The need to update websites faster to keep content fresh has been ever growing. Ever since the first business owner wanted their Web designer to update their website faster, content management systems have played an important role on the Web. Why does this matter to you? How do you know if your company is ready?

In this article, we will look at how to tell if your organization needs a content management system. We will also give you information on the abilities of content management systems to help you better understand what they can do. While content management systems may seem complex, their entire purpose is to streamline your workflow and make your life easier.

A content management system allows you to create, manage, store and edit massive amounts of content without any HTML programming skill. Because you are able to edit your content from any computer with an Internet connection, you no longer have to rely on third-party developers or companies to keep your website up to date. Sounds good, doesn’t it? Every company would like to reduce costs and increase productivity.

Also consider our previous articles:

• 10 Things To Consider When Choosing The Perfect CMS
  Goes over what features to look for when choosing a content management system.
• 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Websites
  Explains the mistakes we all make when running our websites. The nature of those mistakes varies depending on the size of your company. As your organization grows, the mistakes change. This post addresses common mistakes of large organizations.
• Developers Toolbox
  Offers tools and resources to help you achieve your goals at a more hands-on level.

1. What Is A Content Management System?

If you have never heard the term before, a content management system (CMS) is a Web-based solution that makes it easy for a company to manage website updates internally. For many companies, updating a website is not something to look forward to because it can be a lengthy and, over time, expensive process. Most companies search for easier means of accomplishing their goals. The solution that many large and small companies have found is a CMS. The easy-to-use application allows your company to control its online identity with little to no knowledge of Web design.

Do I Need a Content Management System?

While you know your business better than anyone else, if you answer Yes to any of the following questions, your company would likely benefit from using a CMS-based website.

• Does your company update its website content frequently?
• Does your website contain over 10 pages?
• Do you constantly outsource simple website updates to third parties?

Although building your website with a CMS may not save you money up front, if you need to be able to manage your own content in a timely manner, you will certainly be cutting costs in future. You will increase your organization’s speed while reducing its effort. With a CMS accessible from any computer with an Internet connection, you will speed up the process of approving, publishing, and updating.

Some CMS’ have in-page buttons to speed up the process of editing content, while preventing users from accessing the admin interface.

Because a CMS has built-in organizational features, content is easier to find and nearly impossible to lose (unless you delete it by accident). You no longer have to spend a lot of time on simple tasks or duplicating your efforts. All of your content is created, managed, published and edited from a single location with very simple, easy-to-use tools. Because using these tools requires very little training, you can start managing your content almost immediately.

If you have identified your business goals and recognized that your website will play a role in them, you should begin the process of implementing your own CMS. There is no set list of requirements for a content management system because each organization has unique needs. Keep your requirements to a minimum, but be sure to allow for the future growth and demands of your company. Enlisting the help of a Web design and development company to assess your needs is a good idea.

2. Essentials Of A CMS

Three key elements that every CMS has, one way or another, are templates, content and meta data. Understanding how these three elements interact with the other CMS features is important: the template is the graphic wrapper of your website; without the actual content, you would have no need for a website; and the often over-looked meta data helps with search engine optimization.

An example of a CMS theme that has the same look and feel on every page.

Templates control how your content looks on the page and are extremely helpful when you have to produce a lot of pages (10+). The template is a graphic wrapper that usually looks the same on every page of the website, regardless of the content. It makes your website’s look and feel consistent. When you want to change the template (say, the color or an image), you have to make the change only once and it will be reflected on every page of your website. Popular CMS’ such as WordPress and ExpressionEngine have many free or premium templates available online that can reduce the cost of and help you customize your system.

This is the typical layout of a WYSIWYG editor, which has features that are standard in word processors today, such as bolding, italicizing and justifying paragraphs.

Content is created, managed and edited independent of all other CMS elements. Content could be anything from the text on your “About” page to the photo on your company press release. All content is normally managed through a WYSIWYG editor (what you see is what you get) that has integrated photo uploading tools. This helps you create new pages on your website, manage and edit existing pages and assign pages to multiple areas without having to copy them.

Facebook does an excellent job of pulling an external page’s title and description meta data when you post a link to it on a fan page or wall.

Meta data plays a key part in search engine optimization (SEO). The great thing about a CMS is that it makes it nearly impossible for you to forget to add this information, thus helping your website’s search and index ranking on search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Meta data contains such information as category, author, publishing date, title, brief description and keywords.

One great use of meta data is for automatically adding a title and description to links posted on social media websites such as Facebook. This not only saves you from having to retype this information but keeps your content relevant as well. This information can also be pulled by search engines and any other website where your website is listed, so make sure to put some thought into writing it.

3. CMS Features And Functions

Content management systems come with many standard features to help you create, manage and edit your content. In addition to standard features, additional features can be added to the flexible system framework. These additional features are often referred to as add-on modules or plug-ins. Because a CMS is very flexible, you can use it for a simple website with little content or expand the features to support a complex website with a lot of content. Here is a nice list of high-profile companies that use a CMS for their websites, which will give you a good idea of how far you can expand these systems.

Standard Features

These features are what make your content management system so extensive and highly flexible. They allow you to publish, edit and organize content and manage members, and they contain a variety of built-in security features.

With these straightforward tools, you can see how easy creating and managing your content is.

Publishing is made easy with the in-depth features of a CMS. Without any knowledge of HTML programming, users can create, manage and schedule content with ease. These powerful tools help free up time within an organization by streamlining the whole process. A user can create content, set the category (i.e. the section in which it will be published) and then set it as a draft for later review.

Once the content is reviewed, it can be scheduled to be published, say, seven days from then. Once you have reached that step, the rest of the process is automated. You can write and complete a week’s worth of articles ahead of time and take a vacation without having to worry about publishing new content, because it will publish itself (if you have done your part).

