Set Up File Permissions for a new Installation

Before we can continue to the install, we need to change some permissions on certain folders to allow the install process to create the various files needed.

1. Tick the box next to the new folder “wp” and click the “Change Permissions” button. This loads a little popup box (below). You need to tick the two remaining empty boxes. You’ll notice that ticking these boxes changes the numbers shown to “777”. To save these changes, press the “Change Permissions” button.

2. Next double click on the “wp” folder from within the File Manager. From within this folder scroll to the “wp-content” and "bbpress" folders, changing their permissions to 777 too. You can do this by either ticking all its empty boxes or just typing in 777 into the permissions boxes. Then click the “Change Permissions” button.

Amazingly we are actually ready to install this bloody thing!

Setting up a Database

Before uploading and installing any script its normally required that you create a database first. The easiest way of doing this is to use Cpanel. In this tutorial I will be creating a new database on http://www.sinsearch.co.uk

Firstly you need to log into your cpanel which is probably located at ‘yourdomain.com/cpanel/’ . When logged in scroll down to the ‘Database’ section and click on the ‘MySQL Databases’ icon

This leads to a page that is vaguely split into 3 separate functions; create databases, modify existing databases and managing usernames with their associated passwords. The username here refers a new user and password that is required in order to access the database. This data is used later on by the installation routine and so for this section ensure you have notepad open to copy&paste details into it. That is what I always do when installing stuff as writing it down manually can be an iffy business with the weird passwords that the system creates.

The first section of the page is where we first create a new database:

Type in a name for the database and click the “Create Database” button. You could call your database “wordpress” or anything you want really. For security reasons don’t share database names, usernames or passwords with anyone else. After clicking the button a new screen will be displayed saying something along the lines of:

“Create MySQL database
Added the database {Name of your database}.”

Don’t worry if the bit in curly brackets may be slightly different to the name you typed in the create database box. Anyhow, at this point copy the name of the database into notepad for future use and label it as “DB Name”.

Then click the “Go Back” link to return to the previous page and scroll down to the bottom to the create new user section:

In the user name box type in a name and then click the “Generate Password” button. A box will popup showing the generated password; copy and paste this into your notepad file, labelling it as “DB Pass”. Once you have the password copied, click the close button. You’ll see now that both password fields have been prefilled with the generated password, leaving you only to click the “Create User” button. An acknowledgement will be displayed, showing that the user and password was created. Click the “Go Back” link.

Next, we have to associate the new user we’ve just created with the specific database. Scroll down to the “Add User To Database” section. All you have to do here is pick the new database and username that you just created from the associated drop down lists and click the “Add” button. You just ‘Adding’ a user to that database.

Clicking the add button then displays a ‘Manage User Privileges’ screen shown below. Also at the top of the page there is the username and database name shown. Copy and paste the user name into your notepad document, labelling it as “DB User”.

All you need to do on this screen is to tick the “All Privileges” box and click the “Make Changes” button. If the operation was successful then you’ll get another confirmation screen.

Database set up is now complete!

Social Network Upload & Unzip

Since we have prepared all the scripts into one single zip file is pretty easy to do. I’m going to use the file manager inside Cpanel to upload the file. Simply:

 

1. Login to Cpanel and scroll down to the File Manager.
2. Click on the File Manager icon to start the program.
3. Navigate to the “public_html” or “www” folder
4. Click the upload button and select the “wp.zip” file from your PC

The upload should start automatically upon selecting the file from your computer.

Upon completion, click the link to return to the file browser view. Next, tick the box next to the file “wp.zip” and click the “extract” button at the top of the page. This will create a folder called “wp” in the current directory with the associated URL of http://www.sinsearch.co.uk/wp/

Before we can install the software we need to set some file permissions so the installer can set up some files. This will be in tomorrows exciting instalment. (I was being sarcastic!)

Free Social Networking – Download & Prepare

In this part I’ll be discussing where to download the various pieces of software you need for your social networking platform and how to prepare them off-line. The idea is to put all the software into one easy package that can be uploaded to the server in one go rather than having to do them one at a time.

