Posts Tagged ‘capabilities’

Graphic tool to get Hardware Information on Linux / How to view Hardware Information easy in Linux

Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017

 

 

howto-get-graphically-system-hardware-info-linux-gui-program-for-hardware-recognition-linu

 

IS THERE A GRAPHIC ( GUI ) TOOL TO VIEW HARDWARE INFORMATION ON LINUX?

 


If you are a console maniac like myself, perhaps you never think that you might need anything graphical besides to view hardware information on Linux, but as we're growing older sometimes it becomes much less easier to just use a graphical tool that can show us all the information we need regarding a Notebook / Desktop PC with Linux or even Server machine with enabled Graphical Environment with a brand new installed GNU / Linux whatever version (I hope you don't own server with running Xorg / Gnome / Mate / Xfce etc. as that's pretty much a waste of hardware resource and opens a dozen of other security risks for the server running services ).

 

 

 There are at least 2 ways to quickly check hardware on both PC WorkStation or Server, the easiest and quickest for PC / Notebook Linux users if you have installed GTK libraries or Gnome Desktop Environment is with;
 

LSHW-GTK


LSHW-GTK is simply a GTK frontend over the command line tool for hardware information gathering LSHW
 

HardiInfo

 

HardInfo – is a small application that displays information about your hardware and operating system. Currently it knows about PCI, ISA PnP, USB, IDE, SCSI, Serial and parallel port devices.


1. Howto Install LSHW-GTK / HardInfo on Debian / Ubuntu / Mint GNU / Linux to easy view hardware information


To install both of them on Debian / Ubuntu GNU / Linux, run:
 

apt-get install –yes lshw lshw-gtk hardinfo

 

2. Howto install LSHW-GTK on Fedora, CentOS and OpenSuSE Linux to view easy hardware information

On RedHat RPM based Linux distributions, the package to install is called lshw-gui

Install with yum RPM package manager:
 

yum install –yes lshw lshw-gui  hardinfo


3. Run lshw-gtk / hardinfo

Again, find them and run from GUI environment menus or run manually like in below example:

$ lshw-gtk


graphic-program-to-view-computer-hardware-on-linux-lshw-gtk-on-debian-linux-screenshot-view-hardware-easy-linux1

 

$ hardinfo


hardinfo-a-gui-program-to-view-computer-hardware-info-on-linux-and-freebsd

As you see hardinfo is really interactive and it gives you pretty much all the information, you might need, the only information that was missing at my case and I guess, that would happen to others is information about the SSD Hard Disk, which   180GB

HardInfo is really amazing program as it even includes various common Benchmark Tests and comparison with other Computers:

hardinfo-get-hardware-information-easily-on-linux-and-freebsd-benchmark-info-screenshot-debian-stretch

True that the tests, are pretty simple but still could be useful.

Now run it either from GNOME / Cinnamon (The default graphical environment of Debian Linux) or PLASMA (The new name for the second most popular Linux Graphical Environment – KDE desktop environment)

 

$ lshw


Here is few more screenshots from hardware info reported from my ThinkPad T410 Laptop Running Debian 9 Stretch at the moment.

 

MotherBoard -> BIOS Information

(thatnks God this old but gold Thinkpad T420 business notebook does not run UEFI substitute for BIOS 🙂

graphic-program-to-view-computer-hardware-on-linux-lshw-gtk-on-debian-linux-screenshot-view-hardware-easy-linux2

CPU Information (with all the supported CPU capabilities (extensions)

graphic-program-to-view-computer-hardware-on-linux-lshw-gtk-on-debian-linux-screenshot-view-hardware-easy-linux3

Host Bridge Info

graphic-program-to-view-computer-hardware-on-linux-lshw-gtk-on-debian-linux-screenshot-view-hardware-easy-linux4

Thinkpad BATTERY (45N1005) Info

graphic-program-to-view-computer-hardware-on-linux-lshw-gtk-on-debian-linux-screenshot-view-hardware-easy-linux5

By the way another Way to GUI View your Computer is to just generate HTML from lshw command line tool (as it supports export to HTML), here is how:

 

$ lshw -html > ~/hardware-specs.html


Then just open it with Browser, for example I like GNOME Epiphany browser, so I'll read HTML with it:

 

$ epiphany ~/hardware-specs.html


graphical-software-to-view-hardware-on-linux-lshw-command-to-generate-html-and-view-it-graphically-in-browser-on-home-pc-or-server


The great thing about generating HTML report for hardware is that on Staging / Production / Development servers which you inherited from some other administrator who for some reason (laziness 🙂 ) didn't left necessery documentation, you can easily map the machine hardware and even if it is a group of machines, you can automate report generation for all of them write a short script that parses the data on each of the HTML reports and finally creates a merged document with main important information about hardware of a cluster of computers etc.

