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Content Management Systems - or not!
by cl＠isbd.net 28 Jan '07

28 Jan '07

Well I'm still chasing round in ever decreasing circles looking for some sort of Content Management System for creating a web site for my wife's business. Thus I want a CMS (or, it seems increasingly likely, something else) with the following sorts of functions and abilities:- Easy entry of text *and* formatting such as headings, tables, lists, etc., preferably WYSIWYG or nearly so. This needs to be accessible to a non-techie but computer aware user. Consistent professional look for the whole site, it would be nice if a lot of templates/styles were available but just a few nice ready-made ones which are easy to tune (this can be a bit more 'techie') would be OK. Simple 'ready made' menu structure and navigation. What we *don't* need is the ability to have forums, news feeds, blogs and all that sort of paraphernalia, they might be nice to add on at some time but are unnecessary at the moment. Installation doesn't have to be particularly easy (I've already installed Drupal, CMSMadeSimple, Exponent and TWiki!) and I'm quite prepared to put some 'techie' input into it but the content creation *must* be straightforward and more than just text. >From what I have seen so far playing with Drupal and Exponent the current CMS systems are really of little use for what we want to do. They make it easy to add different sorts of content and also make it easy (some of them) to manage the structure of a web site but they help very little in making it easy to add the actual content. We don't even really need a web based system as there will only be two of us involved in creating the site, so although a wiki-like system might be somewhat more like what we're after the whole co-operative input thing would be lost on us. So, has anyone any comments or ideas? I suspect that I may need to look for something other than 'Content Management' but I wish I knew what it was! -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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MX/Zone/DNS question
by cl＠isbd.net 27 Jan '07

27 Jan '07

I have a domain isbd.net which is hosted for me at BSNet where I have access to the zone file. I have added a CNAME record home[.isbd.net] which points at my home system (which has a static IP with a very long name). This works perfectly for me so far, I can access Web pages on the home machine's apache server at home.isbd.net and any port I open up is accessible as home.isbd.net. I have Postfix on my home system (for sending mail). If I want it to receive mail as well what do I need to do to the zone file[s]? At BSNet (where isbd.net has its zone file) will the CNAME entry I already have mean that mail for xxx(a)home.isbd.net will get sent on or do the MX records for isbd.net catch home.isbd.net mail as well? If home.isbd.net mail *is* sent on to my home machine do I need to do anything to the zone file there for it to accept the mail or will having Postfix listening on port 25 be all that's needed? (I suspect that *strictly* I should have a zone file with MX records on my home machine but that it may well work without) -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Handover requests: announce, ICON, www
by MJ Ray 26 Jan '07

26 Jan '07

As you may know, I left a while ago, but I still seem to have a few bits of ALUG in my hands. Who wants these? Email me directly, please. announce mailing list - I think someone offered to take this over a while ago, but I don't know whether that offer is still good. Workload is checking a Mailman admindb web page after 8am each day. Mostly spam. So, who wants it? ICON - ALUG's listing on the Norfolk County Council index of community groups needs two new contact people. I thought we'd added someone else in the past, but it's not listed. Workload is answering any enquiries. Please can two people email me: Name, address, telephone (day/eve/fax), email and whether to hide your details from the web. Current entry may be viewed at http://norlink.norfolk.gov.uk/cgi-bin/vps2-civ.web.sh?enqtype=SECOND&enqpar… www - I thought I handed this over to David Reynolds and Sionide (maybe I forget), but the site is still emailing me patches. Mostly spam now. Can someone please update the web site and change the editor or at least the address it sends to? If you want to keep the editor, it needs updating to discourage spamming. If you want a hand with that, let me know and I'll add it to my to-do list. If these aren't taken over, I'll ask for them to be deleted. Thanks in advance for any help for ALUG! -- MJ Ray - see/vidu http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html Somerset, England. Work/Laborejo: http://www.ttllp.co.uk/ IRC/Jabber/SIP: on request/peteble.

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Re: OT: Content Management Recommendations please
by cl＠isbd.net 26 Jan '07

26 Jan '07

On Thu, Jan 25, 2007 at 02:06:38PM +0000, cl(a)isbd.net wrote: > Joomla > Drupal > MySource Classic > WebGUI > TikiWiki > > Does anyone here have any experience of any of these and/or are there any > good comparison/review sites? (I've found http://www.opensourcecms.com/ > which is useful). > Well I think I've found what I need, none of the above but:- http://www.exponentcms.org/ It's fairly new but seems to be going somewhere. It was certainly as easy as falling over to install it and I found it trivially easy to get started and actually produce some pages etc. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Simple CMS and/or WYSIWYG HTML editor - any suggestions?
by cl＠isbd.net 25 Jan '07

25 Jan '07

What simple CMS and/or HTML editors would people recommend for a non-techie user (my wife)? She's most certainly not computer hostile but wants a simple way to create and maintain a small business web site. There's no requirement for selling or an associated database, it will just be a site comprising a few tens of pages outlining what she does with appropriate internal and external links. It doesn't have to have very sophisticated (or any) FTP management either as I can make the web site appear as a local file system if necessary. It would be nice if it made it easy to create sidebars, menus, etc. The ones I have looked at are things like:- nvu - OK, but seems to have gone to sleep as a project since version 1.0 bluefish - too techie seamonkey - Too simple, just edits an HTML page and that's about it. -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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Silly Hardware Qs
by ted.harding＠nessie.mcc.ac.uk 25 Jan '07

