Installing and using Postnuke

 

 

A step by step tutorial, to install and configure a Post Nuke content management system website (CMS). This article includes installing postnuke customisations.

Preparations
1. Create the domain on your host server with php support. Preferably in the root directory.
2. Create the mysql database on your host and note the name, user and password.
3. Using an FTP program connect to the site and up load all the postnuke files to the domains root directory

Installation
1. Navigate to your domain (install.php)
2. Follow the on screen installation notes. Do not tick the box “create database”
3. At the login screen edit the information for your required login details
4. Remember to delete the install directories and files as instructed.

Installing forums
1. Upload the PNPHPBB2 files to the /modules/ directory
2. In postnuke go to admin/modules/ Hit “regenerate” and then find the pnphpbb2 entry and Initiate it
3. To add “forums” to the postnuke menu, go to admin/blocks/main menu. Add the forums entry to the menu configuration. The link entry will be http://faction.cellxgaming.com/index.php?name=PNPHPBB2

Adding a theme
1. Download the runtime client for AT-Lite (postnuke) from www.spidean.com. Upload it to the postnuke directory as its install notes.
2. Initiate it in the admin/modules section. Regenerate if you cant see it in the list
3. Upload your new theme into the /theme/ directory and set its permissions as instructed.
4. In the postnuke setup menu select the theme.
5. If the theme includes install files to theme the forums as well, then install them.

Shout box
1. Create a new block in the postnuke admin area core/html
2. Name it as “shout box”
3. Add to its contents the html shout box code as supplied by the shoutbox hosting site.

Picture blocks
1. Goto postnuke admin/blocks/new block and select core/html
2. Paste your picture html code into it

Search box
1. Goto admin/blocks/newblock
2. Select core/search box

Post calendar
1. download the post calendar files
2. Upload post calendar to the /modules/ directory
2. Install as its instructions
3. Go to blocks/main menu and add an entry in the menu configuration form for postcalendar. Entry will be [postcalendar]

Member list
1. Activate the members _list module
2. Go to blocks/main menu and add an entry in the menu configuration form for the members list. Entry will be [Members_List]

Other customisations
• Deactivate search box
• Remove from the navigation menu [downloads] and [reviews]
• Position “incoming” block to the top left
• Rename “Sections” nav to “information”
• Set up email notification on news articles
• Add information
• Do tags
• Categories and topics

This article attempts to describe the workings of Postnuke so that admins and users can go about organising and using postnuke.

FAQ Section
This allows members to post questions, and for admins to give answers. The results show up under the FAQ section. Each question can be assigned a category and sub category to allow categorisation of FAQ’s. Admin can design the Faq layout and categories, under administration/content/faq.
The FAQ Nav button must be setup in the administration/system/blocks/main menu area [FAQ].

Topics Section
Topics are used to sectionalise “News Articles” and “Stories”. A Nav menu button allows access to sectionalised news articles. Topics are set up in administration/content/topic. Icons can also be setup for each topic category. The Topic category is assigned to “Submit_News” and “Add Story”

Submit News
Users are able to submit news stories to admin for approval and publishing. “Topic” and “Category” can be assigned to them for sorting and displaying via “Topic” and “Category” Nav buttons. Once published they appear on the home page as a new article. They can also be accessed via the “News”, “Category” and “Topic” nav buttons. Options for setting up email notifications are in administration/content/submit_news.

Read more

Shape tweening text

Flash CS3 cannot shape tween text, only basic shapes. Hence to tween a letter it must be first converted to a shape.

1. Select the text tool and type a letter “A” at frame 1. Press escape to exit out of text mode.
2. Select frame 20 and insert a keyframe (F6). This represents a change in content.
3. Edit the letter “A” to a letter “B”
4. Select frame 1 with the letter A and press Ctrl+B. This convert the letter to a shape (break apart).
5. Select frame 20 with the letter B and press Ctrl+B. This converts the letter to a shape
6. Select frame 1 and in the properties bos set tween to “shape”.

Creating symbols for motion tweens

This tutorial shows you how to create symbols for use in adobe flash CS3 motion tweens. Extra instances of symbols used does not increase required memory resources.

1. In the library tab select the “new symbol” icon. Then enter its name and select “graphic”.
2. Draw the graphic on the stage. Notice it now appears in the symbol library tab (the current view is the symbol stage not the main stage)
3. To align the symbol on the stage, use the align tools panel.

Another method is to draw the image on the stage and then using your selection tool right click on it and select “convert to symbol”.

Designing a robots.txt file

Search engines collate an image of the internet by searching it, using a special program called a spider. This spider, sometimes called bot, retrieves a map of the internet and all its web pages and files. This map is then used as data to compile results for queries we type into the search engines like Google and Yahoo.