If you still want to stick to console run the console version of lshw or use dmidecode or lshw:

 

$ lshw

hipo@jericho:~$ lshw
WARNING: you should run this program as super-user.
jericho                     
    description: Computer
    width: 64 bits
    capabilities: smp vsyscall32
  *-core
       description: Motherboard
       physical id: 0
     *-memory
          description: System memory
          physical id: 0
          size: 7870MiB
     *-cpu
          product: Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-2640M CPU @ 2.80GHz
          vendor: Intel Corp.
          physical id: 1
          bus info: cpu@0
          size: 891MHz
          capacity: 3500MHz
          width: 64 bits
          capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush dts acpi mmx fxsr sse sse2 ss ht tm pbe syscall nx rdtscp x86-64 constant_tsc arch_perfmon pebs bts nopl xtopology nonstop_tsc aperfmperf eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq dtes64 monitor ds_cpl vmx smx est tm2 ssse3 cx16 xtpr pdcm pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx lahf_lm epb tpr_shadow vnmi flexpriority ept vpid xsaveopt dtherm ida arat pln pts cpufreq
     *-pci
          description: Host bridge
          product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family DRAM Controller
          vendor: Intel Corporation
          physical id: 100
          bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
          version: 09
          width: 32 bits
          clock: 33MHz
        *-pci:0
             description: PCI bridge
             product: Xeon E3-1200/2nd Generation Core Processor Family PCI Express Root Port
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
             version: 09
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:24 ioport:5000(size=4096) memory:f0000000-f10fffff ioport:c0000000(size=301989888)
           *-generic UNCLAIMED
                description: Unassigned class
                product: Illegal Vendor ID
                vendor: Illegal Vendor ID
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:01:00.0
                version: ff
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 66MHz
                capabilities: bus_master vga_palette cap_list
                configuration: latency=255 maxlatency=255 mingnt=255
                resources: memory:f0000000-f0ffffff memory:c0000000-cfffffff memory:d0000000-d1ffffff ioport:5000(size=128) memory:f1000000-f107ffff
        *-display
             description: VGA compatible controller
             product: 2nd Generation Core Processor Family Integrated Graphics Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 2
             bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
             version: 09
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: vga_controller bus_master cap_list rom
             configuration: driver=i915 latency=0
             resources: irq:30 memory:f1400000-f17fffff memory:e0000000-efffffff ioport:6000(size=64) memory:c0000-dffff
        *-communication:0
             description: Communication controller
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family MEI Controller #1
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 16
             bus info: pci@0000:00:16.0
             version: 04
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=mei_me latency=0
             resources: irq:27 memory:f3925000-f392500f
        *-communication:1
             description: Serial controller
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family KT Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 16.3
             bus info: pci@0000:00:16.3
             version: 04
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 66MHz
             capabilities: 16550 bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=serial latency=0
             resources: irq:19 ioport:60b0(size=8) memory:f392c000-f392cfff
        *-network
             description: Ethernet interface
             product: 82579LM Gigabit Network Connection
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 19
             bus info: pci@0000:00:19.0
             logical name: enp0s25
             version: 04
             serial: 00:21:cc:cc:b2:27
             capacity: 1Gbit/s
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical tp 10bt 10bt-fd 100bt 100bt-fd 1000bt-fd autonegotiation
             configuration: autonegotiation=on broadcast=yes driver=e1000e driverversion=3.2.6-k firmware=0.13-3 latency=0 link=no multicast=yes port=twisted pair
             resources: irq:25 memory:f3900000-f391ffff memory:f392b000-f392bfff ioport:6080(size=32)
        *-usb:0
             description: USB controller
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #2
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1a
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1a.0
             version: 04
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: ehci bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=ehci-pci latency=0
             resources: irq:16 memory:f392a000-f392a3ff
        *-multimedia
             description: Audio device
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family High Definition Audio Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1b
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1b.0
             version: 04
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=snd_hda_intel latency=0
             resources: irq:29 memory:f3920000-f3923fff