25 Jan '07

Hi Folks, OT Linux-wise, but a lot of you are wise, hardware-wise, as-it-were-wise ... 1. I have an old desktop, whose on/off is mechanical (mechanical link from power button to switch in PSU). This link is now dodgy, and I often have to press it on/off several times before the power finally kicks in. A possible solution, after running shutdown, is simply to switch off at the mains, leaving the power switch in the "on" state; and then, when starting up again, simply switch on at the mains. I.e. simply never switch the machine itself on or off. However, I'm a bit concerned that the surge from switching on at the mains might not be good for the machine if it goes straight through to the PSU, rather than the PSU's own switch allowing it in from an already live mains cable. Any comments? 2. If a TFT/LCD screen simply goes all white (every pixel bright white) when it's switched on, regardless of whether there's any input signel, does this indicate any particular type of internal problem which it might be worth probing for (by taking the back off and looking for, e.g., a loose chip/connection)? Best wishes to all from the Scrapyard in the Fen Ted. -------------------------------------------------------------------- E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <ted.harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk> Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861 Date: 24-Jan-07 Time: 11:04:06 ------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------

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ALUG Annual Nosh
by sfr 23 Jan '07

23 Jan '07

Twelve people confirmed, and three more possibly. The Reindeer has a different menu every week, so we can't get an exact one until Monday 5 February. Here's a sample menu for a rough idea. -- sfr ======================================== Reindeer Menu Homemade Cream of Vegetable Soup with Rustic Bread £3.75 Smoked Mackerel Pate with toasted Bread £3.95 Creamy Stilton Mushrooms with toasted Bread £3.95 Loaded Potato Skins filled with Cheese and Bacon, with a Sweet Chilli Sauce £3.95 ******** Venison Steak, with Tomatoes, Mushrooms and Chunky Chips £9.95 Homemade Quorn Lasagne with Garlic Bread and Salad £6.95 Pan fried Chicken Fillet, with a Smoked Cheese Sauce, Roasted New Potatoes and a selection of Vegetables £7.50 Homemade Sausage Casserole on a bed of creamy Mashed Potato £6.95 Grilled Plaice Fillets with a Dill and Butter Sauce with Roasted New Potatoes and a selection of Vegetables £7.50 A Whole Rack of Baby Back Ribs, coated in a Barbecue Sauce with spicy Potato Wedges, Coleslaw and Onion Rings £9.95 Gammon Steak with Pineapple, with Chips and Salad £7.95 ******** Desserts Banoffi Cheesecake served with fresh Cream £3.95 Vanilla Crème Brulle served with Amaretto Biscuits £3.95 Chocolate Sponge served with a warm Chocolate Sauce £3.95 Meringue Nests filled with Fresh Fruit and Chantilly Cream £4.25

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The 'nobody' user in HTML and CGI, how to best use it?
by cl＠isbd.net 19 Jan '07

19 Jan '07

I mostly understand why there is a user 'nobody' who owns all the HTML and CGI stuff in the /var/www hierarchy. However it's a bit of a pain maintaining the 'nobody' file ownership permissions there, how do other people manage this? At present I tend to do things as root and then 'chown -R nobody' which is a bit clumsy really. This is on a home system with me being the only direct user (and a few other samba file sharing users). I edit and move files around in /var/www directly as I'm really the only user most of the time and the occasional 'outside' user can just put up with anything I break for a while. The problem is that one has to be root to manipulate the files owned by nobody as one can't actually become nobody. Ooh, just tried and one *can* become nobody via root, I suppose that's one way to deal with it. So, is that what others do when doing things to files in the /var/www area, su to root and then to nobody? -- Chris Green (chris(a)halon.org.uk)

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nspluginwrapper
by Peter Alcibiades 18 Jan '07

18 Jan '07

Has anyone successfully used this to install Flash 9 on AMD64 Debian? If so how? Wishing I had just installed 32 bit in the first place but dreading what it will take to move to it... Peter

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Wireless router recommendations + graphics card.
by Luke Dodd 17 Jan '07

17 Jan '07

Hi, Firstly I was wondering if anyone could recommend a good wireless ADSL router. The problem with my current router (dlink 604+) is that it cant seem to handle more than one person using a substantial amount of bandwidth constantly, even though over all there is bandwidth to spare. For example only one person in the house can listen to Internet radio or stream video at once, with a 2MBit link two Internet radios at 128k should be possible! So are there any routers that would share out the bandwidth more effectively to 2-5 computers at once (cheap ones :D)? Although I don't think there is anything that can be done I may aswell ask about an issue with my graphics card. It is a Xfx Geforce 6600GT 128MB, and the problem is whenever I open up any 3D application X will crash and restart, on windows any 3d applications will cause the screen to display some horizontal odd colored lines, then go blank, then I have to do a hard reboot. I tried taking out the card and putting it back in (PCIe), no difference. I wrote a small program just opening a blank opengl window and that was enough to cause the crash. 2D performance works fine, and the card had been working properly for around 9 months before this; the drivers I am using on Linux are a fairly recent nvidia beta (1.0-9631) - 3D was working fine some time after I last updated them. Because the problem started on both operating systems at once I think it can only be a hardware problem - but I really don't want to buy a new card so any suggestions would be good. (amd x2 3800+, 1024mb ram, asus a8n-e mobo, Xfx Geforce 6600GT 128MB video card) Thanks, Luke

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