The robots.txt file sits in the root of your web site and tells these search engine bots what NOT to spider. Areas you may not want them to spider and hence not show up in search queries are sensitive pages, areas with no suitable content, images and pages of duplicate content. Indexing the same content twice risks the bots marking it as duplicate content.(monthly archives, category folders and on your front page) Duplicate content usually ends up in search engines supplemental index as opposed to its main index

A Robots.txt file is can be constructed using Notepad and contains statements like below :

To stop all bots indexing your site (indicated by “/”)
User-agent: *
Disallow: /

To block googles image bot scanning the site
User-agent: Googlebot-Image
Disallow: /

To prevent all bots from indexing certain directories
User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
Disallow: /privatedir/
Disallow: /tutorials/blank.htm
Disallow: /file.html

Dissallow all bots from indexing except Alaxa
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
User-agent: ia_archiver
Disallow:

Dissallow all bots except googlebot. This uses the ALLOW term which only google bot knows
User-agent: *
Disallow: /
User-agent: Googlebot
Allow: /

This statement tells the bots where your sitemap is. Sitemap: http://www.yoursite.com/sitemap.xml

Do not leave a robots.txt file empty as some bots will not index your site.

Web site redirection

This articel tells you how to Redirect a website or webpage to another domain location or page :

Purpose for use :
• You are using optimising the index.html page for search engines
• A web page no longer exists so you are redirecting it to a new page.
• Directing a .co.uk domain to a .com (multiple domains to one)
• Passing search engine rankings from old site to new one

You just created a new web site but want to pass on the search engine rankings of the old one to the new one. What is the most effective and spider/visitor friendly method? You should use a 301 redirect.

301 redirect ?
It is used when you want to redirect your web site or web pages. The code “301″ is interpreted as “moved permanently”. After the code, the URL of the missing or renamed page is noted, followed by a space, and then followed by the new location or file name.
When a search engine spider requests a web page, your web server will check for an .htaccess file. The .htaccess file contains specific directions that are processed then sent
back to the browser. In the .htaccess file create a line of code that reads like this:
Redirect /index.php http://blog.saltalamacchia.co.uk/index.php
The first “/” indicates that everything from the top level of the site down should be redirected. All current links within the search engine results from the old site will redirect to the top level of your new site. Save the .htaccess file to your root directory on your server.
A useful site is :
http://www.htaccesseditor.com/en.shtml for creating .htaccess files

Redirecting a Web Page
The above example shows how to redirect a whole web site. What if you want to just redirect a web page that you have changed but want to keep the rankings of the old page? Follow the same steps as above but write the code like this:
redirect 301 /old/old.htm http://www.you.com/new.htm
Note:

It may take several weeks or months for the old rankings to be passed on to the new site. Therefore don’t remove your old domain name, web site or web pages just yet.

Auto-Redirecting Methods

The “Meta Refresh Tag” method
This method search engines can detect. It is also the one method that the engines are perfectly happy with as long as there is a reasonable delay between landing on a page and being redirected from it. At least 5 seconds is recommended. The code for it must be in the section of the page, and looks like this:-

META http-equiv = “refresh” content = “0; URL = anydomain.com/destination.html”

Don’t forget to include the “http” protocol which has been omitted.

The “content” parameter contains two parts, separated by a semi-colon. The first part is the delay, in seconds, before the redirection occurs. The second part is the URL to redirect to which, like any hyperlink, can be a relative URL (as above) or an absolute URL.

For search engine optimization purposes, a delay in the auto-redirection is not usually desirable. Using the Meta Refresh Tag with a delay of 0 (zero) seconds is not recommended, because search engines can read HTML, Meta tags are HTML, and people have had penalties from redirecting that way. For an immeditate redirect, one of the other auto-redirecting methods is much better.

The “Javascript” methodJavascript auto-redirects cannot be automatically detected by the search engines because they don’t yet parse Javascript. The script can be placed anywhere on the page, but it is best to place it in the <head> section so that it runs as soon as the page begins to load. This is a typical example:-

<head>
<script language=”javascript”><!–
location.replace(”pagename.html”)
//–>
</script>
…other head section stuff (Title, Description,etc.)…
</head>

“pagename.html” can be any relative or absolute URL, just like a hyperlink URL.

The use of Javascript’s “replace” function causes the new page to replace the current page in the browser’s Back button’s History list. If a visitor then clicks the Back button to go back to where s/he came from, s/he doesn’t go back to the page with the auto-redirect but, instead, goes to the page before that. It avoids the annoying occurence of the Back button taking a person back the auto-redirecting page, which immediately takes him/her forward again.

Using a Index.html page to redirect
Use the following code in your index.html to forward to another page or site.  Locate this file in your domain root.

