Don’t get me wrong – I love Freshbooks.com. But, I always have an internal argument whenever I sign up for a web app because I never really know where the data is!
That data, if you run an online business, is your absolute most valuable asset.
The other day, I found a free, online invoice system that I wanted to share with you. It’s an open source web application meant to help manage and create invoices in a simple, straightforward way.
The invoice system really is nice. As of right now, it doesn’t integrate with Paypal, so it won’t let you send one-click-and-pay invoices to your clients, but hopefully a developer will get it straightened out soon!
via siwapp – Free Online Invoice System.
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**If you’re looking for affiliate management software – check out Infusionsoft. I used them for all our in house affiliate programs and absolutely love them… Click here for a free demo**
I love open source software. Truly I do.
About a month ago, in the quest of looking for good affiliate software to run campaigns for some of my sites from, I found an interesting little app called Affiliates For All.
Here’s a bit of a sneak peak:
If you are running an e-commerce site, you almost certainly have affiliates and need affiliate management software. Affiliates for All is the new affiliate management system that everyone is talking about.
It’ll do everything you expect from affiliate management software:
- Fixed commission rates or percentages
- affiliate cookie lifetime
- lifetime commission to the affiliate or just the first order
- emails to affiliates
- reporting
I like it a lot. I have been using it and testing it for a little while now and it seems to hold up pretty well, even under some pretty serious affiliate linking stress. Definitely, check it out here: Affiliates for All
Well we’re on this conversation, what do you use for affiliate tracking? Clickbank? Or another paid affiliate manager package?
[img caption: I'm well aware that this picture has nothing to do with the post - but I liked it...]
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A week or so ago, I posted about a web app, Are My Sites Up. While that service is good, I found a better one :0)
The script: PHPwatch.
PHPwatch is a service monitor that’s able to send notifications of outages via email or text message. Here’s a bit from the site:
The purpose of this system is two-fold: it allows administrators to easily check the status of many different services running on any number of servers and also allows developers to interface with the query and notification APIs.
To view a quick demo, click here! It really is impressive stuff! And totally open source :0) Let me know what you guys think!
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URL shorteners are awesome. The less characters, the better! But what happens when that server goes down or some network issue prevents people from getting to your links?
Nothing. Blank pages.
Better yet, why would you want to brand someone elses domain name? Think about all the traffic and notoriety you’re giving tinyurl and is.gd? Can you use that same traffic to your advantage?
I have a solution. Build your own! In fact, check out mine at j.dro.hn! The software I used was Kissabe, an open source script hosted at Google Code.
The install is really pretty simple.
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Upload all of the files to where you want it installed (e.g. the root of your domain name).
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Create a new MySQL database called “kissa”
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Import kissa.sql to your kissa database using the command line or phpMyAdmin (don’t use kissa_v1.sql)
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Edit config.php and change the MySQL string with your database username and password. Make sure the path
to your database is correct (if it’s not localhost).
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Then edit create.php at line 30 or where is says
$short_url = “http://kissa.be/$code”;
to read
$short_url = “http://yourdomian.com/$code”;
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Then rename htaccess.example to just .htaccess
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Start shortening!
Let me know what you think!
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Building your own web server is cool – but oftentimes it requires you spend weeks checking out tutorials and how-tos. What ends up happening is you find something that looks like it’ll work, get half way through it, and then see it isn’t what you need!
This tutorial is going to show you how to set up a complete server inside VirtualBox, Sun’s virtualization software. You can do it on Windows or on your Linux machine without having to wipe out your existing operating system or have to dual boot.
It’s going to consist of two videos – one demonstrating how to set up Ubuntu on top of VirtualBox and the other running Putty and EHCP. EHCP is responsible for setting up PHP5, Apache, Webmail, Email and all the other libraries you’ll need to run a fully functional web server.
Here’s what you’ll need. The videos are below this little list!