Typography often causes headaches for writers, especially if the writers are not HTML savvy, but the task is made easier with built-in text editors. With most CMS’, your text can be automatically formatted to produce XHTML-valid typography. This saves you the hassle of hand-coding every piece of content and leaves the “fun” bits to the system itself. If you paste disallowed characters, such as curly quotes, bullets or accents, from text editors like Microsoft Word, they will automatically be converted into an HTML-valid equivalent.

Another great feature that many CMS’ include is automatic linking. This feature saves you from having to manually link URLs that you add to your content. All of these features are useful because they make your workflow more efficient when you create a lot of content. And if you prefer to enter your own HTML code every time because you don’t trust the automated process, you have that option as well.

Organization is a key part of maintaining a website. With a CMS, all of the content is stored in one place, only once, and is accessible from any location with an Internet connection. Content can be saved in a number of states, such as draft, published and archived. So you can keep unfinished and finished content in separate places, with different attributes. This is especially handy if you like to write content ahead of time and want to be able to easily find it when it comes time to publish.

• Draft: this is work in progress and is not visible to the public.
• Published: content that is visible to the public.
• Archived: previously published content that is tucked away in a safe place, away from the main navigation. Typically used with blogs.

Member management helps you control all aspects of your website’s users. As an administrator, you have full control over how many people can access your website and how much control they have themselves. This can be extremely useful for a large company, where many people (author, editor, publisher, etc.) are responsible for creating and maintaining content. You control how many hands are in the cookie jar at each stage of the creation process.

• Administrator: has complete control over all users and access to all of the website’s administration features.
• Editor: can publish and mange their own content as well as other people’s content, etc.
• Author: can publish and manage their own content.
• Contributor: can write and manage their own content but cannot publish it.
• Subscriber: can read content, view and write comments, receive newsletters and so on, without being able to edit anything.

Build-in security measures give you one less thing to worry about. You no longer have to worry about session management, robots trying multiple passwords to hack your account or losing data when processing forms. Almost every CMS has different session management configurations, so you can set the preferences that fit your security needs.

With the built-in “multiple password denial” feature, you can make sure that multiple users cannot access your system simultaneously with the same log-in credentials. In addition, you can automatically lock out users after several incorrect password attempts and allow forms to be submitted only once. This helps prevent loss of data and attempts to hack your system via password.

Additional Features

You can integrate add-on modules, or plug-ins, into your CMS to add value, improve accessibility and increase functionality. With the right combination of features, you can create a website that fits your business plan and helps your company achieve its goals. While the number of additional features that you can add is endless, we will focus on the major ones here.

GoMediazine is a great example of blog integration.

Company blog functionality helps keep your website fresh and can be a very useful marketing tool. While CMS’ have evolved into complete website solutions, they were originally intended to manage blogs. Most blogs were used as personal diaries or breaking news outlets. Adapted to business use, they can be very useful for letting customers and clients know about what’s new and exciting with your company. If you sell products, you can announce new items or sales. Some businesses, such as GoMedia, use their blog purely as a community-building tool to publish educational information.

The Electrorack website is a great example of seamless e-commerce integration.

E-commerce integration makes the user experience on your website a very comfortable one. Being able to sell products and services from within your website would be ideal for any business. Some companies, including Electrorack, have seamlessly integrated their e-commerce solution into their CMS. The user doesn’t even notice that they are jumping from one platform to another because the look and feel are so consistent.

The DesignByHumans website has a great integrated user-based community.

Discussion forums are a complete community-building solution that helps your website’s visitors exchange ideas. Users can create topics, offer feedback on existing topics and interact with other users. How you use a discussion forum depends entirely on your needs. Design by Humans uses its forum to post company news and to let their artists and customers interact for free.

This website has a photo gallery set up on its system for album postings.

Photo galleries are used by millions of people around the world. Online photo sharing is becoming this era’s scrapbooking. With the increase in social media use, people can easily send everyone they know a link to their latest photo gallery. The Memory Museum can display photos easily through the customized gallery on its photography blog. Businesses can use this feature to showcase recent events or feature products. By organizing and displaying photos from within your CMS, you can have all of your content in one location.

National Geographic has an intuitive integrated video management system to help users view their video content through the Web.

Video management helps you organize, edit and distribute video content. You no longer have to upload videos to YouTube or Vimeo and then manage them separately. You can manage your video content just as you manage your website’s pages. You can upload almost any kind of video and then share your albums and videos on your website and on social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Flickr and Digg.

CMS’ vary in the video management features they offer. But most let you upload multiple files at once (in batch) and automatically create thumbnails. Once videos are in the system, you can track viewer behavior as well as feature content based on popularity. National Geographic integrates videos into its articles and offers them separately for others to embed on their own websites.

Apple offers extensive multi-language support and uses multiple URL extensions to differentiate content.

Multi-language support lets you offer content in multiple countries within a single CMS, allowing visitors to choose their preferred language. While most small companies do not need this feature, it can be helpful. The support features may not actually translate content (and if they do, they won’t do an accurate job), but they do let you feature content in multiple languages, which is extremely useful for corporate websites that operate globally. Because Apple operates in many countries, it offers its website in many languages.

RSS feeds typically show excerpts of content and images (if any), as shown above.

RSS feeds are a really simple way to syndicate the content on your website. With the explosion of RSS readers, which constantly check a user’s favorite websites for new content, RSS feeds have become essential. It does not matter whether you update your website daily or monthly, your readers will be sure never to miss an update. Millions of websites publish RSS feeds on a regular basis, and yours should not be an exception. With people’s attention spans shrinking along with their free time, letting users choose the content they want to read through an RSS feed is helpful.

A newsletter can be a great way to reach out to users who are interested in your content, especially if yours is designed as well as TV Guide Daily Scoop’s.

