Open Source CMS

Creating a website, but unsure of the options out there? For sure you’ve heard about Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla. But have you heard ClanTiger, ImpressPages, or Shinobu? Some of you might have, but some haven’t. There are a lot of commercial and open source content management systems whose main functions range from blogging, to forums, and even to e-Commerce. 

Here’s a site where you can see them all, and actually TRY using them in a test server before even bothering to download and try in your own setup. It has lots of valuable comments and ratings to help you choose one to suit your needs. Visit OpenSourceCMS and try.

Sample CMS Listing

You will find all kinds of CMS:

• CMS / Portals
• Forums
• Lite CMS
• Blogs
• Groupware
• e-Commerce
• Learning management
• Image Galleries
• Wiki, etc.

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PuSH: PubSubHubbub

The PuSH protocol is gaining more and more recognition nowadays. With this protocol as an extension to RSS and Atom feeds, it’s now possible to provide updates in real time.

How it Works

Before, subscribers have to rely on “pulling” information on a regular time interval. Through the PuSH protocol, publishers, such as us bloggers are now able to “push” information to hubs that act as messengers to our subscribers to provide them real-time updates. Here’s an interesting YouTube video on PuSH / PubSubHubbub.

You may learn more about this protocol on Google Code.

Wordpress and PuSH

Earlier this year, CMS’s such as Blogger, Tumblr, Posterous and Wordpress.com have already provided support for PuSH. There’s no need to install anything.

For self-hosted Wordpress.org sites, there is now an official plugin from Wordpress called PuSHPress. It’s pretty simple to install. As with any other plugin, simply download the file and copy into the plugin directory in Wordpress. Activate the plugin in the Plugins page and you’re ready to go. This plugin already has the hub features included, and once activated, Wordpress is now able to send updates directly from Wordpress to your PuSH subscribers in real-time.

[via DownloadSquad]

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Tumblr + Google Apps + Domain = Full Blown Blog Site

Background
For personal sites, it’s often not a priority to create your own domain and host it. Most don’t really bother to do so, because it usually entails a lot of work and effort to maintain, as opposed to just creating a free account in say, Blogspot or Wordpress.com. I myself started my personal space in the Internet with free blogging  accounts courtesy of those services. It didn’t take long for me to start wanting to own a domain for myself, and ever since, I’ve been meaning to expand my space online.

Recently, I embarked on a journey to create a new domain to host my other blog on Travel and Photography.

Here I’ll share with you how you can actually create and host your own domain with ease, and have all the bonuses setup along with it. You can have your own blog, an email connected with your domain, and a calendar. All these are possible by connecting Tumblr (a good free blogging platform that is easy to use) and Google Apps with your domain.

Here’s How

1. Register a domain with NameCheap or your preferred domain registrar. This usually costs around USD 10 per year for a .com domain.
2. Create an account in Tumblr.
3. Edit your domain’s host records to point the domain’s A-record [IP Address] to 72.32.231.8.Note that for Tumblr, IP address is used, instead of nameservers. In NameCheap, the link to editing host records can be found under Host Management.
   

   NameCheap Host Records Link

   Edit the A-record as follows:

   

   NameCheap Host Record - Tumblr A-Record

   The @ signifies the root of the domain, i.e. iamasampledomain.com, while www signifies the root, with a www prefix, i.e. www.iamasampledomain.com. Save your changes.

   Note: It may take upto 72 hours before the changes take effect, depending on the registrar.

4. Customize your Tumblr blog to allow custom domains.
   

   Tumblr Custom Domain

   On the Info menu, tick the Use custom domain name checkbox and enter the domain you have created. Once this is setup, test your domain by clicking the Test your domain link. Don’t forget to save! You should now be able to type your domain and the site you have created should show up (assuming the domain settings has already been setup and has already taken effect).

   [optional]
   The following steps are optional if you want your own domain email via Google Mail and other Google Apps such as Docs and Calendar linked to your domain.

5. Create an account in Google Apps (Standard Edition) as an Administrator.
6. Activate and customize the email and calendar settings in Google Apps. Change the Web Address/URL for Email and Calendar to a custom name. e.g. mail.iamasampledomain.com and calendar.iamasampledomain.com.
7. Edit your domain’s host records CNAME to reflect the settings you made in Google Apps.
   

   NameCheap Host Record - Google Apps CNAME

8. In order to fully allow the emailing to work, you need to edit the MX records to:
   
   Priority | MX Server address
   10 | ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
   20 | ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
   20 | ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM.
   30 | ASPMX2.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
   30 | ASPMX3.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
   30 | ASPMX4.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.
   30 | ASPMX5.GOOGLEMAIL.COM.

   For NameCheap, it’s a simple change. Simply tick User under Mail Settings, tick Quick Change and Google Apps Email then save. All the required MX records will automatically be loaded.

   

   NameCheap Host Record - Mail Settings

   Note: It may take upto 72 hours before the changes take effect, depending on the registrar.

Finale
Congratulations! You should now be able to access your newly created site, your email and calendar using your new domain.

Visit my Photravelography Blog for a sample blog done using the above method.

Have fun!

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Get ReCSS version 1.1 by David Schontzler on Dojo

Just drag ReCSS to your bookmarks toolbar and you’re all set. Happy web designing!

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Google Search code in Wordpress Page

Using a custom Google Search on your Wordpress site is not as daunting as it looks, especially if you are inclined on using plugins, such as the Google Custom Search Plugin.

However, if you’re more hands-on in terms of your site design and layout, fret not. It’s not that hard. You just need to know how to manually edit and upload some files. Just follow the steps outlined here, and you’ll surely be able to do it.

Step 1: Create the custom Google Search box in your Google Adsense account

Go through the wizard for creating the Google Search for Content. If you wish to customize the look and feel of the search results page and display the results in your own site, follow the succeeding steps below. If you’re ok with having Google handle the results page, just follow until Step 2a.

Google Search Setup 1

Google Search Setup 2

Step 2: Add the generated code

Step 2.a: Insert the search box code

After generating the code from Google, open your header.php file (or the file where your original search box is located, e.g. sidebar.php). Overwrite the existing code with the new one you just generated, and tweak the layout and design around if you’re comfortable.

Step 2.b: Create a page for your results

Create a new Page in your Wordpress Dashboard (Pages -> Add New). Paste the results code you generated on the HTML tab of the page you just added (see the first screenshot on this post). Publish the page.

(Optional) Step 3: Change the search page template and hide the results page from the navigation

If you have a search.php template, change the template on your Page options.You can also edit the visibility of the page on your navigation bar by excluding the new page you created. I will detail how to create your own page template and how to exclude links from your page navigation bar in succeeding posts.

Easy fix: Just add a plugin such as WP-PageNavi to hide pages you don’t want displayed.

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