Software Recommendations – wehuberconsultingllc.com

Sign Up with bluehost.com

I searched the web hosting reviews and sent out a couple emails before I decided on bluehost.com. I was very pleased with the web functionality included, the cost, and the service. Of the features that separated this provider from the rest of the pack was the inclusion of CPanel and the Fantastico installer. Since I am a fan of several open source packages I was really pleased to use Fantastico to install phpWebSite and WordPress. I had previously battled with another host provider on relaxing the security enough that I could run phpWebSite. After multiple emails I finally figured out there was an easier way. You go to a provider who provides an installation script like Fantastico.

Several other features I have used and really like are:

  1. Awstats is included for analyzing web stats. Once again I am a fan of another open source package. They provide several packages to analyze web stats but this is the one I like the most. I used Webtrends on a different host provider and this is better and faster.
  2. Web FTP is included. They include several packages you can use to upload your files and synchronize your files. Web FTP is not any better than a separate FTP client but they are handy.
  3. A Filemanger is provided. I haven't seen this provided at other host providers but this is really handy. I have used this to uncompress files, move files, and edit files on the web server. I have even used this to upload a single file from my PC. This saves a lot of time when tweaking html, css, and php code.
  4. phpMyAdmin is provided to manage MySql. This is the standard for managing MySql. It was a little hard to find.
  5. A backup script is provided. This is a handy way to backup the entire site including the databases into a compressed file. It even sends you an email when the backup is complete. Wow!
  6. SpamAssassin is provided to filter out the spam. So far I have found no false positives and a lot of spam has been filtered.


Click here for more information or to signup for bluehostcom.

Scaling up for the Spam Onslaught

After moving our farm website over to bluehost.com I waw somewhat surprised to find out how much spam I was getting in the default account. It was way too much to delete manually and I was really short on time so I made an executive decision to enable Spam Assassin to start segregating the mail and pick up the pieces later. Enabling Spam Assassin was very easy with bluehost.com. I clicked a few buttons to select the default settings and off it went. I was not surprised to see it quickly put almost all the mail into the spam folder.

A few days later when I had more time I configured Mailwasher Pro to read the spam folder. Mailwasher Pro is my favorite tool to sift through spam for false positives and delete spam. I have trained Mailwasher to identify my “good” mail but I also use a combination of regex rules to catch the stuff that falls through the cracks. I sent a couple emails to myself from different email accounts and the good stuff is getting through and the bad stuff is getting diverted.

I have since looked at the statistics in Mailwasher Pro. Prior to the switch over I was deleting about 300 to 350 spam emails a day. After the switch over I had several days in which I deleted over 1000 spam emails a day. I am sure glad I am deleting this stuff on the mail server and not letting this junk steal my limited bandwidth.

SpamBayes: Bayesian anti-spam classifier written in Python.

SpamBayes: Bayesian anti-spam classifier written in Python.

The Version 1.0 release candidate (both source and Windows binary installer) is now available!

This is another sourceforge program I use daily. The Junk email filter in Outlook 2003 seems to be doing a good job but this catches the rest. I will wait until the stable version is released. All spam programs can detect spam but the good ones avoid false positives.

Seven open source business strategies for competitive advantage

Open source presents a large potential competitive advantage for hardware and software vendors, and vendors of complementary or substitute services. Linux has contributed greatly to the adoption and success of OSS. Companies such as IBM, HP, Red Hat, Oracle, and recently, Novell, have invested in, and legitimized the use of Linux for enterprise applications — including datacenter operations.

Open source presents a large potential competitive advantage for hardware and software vendors, and vendors of complementary or substitute services. Linux has contributed greatly to the adoption and success of OSS. Companies such as IBM, HP, Red Hat, Oracle, and recently, Novell, have invested in, and legitimized the use of Linux for enterprise applications — including datacenter operations.

Linux-related services deliver more than $1 billion in annual revenue to both IBM and HP. Oracle strongly promotes and likewise derives revenue from the Linux platform, with the so-called “unbreakable Linux” guarantee. In an attempt to catch the Linux wave, companies such as Computer Associates and Peoplesoft are porting their applications to Linux on ambitious timeframes.

In this article, we examine seven open source strategies that can give your company a competitive advantage. (Editor’s note: Each of the following links will take you directly to a particular section of the story.)