Newsletters/mailing lists are an extremely helpful feature, especially if you have a lot of users or want to expand your base. Many mainstream users still do not use an RSS reader, and some of them may prefer to receive your content in their inbox rather than by visiting your website every few days. You can integrate newsletters into your system and set the feature’s functionality. Usually, you will be able to manage subscriptions, create a template, compose the newsletter in a WYSIWYG editor, manage your archive and track open/click results.

Google Analytics shows detailed information on your website’s visitors, at no charge.

Statistics/tracking is an essential feature for any website. To effectively run and market a website, you need to know as much as possible about your visitors. Analyzing whatever data is available prepares you to achieve company goals, focuses your marketing initiatives and converts visitors into regular users. You will have information on how many people visit your website, where they live, what content they view and much more. Google Analytics is one of the most widely adopted analytics programs that are available for CMS’. Its popularity is partly due to the immense amount of information it provides about your visitors for free.

Where Can I Find A Content Management System?

You know the size of your organization and how much you can spend on a CMS. These factors are good indicators of where to start your search. Actually finding one can be a daunting task, but if you have a clear idea of what you are looking for, you can quickly weed out the options that don’t fit your needs. Finding a solution that helps your business achieve its goals is important. Many businesses, large and small, use all kinds of different CMS’ to manage their content. Start your journey by using the resources listed below.

Further Resources

Check out the following related articles and resources:

• 45 Incredibly Useful Web Design Checklists and Questionnaires
  You are much less likely to overlook important aspects of your website if you follow this checklist, which covers content, usability, accessibility, standards and more.
• 15 Essential Checks Before Launching Your Website
  Lists some important things to check before taking your website public.
• 10 Designer’s Checkpoints To Be Aware Of
  A list of things every designer should know about their website.
• List of Content Management Systems
  A list of notable content management systems that can be used to organize and facilitate collaborative content creation. Many of them are built on top of other content management frameworks.
• Compare Multiple CMS Solutions (technical)
  This is a community service for anyone looking for a means to manage website content.
• Many useful resources on how to design and develop for these CMS’, including many free templates:
  • Joomla Resources
  • WordPress Resources
  • Expression Engine Resources
  • Drupal Resources
• How To Improve Your Branding With Your Content
  Branding experts speak the truth when they say that a winning brand communicates why you are your prospect’s only solution. If you can’t achieve that, at least convey why you are your prospect’s best solution.

(al)

© Robert Hartland for Smashing Magazine, 2009. | Permalink | 26 comments | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: CMS

Go to Source

Getting Started With Content Management Systems originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on November 8, 2009.

If you’re looking for a video conferencing solution for your office, you could invest in a hosted and managed solution like WebEx or GoToMeeting–but in both cases, you may wind up paying for features, support, and licenses that you don’t want or need.

DimDim is an alternative video conferencing solution for small businesses, consultants, or anyone else who wants video conferencing capabilities but doesn’t want to spend a lot of money or lock into a multi-year licensing contract. All of the features you’d expect from a video conferencing tool are there: the ability to share presentations, desktops, work together on a whiteboard, and more, all through your Web browser. Best of all, for most users it’s free.

One of DimDim’s best features is that the entire service is accessible
through your Web browser. You don’t have to download special software
to start or host meetings, share documents and Web pages, or even
broadcast video from your Web cam. All you have to do is sign up for an
account, invite your attendees, and start your meeting. Attendees don’t
have to download anything either: they simply log in to DimDim using
the meeting credentials you supply to join your meeting.

DimDim also has features most people would attribute only to large,
enterprise video conferencing services; you can make any attendee in
your meeting the presenter, you can pass the microphone or Web cam
around among participants, mute your attendees if you’re giving a
presentation or leading an online class, share documents with your
attendees, or chat privately with them if you want to discuss something
but don’t want to inturrupt the meeting.

Basic accounts at DimDim are free. You get all of the standard
features, and free accounts allow you to schedule video conference
meetings of up to 20 attendees. If you’re looking for a solution that’s
a little more customizable, you can upgrade to DimDim Pro for
$19/month, which gives you easier access to DimDim support and meeting
spaces that can be branded with your company’s logo. You also get
access to some additional collaboration tools, unlimited meetings with
up to 50 attendees each, and access to dedicated servers and faster
meeting performance.

If you’re looking for an even higher level of support, you could sign
up for DimDim Webinar or DimDim Enterprise, each of which offers even
greater access to high-level application support, custom meeting spaces
and dedicated servers to your organization, not just your account
level, and hundreds, if not thousands of participants in your meetings.

DimDim Webinar is $75/month, and meant for users who will likely use
the service less frequently but expect over 1000 attendees when they do
use it. DimDim Enterprise is for users who expect a combination of
stability, support, and regular use. Pricing for DimDIm Enterprise is
based on your company’s need.

Additionally, DimDim offers downloadable modules and connectors that
support other business and desktop tools you may already use. For
example, for Zimbra Desktop users, there is an add-on that allows you
to schedule and launch DimDim meetings straight from Zimbra Desktop,
and educators using Moodle can use DimDim to start online class
sessions right from Moodle.

DimDim is open-source, and the API is freely available for developers
who want to integrate it into their own applications or services. Since
the service offers a free option, DimDim is a great option for small
businesses or businesses without video conferencing tools that are
looking for affordable ways to get them without a ton of hassle or the
need to install custom software on their computers.:

Go to Source

DimDim Offers Quality Video Conferencing for Free originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on September 4, 2009.

In this article we will look at tools that can help those of you who want to develop websites on a Linux platform, from powerful text editors to desktop and system features. How do you edit files remotely without FTP plug-ins? What are package managers, and why they are cool? In which Web browsers can you test your applications?

I wish I could cover many more topics: using the command line, basics of Vim, Nautilus features in detail, Nautilus scripting, neat command line tools, basic server configuration and many others. But if I addressed all of the issues that arise from time to time on the Internet, this article would turn into a small book. This isn’t an article on “How to do X or Y on Linux” or “How to use [insert app name here].” And we cannot cover more comprehensive IDEs such as Eclipse and NetBeans, each of which requires separate articles.