The first thing to do is set-up a folder on your computer to download the zipped scripts to. I’ve called it “Social-Network” on my PC. Next you need to download the following scripts, placing them into the “Social-Network” folder:

1. WordPress MU (Multi-User)
2. BuddyPress (Social Networking)
3. BB Press (Message Board)
4. BB Press Integration (Joins BBPress to WordPress)

Your download directory should look like this:

Next we need to extract or unzip all these archives into the current folder; “Social-Network”. I use 7-Zip for my decompression program but there are plenty of other ones that do a similar job. When extracting make sure you select to unzip or “Extract to Here” rather than the named folder since its going to be hard to follow the rest of this article otherwise. After I’ve extracted each zip I tend to delete the file or move it outside of the current folder – My memory is terrible! Assuming you did this too then your “Social-Network” folder should now look like this:

Okay, we’ve now got the 4 main scripts in the folder fully extracted. What we have to do now is move 3 of the folders inside the WordPress-MU one and then move 2 folders from inside the Buddypress directory into the themes folder for wordpress before we re-zip the lot once again.

a) Pick-up the “bbpress” folder and drop it into the “wordpress-mu” one.

b) Move both “buddypress” & “bbpress-integration” to “wordpress-mu\wp-content\plugins”

c) Next move to the “\wordpress-mu\wp-content\plugins\buddypress\bp-themes” folder. This folder should had been just created when you moved the BuddyPress into the plugins folder in the previous step.

d) Copy all the folders inside the bp-themes folder to: “wordpress-mu\wp-content\themes” directory.

Now the wordpress-mu themes folder should look like:

Next you need to move up to the “social-network” folder and rename the “wordpress-mu” folder to “wp” and then zip everything in this folder. This should give you the following:

Now we are ready to upload this via your FTP software or through Cpanel. I am going to use Cpanel as it also includes a handy decompress feature. All this will be in my next instalment.

CWU Cancels Christmas

It looks like the CWU, has announced that postal strikes are to go ahead next week. There will be a blanket strike for 3 days this week and further ones next week too (source: BBC news)

Last night they were meeting Royal Mail in last minute talks. The CWU hinted that they were close to settling or they might be prepared to. But as per usual they failed to come to an agreement and showed the sort of inflexibility that was last seen in the 1970’s. This union and the post office are living in a different time and instead of standing by their country in time of recession, they choose to make it worse, increase the suffering and possibly spoiling Christmas for millions of people.

Small businesses are reeling at this news that rely on the postal service to deliver their orders. On-line retailers such as those that run e-bay based businesses will be particularly affected as there is little alternative carriers they can use without dramactically increasing carriage charges. Businesses that rely on cheques then you might as well forget it, the cheapest alternative is £5 to send a letter in the UK. So, don’t worry about sending Christmas cards and presents this year. Christmas has been cancelled by the Postal Union, the CWU.

Free Social Networking – Introduction

There are plenty of social networking platforms out there; Facebook, Twitter, Bebo and even Myspace. On all of these you can have your own groups and collect friends of similar interests. For adult industry having a group or even a presence is problematic as you can quite easily fall victim to their ever restrictive terms and conditions. These networks are designed really for the wider public including those under 18 and so the operators have to make sure that the content is acceptable to all. I know multiple people on Facebook that have had their accounts taken down, often for posting ‘lude content’ which is in violation of their TOS.

What we are starting to see as an alternative are such mature interest groups setting up their own niche social platforms on their own servers. There are quite a few paid scripts out there, one of which I have already talked about previously; VLD which with several plug-ins can make a decent social networking platform. With all the extra paid plug-ins though it does make it a rather expensive solution.

Whilst researching a new site I found that there is a free way of creating a pretty stable social network site using WordPress Multi-user version. The multi-version edition of the famous blogging platform is really for sites that want to offer their users the ability of setting up their own blogs too. For example, you can set up as your own wordpress.com site and offer blogs to all your friends/colleagues.

By itself WordPress MU offers the basic platform for handling multiple registrations and user management. To add the social networking aspects then a plug-in needs to be added called “BuddyPress” which is a collection of 11 plug-ins that have been specifically engineered to give that Facebook like experience. It should be noted in order to use Buddy Press designed theme or have one developed for you. You cannot use the thousands of free WordPress themes out there. They won’t break your site, wordpress just won’t show any of the extra social networking elements.

Buddypress has been designed to work with an optional Message board too called “BB Press”. This software isn’t a plug-in but an extension that can be integrated into WordPress MU whereby a single login can be used across all the different pieces of software. Otherwise your users would have a different login for the Message board to that they would use when logging into the main wordpress powered application.

To join BB Press and WordPress MU together then we used a plug-in called BB Press Integration which simply is treated as a normal plug-in that when run is a fairly straight forward wizard that takes care of the necessary changes and instructions on how to do it without too much hassle.

