Please bear in mind that this is my very own personal experience. Try this at your own risk!

Situation:
Manually installed wordpress on my hosting account, getting tired of upgrading every new version. Decided to switch to Fantastico install, let it handle the upgrades.

Solution:
You must have these:

1. A Cpanel hosting account with Fantastico bundled.
2. A archiving tool(to zip your files).
3. A FTP program(to upload big files).

Step 1: Backup everything.
I seriously mean EVERYTHING. Download a home directory backup, and a Mysql database backup from your cpanel to local computer. Extract the files to see everything is in place(compare to your current hosting account home directory).

Step 2: Purge everything.
Delete everything starts with wp* inside your wordpress directory on the server. For me it is the public_html directory, it has only 1 directory called cgi-bin by default.

Delete your old mysql database for wordpress as well. Please make sure you have all the backups on your local computer.

Step 3: Install a fresh Wordpress with Fantastico.
Pretty standard procedures here. At the end you will get a fresh wordpress at your desired location, for me it’s the webroot. You don’t need to actually login to admin area to do anything yet. Let’s get back the old data first.

Step 4: Restore all old data
4.1 Database
You should have an old database backup with you. Extract it and you will get a file xx.sql. For me it’s wp.sql, which I named the database last time.

Now go to your cpanel, inside ‘Mysql Database’, there’s a link at the bottom for you login to phpMyadmin. Inside phpMyadmin, on the left shows the available databases under your account.

If you removed the old database already, you should see only one on the list which has the name ‘wrdp1‘. This is default database name for new wordpress installed by Fantastico.

Go inside wrdp1 database and choose to import, just upload the old wp.sql file and wait. After it’s done, there will be message telling you how many queries have been made.

Leave phpMyadmin now since the database has been imported.

4.2 Files
Now check the backup you have downloaded, inside wordpress folder you should have your old wp-content folder. You should only take care of 3 things:

1. Upload everything in ‘wp-content/plugins‘ to your fresh installed wordpress, the directory structure should be exactly the same. Do not upload ‘akismet’ and ‘hello.php’
2. Upload everything in ‘wp-content/themes‘ to your fresh installed wordpress. Do not upload ‘classic’ and ‘default’.
3. Upload everything in ‘wp-content/uploads‘ to your fresh installed wordpress.

Step 5: Run the upgrade script
Open browser and go to yourdomain.com/wp-admin/upgrade.php

Step 6: You are done
Things should be okay now, you should be able to login to admin area and your front end.

Again I must stress that this is not a tutorial, it is just my personal experience. If you have previously manual install wordpress on your own, you should pretty much have a clue about I am writing here.

Result:
You are looking at my blog isn’t it? The only uncertainty is……I am not sure whether can Fantastico upgrade the next version for me or not!

Happy upgrading anyway! Feedbacks are appreciated.

I use my debian box to physically connect to the device with usb cable. Setting up the printer should be as easy as my previous HP PSC 1400 how-to. There’s one extra package needs to be installed for this model.

• hpijs-ppds

This is a collection of HP printers’ ppd files. 5610 appears to be in it.

Sharing HP Officejet 5610

Following my previous how-to, the device should be running fine on the Linux platform. Now let’s share it on the local network. Here’s my Samba config file for printers.

Codes:

Note: Add necessary lines instead of copy and paste, do not remove your original config lines.

Restart your samba service after editing the config file.

Codes:

Installing HP Officejet 5610 as network printer on Windows

On Windows machine, we need to locate the device. Use Windows Explorer and search your network. For fast access I always input following line in the address bar.

Codes:

You should see a printer name “HP_Officejet_5610″(as my samba settings). Double click on the printer will prompt you dialog to install the printer’s driver. Unfortunately, bundled installation cd has no available driver for user to extract. We have to look for alternative here.

Thanks so much to the CUPS team, they have a windows version of CUPS driver available. You can download it here. Download the .tar.gz or .tar.bz2 version on to your windows machine. Extract the file to somewhere on your desktop.

During the selection of driver, click “Have Disk”, and browse to the latest extracted folder, the driver file will be “cups-windows-6.0\i386\cups6.inf“, and there you go, print your test page.

You can repeat this step on any other windows machine you wish to access the printer.

Here’s a test page of Windows XP using CUPS driver.

Please share your experience with me.

References:

http://www.mail-archive.com/hplip-help@lists.sourceforge.net/msg03674.html
http://forums.xandros.com/viewtopic.php?t=19385&start=0

AmaroK with lyrics auto-loaded.

Locale Settings

First, you have to make sure that your locale environment is setup properly. In my environment, I’m able to input chinese(big5 or GB) and English, switching with hotkey CTRL-SPACE. Files can be saved in chinese file names(big5 or GB). It is useful if you can save your chinese music files in chinese file names, I will tell you why later.

