Archive for the ‘Webmasters’ Category
“…
./mysql.server start
Starting MySQL
. ERROR! Manager of pid-file quit without updating file.
…”
If you’ve ever had to configure a CentOS system from scratch you may have noticed yourself running into issues when ( some of many examples) it came to the MySQL installation whether it be the default yum install, manual RPM packages or even compiling from source, well not so much the installation itself but when it came time to start it. It simply would not start, and the error logs reveal nothing. I have come to this issue myself and faced with much frustration and no answers even from the MySQL developers themselves I think I have finally found a fix.
I decided to check the SE Linux permission settings (no idea why), and it seemed to fix the issue. Depending on your host, you may have a very relaxed setup on a fresh install, others may not be so. In order to tweak these settings via SSH, run this command when logged in as root:
yum install -y system-config-securitylevel
If it’s already installed, you can go ahead and enter the manager.
system-config-securitylevel
This will reveal a blue screen, perhaps unsusual to the sight of a blank SSH screen:
From this screen, you can use tab to switch between options, the arrow keys to move up and down, and space to select. In order for the most relaxed possible (though perhaps not preferred depending on what you’re using the server for) you could select these options:
Now, tab onto the “OK” button and hit the space bar. The manager will exit. MySQL should now start with no issues regarding the PID manager. Don’t forget to set your root password.
-Erratic.
Ok, so we’ve covered the ads, experience..etc angles for new webmasters, we tried to give advice on everything to start a good and a clean website but we forgot the most important one.
The looks of the site, by looks I mean the template/skin, I’m not talking about creating your own skin or making lots and lots of customizations, I’m talking about the looks of any skin out there, every skin is “beautiful” in its own way but sadly I see sites that turn one of the best skins to the ugliest disasters out there.
When you want to edit your site’s skin, try to be organized about it, if you’re going to add a new block make it match the skin and place it in an appropriate place, not just in any freakin empty space, also make sure that your website looks the same in all most common used web browsers, such as Firefox, Opera, IE, Safari..etc, the easiest way in doing that is to make sure that your site has a valid XHTML and CSS template, sometimes that doesn’t always work and some specific fixes needs to be added (another reason to hate IE!), but try to do your best.
I’ve seen sites with a container width 800px, and they add another block in header or footer that just expands and stretches the hell out of the website, if you don’t know what you’re doing then my advice to you is just don’t do it.
Keep your website professional, in looks and management, your site’s looks is a huge factor on your return traffic, if your site is messed up, a user will visit once with the typical “oh god, wtf is this” comment, but if you keep your website clean in every angle, your site will be more interesting to your guests and visitors.
Keep the scene clean people.
Article by el_jentel1
I’m sure most of the scene webmasters know about WCDDL by now, if you don’t know about it, its a DDL script developed by WarezCoders team, till now almost 90% of all DDL sites are either using kDDL or EvilDDL (most use kDDL though).
As we all know, everyone tries to copy the success of another, I mean don’t get me wrong go ahead and congratulation if you were able to have a successful DDL site of your own, anyways, most tried to make their own DDL site using kDDL script, I’m sure most found out that kDDL is poorly coded and needs a lot of fixing and tweaks first to get the site working.
Now with the release of WCDDL, webmasters will not have a problem starting a DDL site, I have checked the script and I have to say its very good, whether you’re advanced in PHP or just a beginner you’ll be able to handle that script, specially with the “Modules How-To” explanation provided at WC.
Now to get to my point, I know for a fact that a lot of webmasters have been looking for a working ddl script for years, I’ve seen hundreds of requests threads in different forums, most weren’t able to find one or weren’t able to make the old scripts work, thats one of the reason why the DDL scene is not as big as Scene forums and blogs.
If you’re planning on using WCDDL script and make a DDL site, here is an advice, try to be original and not just another webmaster with the only purpose of making a fast buck, the Scene has been ruined by noob webmasters that fill their sites with pop ups, fake and misleading links, noobish and terrible layout, no knowledge of HTML/PHP whatsoever…etc
Try to do some research first, if you want to make a DDL site, don’t just buy a domain, get hosting and install a script and think you have a DDL site, read, work hard on your site, make it standout.
