What does Wiki mean? The word ‘wiki’ is a Hawaiian word. Wiki-Wiki in Hawaiian means very quick or fast, and this perfectly describe one of the best features of Mediawiki.

Mediawiki is a software platform written in PHP that creates webpages for display in any web browser. The pages can be group into subjects, interlinked to each other with a lot of customization available depending on your needs.

For the technically minded, the backend utilises SQL for the database, with the software typically running on a Linux or Unix based operating system. The pages are served to you thanks to the web server (Apache on a linux box) that is running on your box. The resources that it requires are fairly minimal unless your database is quite large, but for small or medium business you don’t need to outlay thousands of dollars for a server. If the database is going to be large, one might consider getting a hosted server and installing Mediawiki on it there.

Most IT support staff would have operating system knowledge and would be able to set one up without too much difficulty. Maintenance would only be required at the beginning to finetune settings etc, and database backups kept regular like any other produvtion data.

It can not only be used for business, but charities or even at home dpending on your needs. With my limited knowledge, I had a mediawiki up and running on a OpenSuSe install in under 30 mins so i know it’s not rocket science.

Having said that, if you ever forget your admin password like I did, all is not lost. Check out my other post on this site.

i must admit that I was looking at free themes – I have used some good ones but was never 100% happy with them, and yes I could of created one myself but I won’t show you my efforts there. They are quite embarassing to say the least.

Next was to check the themes that you have to pay for. What was so good about the paid ones that publishers were selling? Mmm not really sure, although I did found a couple that were targetted at particular niches such as a pet website or an automotive enthusiaists website. Do you think I could find an IT related theme that I was happy with? Ironically not. Mind you I think I’m just a bit picky too.

Then I came across Socrates.

How’s this for a list of features:

* Built in Header Generator
* 200+ Niche Header Designs
* Upload Your Own Headers
* 4 Custom Nav Bars with New Window and No Follow Links!
* Optional Built In Adsense, Affiliate and Clickbank Ad Bar
* Social Media Slider – Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,YouTube, RSS
* Choose from Dozens of Backgrounds On The Fly
* Custom Styling and Color Options
* Affiliate Program Integration
* 728×90 Banner Custom HTML Rotator
* Multiple Sidebar Layouts
* Internet Marketing and WordPress Training
* Monetize With Any Affiliate Program or Network
* Sales Page Templates
* No Side Bar Template
* Squeeze Page Template
* Advanced SEO Layout
* In Post Ad Units – Can be Disabled on Per Post Basis!

Sounds good. The video was even better. I was thinking of giving the Socrates team a testimonial before even trying it!

Price? $47 for a single domain license or $77 for an unlimited license. I went with the unlimted as i could deploy this on a few of my sites, and what I’ve found is that you need only change a few things to make them look all completely different.

I must say, I’m very happy with the way things are panning out. I still have a bit of work to do on this site, but the changes are easy to implement.

For example, in the control panel of the Socrates theme there is provision to put in your Adsense code, Google analytics code and sponsored ad code. The theme does all the rest by placing the ads in the right places.

Site banner or background too hard to design? Well you don’t really have to worry as you can use the ones that come with the theme. In the relevant menu, your WP install will download the latest banners/backgrounds from the Socrates website for you to use. Such a simple solution, and allows your site to have a decent lookbefore you design whatgraphics to use – mind you they are good enough to keep forever.

Look at the old theme of this website:

Please at least check out the video and features of the Scocrates them to see for yourself:

The AVG Rescue CD also contains the following set of admin tools:

* Midnight Commander – a two-panel file manager
* Windows Registry Editor – simple registry editor for more experienced users
* TestDisk – powerful hard drive recovery tool
* Ping – to test the availability of network resources (servers, domains, IP addresses)
* Common Linux programs and services – vi text editor, OpenSSH daemon, ntfsprogs and the like.

Now I haven’t actually tried this yet, but from what I’ve read it’s not a bad little addition to the IT professional’s toolkit. If you want support for this from AVG, it is free if you have a purchased AVG product. Else check their forums.

Check it out here, and if you have tried it let me know what you think of it.

I must admit that I haven’t used Joomla too much, and not it’s predecessor/competitor mambo for quite some time so I wasn’t sure what the issue was.

Upon a bit of research and thinking, I was able to understand what the message was and how to fix it.