        *-pci:1
             description: PCI bridge
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 1
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1c
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.0
             version: b4
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci normal_decode cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:16
        *-pci:2
             description: PCI bridge
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 2
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1c.1
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.1
             version: b4
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:17 memory:f3800000-f38fffff
           *-network
                description: Wireless interface
                product: Centrino Advanced-N 6205 [Taylor Peak]
                vendor: Intel Corporation
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:03:00.0
                logical name: wlp3s0
                version: 34
                serial: 26:ad:26:50:f1:db
                width: 64 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: bus_master cap_list ethernet physical wireless
                configuration: broadcast=yes driver=iwlwifi driverversion=4.9.0-3-amd64 firmware=18.168.6.1 ip=192.168.0.102 latency=0 link=yes multicast=yes wireless=IEEE 802.11
                resources: irq:28 memory:f3800000-f3801fff
        *-pci:3
             description: PCI bridge
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 4
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1c.3
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.3
             version: b4
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:19 ioport:4000(size=4096) memory:f3000000-f37fffff ioport:f1800000(size=8388608)
        *-pci:4
             description: PCI bridge
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family PCI Express Root Port 5
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1c.4
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1c.4
             version: b4
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: pci normal_decode bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=pcieport
             resources: irq:16 ioport:3000(size=4096) memory:f2800000-f2ffffff ioport:f2000000(size=8388608)
           *-generic
                description: System peripheral
                product: MMC/SD Host Controller
                vendor: Ricoh Co Ltd
                physical id: 0
                bus info: pci@0000:0d:00.0
                version: 08
                width: 32 bits
                clock: 33MHz
                capabilities: bus_master cap_list
                configuration: driver=sdhci-pci latency=0
                resources: irq:16 memory:f2800000-f28000ff
        *-usb:1
             description: USB controller
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family USB Enhanced Host Controller #1
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1d
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1d.0
             version: 04
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: ehci bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=ehci-pci latency=0
             resources: irq:23 memory:f3929000-f39293ff
        *-isa
             description: ISA bridge
             product: QM67 Express Chipset Family LPC Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1f
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.0
             version: 04
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             capabilities: isa bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=lpc_ich latency=0
             resources: irq:0
        *-storage
             description: SATA controller
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family 6 port SATA AHCI Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1f.2
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.2
             version: 04
             width: 32 bits
             clock: 66MHz
             capabilities: storage ahci_1.0 bus_master cap_list
             configuration: driver=ahci latency=0
             resources: irq:26 ioport:60a8(size=8) ioport:60bc(size=4) ioport:60a0(size=8) ioport:60b8(size=4) ioport:6060(size=32) memory:f3928000-f39287ff
        *-serial
             description: SMBus
             product: 6 Series/C200 Series Chipset Family SMBus Controller
             vendor: Intel Corporation
             physical id: 1f.3
             bus info: pci@0000:00:1f.3
             version: 04
             width: 64 bits
             clock: 33MHz
             configuration: driver=i801_smbus latency=0
             resources: irq:18 memory:f3924000-f39240ff ioport:efa0(size=32)
     *-scsi
          physical id: 2
          logical name: scsi1
          capabilities: emulated
        *-cdrom
             description: DVD-RAM writer
             product: DVDRAM GT50N
             vendor: HL-DT-ST
             physical id: 0.0.0
             bus info: scsi@1:0.0.0
             logical name: /dev/cdrom
             logical name: /dev/cdrw
             logical name: /dev/dvd
             logical name: /dev/dvdrw
             logical name: /dev/sr0
             version: LT20
             capabilities: removable audio cd-r cd-rw dvd dvd-r dvd-ram
             configuration: ansiversion=5 status=nodisc
WARNING: output may be incomplete or inaccurate, you should run this program as super-user.

