The Civicrm is dedicated to people who would like to put their non governmental orgainizations online, This script is so powerful that you cannot imagine the features it has to offer. This script had been developed as a standalone, or as compnents to be integrated into Drupal or Joomla.

Infact right now i’m currently integrating it with joomla for a client putting his NGO online.

Please read the extract from civicrm below.

CIVICRM

The Open Source Solution for the Civic Sector

CiviCRM is an open source and freely downloadable constituent relationship management solution. CiviCRM is web-based, open source, internationalized, and designed specifically to meet the needs of advocacy, non-profit and non-governmental groups. Integration with both Drupal and Joomla! content management systems gives you the tools to connect, communicate and activate your supporters and constituents.

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Okay here we are again, This might seem simple to a lot of gurus but to a new user in this field , it would be a riddle that needs to be solved. Most of the little things being written by me in this blog relates to the questions that are commonly  asked by my clients with little coding and webmastering experience.

Now lets get back to our topic which is backing up your files and databases using cpanel. One good thing about using a cpanel hosting platform is the fact that a lot of things are already inbuilt into it. So lets go now and back up your files and databases

Go to your cpanel(normally you must log in)

Find the backup icon

click on the icon

you would be taken to a page that features links to backing up your home directory or restoring your home directory.

Since you are backing up all you need to do is click on the button that asks you if you want to “download or generate full website backup”, this would include all your home directories and databases,  or if you want to do partial backing up, this means that you want to either backup the home directories only or the databases only.

When you click on any of these options, it will open in a zip file and which you can now store in any directory in your computer. please take care where you store these because this would be needed if your site crashes. A good websmaster would do  backups everyday and especially for those running a database driven website, then the databases would need to be backed up daily.

Why is it good to do backups?

Any site can crash or be hacked into  and so this calls for you to have a backup ready, even if you don’t know how to restore your site, you can get a person with a good technical know how to do that for you but also, the person would need  your backed up files or he/she wont be able to do anything .

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After installing an oscommerce store, the next thing you want to do is work yourself through the backend to get familar with it, one of the things that would strike your mind is how to set up a payment system that would recieve money from your customers with ease. Majority of online entreprenuers would go for paypal payment system because that is one of the easiest payment gateways to set up.

I have decided to talk about this a little bit because not so long ago, i was consulted by a client on how to set up a payment system in oscommerce with paypal. The good news is that oscommerce already has paypal payment module built into it and all you need to do is configure it in the store admin.

Before you do that, you must make sure you have set up a paypal account and then come back and configure your paypal account in  the oscommerce store admin. Because we would not like to touch on others that are not so relevant, lets walk you through how to do it  with paypal.

LET’S GO HERE:

• Go to your admin
• Click on ‘Modules’ folder
• Click on ‘payment’
• on the list on the right find ‘PayPal Website Payments Standard’
• Click on it and top right , click on ‘edit’ .
• Then set the button to true if you want to accept payment by paypal website standard and then enter your paypal account email address and click on ‘update’ . There you are finished, all you need to do is test it and see if it works, try to buy an item as a customer and see if it works, once it leads you to your paypal page, then you are on the right path.

Hope this helps.

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IP.Board is one of the best places to turn to when looking for commercial community scripts. Please read from the site below.

IP.Board has been helping site owners foster engaging discussion for years, so we’ve taken the proven core of our community platform, and tweaked, extended, improved and polished it to bring you version 3.

Drive user interaction with new features like Reputation and Personal Conversations, and streamline dealing with troublemakers with features like the Report Center. IP.Board 3 helps you create awareness, positive discussion and empowered users, and can help reduce staffing costs by enabling user-to-user support interactions.

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I got an email from a client of mine about a phpbb3 forum that refused to update even though the changes had been made in the backend . Well believe me  this might be a real pain for people who quickly wants to update their forums. Nothing can be so frustrating as trying to find out the roots , you may delete your browser cache etc  but the problem would  still be there .

Dont worry, here is the solution, it is simply a cache issue in your server, this problem is very inherent in phpbb3 forums. Now lets  solve this,

Go to your Admin control panel in your forum

Click on the ‘general’ menu tab, look for for a ‘Purge Cache’ button around the center of the page, then click on ‘Run’ which takes you  to a page where you would be asked if you want to confirm it, please confirm and afterwards, go back to index page and refresh the page, your changes should appear now.