As I said, many webmasters were waiting for a fully working DDL script, and WarezCoders team provided it, so don’t ruin that by your childish dreams of becoming a millionaire over a night, the “Scene” world was all about sharing and giving, now most don’t care about any of that, its all about the $$$.
Keep the scene clean people.
Article by el_jentel1
I’m sure you’ve read st0ne’s opinion about site ripping (which I fully agree with), ripping is pathetic, always try to be unique and original instead of just copying everyone else.
Anyways, to protect your template files from being ripped/downloaded just add this in your htaccess file in root or in your template folder.
<Files ~ "\.tpl$">
Order allow,deny
Deny from all
Satisfy All
</Files>
Change .tpl to whatever extension your template has, most has either html or htm, but some use .tpl (such as phpBB2), and thats basically it.
Enjoy.
Article by el_jentel1
This article will be dedicated to all team members that are handling any website out there and putting all the effort, time and dedication they have on making the website better and better.
If you own a website, blog, forum… and you have a team helping you managing and moderate it, don’t forget to show appreciation for your team, after all they are helping you to make your site better and bigger, its really sad to see good team member taken for granted just because he/she is doing all they can (sometimes even “extra”) and not get the appropriate appreciation they deserve, most of the good team members expect nothing in return.
A simple “thank you” every now and then would do the trick, and whenever you feel like you can “give” more appreciation to that one team member that is always doing the initiative move, go for it.
Your staff team is your small community, they are the people you trust (online), and as you all know trust is hard to find these days, don’t lose that just because you didn’t take the time to actually give a damn about your team, your website is important, but you have to understand that your website wouldn’t be worth a penny without the team you have.
Thank you.
Article by el_jentel1
Something that baffles me is how people often see phpMyAdmin as the only tool for managing their MySQL database. Personally I can’t stand it. It’s slow, it doesn’t really teach you anything and worst of all it has a lot of limitations due to its use of PHP. So your forum/blog/etc has grown a lot, and it’s database is say, over 50MB. Not only is this annoying to backup, but you’re somewhat worried that should you have to change hosts it will be a pain to restore. Once again, let’s use SSH!
Even with your standard hosting account, you should have SSH access that enables you access to MySQL. Make sure you’re in your root directory (and not backing up into a public folder). Then, it’s as simple as this:
mysqldump --opt -u your_database_username -p your_database_name > backup.sql
It will then prompt for your password to the database. Depending on the size of the database this can take seconds to hours, so be patient. It isn’t just sitting there. Once it’s completed, you can check the size of the raw database, by using this command:
ls -al backup.sql
The easiest way to get the size down is to gzip the file:
gzip backup.sql
You can then download the file by whatever method you wish. Probably FTP is the best if it’s in a private directory. If you have to change hosts, you can upload the backup.sql.gz file you’ve created, and restore it as follows. First, unzip the compressed file:
gzip -d backup.sql.gz
Then, assuming you’ve created a MySQL username & database, you can restore with the following:
mysql -u your_database_username -p your_database_name < backup.sql
It’s really that simple. A lot faster, no file limitations, and no phpMyAdmin required!
Article by Erratic
Spammers, we all hate them, I personally wish that each spammer gets a large pole with rusted bended nails up their ass, my favorite title for spammers is “Pathetic Beings”, think about it, its true in every way.
Every website, forum, blog.. or any site that has a comments or replies system in it has rules against spamming, after all it is reasonable, no one likes to go to a site and find some topics about how if you take this pill your penis would become bigger and you’ll finally be able to please your woman (yourself?).
However, we have accepted spam bots in a way, at least knowing that they are actual bots with no brain attached (but we’ll always blame the creator!), so spam bots have an excuse, they have no brain, but what surprises me are the dumb webmasters who spam other sites and forums in the hope of getting petty traffic from other sites.