- Download and burn a copy of Ubuntu Server
- Download and install VirtualBox
- Set up VirtualBox for running Ubuntu
- Install Ubuntu by booting up your virtual machine instance
- Install Putty on your Windows machine
- Login to your server using Putty
- Run the EHCP install
- Navigate to http://your.ip.address/ set everything up like a normal web hosting control panel!
- Start adding sites through ftp and phpmyadmin!
And here are the videos that show you how!
Let me know your questions!
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Servers are sexy. They let you do all kinds of crazy things that most ‘normal’ rigs can’t. That includes data mining and serving web apps and being an email dump for all your random gmail accounts.
But what happens if something goes wrong? Where is all your data? Will it rise out of the ashes of smoked metal and plastic? Don’t count on it.
Over the last month, we’ve been talking about servers and how we can make them do some cool things. We plan on keeping it that way. But I would be remiss if I didn’t also show you how to protect your data as well.
I just found a top notch guide on HowToForge.com which walks you though mirroring your web server to another machine with rsync.
Here at the office, we have a web server and a file server, both RAID’d – but as an extra layer of protection all the web server files are getting stored on the file server as well.
The install is pretty quick and painless. All you need is SSH or terminal access to both machines.
In fact, if you have SSH access on your GoDaddy or Mediatemple server, I think this setup will work for you there too!
Have a look and let me know what you think!
[Link to how-to guide: HowToForge.com]
JD
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YourFonts is a free font generator using your own handwriting for the letters and numbers! All you do is print out the template, complete it, scan and upload it!
Here are some of the features:
- Your own handwriting turned into your very own font for free
- Optionally include your signature and digitally sign your contracts
- You’ll have your very own font within 15 minutes
- Make as many fonts as you like
- Use your fonts on Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
- Personalize your digital scrapbook pages and invitations
- Make your own “family handwriting history”
- Use your fonts in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint and every program that you own
Try it out and see for yourself!
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For this last christmas, I got a Popcorn Hour to stream movies and podcasts from my media server. I love it, I really do. In fact, I have been thinking about dropping cable because most of the time I am watching Internet programming on Hulu or podcasts.
Recently, I started playing with Boxee. Boxee is a grown up version of the Xbox Media Center app that you can install on Windows or an old Xbox console. It’s a simple application that aggregates endless Internet video content so that you can watch it on your computer.
Right now, you can only install it on Apple or Ubuntu – both of which are extremely easy. You don’t need to unzip and compile – just edit the sources list, update and apt-get. They’re getting a Windows version ready for distribution as well!
For more information or to sign up, check out boxee.tv. If you’ve used it, let us know your favorite programming!
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I spend most of the day sitting behind a computer. Even though gas prices are down, who knows when they will go back up… I used to use GoToMeeting software – which was really nice. It’s just that $50 a month gets a little expensive when you go through a couple months in a row that you don’t use it much.
A good friend of mine, John, pointed me to Dimdim. Dimdim is entirely web based. You manage your web conferences inside their admin panel with nothing to download. You can host meetings, join meetings or schedule events.
For the true technophile, they have a compiled version of the web conference hosting software that lets you keep all the stuff on your own server. That’s nice for someone like me how tries to keep as much data in-house as possible.
I’ll probably mess around with the Dimdim open source edition this weekend – but until then have fun with the free conferencing!
Over the holidays, I decided I needed a break. After starting various businesses and websites, I hadn’t had a ‘vacation’ in probably three years. Some people get excited about going to Disney World or the Swiss Alps – but I was just excited that I could turn my Blackberry off for more than a weekend…
On Christmas Eve, I found an interesting service called AwayFind. It’s basically a contact page that lets people get in touch if they really need you… It’ll do SMS, email and the like – but it is totally unintrusive.
After close to a month of using the service, I have to admit I feel much better about how and when people get ahold of me. I don’t feel like I’m tied to a ‘connected’ device and I don’t feel panicked by having an inbox of emails.
But more to the point, I can walk away from my desk and still feel in control of what’s going on. Check it out and let me know what you think!