 

Enjoy Life ! 🙂

Shocking facts you did not know a minute ago :)

Thursday, June 21st, 2012

shocking-facts-you-did-not-know-a-minute-ago

I've stumbled on a video on youtube exposing very interesting facts collection. The video few seconds start up is a bit of manipulative with those back counting but anyways some of the facts exposed in the video seem to be quite interesting. Just to mention few of the facts one could be wondered is:

]

  • The education system prepares students / pupils for unexisting jobs
  • Google Searches exceeed 31 billion per day
  • India has more honour kids than the kids in America (and probably in Europe)
  • About 25% of India's educated population has highest IQs
  • In short future China will become the largest English speaking country in the world
  • every 1 of 8 Americans marriages are a cause of online dating
  • Number of Internet devices in 1984 was 1000; In 1992 was 1 000 000; In 2008 1 000 000 000 (1 Billion
    Nowdays probably there are at least 1.2 billion inet connected devs
  • English language has current about 540 000 words; 5 times multipled from Shakespeare's time
  • weekly worth of The New Your Times contains more information than a person was likely to come across in lifetime in the 18th century
  • More than 4 exabytes of information (4.0*10^19) is generated approximately yearly (more than the overall information generated the previous 5 000 years
  • Amount of new technical information is approximately doubling per year
  • By 2013, a supercomputer might be built that exceeds the computational capabilities of human brain
  • Some scientists predict by 2049 (if still is earth) a 1000$ computer will exceed the computational capabilities of the entire human species

How to make a mirror of website on GNU / Linux with wget / Few tips on wget site mirroring

Wednesday, February 22nd, 2012

how-to-make-mirror-of-website-on-linux-wget

Everyone who used Linux is probably familiar with wget or has used this handy download console tools at least thousand of times. Not so many Desktop GNU / Linux users like Ubuntu and Fedora Linux users had tried using wget to do something more than single files download.
Actually wget is not so popular as it used to be in earlier linux days. I've noticed the tendency for newer Linux users to prefer using curl (I don't know why).

With all said I'm sure there is plenty of Linux users curious on how a website mirror can be made through wget.
This article will briefly suggest few ways to do website mirroring on linux / bsd as wget is both available on those two free operating systems.

1. Most Simple exact mirror copy of website

The most basic use of wget's mirror capabilities is by using wget's -mirror argument:

# wget -m http://website-to-mirror.com/sub-directory/

Creating a mirror like this is not a very good practice, as the links of the mirrored pages will still link to external URLs. In other words link URL will not pointing to your local copy and therefore if you're not connected to the internet and try to browse random links of the webpage you will end up with many links which are not opening because you don't have internet connection.

2. Mirroring with rewritting links to point to localhost and in between download page delay

Making mirror with wget can put an heavy load on the remote server as it fetches the files as quick as the bandwidth allows it. On heavy servers rapid downloads with wget can significantly reduce the download server responce time. Even on a some high-loaded servers it can cause the server to hang completely.
Hence mirroring pages with wget without explicity setting delay in between each page download, could be considered by remote server as a kind of DoS – (denial of service) attack. Even some site administrators have already set firewall rules or web server modules configured like Apache mod_security which filter requests to IPs which are doing too frequent HTTP GET /POST requests to the web server.
To make wget delay with a 10 seconds download between mirrored pages use:

# wget -mk -w 10 -np --random-wait http://website-to-mirror.com/sub-directory/

The -mk stands for -m/-mirror and -k / shortcut argument for –convert-links (make links point locally), –random-wait tells wget to make random waits between o and 10 seconds between each page download request.

3. Mirror / retrieve website sub directory ignoring robots.txt "mirror restrictions"

Some websites has a robots.txt which restricts content download with clients like wget, curl or even prohibits, crawlers to download their website pages completely.

/robots.txt restrictions are not a problem as wget has an option to disable robots.txt checking when downloading.
Getting around the robots.txt restrictions with wget is possible through -e robots=off option.
For instance if you want to make a local mirror copy of the whole sub-directory with all links and do it with a delay of 10 seconds between each consequential page request without reading at all the robots.txt allow/forbid rules:

# wget -mk -w 10 -np -e robots=off --random-wait http://website-to-mirror.com/sub-directory/

4. Mirror website which is prohibiting Download managers like flashget, getright, go!zilla etc.

Sometimes when try to use wget to make a mirror copy of an entire site domain subdirectory or the root site domain, you get an error similar to:

Sorry, but the download manager you are using to view this site is not supported.
We do not support use of such download managers as flashget, go!zilla, or getright

This message is produced by the site dynamic generation language PHP / ASP / JSP etc. used, as the website code is written to check on the browser UserAgent sent.
wget's default sent UserAgent to the remote webserver is:
Wget/1.11.4

As this is not a common desktop browser useragent many webmasters configure their websites to only accept well known established desktop browser useragents sent by client browsers.
Here are few typical user agents which identify a desktop browser:
 

  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; rv:6.0) Gecko/20110814 Firefox/6.0
  • Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:6.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/6.0
  • Mozilla/6.0 (Macintosh; I; Intel Mac OS X 11_7_9; de-LI; rv:1.9b4) Gecko/2012010317 Firefox/10.0a4
  • Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; Win64; x64; rv:2.2a1pre) Gecko/20110324 Firefox/4.2a1pre

etc. etc.