Download This Script, Lyrics CN

This script is created by sanfanling. He’s uploaded the script to kde-apps.org. Many thanks to him.

However, the original version did not work properly for me. I had to tweak a small portion of the codes to make it work in my environment. Download my tweaked version here.(Please change the file name to ‘Lyrics_CN.amarokscript.tar.gz‘ after download, strange WordPress behaviour). It is a python script, you will need to have python installed on your system.

Install Lyrics CN

After you have the Lyrics_CN.amarokscript.tar.gz in place, open your AmaroK -> Tools -> Script Manager
. Click on ‘Install Script’ button to browse the location of the .tar.gz file and open it. Highlight the “Lyrics_CN” entry in the script list and click on “Run”.

How does it work

This script will make use of your media’s title, artist, and album tag information, send a query to various lyrics databases, including mp3.baidu.com, sohu.com, yahoo.com.cn, lyrc.com.ar and hk.music.yahoo.com. It is crucial that you have your media’s tags organized, so there is sufficient information for the query. Successfully loaded lyrics will be displayed in Context Browser -> Lyrics tab. The script will send query to baidu.com as default, if the lyric is not found, you will have options to search from sohu.com or yahoo.com.

Tips for Chinese Media Files

Always store your media files in chinese file names. For example, I always save music albums this way “Artist – Album/trackNo.title.mp3″, then make use of the “Guess Tags from filename” button in Track Information. In this way I don’t have to input the tags manually. Filename scheme for above file saving technique will be “%artist – %album/%track.%title“, make use of this feature will save you a lot of time.

As For Windows

Sorry, AmaroK is not for Windows. If you can read mandarin, and don’t mind using a full mandarin program, please try ttplayer. It has a very cool line by line lyric display feature.

Share your experience with me please.

I would also like to take this chance to introduce you guys a plugin which I have been watching closely, NOT YET installed. WordPress Automatic Upgrade is a plugin brought to you by techie-buzz.com, it will upgrade your wordpress blog automatically. Including download the archive to your web space, replace old files, setting file permissions and more.

As I’ve said I do not use this plugin yet, let’s wait and see. I have a very high expectation on this.

P/S: Please notify me if you find any error after this upgrade.

So I figured it’s time for me to organize all the posts in this blog and come out with a sitemap, in order to submit to the Google Webmaster Tools. Google Sitemap Generator is one of the top ten results upon Google search.

Download the plugin here. Upload the entire folder to your wordpress plugin directory after extract the zip file. You need to make sure that WordPress’s root directory is WRITABLE, because this plugin will generate two sitemap files in that directory.

Enable the plugin in the plugin management page, after that a new option page will be available under “Options”. I did not change much of the default settings, everything should work fine without any problem.

Surprisingly, logging of Thunderbird has to be done outside the program. Here’s how I did it, on both Debian and Windows machine.

On Debian

All you need to do is prepare a shell script on your desktop, double click it to run Thunderbird instead of your previous desktop icon. Name the file runTB.sh, or any name you prefer.

Codes:

As simple as that. Please remember that the name “icedove” is a fork of Thunderbird in Debian. You should not be using this if you are using other distros.

On Windows

Similar approach, we are going to create a Batch file here. Create a text file, name it runTB.txt or any name you prefer. Input following codes into the txt file.

Codes:

After editing the txt file, change its file extension to .bat instead of .txt. Please note that the log file location can be changed based on your preference.

Available Protocol Options

According to Mozilla Page, available protocols for logging are: IMAP, POP3, NNTP, or SMTP. There is another option “ALL“, which will dump everything into the log file. Use it wisely.

Available Logging Levels

According to above help page. There are,

• 0 = Nothing
• 1 = Always printed
• 2 = error messages
• 3 = warning messages
• 4 = debug messages

Actually, there is also 5, which they did not document. Just take it this way, the greater the number, the more detail will get printed in the log file.

If you need help to understand the log file, please take a look at this page. Please send in your feedback.

References:

http://www.mozilla.org/quality/mailnews/mail-troubleshoot.html
http://wiki.dovecot.org/Debugging/Thunderbird
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Session_logging_for_mail/news

Think Thick, however, has gathered some facts, for those who really want to try out Linux. I’ll quote the 10 facts here.

1. The basic installation of most mainstream Linux distributions is very easy, but a first time user might run into trouble when trying to depart from the defaults.
2. If you want a proper Linux installation, you are going to have to mess around with the partition table.
3. You will have to learn how to use the command line.
4. All those pretty effects of wobbly windows and cube desktops require some work from the user.
5. Yes, more hardware works with Linux than with Windows. No, not all hardware works 100% like it’s supposed to.
6. If you need/want to install a package not included in the repositories, or install from source, you might need to do some research.
7. Most mainstream software manufacturers forget about Linux.
8. Linux is not for the meek of heart.
9. Linux is almost entirely virus/trojan/spyware free, but you will still need some kind of protection.
10. Linux assumes that you are an intelligent person.