You probably already have some idea of how to find and install applications for your favorite distros. However, we will point you to the right place anyway to download, for example, scripts and plug-ins.

So, let’s begin!

1. Our Tools

Below, for your quick reference, is a list of tools that we will mention or explain in this article.

Text Editors:

• Gedit
• Geany

Browsers:

• Opera
• Mozilla Firefox
• Epiphany (with the WebKit engine)
• Chromium (for some other WebKit examples)

General and command line tools:

• FUSE
• SSHFS
• Vim
• Parcellite

2. Gedit

Gedit is the default and simplest text editor for the GNOME environment. The default installation already comes with some good resources, although not all of them are activated by default. It is bundled with some plug-ins; however, you can add many more plug-ins to make it a nice simple IDE. If you go to Edit > Preferences > Plugins, you’ll see which plug-ins are installed by default. There, you can configure and activate them. On the same screen, you can configure other elements of the text editor, such as indentation, line numbering and current line highlighting.

Your default installation probably won’t have many plug-ins by default other than those. Check if your distro has a package to automatically install a set of plug-ins. The package would be named gedit-plugins. I recommend installing it because it adds at least five helpful plug-ins: bracket completion, color picker (quite helpful with your CSS), session saver, smart spaces and terminal. These are all of the plug-ins installed with the package:

• Bracket completion
• Charmap select
• Code comment
• Color picker
• Join and split lines
• Session saver
• Smart spaces
• Show tabbar
• Terminal

See the plug-ins section for a fuller overview of them.

Let’s look at the most useful of these basic plug-ins for developers and see how we can configure them, in needed.

Snippets

Snippets inserts frequently used pieces of text quickly. To configure it, check it on the plug-in tab and hit “Configure Plugin.” You can edit existing snippets, add new ones, import and export snippets and create global snippets. It is also possible to add tab triggers, shortcuts and drop targets. To activate a snippet, you must be editing a file with a corresponding snippet (e.g. if it is a Python snippet, you should be editing a Python file). If it is a blank pure-text file, just change its syntax on View > Highlight Mode. Many good snippets are on the Internet; some that I use are Django and RoR snippets.

External Tools

External tools executes external commands and shell scripts. As with snippets, you can configure those that ship with the plug-in or create your own. For more complex tasks, you will need some knowledge of shell-scripting and how to use some of the shell tools. We won’t go into how to master Gedit and its amazing plug-ins (we recommend reading Gedit manuals for that), but we will give you links to some scripts that you can play with.

Modelines

If you use Vim or Emacs in your daily work, you may know what modelines are. If you wish you could import them to other text editors, modelines lets you do exactly that.

For those who aren’t familiar with them, modelines are “definitions” of tabbing, spacing, line ending, tabbing level and so on.

The basic and gedit-plugins packages are the ones I use most often. Some other functionality can be added only through third-party plug-ins, which you can find all over the Web; GNOME Live’s Gedit section is a good start. Have a look at AutoComplete, Better Python Console (the Python Console that ships with Gedit is only useful for developing gedit plug-ins), ClassBrowserPlugin and Autosave editing sessions.

Finally, you can customize the look of Gedit with color themes. Gedit comes with a few, but you can find many more.

Further Reading

• Modelines:
  Modelines page at GNOME library website.
• Gedit Plug-ins
  Gedit plug-ins repository at GNOME Live
• External Tools Plug-in
  External Tools plug-in page at Live GNOME.
• Text-mate like Gedit in a few steps
  
  A guide with resources for making Gedit look more like Text-mate.
• Using Gedit with Django:
  A guide to using Gedit for Django programming
• Django Snippets:
  Snippets for Django.
• RoR Development with Gedit
  A guide to using Gedit for Ruby On Rails programming.
• RoR Snippets
  Snippets for Ruby On Rails. There are also more snippets here.
• RHTML integration:
  A guide to integrating RHTML in Gedit.

3. Geany

Unlike Gedit, Geany is more of a general purpose “minimalist” IDE than text editor. It already comes with such resources as an embed terminal, compiler tab, messages tab and note-taking tab (Scribble). You also have a side-pane listing of file symbols (i.e. classes and methods in Java files, sections and sub-sections in LaTeX files) and documents that can be extended to include a tab with file browsing. In addition, Geany comes with a simple completion tool, color picker, finder, simple project builder and tools for some languages. Its search tool is capable of searching the whole session or only the current file, with or without regex, and a “Find in files” option if the browser files plug-in is on.

Yet one of the nicest features of Geany is its Compile and Execute buttons. Based on the file you are editing, Geany tries to find the corresponding compiler/interpreter. So, if you are editing a Java file, you can compile it with javac and run it right after the compilation ends. At the same time, you can compile a LaTeX file and preview it in a really simple DVI viewer without having to change any configuration parameters. For interpreted languages, you don’t even have to run the compiler: just hit “Execute.” Of course, if your executable has a different name (let’s say, ruby1.8 instead of ruby), it will fail and report that it couldn’t find ruby. But you simply need to configure that to make things work wonderfully again.

Another interesting aspect of Geany is its built-in tags information. You can create *.tags files for a language or framework that Geany does not support by default, as well as add support for auto-completion and call tips. Consult Geany’s documentation for more details

Finally, you can extend Geany with plug-ins (find the plug-ins manager in the Tools menu) and themes. Or simply configure everything the way you want: just go to “Preferences” and adjust things to your taste, from the browser to your shortcuts.

Further Reading

• Geany snippets
  A collection of snippets to use with Geany.
• Integrating with SVN/Git:
  How to use Geany with SVN or Git version control systems.
• Geany extras
  Extra goodies to extend Geany.

