Drupal vs. Phpbb vs. Joomla vs. VBulletin

Argghh! Are you like me and have spent countless hours reading about all these different software platforms? In my case, I have many different forums that I would like to upgrade – currently running PhpBB 2.2x on most of them. I don’t mind sinking some money into them – but I want a really great user experience.

I’ve been running forums since 1999 so have been around the block a bit. I’ve been burned in the past by using bridges and combinations of software that were deprecated – so I’m a little leary of using multiple software platforms, but still open to the idea if it really rocks and is stable.

Continue reading “Drupal vs. Phpbb vs. Joomla vs. VBulletin” →

Skype for free video chat

skype_logo.png

I’ve finally downloaded Skype for free international video chat. So many of my friends use it and they all love it. I haven’t heard a single negative thing about Skype. I asked a friend how skype makes money – and they said that if you want you can purchase a permanent Skype number – which you can designate to forward to your different numbers as you travel around the world. That sounds like something I’ll probably do – but have also heard even those prices are VERY affordable.

Tagged.com Phishing Website

 I’ve had a couple real-world friends send me invitations to this website so I checked it out a bit. Here is info on Tagged.com:

Tagged.com is a phishing website that masquerades as social networking website. It was co-founded by Greg Tseng and Johann Schleier-Smith and launched in October 2004 by Tagged Inc. and is privately owned. The site allows its users to send messages, leave comments, post bulletins, customize status, browse photos, watch videos, play games, give tags, chat and make friends. Early innovations include the use of slides and Youtube as a part of the site’s graphical interface. As of July 2008, the site claims to have 70,000,000 registered users.

Continue reading “Tagged.com Phishing Website” →

ImpEx Timeout Error

Fix for the dreaded ImpEx white screen timeout error. ImpEx is a utility to import various forum mysql databases into the VBulletin format. This timeout error happens most common when importing the POSTS with a count over 400,000. This is probably the largest part of your database. The timeout error around 400,000 posts imported results in a blank white screen that you can’t navigate away from (and an incomplete database transfer).

Continue reading “ImpEx Timeout Error” →

PhpMyAdmin Error 2002

This is an error seen when connecting to PhpMyAdmin via Cpanel.

Error: #2002 – The server is not responding (or the local MySQL server’s socket is not correctly configured)

Fix: Symbolically link /tmp/mysql.sock to /var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

*Restart MySql services for changes to take effect.*

Or here’s an even easier fix:

To make your life easier, you can make a simple change to the MySQL configuration file /etc/my.cnf that will permanently set the socket file used by the mysql client. After making a backup copy of /etc/my.cnf, open it in your favorite editor. The file is divided into sections such as

[mysqld]
datadir=/usr/local/mysql/data
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

[mysql.server]
user=mysql
basedir=/usr/local/mysql

If there is not currently a section called [client], add one at the bottom of the file and copy the socket= line under the [mysqld] section such as:

[client]
socket=/var/lib/mysql/mysql.sock

If there is already a [client] section in the my.cnf file, add or edit the socket line as appropriate. You won’t need to restart your server or any other processes. Subsequent uses of the mysql client will use the proper socket file.