The Optimization Strategy
The Dual License Strategy
The Consulting Strategy
The Subscription Strategy
The Patronage Strategy
The Hosted Strategy
The Embedded Strategy

I use “free” software most of the time

I have always been a fan of “almost free” software. Most of the news focuses on the inroads made by the server software, Linux, Apache, Mysql, and Perl/PHP/Python. Recently I have been surprised to find out that I am using primarily “free” software throughout the day and it is client software rather than server software. Up until two years ago I would always read Anchordesk for the reviews on some of latest “free” software. At this moment I am using WordPress via the Firefox browser. I use Firefox and Internet Explorer and consider both of them “almost free”. I occasionally use Tortoisecvs to update the WordPress files and Jedit to edit the files. WordPress on the other hand uses the opensource software, Mysql and PHP to do most of the heavy lifting. Rssbandit, my favorite news aggregator, also is sourceforge software. I use Pdfcreator to create Pdf files, Eraser to permanently erase files, bloggar to post to my weblogs, Filezilla as my ftp client, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I still use commercial software but I do not live in Microsoft Office like some people. I use Outlook daily but the other programs I use occasionally. I have Dreamweaver but I find myself using Jedit more often for the quick edits since it does a nice job displaying PHP, CSS, and HTML code. I use Quicken and QuickBooks daily but I am in and out pretty quickly. Norton Anti-Virus runs all the time but I do not interact with it. What I have found is that I have stretched my upgrade cycle for all of the commercial programs I do not use daily. The more features you can find and use in opensource software the less you upgrade. Commercial software providers have had this problem for a long time. I think if my usage is a good indicator of the public then it has become a major problem.

Awstats and changing web host providers

I installed awstats on the fedora box to test it out. I am planning to move a couple websites over to godaddy.com and I have been trying to figure out web site statistics. I have a love-hate relationship with webtrends. Its fine when it works. Last year I am missing about a months worth of data on one of my websites. I asked the web host provider to generate the month again but I still got nothing. After a couple more tries a gave up. I am not sure whether the data is missing but I would like better control.

My plan on changing my web host provider is to add features and lower cost. I think I can get away with $3.95 a month for a low volume LAMP site. At the worst I may need to spend $7.95. My present provider, Interland, provides me LA service for $19.95. Time to move on!

The good news is I got it to work. The bad news is the statistics for phpwebsite does not tell me much about which pages people are visiting. I guess I need to read the FAQ and manual.

More hacking with htmlarea

Some of the things I have learned already is that htmlarea and the Yahoo popup blocker do not get along. The popup blocker gets in the way of inserting images, colors, links, etc.

My hack screws up the Urls to ping textarea since I cannot be selective. If Radio had used an id for their textarea I could be selective. Oh well! I have never used the urls to ping feature anyway.

Hacking with htmlarea

Today I got a lot of stuff done. I have been chasing down problems with using htmlarea on phpwebsite. It didn’t work as expected but I have it working now. The instructions just didn’t work for me. Along the way I ended up retrieving the latest version using Tortoisecvs. To accomplish that task I had to figure out how to open up port 2401 through the firewall. Finally I hacked up my Radio installation to take advantage of htmlarea. This post is being composed in htmlarea. That is pretty cool.

Phpwebsite

On Monday Nancy told me they were going to get her cousin to fix our local Habitat affiliate’s website. There are a variety of problems with the site but old data is the most prominent. It is basically useless. My guess is that about half the board sees no value in having a website. That got me thinking. Yesterday I created a mockup of the website using my favorite no-cost cms, phpwebsite. Phpwebsite is one of the most popular low cost content management systems. It is a sourceforge project that is primarily maintained by Applachian State University. Since I think I will use it elsewhere I viewed this as a training exercise. I had previously installed it on my fedora box so it was ready for customization. I spent a couple of hours grafting the best ideas I saw from local Habitat affiliate sites onto the menu for the new site. Then I customized the “clean” theme to add a new logo and copyright. I was finished. Although the site is workable as I have designed it, I consider it a prototype which demonstrates the major content and function requirements I consider to be important for the new website. It should be interesting if her cousin sees what I have done. It would be nice if we could have several people add content to the site but I think that he will create a static site. Ultimately the lack of consensus on the priority of the site by the board will doom it to being stale again.