Surveys are beneficial for a lot of things like data collection, research and customer response.  No doubt, you’ve had to fill a couple out or create them for clients and bosses.

Surveys can be a pain in the ass, frankly.  Aside from making them look good – they have to function correctly.  Oftentimes, the data is critical in nature, so security and ease of use is a must too.

I wanted to build a quick survey to give people after our Social Media Webinar on Thursday.  I cForms in Wordpress rocks, but I don’t want to be emailed the data.  I just want to download it once it’s all done.  Hosted options like SurveyGizmo are limiting as to what the free account gives you, and all that stuff is sitting on some one else’s server!

So I ventured out to find an open source solution.

After trolling around SourceForge for hours, I finally found LimeSurvey. 

LimeSurvey is a complete survey application that lets you do the install on your servers, build a really nice looking survey, and keep the results in a database. 

One of the beautiful things about LimeSurvey is its ease of use.  After only a couple minutes you can have something up and running.  There is also some graphing and reporting options available in the admin panel.

So the next time you need a survey done, check out LimeSurvey.  All you need to do is install it on your web server, populate the fields, and you’re off and running!

Let me know what you think about the app!

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!

Server apps are awesome.  What better way to recycle on old PC than to hook it up to the network, install a couple applications, and make it work for you! 

The only thing that makes me love server side software more is when they offer community editions so you can try them, tweak ‘em and build them out.

Rendezvous is one such server-side application.  It’s an ‘Enterprise Collaboration Suite’ meant for project teams and scattered workforce members, but it’s features are something bloggers or ambitious professionals might use.

It features an:

• Email client
• Calendar
• Project Management
• Document Management
• Contact Management
• RSS/Atom Feed Reader

So rather than pay two or three services for similar functionality, install this app on your server and use it for free!

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.

1. Upload all of the files to where you want it installed (e.g. the root of your domain name).
2. Create a new MySQL database called “kissa”
3. Import kissa.sql to your kissa database using the command line or phpMyAdmin (don’t use kissa_v1.sql)
4. 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).
5. 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”;
6. Then rename htaccess.example to just .htaccess
7. Start shortening!

Let me know what you think!

 

 How To Build A Project Management App: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 How To Build A Project Management App [.wmv]: Download
 How To Build A Project Management App [.mov]: Download
 How To Build A Project Management App [.mp4 - HD]: Download

Project management software is big money.  For you to have something custom developed, it would run well into the thousands of dollars.  If you decide to go the hosted route, expect to pay about $50 a month for decent stuff.

In this how-to podcast, we’re going to show you how to build your very own project management suite.  Your clients can log in.  Your people can log in.  Everyone can keep tabs on what’s going on, upload files, send emails, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Here the podcast notes:

• We’re going to be using Collabtive
  • Install instructions:
    • Unpack the Collabtive archive in a directory of your choice.
    • Next, upload all the files to your webserver.
    • Make the following files/folders writable:   /files    /templates_c    config.php
    • Then open the installer in your browser.
    • Point your browser to http://yourdomain.com/collabtive_dir/install.php to do that.
• Commercial offerings and other services
  • Basecamp
  • GoalsOnTrack
  • GoPlan
  • ActiveCollab
  • Jira

All set!  Let me know what you think!

Not necessarily the most catchy of titles, but nonetheless.

If you’re running your own web server, you want to make sure your websites are accessible by your visitors.  That way when they show up, they don’t get a time out error or the dreaded ‘page not found’ screen.

For those who are particularly crafty, I’m sure you could write a little script that pings your sites to make sure they’re up.  Or if you feel the need to check on your sites 30 times a day, that works too.

For me, I like Are My Sites Up.  Are My Sites Up is a great little service that polls your websites every so often to make sure they’re working.  If not, it sends you a text message and an email so you can fix things!

This is particularly nice because my personal phone doesn’t get email (and it’s that way for a reason!).  But I do want to know when my sites are down!

So anyway, if you need simple website monitoring, check out AreMySitesUp.com.  They have a free account which is full featured, so no need to pay money if you only have a couple sites!

Do you know of any other services like this?  If so, leave a comment.  I’ll add them and a link to your site in this post!

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!

• How To Install Ubuntu Inside VirtualBox
• How To Set Up Your Virtual Web Server Using EHCP

Let me know your questions!

If you geek out with the thought of datacenters and thousands of servers in the room surrounding you, you’ll want to check out this article on Google’s datacenter setup.

In it, we find that Google has been using 12-volt batteries inside each and every server.  Truly a remarkable idea..  Also, Google has been using storage-container server environments like the ones Sun sells – since 2005!

Check out the article on CNET!

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

 

 How To Build An Ad Server: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download
 How To Build An Ad Server [.wmv]: Download
 How To Build An Ad Server [.mov]: Download
 How To Build An Ad Server [.mp4 - HD]: Download

Most generally, the money you make with your website is from advertisers.  The most recent trend, aside from text link ads, is 125 x 125 pixel banners.

Today, I am going to show you how to install and deploy your own private ad server using OpenX.  That means you can sell your own ad and keep 100% of the profit!  This ad server is going be capable of running any size banner ad or text link you need to serve.

nH005 – How To Build Your Own Ad Server shownotes:

• Intoduction to OpenX
• Other ad servers and ad networks I mentioned
  • Buy Sell Ads
  • Text Link Ads
  • Wordpress Ad Server Plugin
• The install process
• OpenX tutorials

Enjoy!