<head>
<meta http-equiv=”refresh” content=”5;url=http://blog.saltalamacchia.co.uk/index.php”>
</head>

Hiding a redirect to a sub domain
If you put your side within a sub directory of your domain, you can hide the sud directory displaying in google.  To do this :-

• Create site in www.mydomain.com/subdirect
• Create an index.html file in the domain root
• Within the index file add only
  <?php include(”subdirect/index.html”); ?>
  or in the htaccess file add :
  RewriteEngine on
  RewriteRule ^index\.html$ subdirect/index.html

Note
When using wordpress in a sub domain the wordpress .htaccess file is in the subdomain root and the redirect is in the from page root

Fireworks shapes

Here are some handy tips when working with shapes in Fireworks :

Combine shapes together
Select the shapes to combine
In top menu – Modify/Combine Paths/Union

Punch Shapes out (Cookie Punch)
Position two shapes with cut out tool on top
Select both shapes
In top menu – Modify/Combine paths/Punch

Importing an image to your size
In top menu – Import/File/Select the image/Open
Click and drag for size

Putting round corners on an image
Place an image on canvas
Position a new white rectangle over it (mask)
Round its Corners
Select both images
In top menu – Modify/Mask/Group as mask
Image below can be repositioned using thumb

Copying Shapes
Click and hold on the shape. Then press ALT. Move mouse to drag out another copy.
(If you hold the shift key out it will keep it on same axis)
 - Modify/Group : To group shapes
 - Modify/Transform/Flip : To flip shapes

Confine restraints (Drag a circle)
Hold Shift and drag

Styles
Pre defined styles can be applied to any shape.

1. Create a shape
2. Select a style from the styles panel on the right.
3. If you press Alt+Drag on a styled shape, you will create an identical one. If you then edit ti and click on thr “Redefine Style” button in the properties panel. The edited style is applied to all shape instances.

Notes
Use the Cut tool  and Shift key to cut shapes up (utilise grid lines)

Frame by frame animation

This tutorial produces a small movie using flash CS3. It does so using a frame by frame animation. Each frame will be different, hence all frames will be key frames.

1. Select the number of frames which will represent your stack of paper
2. Right mouse click on this selection and pick “convert to blank keyframes”
3. Draw an image in frame 1
4. Select frame 2 and draw the next instance of the animation.
5. Repeat until all the frames are complete

Note : To assist with creating the animation select the “onion skin” icon and adjust its markers such that previous frames can be seen while drawing the current frame.

Backing up Wordpress

Ensure you always have a fairly recent backup of your Wordpress site.  Especially when updating the version of Wordpress.

Firstly download all the files using an FTP download program. I suggest the whole httpdocs folder is downloaded. That way you have everything to simply re upload should the need arises.

Next access the database using PHPAdmin.  Use the following settings to back it up to your local harddrive :

• Select “Database”
• Select the database to be backed up in left hand column
• Select the top “Export” tab
• Check that all the database files appear in the export area
• Tick the following selections : (Sql), (Structure), (Add drop table), (Add Auto-Increment), (Enclose table and field names with backquotes), (Data), (Max length=50000), (Export type=insert)
• Tick “Save as File”
• Select the “Go” button and pick your download location

Masking and Gradients in Fireworks

These technique are for fading an image in or out.  It’s mainly used for creating web site banners.

• Import an image or photo
• Create a white rectangle over the image.
• Select the white rectangle and in the properties panel set the fill property to Gradient/Linear.
• Alter gradient left to right, white on black. The white is where the image will be seen clearly and the black areas will be masked out.
• Select both objects then Modify/Mask/Group as Mask
• Use the pointer tool to drag the picture beneath (image selected in layers panel)
• Select the gradient rectangle in layer panel to adjust gradient and colour (colour=canvas colour)
• Multiple fades is achieved in fade fill box property.  Clicking adds extra thumbs ie Black,white,black

Vector Masks
These can be used for placing an image on a defined shape. And for fading in and out two pictures.

1. Put the required shape on to the canvas.  This can be any shape.
2. import and position the image or photo above it.
3. Select the top original rectangle and select Edit/Cut
4. Select the image in the layers panel and then Edit/Paste as Mask.
5. The image can be repositioned on the shape by selecting it then click and drag on the centre thumb.
6. To create photo’s fading in the process can be repeated. Place the two photo’s on the canvas. Select the top photo then Commands/Creative/Auto Vector Mask. Pick a preference and edit using the properties panel.

These notes can be printed.

A full screen HD video of this tutorial is available Here or click within the video box.

How to update Wordpress

This is a more reliable way to update Wordpress than using the auto update tool, which in many cases won’t work.  I have been using this method and never had an issue.

1. Backup your wordpress files and database.  Personally I ftp down the whole “Httpdocs” file and then backup the database using PHPAdmin.
2. Download the Wordpress update patch and unzip it.
3. Deactivate your plugins in Wordpress
4. Delete your current wp-include” and wp-admin directories
5. Upload the new wp-include and wp-admin folders
6. Edit the new wp-config-sample.php to reflect your current user name, password and database name. Then rename it wp-config.php (see your current wp-config.php file). Do not upload yet.
7. Delete all the current root files then upload all the new ones including the edited new wp-config.php
8. The content of the new wp-content folder now needs uploading, carry this out individually so as not to accidentally write over your current theme and plugin folders.
9. Browse to your web site and follow the instructions to update the database
10. Activate your plugins one at a time checking they work as you go.
11. That’s it all done

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