4. What About Remote File Editing?

Nowadays, things are pretty easy, and you almost don’t need to install plug-ins to access FTP and SSH accounts or to edit files, because most modern distros comes with FUSE. And if you have GVFS installed, GNOME integrates it so that you can use it on Nautilus.

“But what is it?” you may be asking. In short, it allows you to mount a virtual file system on your system and work there just as you would in common directories.

You would just click on a file and start editing it. When you’re finished, just save and everything is done. A big advantage of this method over the FTP plug-in method is that you make things available to more than one application.

Note: since my server has only SFTP access, I’m not sure how stable this is with simple FTP, but it works flawlessly with SFTP. Nevertheless, when I need to edit a remote file, I prefer to connect via SSH using a terminal and use Vim to edit the file, only because the method reminds me that I’m not working locally and to be careful.

Further Reading

• Mounting FUSE file system
  A quick guide to mounting a FUSE system and adding it to fstab.
• Creating file systems with Ruby and FUSE
  Using FUSE with Ruby

5. File Browsing FTP and SSH, Natively

In more recent versions of Nautilus, the GNOME file browser, you have native access to network protocols, such as WebDAV, FTP, SSH and Windows shares. You can add other protocols, like SVN, or extend it through its plug-ins and scripts. (Unfortunately, I cannot cover this topic here but only point you to an extensions and scripts website.)

You can browser different servers at the same time on different windows, which can be really helpful for transferring files from one server to another.

Of course, you don’t need to be stuck in the graphical portion of Linux. You can use the command line to perform most of these tasks.

Further Reading

• SVN on Nautilus:
  Nautilus SVN integration project page.
• Nautilus subversion integration tool. Execute SVN commands with Gnome scripts
  A tutorial on how to integrate and use SVN on Nautilus.
• Nautilus File Manager Scripts
  A page with a good collection of Nautilus scripts.
• Nautilus on GNOME Live
  Nautilus page on GNOME Live.
• Extending Nautilus
  A guide on how to write scripts and extensions for the Nautilus File Browser.

Web Browsers

Linux has a lot of Web browsers to play with, from Mozilla’s family to console-based browsers. All of them have their pros and cons. But most of the time, we need only a few for testing, probably Firefox, Opera and one with the WebKit/KHTML engine.

Because I’m covering the GNOME environment, I chose Epiphany, with the WebKit engine (Epiphany’s project developers switched from Gecko to WebKit in the latest versions). Epiphany with WebKit is named epiphany-webkit on Debian and probably on some other distros

If you are on KDE, though, Chromium would probably suit you better because it does not depend on GNOME libraries or even use Konqueror (KHTML).

Note: I’m no specialist on rendering engines, so I can’t say for sure whether testing on more recent versions of Konqueror (which uses KHTML) would be sufficient for WebKit tests. I do all my testing on Epiphany.

If you really need to test your website in Internet Explorer, you can use the Wine library with Wine Tricks. Or use VirtualBox images, which is provided by Microsoft itself. For now, IE8 on Wine is still too buggy. But IE7 can run on Wine: check the “Further Reading” section below for more information. Running them on VirtualBox should work flawlessly.

Further Reading

• Chromium
  Chromium project page.
• Epiphany WebKit
  Epiphany WebKit page at GNOME Live.
• IE 7 on Wine
  How to run IE7 on Wine.
• HOWTO: run IE6, IE7, IE8 on Linux in VirtualBox
  How to use VirtualBox to run Microsoft browsers. Another guide is here.
• Wine Tricks
  Wine tricks page at Wine HQ wiki.

Package Manager: Your Best Friend

If there is one thing I really love on every Linux distro I have used, it is the package management. Okay, some are better than others, but generally speaking you need only the command line to take control of your system applications. Package managers help you find, install and keep track of security updates and new versions of your applications. And you can install more than one application at a time, even if they are not related.

Depending on the package manager, when you search for and install new applications, others that might work well with the ones you have found are suggested to you, such as GUIs for configuring and managing an FTP server.

Some bundles for installing AMP include too many applications (even on Linux) or are strict in what they have packed. But when using a package manager on Linux, installing a server environment can be easier and flexible: you can tailor your installation more efficiently, choosing only what you need. Why would you install PHP if you are not a PHP developer? Why install MySQL if SQLite serves your needs? You probably don’t need an FTP server or an email service either. Nevertheless, you can install any of them easily if you need to in future. Also, you needn’t be restricted to Apache if you plan to use, say, lighttpd.

Open-source version control systems are available for Linux and, even better, in distro repositories. For Debian, you have Git (as git-core), Mercurial, CVS, Subversion and Bazaar all in the official repository (though Bazaar is over the backports and unstable). No need to go to a bunch of different websites.

Further Reading

• The Perfect Server: Debian Lenny
  Tips and instructions on how to set up a complete server on Debian
• Debian lighttpd
  How to configure a lighttpd server on Debian
• Gentoo Tutorials
  A collection of tutorials at Getoo Wiki. Could be useful for others distro, too.
• CrossFTP Server
  An FTP server with an LDAP/database back end and GUI configuration/monitoring.
• GAdmin ProFTPD
  GAdmin module for administrating ProFTPD servers using a GUI.
• PureAdmin
  PureAdmin is a user and server administration for the pure-ftpd.

Native Multi-Paste And Multiple Desktops

I started using Linux seriously at the end of 2003, when I got sick of Windows 98 SE freezing after 20 minutes of use and having to be reinstalled after 2 weeks.

After installing Debian and exploring KDE features, I discovered how cool and useful the virtual multi-desktop concept was. Now when I use other operating systems, this is what I miss most. But really understanding how it can help you organize your windows and work takes some time.

Another thing I find really helpful and miss in every other system I use is being able to buffer two things on the clipboard with any external tools. (Okay, I know when using Vim you have as many buffers as keys, but I’d need a whole book to talk about Vim!) All I need to do is highlight a piece of text and press the middle button to paste it. And if I have something in the buffer (loaded previously with Control + C), I won’t lose it.