Once all of this has been set-up then you actually get a platform that allows users to register, set-up a page/profile, upload a picture, setup/join groups, post on the message boards, invite friends, comment on other profiles and activity streams. You can use other wordpress plug-ins for perhaps adding galleries and even incorporate your twitter update into your activity stream.

In the next part, I’ll be discussing how to download and prepare the various bits of software into a single package that can be put onto a web server in one operation.

Drupal is very annoying

For the past couple of days I’ve been trying to get my head around an open source Content Manger called "Drupal" for a new web site. It’s kept me up late a couple of nights reading tutorials, struggling with modules, hacking code that looks like its been written by a drunk teenage gorilla on speed. It all looks good, but has such a steep learning curve. I think I probably could write the entire application myself in the same time as it would to learn how to do it in Drupal. So what’s the point of using Drupal?

What attracted me to Drupal was that it already had a user management, blogging and forum engine built in, plus a twitter plug in that together, at least on paper should had done what I wanted. The trouble is it doesn’t! Drupal, has a pretty pitiful set-up when it comes to handling user profiles. Its confusing at best! There is all sorts of plugin’s like "Content Profile" that is suppose to make this all possible, but again it just doesn’t work that well and I’ve had enough of farting about with it. I find it confusing, I can’t imagine what real surfers would say!

Drupal also does some weird shit on the server at install, changing the file ownership and group for 1 file and folder, making it virtually impossible for the average user to delete via FTP. So, yep you can’t properly un-install it without writing a php script to change both file ownership & grouping back to normal or asking your host to delete the folder. I’ll do the later as Drupal doesn’t deserve the 20 minutes it would take for me to write the script to clean up the mess the application has left behind.

Additionally I noticed that the database size for an empty Drupal application is 500K which is huge saying that’s no content in it. On installation, it creates a massive 48 tables which is a bit excessive for what the application actually does.

To cut a long story short, I’m going to delete Drupal again, clearing out all the database and then perhaps trying something else. Plan A was to write it myself from scratch and I might go back to Plan A, but tomorrow I will just have a go at Mambo to see if that works any better. It really can’t be any worse than Drupal.. can it?

Face Book

I’ve never been a fan of face book because its too much of a distraction, though its a dam great tool for capturing eye balls for advertising. I might do a social networking platform one day. Its something I have thought about before but have never had the time for such a massive project, besides I need to update my programming skills first to even attempt such a technically challenging project.

Anyway, I have succumb to commerical pressures and now have a Face Book page. Whilst logged into FaceBook to view my profile, Click Here

whose your target market?

Before we get in to the hard stuff, you first need to consider what sort of market you are aiming to target with your site. Its better to build a dating site that specifically targets a group or range of people with similar interests than just doing a generic dating site that appeals to everyone. There are already too many large generic dating sites with multi-million pound budgets that any new site cannot even hope to compete with.

One method I use for creating a niche is that I write 5 lists of words; Location, Gender, Age, Status and Activity Related. An example of a very short list might be:

Location (Geo): UK, England, English, US, Americans, American, States, Florida, France, French, Germany, German, Russia, Russian.

Gender Related: male, man, chap, guy, bloke, Women, woman, girl, lady,
Age Related: Teen, adult, pensioner, youth, mature, old, young, virgin, 30somethings
Status Related: Single, married, available, separated, looking, friendship

Activity Related: Drinking, Dance, theatre, eating out, clubs, music, concerts, films, staying in, horse riding, football, pop music, computer games, quiet pubs

From this group you might consider targeting “young sing male concert” goers looking for girls that are into the same thing. Or 30Somthings single again’s looking for friendship wanting to meet for a drink in a quiet pub.

By using lists of words It helps you to discover new markets that perhaps you initially wouldn’t had thought had otherwise. Its a good idea in spending a substantial amount of time at this stage as the subject or niche you choose will have a pivotal role of how your web site will perform for its life time. You want to spend time on this stage, because ideally you want to have a strong brand identity and after a while your site advertises itself through word of mouth or has a loyal affiliate manager following that are promoting your business for you.

For this tutorial I’m going to use the niche of “single 30Somethings looking for other club goers from the UK”. At this stage you may want to consider whether you want to target a particular gender (I don’t) and you’ll notice I’ve decided to specifically target a particular country. In practise this could be a little too much niche like, where as in the real world of on-line trading it would make more sense to open the side up to a slightly wider audience.