Also it would be wise to  clean your browser history so the page can be newly refreshed. this might not be necessary but you can try it after you have run the ‘purge cache’ in the ACP(admin control panel)

Hope it helps out.

Thanks.

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Hello all,

I know there are lots of topics that needs updating here in this our blog that has not been updated but please bear with me as i have too many projects on my hand.

Recently a client of mine asked me some questions regarding a payment module problem in Prestashop and i felt i should share it.

PROBLEM: When a client  wants to pay by Bank wire, an error page is generated with the message “INTERNAL SERVER ERROR.”

SOLUTION: This is basically a folder/file permission problem, just go to your Module folder and give it the permission 755 and also make sure that the files inside the bankwire folder are set to 644.

So lets summarize it,  Module folder = 755 , Bankwire folder inside the Module folder = 755,  Files inside the bankwire folder =644.

Your problem should be solved after you do these and you can apply this  to  other such errors relating to payment Modules.

Hope this helps.

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Hello Readers,

I remember promising to write something on using a phpbb forum but due to time factor, i have not been chanced  to do that. Recently a client of mine asked me some questions about placing ads on a phpbb forum  that was purchased from me.

I felt it was good to share this same knowledge with you all also.

Getting your Ad code:

You would know what type of ad would fit your page, vertical ads are most pleasant and fits the page very well.

Posting your ad code in the header:

Please note that this is based on “PROSILVER” template in phpbb3, If you are using phpbb2, the difference cant be that much.

Go to the following folder and files if you want to place your ad in the topmost head position.

styles/prosilver/template/overall_header.html

Find this line <div id=”wrap”> Place your vertical ad in this place, it is better to start just after the <div id=”wrap”>  Or you can place your ad at the bottom of the page after the whole codes. </div>

Firstly back up your files and then try out the ads and check how it appears.

Posting your ad code in the foot:

To place ads in the foot, you can locate this file

styles/prosilver/template/overall_footer.html

Find this part of the page that looks like this

<div>Powered by <a href=”http://www.phpbb.com/”>phpBB</a> &copy; 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group
<!– IF TRANSLATION_INFO –><br />{TRANSLATION_INFO}<!– ENDIF –>
<!– IF DEBUG_OUTPUT –><br />{DEBUG_OUTPUT}<!– ENDIF –>
<!– IF U_ACP –><br /><strong><a href=”{U_ACP}”>{L_ACP}</a></strong><!– ENDIF –>
</div>

You can place your ads after this <div> or somewhere inside the <div>

Please try it out as usual to see how it looks, as a novice , you would need to back up your files and then try out ads.

Hope this helped out.

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I had a  joomla site i was developing for a client recently but by the time i decided to extend it in a sophisticated way as i always do with my sites, but to my surprise i couldn’t upload any module as it keeps producing errors like “Please enter a package directory”.  Actually this gave me a little headache because i could not imagine having a site i can’t module up the way i like but after looking around , i finally solved the problem.

Now lets follow up the errors associated with these one after the other.

ELIMINATING THE FTP ERRORS THAT APPEARS WHEN YOU TRY TO INSTALL A MODULE.

• Go to Admin control panel
• Go to” Site” on the top menu
• Go to “global configuration”
• Click on “Server”  on the top menu
• Scroll down and get to “FTP SETTINGS”
• Juts enter your normal FTP settings by your host and then save.

This will elimate those FTP errors you get in red colours when trying to upload a module. It will also help to solve most error problems you get  around the site related to FTP.

UPLOADING AND INSTALLING  YOUR EXTENSION FILES SUCCESSFULLY;

There are two approaches to this.

1. Just download the extension you want to install, unzip the files

Open up your ftp program or root folder in your server and then create a folder and call it any name, then upload the files you want to install to that folder, then go back to your install/uninstall under extensions menu and then use the option  “install from directory” Change the directory url to your latest folder where your inteded files are stored i.e  /home/user/public_html/your new folder

Then click on install and you are done.

2 The second approach which is the simplest one is to simply dowload the extension, then do not unzip it or if unzipped, use a zip program to zip up the folder and then use the “Upload package file” option to upload  and install the  extension.

Afterwards you can click on module option and then configure and enable the actual module installed.

If you are having problems with these please let me know by leaving a comment here.

 Hope this helps out.

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