You have plenty of options for controlling multiple buffers in the clipboard. KDE already comes with Klipper, which is great. GNOME comes with no such tool, but you do have some good options (I use Parcellite).

One little thing I miss is a native way to call programs without having to click on their icons or menu entries or call them through the terminal. GNOME and KDE both have a native application runner that you can call by pressing Alt + F2. Then, just start typing and it shows your options. Even though QuickSilver, and programs like it, does something similar and even better, you have to install it.

Further Reading

• X Window System Multiple Desktops
  Wikipedia entry about multiple desktops on X Window System
• Glipper
  A GTK clipboard manager.
• Parcellite
  Another GTK clipboard manager.
• GNOME Launch Box
  A QuickSilver-like tool for the GNOME environment.
• GNOME Do
  Another tool inspired by QuickSilver.
• Katapult
  KDE’s tool inspired by QuickSilver.
• GNOME Deskbar
  Deskbar is an applet the comes bundled with GNOME with the goal of providing a common search interface.

A Note About KDE

Linux is a rich world and has many variables to experiment with. I have never used any of KDE’s specific tools. For programming, I use NetBeans. I have used KWriter for simple edits but never for programming (nor Kate). Though I haven’t used KDE4, I can say by experience that, for file browsing, Konqueror is a killer app: integrated preview for many file types, native access to SSH, (S)FTP and other network protocols, extensible, tabbed file browsing and many other great features.

Conclusion

We have seen a lot of simple tools to play with, a rich environment for building testing and development servers and a good range of tools to improve your workflow. Although Linux isn’t the most popular OS for desktops, it is not necessarily ill-suited to most kinds of development work — and it may even be better than more popular OS’s. It is up to you now to try it if you are not satisfied with your current environment.

Further Reading

• Vim
  Vim official page
• Vim doc
  A Vim documentation project, with references, tips, FAQs and tutorials. A good resource for any Vim user.
• Shlomi Fish’s Vim for begginers
  A good place to start if you want to learn Vim.
• VIM for Django
  Tips, plug-ins and scripts to make Vim more suitable for Django.
• Vim for Rails
  A plug-in to enhance Vim for Ruby On Rails.

Related posts

You may be interested in the following related posts:

• CSS Editors Reviewed
  This review includes JustStyle CSS Editor, CSSED and other CSS editors for Linux.
• 35 Useful Source Code Editors Reviewed
  This review includes Komodo Edit, Aptana Studio, Screem, Quanta Plus, Emacs and other editors for Linux.

About the Author

Ricardo is a systems information student from Brazil. He works as an intern at a local company developing JSF applications that help people keep track of many Brazilian companies’ stocks on BM&FBovespa. He is also starting a new website with some friends to talk about comics, video games, films, TV series and RPG in a way different from most Brazilian websites. You can contact him on Twitter or through vox.

(al)

© Ricardo Cappellano for Smashing Magazine, 2009. |
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Post tags: coding, linux, web-development

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How To Develop Websites On Linux originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 29, 2009.

To Combine the answers above”

Create a php file and paste this in it:

<?php

echo $_SERVER['REMOTE_ADDR'];

?>

save it as curip.php and upload it to your server.

In your VB.net project create a module.

Declare the imports section at the very top

Imports System.Net

Imports System.IO

And create your function:

Public Function GetIP() As String

Dim uri_val As New Uri(“http://yourdomain.com/curip.php”)

Dim request As HttpWebRequest = HttpWebRequest.Create(uri_val)

request.Method = WebRequestMethods.Http.Get

Dim response As HttpWebResponse = request.GetResponse()

Dim reader As New StreamReader(response.GetResponseStream())

Dim myIP As String = reader.ReadToEnd()

response.Close()

Return myIP

End Function

Now anywhere in your code you can issue

Dim myIP = GetIP()

and use the value from there as you wish.

Get “real” IP address with vb .net? originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 14, 2009.

All the instructions needed are included in the modules config page.
Main part is you need to provide a script that actually generates the key. Since every program can have a different algorithm to generate a key, there is no point in trying to make a 1 for all. Especially since the key has to validate against your application.

Your keygen file can be PHP, CGI, whatever you want, just see the instructions for all the info.

This was tested with PS 1.1.0.5 (I’ll be testing it on 1.2 soon)
I’ve tested this as thoroughly as I can, both on my test setup and our production system.
If you do notice any problems, please post it here and I will try my best to help.
Thank you.

UPDATE: after a bit more thought I’ve realized that the way the return from the keygen script to the module is handled is very specific to what I needed it for. Since our sales are mostly one or two line items with a qty of 1, the modle wasn’t setup for multiple qtys. I will be working on a more flexible version soon. For now I hope my work on this helps someone get what they need out of PS.

Forum Thread: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/24707/

Serial PrestaShop Generator Module originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 11, 2009.

I’ve tested this on v1.1.0.5 (Should work on 1.2, but not tested)

See the module instructions for exact info.

You have to check a box inside the config page, then click submit, only then will the orders be deleted.

You should uninstall/delete this module once your stores in production as it deletes ALL ORDERS!

Can be downloaded from http://attendview.com/deletetestorders.tar

Forum Thread: http://www.prestashop.com/forums/viewthread/24710/

Delete PrestaShop Test Orders originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on August 11, 2009.

It might not be as mature, but hey, it works and thats what matters

1. sudo apt-get install doxygen doxygen-gui

2. in terminal doxygenwizard& will launch the gui

OR (from Life of a Programmer Geek)

2. cd project directory

3. doxygen -g

4. edit Doxyfile

5. doxygen

As a test I ran it on my prestashop install and let it generate the documentation in another directory. Now condsidering that PrestaShop was not written with Doxygen in mind it did a great job of finding all the functions in the code and laying them out.