You’re a damn webmaster, that title is given to anyone these days, webmaster is not just about owning a website, its about the responsibility of owning a website, the respect you give and get from other websites (even competitors!), now its just given to some idiots that will do anything to get any type of traffic.
I’m sure that all the spamming webmasters have their own set of rules on their sites, and I’m also sure that they have the “no spamming” rule, I mean come on, when have you seen a website with a comment “spam as you like!”, my question for those webmasters, why are you spamming? and if you’re ok with spamming why did you add the no spam rule in your own website? or is that just something you don’t care about if its not happening in your “property”?
If you’re thinking or about to go to another site for the soul purpose of spamming your site link everywhere, stop, think for a min, you do realize that you’re wasting your time right? what do you think will happen? a sudden burst of traffic just because you made some topics with “visit my site puhleessssee”? you probably have staff members that help you manage your site, well, you’re not the only genius that came up with that idea, almost every single site has a team managing it, so rest assured that 99% of the sites you spam in, those spam topics will be deleted within 10 minutes, the other 1% are just pathetic sites such as yours that are trying to do the same.
I’ll say it again, you’re a webmaster, you’re supposed to be the mature one, the one that handles “things” professionally, if the only plan you have on making your site big is spamming other sites with traffic, my advice to you is to find something else to do and burn your modem / router right now.
Of course I give all respect to all the respected webmasters out there, the ones that know their boundaries and limits, and actually know how to run a website.
Keep the scene clean people. 
Article by el_jentel1.
Lets rewind a bit before I get to the point. We’re going to take things back to 2000. A year when phpBB, IPB, and vBulletin were just lifting off, blogs were a rare thing, and DDL’s came in only a couple of flavors. Warez Blogs were unheard of, and there were only a handful of warez sites out there. Unlike today, they were all successful even if they sucked. How come? Because there weren’t 250,000 other choices. Lets fast forward 8 years into the now.
In the last several years I’ve witnessed the birth of tens of thousands of new warez sites consisting of forums, blogs, DDL’s, and hybrid software to power the site. Congratulations, n00b: You’ve just helped kill the scene. Every day a warez site collapses while somewhere out there in cyberspace the birth of several more emerge. You n00bs are single handily saturating the scene with a load of shitty warez sites that will eventually fail. Everyday someone gets the bright idea they can start the next Warez-BB, or pornBB. Even if your goal is on a smaller scale you aren’t doing anyone any favors. The problem is that we’re not speaking of regular experienced webmasters. We’re talking about thousands of people starting sites without any working knowledge of the scene, or, of their own forum software. Some people don’t even know how to change a default logo, or how to navigate to a word filter. It’s these same people who order a domain through that US based hosting company which does not allow warez. 99% of the time its specifically stated in their AUP and easy to find. When that site gets closed you lost all your work, and more importantly your domain.
Do you know what happens with that domain once you lose it, forget about it, or don’t care about it anymore? They get bought out by other companies who then park these domains and sell or auction them at outrageous prices. You might not care about this but some of us do. We’re losing thousands of premium domains and losing ways to creatively and effectively name sites with proper domains because all you n00b-cakes out there thought it would be cool to launch your warez site that probably failed in its first month.
Speaking of pornBB, I’d just love to use this as an example. I remember when pornBB started off as a small-time porn forum. It didn’t have much content, and had even less members. The owner had several things going for him, which you, my friend, do not. In order to run a successful site, you need to have a plan. The site owner is knowledgeable across several key areas that are important to having a successful, smooth running site. It does not hurt to know PHP, HTML, CSS, SQL, and LINUX. Thats right, I said it. You should be able to manage (or have someone who can help you) your own server. In the last year the site has bloomed beyond belief. Its one of the largest sites of its kind and shows no signs of stopping anytime soon.
