each service, by itself, has Windows installers. That being said – once the programs are installed, you need to know how to configure the services. That may not be simple unless you happen to be a system administrator.

We are going to focus on WampServer. In my experience, using WampServer is the fastest way to get up and running. Wikipedia has a nice list of all Wamp servers.

Step 1

Download the latest WampServer. As of the writing of this article, it includes Apache 2.2, PHP 5.2 and MySQL 5.0.

Step 2

Run the installer. It will warn you to uninstall WAMP5 1.x if you have installed that already. You can use the defaults and it should install without problem.

Step 3

Start the services. You will see a small icon in your taskbar. Left click on it (right clicking does not display the right menu) and select “go online”. The icon will then make a little animation, and your services will be online. You can view your homepage by going to http://localhost/.

Thats it! Wamp is now running. You are ready to install your application, or start learning some PHP! The public website directory is ‘c:\wamp\www\‘.

Any directory you create in this directory, shows up as a ‘project’ on the main index page.

Advanced Settings

PHP Customization

Depending on which type of program you want to install onto your server, you may require additional extensions that are not loaded by default. There are a whole variety of PHP extensions you can load that come built in, but disabled. Left-click on the Wamp menu, go to PHP->PHP Extensions and click off the extension you would like to reload.

You can also edit the configuration file, php.ini through the menu. Edit anything you need, and save this file. The most common edit is the memory_size, but there are many options you can tweak to your liking.

After making any changes to php, make sure you reload apache. I’ve learned the hard way that changes aren’t automatically pushed to the server, until it is reloaded.

Apache Customization

For you advanced tinkerers out there, you can tweak the apache configuration files to your heart’s content. Make sure after making any changes, to reload apache.

MySQL Customization

Depending on your project, you may need to create a database in MySQL. This can be done through phpMyAdmin, which is handily included within the WAMPServer install. By default they include no password on the root MySQL user, which is not the best thing for security reasons. I would recommend changing this password. phpMyAdmin can be reached via the Wamp Menu, or via the url http://localhost/phpmyadmin/

In Summary:

Don’t let the fun stop there. Install a blog and start experimenting with PHP and templates. Run your own Wiki. Run your own music server. The howtos on how to install some neat programs are coming in some future articles.

One of the greatest things about running a home apache server, is that you can use it in combination with a VPN (Hamachi) to access your server anywhere in the world, securely. You can even change your setup to host pages to the outside world, if you so desire.

There is no limit to what you can do! OK, maybe it won’t cook you breakfast in the morning – not yet anyway!

Please let me know if you have any questions, comments, or need help with the install!

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If one site uses too many resources or a bad piece of code, it can crash the server taking down every site with it which in some cases can be thousands of websites. Wouldn’t it be useful if you could see what other kind of sites were on the same server as you?

You Get Signal has just the tool for this. It’s called a “Reverse IP Domain Check” and it takes a site URL or IP address and tells you all or many of the domains pointing to that server. This is a good way to check to see if your webhost or ISP is overselling or if there are very high traffic sites on the same server as you. By using this tool, you can see whether or not that $2 per month hosting plan based out of some guy’s basement in Russia is worth it or not. You will save yourself hours or potentially weeks or months of frustration from crashing sites and slow loading pages.

Although the “Reverse IP Domain Check” is an extremely useful tool for website owners, YouGetSignal.com also offers other utilities, some unique and some common. They offer the popular WHOIS Lookup Tool so you can check out who owns and manages a domain name, Phone Number Geolocator to find where a call originated, Port Forwarding Test to see if a port or ports are insecure on your computer, Visual Trace Route Tool to visualize the route of network traffic, and the nifty Network Location Tool to locate a physical network on a Google Map. YouGetSignal was originally created as a project from a Brigham Young University student but in my opinion is a very helpful collection of web tools in network and website management.

What web services or applications do you use to manage your networks or websites? Let us know in the comments.

(By) Nick Volpe is a freelance blogger and web guru from techNETWORK.US, a provider of tech news, open source software, web development tools, useful tips, as well as podcasts, tech videos, and much more.

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