True, this isn’t very useful, but if from the start you wrote your code with doxygen in mind and documented accordingly this would be a very powerful tool.

Quick Guide to Using DoxyGen in Ubuntu originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 28, 2009.

Filed under: iPhone, App Store, App Review

Many months ago I received a review copy of G-Map for the iPhone. It had its own maps and turn by turn directions, but no voice guidance, and North was always up. Apple was limiting nav apps at that time, and I had real trouble with G-Map. I couldn’t load it on my iPhone. It kept locking up about halfway through the process. Extensive back and forth with the developers in Japan came to nothing, so I gave up. Finally, last April, my colleague Steve Sande was able to load it, and reviewed it for TUAW.

Now, with iPhones having new hardware and new software, G-Map [App Store] works and is certainly a competitor to the subscription-based AT&T app. You buy G-Map in one of several editions. G-Map West, at US$34.99, covers the Western States, and G-Map East covers, you guessed it, the Eastern U.S. It is also priced at 34.99. It gets a bit tricky, because some states like Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee and Wisconsin are split. If you travel all around those states you will probably want both editions.

There is also a California edition for $19.99, and one at the same price for New Jersey and New York. Versions for Canada and Europe are coming. All the G-Map modules require iPhone software version 3.0.

So how does it work? Pretty well, but with some caveats. It’s accurate at getting your position. The voice directions are quite audible, especially compared to the distorted AT&T app. The on-screen display gives you your speed limit, distance to your next turn, distance to destination and time to destination. It also plots major intersections in a very detailed 3D view, which is helpful. This works in the largest 185 metro areas.

Another plus is that all the maps are on your phone. If you slide out of AT&T’s service area the maps are still there; in contrast, the Telenav-based AT&T Navigator app will not work if you don’t have data coverage, as the maps are downloaded on-demand.

There are some downsides. The POI database is pretty thin in smaller towns. From Southern Arizona it couldn’t find the Phoenix Airport. It probably would have found it when I was closer, but even a POI search didn’t bring it up. As I was sitting at a long established car wash, it said no car washes were nearby. It did better with restaurants, banks, and hospitals. Like the AT&T app, there is no landscape mode, and you can’t get access to your address book, which is just plain silly.

It looks like the database, which comes from Navteq, has some errors, as do all such systems. Navigating to a restaurant, G-map reported it was on the left, when it was actually on the right.

Unlike the AT&T Navigator, G-Map has no real time traffic, but it does provide info from Navteq’s traffic statistics to predict trouble areas.

Even with some weakness, G-Map is a worthy competitor to the AT&T iPhone app. If you have the room on your phone (G-Map West is 824 MB), you can navigate without worrying about cell network access.

It’s cheaper than a monthly subscription would be over time, although there is no word when maps will be updated and what the cost will be. If the G-Map developers clean up the POI database, and add a lot more to it, I think they may sell a lot of apps. As it is, for getting to places where you know the address, it works about as well as the AT&T Navigator at a fraction of the cost. Of course more choices are coming, including the much discussed TomTom app, so you may want to wait it out and see what other offerings come along.

Here are some screen shots that show some of the major features:

TUAWAnother turn by turn app with voice for the iPhone originally appeared on The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) on Tue, 07 Jul 2009 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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Another turn by turn app with voice for the iPhone originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on July 7, 2009.

The year is flying by, and so are our readers’ picks for software, hardware, and other tools. Come on in to see the winners of our Hive Five polls for the second quarter of 2009.

Every week we pose a question to you, the saavy and experienced Lifehacker readers. Pulling from current trends, popular reader suggestions, and our own brainstorming sessions, we search out the next “Which is best?” question to put before the collective knowledge of the Lifehacker readership. We read all your comments, tally all your votes, and summarize the top five contenders for you. You vote on the best of the best and we return the next week with the champion.

The following list showcases the winners in each of the categories we covered in the second quarter of 2009. If a particular category catches your eye and you’d like to see the other contenders, click on the name of the category to to jump to the original Hive Five post; clicking on the name of the winner takes you directly to the web site for the software.

Best Image Editing Tool: Adobe Photoshop

Photoshop has achieved such status in the design community and such widespread recognition by the general public that even non-designers recognize what someone is saying when they exclaim, “That’s photoshopped!” Many of the techniques and methods that are standard across photo editing software were pioneered in Photoshop, like layers, slices, and image correcting macros and filters. On its own Photoshop is a titan of photo editing power, but thanks to a nearly complete dominance in the graphic editing industry, there are entire companies devoted to creating plugins for it. When it comes to manipulating images, if you can’t do it in Photoshop, there’s a strong chance you won’t be able to do it at all. Photo by HVarga.

Best Portable Operating System: Ubuntu

The same qualities that make Ubuntu so popular as a desktop operating system and live CD bring it a lot of popularity as a portable operating system. Ubuntu isn’t the smallest portable OS in the portable operating systems Hive Five, but thanks to a number of factors, including strong saturation in the Linux market and an easy to use tool built right for flash-drive installations, Ubuntu makes a great addition to your portable drive.

Best Screen Capture Tool: Snagit

Snagit is as far removed from the classic Print Screen school of screen captures as possible. Snagit helps you capture both still images and grab frames from video. You can capture your entire screen or regions of it, and thanks to a robust profile system, you can create profiles for all manner of capture techniques. Whether you only want to generate a screen capture after a menu is activated or you want every screen capture to be automatically uploaded to a server, you can create a Snagit profile to fit your purpose. On top of the highly customizable feature set, Snagit offers a built in editor for annotating your screenshots and adding basic effects. Finally, the app’s screenshot organizer keeps your grabs in order with date, name, and tag-based searching. Snagit also has the ability to easily capture images from objects that are larger than the screen.