If you're trying to mirror a website which has implied some kind of useragent restriction based on some "valid" useragent, wget has the -U option enabling you to fake the useragent.

If you get the Sorry but the download manager you are using to view this site is not supported , fake / change wget's UserAgent with cmd:

# wget -mk -w 10 -np -e robots=off \
--random-wait
--referer="http://www.google.com" \--user-agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.8.1.6) Gecko/20070725 Firefox/2.0.0.6" \--header="Accept:text/xml,application/xml,application/xhtml+xml,text/html;q=0.9,text/plain;q=0.8,image/png,*/*;q=0.5" \--header="Accept-Language: en-us,en;q=0.5" \--header="Accept-Encoding: gzip,deflate" \--header="Accept-Charset: ISO-8859-1,utf-8;q=0.7,*;q=0.7" \--header="Keep-Alive: 300"

For the sake of some wget anonimity – to make wget permanently hide its user agent and pretend like a Mozilla Firefox running on MS Windows XP use .wgetrc like this in home directory.

5. Make a complete mirror of a website under a domain name

To retrieve complete working copy of a site with wget a good way is like so:

# wget -rkpNl5 -w 10 --random-wait www.website-to-mirror.com

Where the arguments meaning is:
-r – Retrieve recursively
-k – Convert the links in documents to make them suitable for local viewing
-p – Download everything (inline images, sounds and referenced stylesheets etc.)
-N – Turn on time-stamping
-l5 – Specify recursion maximum depth level of 5

6. Make a dynamic pages static site mirror, by converting CGI, ASP, PHP etc. to HTML for offline browsing

It is often websites pages are ending in a .php / .asp / .cgi … extensions. An example of what I mean is for instance the URL http://php.net/manual/en/tutorial.php. You see the url page is tutorial.php once mirrored with wget the local copy will also end up in .php and therefore will not be suitable for local browsing as .php extension is not understood how to interpret by the local browser.
Therefore to copy website with a non-html extension and make it offline browsable in HTML there is the –html-extension option e.g.:

# wget -mk -w 10 -np -e robots=off \
--random-wait \
--convert-links http://www.website-to-mirror.com

A good practice in mirror making is to set a download limit rate. Setting such rate is both good for UP and DOWN side (the local host where downloading and remote server). download-limit is also useful when mirroring websites consisting of many enormous files (documental movies, some music etc.).
To set a download limit to add –limit-rate= option. Passing by to wget –limit-rate=200K would limit download speed to 200KB.

Other useful thing to assure wget has made an accurate mirror is wget logging. To use it pass -o ./my_mirror.log to wget.
 

How to easy add Joomla 1.5 donate Paypal capabilities with Joomla PAYPAL DONATION MODULE

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

PayPal donation Module Joomla Screenshot

Many joomla CMS installations are for Non-profit organizations or Non Government organizations. These are organizations which are not officially making profit and therefore this instituations are interested into donations to support their activities.

In this occasions adding Joomla paypal capabilities is very essential. There are plenty of modules which enables Joomla to support paypal monetary payments, however many of them are either paid or requires registration and thus it’s quite time consuming to set up a decent PayPal supporting module for Joomla.
After a bit of investigation thanks God, I’ve come across a module that is free of charge, easily downloadable (wihtout registration) and is also relatively easy to configure, these module is called PAYPAL DONATION MODULE
I’ve mirored the module to my server, just in case if the module disappears in the future.

Here are a very brief explanation on how the module can be downloaded installed and configured:

First Download (mod_ojdonation_pp) Paypal Donation Module here

Install it as joomla module via:

Extensions -> Install/Uninstall
menu

Afterwards, go to:

Extensions -> Module Manager

In the list of modules you will notice the Donate module which will be disabled. Use the Enable button to enable it.