In turn however, this has sparked hundreds of n00b-wannabe’s wanting to create their own porn forum. Do you really think because you can come up with a half-decent domain, a shared hosting account, and a complete theme-rip (down to the forum setup and domain) that this will make your site successful? Do you honestly think that because you can leech content, steal members, rip names/logos/domains or use any number of other dirty tactics to improve upon your failing site? Just stop. Please stop and ask yourself what the fuck you are thinking. All you’ve done is proven you’re an idiot, and perhaps you should just go back to being a member on your favorite forum. If you’re not willing to spend a couple hundred dollars a month (month after month) on your site, then you shouldn’t even bother to start. Do you think sites like Katz, pornBB, or Warez-BB comes cheap? You need to invest in legitimate forum licenses, hosting using a decent dedicated server, and in most cases a control panel. The trick is being as legitimate as possible, and paying the premium price to help protect yourself, and your investment. Something 99% of you are not willing to do, as proven time and time again each and every day.
Every new site that starts usually has some good members posting there. A handful at best. You’ll get hundreds of guests that visit your site only to never sign up and to never return again. Your use of the hide-hack, or limited viewing permissions are annoying and devious. Yet, no one seems to understand the best way to gain members is to offer up unrestricted content without annoying or nagging your guests to join. If you took that handful of good posting members from your forum, and from forum B, C, D, and E and put them in an already established site - don’t you think this site would be better for everyone in the long run?
You’re killing the scene, wasting good domains, good members, your time, and more importantly, our time.
Article by: st0ne
I get a lot of people coming to me in regards to Linux administration. A large majority of the questions are the very basic. I also get a lot of people coming to me with complex problems, such as a root kit on the server which they’re having issues with. I honestly recommend you format a server if it’s ever found to have been compromised. And a good way to prevent it is to keep your server updated, automatically. I understand this isn’t the best for all situations, though for the standard server which is being used for nothing more than a single website this is a good solution, and I believe it would stop at least 75% of the root kit cases that come to me. People don’t update their servers! So here’s a pretty simple guide to updating your server and keeping it up to date.
First, log into your server over SSH (via root) and update the server.
yum update -y
Then, we’ll update crontab. Personally I don’t like vi, so we’ll use nano instead:
EDITOR=nano
export EDITOR
Now open crontab for editing:
crontab -e
If you have previous entries, go to the bottom and add this:
0 0 * * * yum update -y
Then exit nano (ctrl+x - y - enter). The crontab should be updated. The yum update process will now be ran once daily. Please keep in mind that this does not update a lot of third party software you may have installed on the server (such as custom PHP installs, MySQL, lighttpd etc). It’s a very good idea to keep an eye on the latest releases of important software and subscribe to the mailing lists in case any important updates are released.
Article by Erratic
Over the last few years we’ve seen a burst of thousands (millions?) of sites, forums, blogs..etc, we can officially call this century the Online Century, having a website used to be a rare thing in the past but now, having a website is just another random thing.
However, what caught my attention is, well not just me I’m sure most of you have noticed it as well, most webmasters make websites for the soul purpose of making a quick buck, so they fill their sites with ads everywhere, popups, ads on top, bottom, right, left..
If you’re planning on adding ads on your site I want you to just stop and think for a minute, do you really think that you’ll become a millionaire from those ads? I mean there is a slight chance that you could make a decent revenue, but that is hardly considered as “I’ll quit my day job” thing.
When you make a website and you fill it with ads, you’re basically telling all your visitors “Get out, this is a money ad fested place”, have you ever thought that you need those visitors to even get a cent from those ads?
The only justified use of ads in my opinion is when the website really needs it, for server, server management…etc, other than that, I see no reason to include ads in any website, since most of them are on the $5 bucks monthly plans… if you can’t afford $5 bucks monthly and you think ads will help, then my friend you need serious help, the first thing you should do is get a Job.
My advice, if you’re planning on making a website, try to keep it clean as possible, develop regular visitors and traffic, make your visitors trust your site, don’t let them say “Ah, its another one of those” and when your site needs more “gear power”, use the ads to upgrade your server, your script..etc
Some will argue that there are sites such as this and that, and they have ads, my response to you is, do you even know how much it costs to keep some of “those” sites alive? at least the ads they have are for a REAL purpose, which is to keep the website/community alive.
Keep the scene clean people.
Article by el_jentel1