<strong>Interpreting Google Results</strong>

You may think you know how to search Google, having done so for years. When you are looking for a brand name or an idea you have to learn to interpret the results in a slightly different way. Its not just about what results you can see, but also those they are not present. After all, you are looking to fill a gap in the market and not to duplicate another site exactly, since you will fail in your aspirations of having a successful dating site.

Go to Google Search and now search for the keywords of “single 30 club uk dating” (excluding the quotes).

<a href=”http://www.sinsearch.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/googleserps1.jpg”><img class=”alignnone size-full wp-image-383″ title=”googleserps” src=”http://www.sinsearch.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/10/googleserps1.jpg” alt=”" width=”500″ height=”284″ /></a>

The search results includes mainly two types of web sites; existing dating sites and club/music orientated sites. This is perfect because you have the opportunity of promoting the site to two core audiences and a multitude of secondary audiences related to Music and club culture.

Another important thing you should be looking for is to see if the keywords you have used returns search results that includes advertising from the same or related industry. You can see from this results page it features an advert from match.com at the top of the page, plus also a screen full of ads down the right hand side. This should tell you something! It tells you that many dating sites consider this collection of terms to valuable to pay for advertising for.

If you read any on-line marketing book about using Adwords to promote your site, they always suggest trying to find the golden egg – ie, a popular group of keywords that no one else has thought of and use them in your Adwords campaign since the pay per click unit price will be very small. This is fine for Adwords, but in reality if you decided to base your site using the keywords of “uk dating” then you have a very small chance of getting your site to number one before you retire in 20 years time.

To be successful you need to pick a group of keywords that sit in between those that are the most popular and those that are the least popular as seen my Adword advertisers as this gives you a fair indication of how successful your web site may be in the future.

The number of search results that has been returned during your analysis is something that you should look closely at. If there’s to many then its a good indicator that the search criteria needs to be narrowed and therefore you perhaps you need to tighten your niche. If on the other hand hardly any results are being returned then its a fair indication that its not going to be popular enough and therefore not draw the sort of interest you are hoping for.

In the example above, Google is returning 299,000 results which would make it pretty easy to make it to number one without much effort. You can quite easily just create a web site, link it from a couple of locations and be number one in Google within weeks. When I am looking at creating a new niche I am generally looking for a wider audience of around 1.5 million results in the search results page. Though it should be said that I would also use “single 30 club uk dating” as well and create content that specifically targets that particular set of keywords to ensure as wider spread of traffic as possible.

If you particular search returns in excess of 10 million results then you certainly need to narrow your niche to something that gives a smaller number of results. At this point you could chose to narrow it by selecting to target your site to a particular genre of music that is played at certain clubs where the 30 somethings hang out.

RSS Feed Submission

Many bloggers including myself find it quite tedious as every time we do an update we have to go through the process of manually telling all the feeds and directories about the new content. It is a very repetitive task and since I have an injury, excessive keyboard work would put me in a lot of pain for several weeks, and you can imagine it’s something I try to avoid. Word press automatically sends out a ping to a list of directories whenever an update is done, however blogger appears not to do the same and so I have taken it upon myself to look for an alternate solution.

I am not a big supporter of automated submission software as you don’t really know if a submission was successfully done or not. Also, many blog directories will block automated submissions and won’t necessarily be reported by the software that you have just purchased. Another good reason for not using automation software is that it is overpriced for what he actually does. Of course, there are people willing to pay the price as they are looking for ease of use rather than peace of mind. I am look for a tool that would make my life easier but at the same time to know that when I pressed a button to submit my feed, I can see it was successively done.

Today I installed a new piece of software that is very simple to use and doesn’t do this submission as such. What it does is to store the values of form boxes and then when you go to the various web submission pages, it pre-fills the forms so that you only have to do press the okay button to send the information to the server. This means you get to see whether the submission was successful or not. Unlike with automated software you get peace of mind by doing it yourself, without all the repetitive strain injury of excessive typing.

You can configure the program to add your own feeds, meaning that you do not have to rely on the author to update the database of engines. Simply speaking, you just set a profile up that contains information about your feed and then visit each web site listed in the right-hand panel and the software automatically pre-fills any registration or submission pages and then you click okay. That is all there is to it. It is very easy indeed.

The software itself is very cheap at a mere $30 which in real money is less than 15 UK pounds. I prefer paying this tiny amount can pay it to the $250 plus that is being charged for many of these auto submission applications. For more information about rss planter visiting their website by clicking here