A file remains ‘Checked Out’ until the User clicks ‘Save’ or ‘Cancel’, at which time the file is “Checked In”. However, if there’s a connection error, the user presses the ‘Back’ icon in his/her browser, or the User chooses another menu item without saving or canceling the work in progress, the file remains ‘Checked Out’.

This means no one can edit this content item but the person who “Checked Out” the item or the Super Administrator. This is usually reported or experienced as Users being unable to edit or access items, and can be verified by looking at the column labeled “Checked Out” in the Section, Category, or Item file list. You will also see a padlock next to the offending item.

If you wish to edit a “Checked Out” item, you will have to ask the last author who “Checked Out” the item to “Check In” the item or to ask the Super Administrator to “Check In” the item. As I was the only user/administrator on the site, I need a workaround or a fix.

Joomla has an menu option, called “Global Check-in” that allows an administrator to unlock all files that are currently Checked Out.

To perform the ‘Global Check-in’, I selected “System > Global Check In” from the Administrator menu bar.

After performing the ‘Global Check-in’, Joomla then returned a list showing how many items were Checked back in. After that, I was then able to reorder my menu items.

Note: Be very careful in doing this in a multi user Joomla site as anyone who is editing a document at that very moment can have his or her work lost.

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Hackers are able to send a corrupt JPEG image to a RAZR which would run malicious code if viewed, according to the ZDI advisory, released on Tuesday. Malicious code could force the RAZR to make unwanted calls or send unwanted messages, for example.

The flaw exists in the JPEG thumbprint component of the EXIF parser. EXIF, or Exchangable Image File format, is a set of tags that can be embedded in image files, which might include the location where the image was taken or the camera used to take it.

When the user tries to view the image, a memory corruption is caused and malicious code can be run on the phone.

A firmware update has been released from Motorola to patch the vulnerability.

To read more about this vulnerability, go here.

I realise how important it is to backup your wordpress install (and database) should an upgrade not work.

Here’s what happened:

I upgraded via fantastico, and for the last few updates, I haven’t bothered backing up my data etc because I’ve never had problems.
When I loaded up my site, yeah it looked fine. But when I tried to go to my admin panel, a message (shown below) came up:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare activate_plugin() (previously declared in /home/username/public_html/wp-content/plugins/installer/includes/functions.inc.php:69) in /home/username/public_html/wp-admin/includes/plugin.php on line 116

What the? After asking my friend Google what he problem was, it appears to be the ‘installer’ plugin that was causing the issue. I FTP’ed into my plugins and renamed the installer folder – which in effect made it treated like a new plugin (by WordPress), and thus deactivated. I was then able to get into my admin panel and carry on as normal.

The moral? Keep regular backups of your WordPress installation and SQL database, as well as deactivate all your plugins prior to upgrading.
Also, backups are fine, but have you ever tested doing a restore?
Another thing to keep in mind is that I decided to try and use the backup tar file that fantastico auto generates when updating. Guess what? the file was corrupt

Unfortunately, it doesn’t work in Microsoft Vista – but there is an alternative. It’s called Vistumbler. personally I haven’t tried it, but friends of mine say it looks and feels very simialr to the ‘original’.

But there appears to be a security flaw.

From this website I read:

The backstory:

Yeah, but it wasn’t a ‘coding mistake’. He coded it in there, so when someone used this tool, it uploaded YOUR username and password to HIS email account. (Nice huh?)

OUCH!!!!

Anyway, looks like the good people of Google have removed g-archiver, and are recommending you remove it from your computer. Their official explanantion:

What happened was that a member of our development team had inserted coding used for testing G-Archiver in the debug version and forgot to delete it in the final release version.

Yes, the linux learning curve is steep but rewarding when you do start working it all out.

Here is a good website that lists the Windows/OS X software and the linux equivalents.

In a lot of cases there are multiple options which is good. You aren’t tied down to one thing which you may not like.

I’ve always wanted to track or log my exercise without too much hassle. Nokia have released a beta version of such a product called SportsTracker.

It uses the GPS fucntion in your mobile phone to map your exercise activities. These can be uploaded to the Nokia sportstracker site and you can view your route in Google Maps – very handy indeed.

There are a large number of phones currently supported. I use it on my Nokia 6110 navigator and have yet to have any problems – even though it is still in a ‘beta’ stage of development.

Kudos to Nokia for such a great piece of software that is available free of charge.

Here are a few screenshots:

For more information, check out the sportstracker wesbite.