Best Malware Removal Tool: Spybot Search & Destroy

Spybot Search & Destroy has made quite a name for itself over the years, earning accolades from both general and computer-focused publications. Spybot Search & Destroy is the highest ranked freeware tool at 2Spyware.com, a website that ranks malware removal tools. In addition to scanning for malware, Spybot Search & Destroy also has a variety of additional functionality, including a botnet scanner, hosts-file modification (to keep malware from calling home), a secure file shredder, and a dummy code feature (it replaces malicious or questionable adware modules with inert code so the dependent program will keep functioning). As an added bonus Spybot Search & Destroy is compatible with every version of Windows dating back to Windows 95.

Best Free Data Recovery Tool: Recuva

Recuva is a user-friendly Windows-based tool. When you run Recuva, you can resurrect missing files using either the file-recovery wizard or the application’s manual mode. The file-recovery wizard is handy when you’re sure your data is gone but you’re not quite sure where it went or how to get it back. The wizard lets you narrow your search type to pictures, music, documents, video, or all files, and you can set the search location to everywhere on your computer, removable media only, in My Documents, the Recycle Bin, or a specified location. If you don’t need the wizard you can jump right into manual mode and get to work searching where you know the file should be. Recuva uses a green/yellow/red light system to indicate how probable the recovery of your files will be, and when available, it can provide previews image files available for recovery. Recuva also includes a tool to securely wipe files you find, handy if you’re attempting a file recovery just to ensure the files are actually dead and gone.

Best Journaling Tool: Pen and Paper

Long before people were pecking out their missives on typewriters, let alone keyboards, they were quietly scribbling them onto paper. In an age of instant sharing and easy digitization, many of you showed a strong affinity for recording your most private moments with the solidly analog and difficult to share medium: pen and paper. For many Lifehacker readers there is no substitute for the privacy and ease of use that comes with keeping an old fashioned paper-based journal. Among the variations of the pen and paper motif you submitted, readers showed a distinct passion for high-quality pens and Moleskine notebooks. Rich paper and smooth flowing ink is apparently the icing on the cake of analog journaling. Photo by MShades.

Best Exercise Planning and Tracking Tool: RunKeeper

RunKeeper turns your iPhone into an exercise tracking tool. Once installed you can monitor your speed, how far you run, and track your route on a map. You can review your data on the iPhone itself or upload the data to the RunKeeper website for analysis. The pro version includes audio feedback to make the application easier to use hands free, announcing how far you’ve run and other relevant stats. Finally, if you’re so inclined you can have RunKeeper update your favorite social tools like Twitter or Facebook with workout updates. For more, check out our guided tour of RunKeeper.

Best MP3 Tagging Tool: Mp3Tag

Mp3Tag is a an MP3 tagging tool with a rather spartan interface which lends itself to easy use. You can batch edit your MP3 tags, including iTunes specific tags like media type or TV Show settings. If your MP3 files are named with tags in the file name like band-album-track-title.mp3, you can tell Mp3Tag to convert the naming convention of your files into the actual tags. You can also go in the opposite direction, renaming your files to reflect their tags. The latter trick is handy if you’d like to make the file name easily recognizable during searching and also have a backup of sorts should the ID3 tag become corrupted or overwritten with an incorrect tag. Mp3Tag also supports expression-based renaming, allowing you easily reformat the naming convention or formatting style of your files. Mp3Tag supports multiple online databases such as Freedb, Amazon, Discogs, and more for easy tag importing.

Best Netbook: ASUS EEEPC 1000HE

When netbooks first appeared onto most peoples’ radars, it was because of the earlier EEEPC models gaining surprising popularity several years ago. ASUS has continued to crank out rock-solid netbooks, building their reputation in large part to some of the longest battery lifes. While they claim 9.5 hours under ideal conditions, under real world conditions it’s more like 6—still radically better than the 3 hours you can squeeze out of most netbooks. The 1000HE sports a 92% size keyboard and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 1.3MP webcam, 10.1″ display, Wi-Fi b/g/n and Bluetooth for connectivity, and weighs in at 3.2 pounds. Every ASUS netbook comes with 10GB of online storage, free for 24 months after purchase.

Best Alternative File Copier: TeraCopy

TeraCopy is one of the best known alternative file copiers, winning people over with an interface and functionality that one might call “just advanced enough”. TeraCopy integrates with the Windows shell for drag-and-drop support and includes a solidly laid out right-click menu. It doesn’t overwhelm you with a plethora of settings or options, but it provides enough advanced functionality to speed up file copying, notify you when files don’t copy correctly, and allow you to bulk approve overwriting, renaming, and skipping of duplicate files. TeraCopy is also available in a portable version. The $21 Pro version adds the ability to select files by extension and remove files from the queue without having to start over.

Best Recipe Manager: Paper

Traditionalists rejoice! Despite the creep of technology into all realms of our lives, many of you have eschewed search-friendly text, embeddable images, and virtual recipe sharing for storing your recipes traditionally on paper. Not all of you hand wrote your recipes—some printed and stored them—but there is a certain intimacy that comes with keeping handwritten recipes that some of you haven’t abandoned. The votes for paper-based systems were scattered among 3-ring binders, bound notebooks, and 3×5 cards. Paper is an excellent and timeless choice for those wanting to avoid whisking an egg all over your laptop screen. Photo by Pink Sherbet Photography.

Best Clipboard Manager: Ditto

Ditto is a portable clipboard manager with a hefty feature list. Not only does Ditto support plain text, but it can also copy formatting and even images. You can search your stored text clippings and synchronize multiple copies of Ditto together to update your clippings across computers. Ditto has full unicode support, so you can paste foreign and non-standard characters without a problem. You can group together your clippings to keep things organized by task or project, as well as assign hotkeys to frequently used clippings. On top of the user-defined hotkeys, Ditto sports over a dozen built-in hotkeys for entering, searching, and retrieving your clippings.

Go to Source

Best of the Best: Hive Five Winners, March through June 2009 [Hive Five] originally appeared on Shai Perednik.com on June 29, 2009.