Next by clicking on the Donate Module Name, one can configure the module, where the most essential configuration values that needs to be filled in are:

1. Title: – The title of the donation form:
2. Donation Title: – Title of donation picture to show in the webpage
3. Donation Amount: – Default donation amount user will donate with paypal by clicking on Donate button
4. Currency – Default currency the donators will use to donate to configured paypal account
5. Paypal ID: – The email address of paypal account your donators will donate to (This was a bit hard to understand since Paypal ID is not a number ID but the email address configured as an username in PayPal).
6. Donation Description: – Description text to appear before the Donate button
7. Donation Footer: – Text to appear after the Donate button

There are two ways one could add the donation module to show the donation form, on the joomla website:
a. One is to enable the donation button on every joomla webpage (I don’t like this kind of behaviour).

To use this kind of donate button display approach, you will have to select from the Donation module, conf options:
– Show on FrontPage: and Show Title:

Also make sure the Enabled: option is set to Yes

b. Second approach is to set the PayPal Donation form only to appear on a single menu, to do so:

While in Paypal Donation Module configuration in Menu Assignment section, select:

Select Menu Item(s) from the List
instead of the default All value set for Menus.

The last setting to be choosen is the paypal donation form page location (where exactly on the selected pages the form will appear).

The form location is set from the Position: dropdown menu, the option which I found to be the best one for me was the bottom option. However just play with the Position setting and choose the one that will be best for you.

Then scroll on in the Menu Selection: and choose only the menus where you want a paypal donation form to appear.

Finally to save all the recent made settings, click on Apply and refreshing in a new page should show you paypal’s money donation form in joomla

If all is configured fine with Joomla’s – Paypal Donation Module you should get on your webpage:

PayPal donation Module in Joomla Screenshot
 

How to substitute default TinyMCE Joomla Content editor with JCE Content Editor

Tuesday, May 31st, 2011

This content editor is really awesome compared to the default editor TinyMCE. If you want to have an options rich content editor for Joomla, then this is the one for you 🙂
download JCE Content Editor here

After installing the JCE Joomla content editor in order to enable it as a default editor you need to go to the following location:

Site -> Global Configuration -> Default WYSIWYG Editor

There place on Editor TinyMCE and change it with Editor – JCE

Now go to edit some article, and you will see the difference in the editor 🙂

7. Add gallery Joomla capabilities with sigplus (Image Gallery Plus) and Very Simple Image Gallery

sigplus Image Gallery Plus is a straightforward way to add image or photo galleries to a Joomla article with a simple syntax. It takes a matter of minutes to set up a gallery but those who are looking for a powerful gallery solution will not be disappointed either: sigplus is suitable for both beginner and advanced users.
 

How to add Apache 301 redirect to VirtualHost in Apache

Sunday, September 25th, 2011

I’ve had two domain names which were pointing to the same website content.
As one can read in any SEO guide around this is a really bad practice as search engines things automatically there is a duplicate site content and this has automatically a negative effect on the site pagerank.
To deal with situation where multiple domains are pointing to the same websites its suggested by many SEO specialists that a 301 redirect is created from all the domain websites to a single website domain which will open the actual website.

Making the 301 direct domain from the sample domain my-redirect-domain.com to www.mydomain.com can be done with a virtualhost dfefinition in either httpd.conf or with the respective file containing the domain virtualhost definitions:
Here is the exact VirtualHost code I use to make a 301 redirect.

<VirtualHost *>  ServerAdmin support@mydomain.com  ServerName my-redirected-domain.com
ServerAlias my-redirected-domain.com www.my-redirected-domain.com
RewriteEngine on RewriteRule ^/(.*) http://www.mydomain.com/$1 [L,R=301]
</VirtualHost>

After placing the VirtualHost redirect, an apache redirect is required.
Further on when a Gooogle or Yahoo Bot visits the website and does any request to my-redirect-domain.com or www.my-redirect-domain.com , they will be redirected with a 301 reuturned code to www.mydomain.com

This kind of redirect however can have a negative impact on the Apache CPU use (performance), especially if the my-redirect-domain.com is high traffic domain. This is because the redirect is done with mod_rewrite.

Therefore it might be better on high traffic domains to create the mod_rewrite redirect by using a vhost like:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin support@mydomain.com
ServerName my-redirected-domain.com
Redirect 301 / http://www.mydomain.com/
</VirtualHost>

The downside of using the Apache 301 redirect capabilities like in the above example is that any passed domain urls like let’s say http://www.my-redirected-domain.com/support/ would not be 301 redirected to http://www.mydomain.com/support/ but instead the redirect will be done straight to http://www.mydomain.com/