Techno

Cool Tech Toys, and stuff for the boyz and the girlz!

SMF, TinyPortal and Aero Theme: Add a community to your blog!

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Over the years, I have worked with several different forum softwares: SMF, PunBB, PHPBB2, and as a user vBulletin. One of my customers wanted to upgrade his forums on his hosting plan after using PHPBB2 for a while. He needed to grow his forums a little more and add features to his groups, including attachments, sophisticated group management, increased ease of use, and so on. But the vBulletin license was too expensive.

I recommended SMF as a good alternative, and in fact, it is. But we had to migrate the forums. It was complex but possible. So, yesterday we worked for about 4 or 5 hours to get everything working. So here’s how the process went!

Backing up your installation
I first backed up everything, then I created a working install of the original website. Just in case everything went wrong, we could redirect everything to the backup or restore the backup easily enough. If you are upgrading, such a cautious route is highly recommended.

Finding the software
We decided to go with SMF, but I couldn’t get the webinstall software that they were offering to install, so I downloaded the files from the most recent version, and uploaded them to my host. It was a little slow, but reliable. Once uploaded, the install went quite smoothly, and was done quickly.
Importing Posts from PHPBB2
The next problem we faced was importing the 300-odd posts and settings from PHPBB2 to SMF. Naturally, there is an importer utility, but initially it wouldn’t work. I tried almost every variation, but it kept reporting that it couldn’t find the PHPBB files. I think that was because I hadn’t installed the backup properly. The other odd thing was the posts all have to be IN THE SAME database as the SMF install BEFORE you import. You can’t import from another DB to your SMF database. However, it did work as reported, eventually. I still don’t know why it didn’t work at first or what I got wrong.

TinyPortal and Themes
Adding TinyPortal, and TP themes was the final stage for the initial development. Once downloaded, the administration functions of SMF allowed the easy upload and install of these packages.

For more information about Tiny Portal and SMF.

So, you’d like to take a look at SMF, with TinyPortal and Aero_TP theme installed, go to AgentsChat.com and have a gander! Adding a small but nicely presented community to your blog as StevePavlina has done. It will increase the number of people coming back to your blog as well as your forums.

A first data: Should you or shouldn’t you save yourself?

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Last week, I spent too many precious hours copying data. Geez! Every solution I have tried seems to generate more trouble. Here’s the problem: I have too many files generated over 10 years of PC use, going way back to Win3.1 on my first pc.

I have religiously copied and backed everything up since my first hard drive died nearly 10 years ago. Result: I have now tons of files, all over the place, with new versions, multiple copies of the same version, and so on. Originally I tried to place them in folders, only to discover that some folders ran so deep that the system couldn’t recognize them when moved. Others were in Chinese so that Win98 would stop copying the files reporting an error. Yikes! I had to copy everything again. I just do not have good data management habits in that respect.

And it’s not like I haven’t tried: I tried a 100MB zip drive, a CD-writer, a DVD writer, an extra hard drive (or two), and even an extra system. All of them worked (for a while), but now I’m overrun again with copies of pictures and albums, and it’s becoming a regular nightmare.

Now I’m hoping that a program called CloneSpy V2.3 will help me, but I’m not awfully positive on that point. I’m also planning to use software like SyncbackSE to store data automatically on another PC for all the computers I use. I have thought about using online storage (I like have a ton of space, courtesy of Dreamhost) as a backup…

But the one common thread that runs through everything is that each solution brought its own problems:

  • zip drive: slow, burdensome, occasionally failed outright (meaning 2 copies were needed)
  • Zip software: quick, effective, until I ended up with zips within zips within zips
  • CD burner: until I ended up with dozens of CDs and not a clue what was on them
  • DVD burner: couldn’t get it to burn a full DVD of data
  • Hard Disk: data was half copied several times due to errors
  • Another PC: copying files in another language caused undue stress.

So, I’m pleading for help. What in your opinion could be the answer to all my problems? I need some data guidance. And as I blog more, I think that will present a whole NEW dimension to my data nightmare… And I have started making videos seriously yet, either…

Comments, suggestions and general advice are most welcome!

SanDisk’s New 32-GB Flash Drive – Liberation for the Blogger?

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I recently blogged about virtualization on a USB flash drive. Little did I realize that a portable flash drive of such dimensions as SanDisk’s new Flash Drive Hard Drive replacement would become available so soon and at a price that is almost affordable.

While the dimensions aren’t huge by hard disk standards, running an OS in such a space is certainly very feasible. I’m sitting here thinking of a Damn Small Linux running on a laptop without a CD. Now on that environment, you’ve cut out two large sources of power drain. I wonder how long you could get out of the batteries, then. Not to mention, the weight and physical size of the laptop could be much thinner, I think. Or perhaps an extra battery could replace the CD-Rom/DVD burner!

I know that there are people designing such systems even as we speak, but I think for the most part, they’d have to be homegrown efforts for the time being. Still, it would be awesome, if you could get your hands on such a machine or design one yourself. Could it be the perfect blogger’s tool?!