How’s that sound? Read the full article here.

How does it spread? In short, this worm enters the computer as an OpenOffice document “badbunny.odg“, once opened by the user, it launches a macro that acts differently depends on the operating system.

1. On Windows – It creates a new file called “drop.bad” which stores in system.ini in the user’s mIRC folder. “badbunny.js” Javascript virus is also executed to replicate files in the folder.
2. On Mac OS – It creates Ruby script viruses in files “badbunny.rb” and “badbunnya.rb“
3. On Linux – It creates “badbunny.py” as XChat script and “badbunny.pl” as a Perl virus.

This virus is distributed via IRC’s DCC file sending (the “badbunny.odg” file).

Read also:
OpenOffice worm hits Mac, Linux and Windows
Multi-platform OpenOffice worm discovered
BadBunny seen in “the wild”? OpenOffice multi-platform macro worm discovered

PhishTank is a community formed to fight against online phishing scams. The community has also kindly released API for other applications to link to the database, to help massive users to distinguish dangerous websites from good ones.

PhishTank SiteChecker is a Firefox extension that makes used of the PhishTank API. Whenever you visit a website, the program will check with PhishTank database whether the site has been submitted to the blacklist or not. You can also help the community by submitting phishing websites, just a simple click.

PhishTank SiteChecker just uses a small portion on Firefox’s status bar.

There’s no need of any configuration for this extension to work. Please also bear in mind that even a website is marked as “Safe!”, do not trust the feedback entirely. Chances are that site HAS NOT been blacklisted, you should always be cautious when visiting untrusted sites.

Install PhishTank SiteChecker here.

Compiz is OpenGL-based compositing and window-manager for Linux. Sort of 3D Desktop, like what you get in Windows Vista, only it has relatively more features and plugins. It is pretty much in development, so some tweaks have to be made in order to make it work. Ubuntu has it integrated in the desktop environment pretty well I’ve heard. Let’s get on to it.

First, get these packages in the Unstable pool. Apply necessary dependency.

• compiz
• compiz-core
• compiz-gnome
• compiz-gtk
• compiz-kde
• compiz-plugins
• libdecoration0
• gconf-editor

Please be informed that you must have the latest Nvidia video driver installed.(I’m using Nvidia 1.0.9755-1 as of writing)

You need to edit your xorg.conf at /etc/X11/xorg.conf. Please do not copy and paste the following entirely, add in lines section by section.

Codes:

I did not have “Extensions” section in the conf, this is a whole new section.

Codes:

Applying a new key to your keyboard’s “Window Key”, it’s called the “Super Key”.

Codes:

Applying GLX in the device section.

Codes:

Another 2 values in Screen section.

After applying the changes above, restart your X by holding CRTL + ALT + BACKSPACE.

Now in your KDE desktop, open Konsole and type

Codes:

NOTE: It’s two dashes “––” for “––replace”
You should now notice when you minimize or maximize window, it has the wobbly effect. If something is not right, for example you don’t see borders for your window. Simply switch back to kwin with this command

Codes:

Additional Compiz Configurations

To achieve more satisfying results from Compiz, you can tweak its config with gconf-editor. Simply type gconf-editor in Konsole. Compiz config is in apps > compiz > general > allscreens > options

Active plugins is where you specify the plugins you would like to use, simply edit the key and add in value(refer to apps > compiz > plugins). Plugins I’ve found useful are screenshot, png, fade, minimize. Please do not remove those enabled by default.

Compiz General Features

1. Zoom – Super Key(the “Windows” key) + Mouse Wheel.
   Wonderful feature when viewing web pages, direct zoom for better visuals.
2. Transparency – Mouse over a window, then ALT + Mouse Wheel Down.
   Useful when you want to keep a window opened in full size but still need to refer to another window’s content.
3. Expose – Point your mouse to the TOP RIGHT CORNER of your screens.
   This is another useful features when you have many windows opened at once without minimizing them. You can get to the window you want right away.
4. Screenshot – Super Key + Left-Click Drag(Select a region)
   Instant png saved to your desktop, just the area you selected! How cool is that? No need to edit with GIMP for desired image anymore.

These are the features I find useful for a power desktop user. Of course there are more, you can check in the sources I list down below.

Autostart Compiz with KDE

In order to start compiz automatically when log on to KDE. Create a new file ~/.kde/Autostart/compiz.desktop, with the following content

Codes:

That’s it, kind of troublesome but it definitely worths it. Please discuss with me if you have any tip or encounter any problem.

Sources:
http://compiz.org/How_to_compile_and_run_Compiz_for_nvidia_card_users
http://wiki.debian.org/Compiz
http://technowizah.com/2006/10/debian-how-to-aiglx-compiz.html