Free Nuts

Make A Book Of Your Tweets With Twournal

Young — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 13:03:16 +0000

To make a PDF book of your tweets, you could check out Tweetbook, but which "is undergoing maintenance" now.

Instead, you can check out a new similar website — Twournal, which is also free for you to make a PDF eBook of your tweets.

After login with your Twitter account, you can just click on the red "Finish" button, then Twournal will generate all your latest 3,200 tweets into a book as default.

Besides, you can also customize the book first, such as that you can remove the tweets with "@","RT","#", etc., you can include others' tweets that mention you, you can use your Twitter profile background picture or import a new image as the cover, you can include pictures from Twitpic, Plixi, Yfrog and/or some other sites, and you can even sell your book and get commissions.

When your book is generated, you have to post a tweet, and you can see a page like the following:

On that page, you can preview your book with one tweet, buy a printed book, ask for a free PDF eBook (such as this), and you can also make your book public or private, for the public book (such as this), people can preview it with the first 12 pages and buy it, which will bring you commissions.

By the way, only the owner of the book can download the book as a PDF file, but which you can share with your friends later.

For me, a free PDF eBook is enough to back up my tweets, since a printed book is too expensive. How about you? Will you buy a printed book of your own tweets? Share with us by leaving a comment.

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Watch Shit People Say Online

Young — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 04:07:03 +0000

Nowadays, people like to say shit, which doesn’t mean real shit, but just whatever they have said.

As the name, Has Anyone Said This Shit is a website for you to search and watch the shit people have said on YouTube.

On the homepage, you can see nearly nothing else but the following sentence:

Shit people say …

Replace "people" with any keyword, you will see some suggestions, which are all the shit videos that matched your query. And for every result video, you can watch it with a big screen on the website.

There are over 678 videos on the website, and you can also suggest more by submitting their titles and URLs, no registration is required.

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How To Move WordPress To A VPS Or Dedicated Server

Young — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 14:24:37 +0000

While shared hosting is easy for you to run WordPress with cPanel, it may be a bottleneck when your blog is becoming bigger with much traffic, in that case, you can try to use a VPS or a dedicated server.

The following will show you how to move WordPress to a VPS or dedicated server with Ubuntu OS quickly, safely and seamlessly with 8 easy steps:

1. Login to your remote server

First of all, login to your remote server with the following command:

ssh root@184.173.223.114

Remember to replace "184.173.223.114" with your server’s public IP address. For more details, you can check out this tutorial.

2. Update the OS

After connection, enter the following command:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Then you can update your Ubuntu system. For more details, you can check out this how to tutorial.

3. Install LAMP

To run a WordPress website, you can use LNMP (Linux-Nginx-MySQL-PHP) as mentioned before, but LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP) will be easier to install in Ubuntu, and what you need to do was just to enter the following one command line:

apt-get install lamp-server^

Enter and remember your MySQL database password for the user "root", then you are done. For more details, you can check out this post.

4. Install phpMyAdmin

phpMyAdmin is not a must-have software, but it is every good to manage your database, and you just need to enter the following command line to install it:

apt-get install phpmyadmin

Remember to use the password you set for the MySQL user "root" to finish the installation. After that, open the "apache2.conf" file with the following command:

vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

And add the following line of code in the end:

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Then, restart the apache with the following command line:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Everything will be right if that you can see the phpMyAdmin landing page by visiting http://yourdomain/phpmyadmin on your browser. For more details, you can check out this post.

5. Import WordPress database

Login to your phpMyAdmin control panel, and create a new database with same name, user and password as those of your current WordPress blog database, which you need to import to the new database.

If your database is too large to be imported with phpMyAdmin, you can upload it via SSH according to this tutorial.

6. Upload blog files

Download all your blog files as a gzip file (such as "jingpin.tar.gz") and upload it to a directory (such as "/var/www") of your server with the following one command line:

scp /xxx/jingpin.tar.gz root@184.173.223.114:/var/www

Remember to replace "/xxx/jingpin.tar.gz" with the path of your gzip file, to replace "184.173.223.114" with your server IP, and to replace "/var/www" with the folder you want to upload the gzip file to, press the Enter key and enter the root password, then your gzip file will be uploaded.

After that, uncompress your gzip file with the following one command line:

tar -xzf jingpin.tar.gz

Then enter the following command line to change the ownership of the uncompressed file:

chown -R www-data jingpin

This code will be available for you to install and remove files to your server from the WordPress dashboard.

Tips: You can just drap the blog gzip file into the command line after "scp".

7. Enable the new WordPress site

Like Nginx, the virtual server configuration file is located in the "sites-available" folder, which you can reach with the following command line:

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available

And create a configure file for your WordPress with the following line of code:

cp default jingpindotorg

You can replace "jingpindotorg" with your site’s name or anything you like, after that open the file with the following command:

vi jingpindotorg

And add your WordPress domain (with and without "www") under the "ServerAdmin" line:

ServerName jingpin.org ServerAlias www.jingpin.org

Then, replace each of the two "var/www" with "var/www/jingpin", and change the second "AllowOverride None" to "AllowOverride All", as what you can see from the image at the beginning of this step.

After that, you can enable your WordPress blog with the following command:

a2ensite jingpindotorg

And enter the following command line to enable the "AllowOverride" feature:

a2enmod rewrite

Then, restart the apache with the following command:

/etc/init.d/apache2 reload

8. Bind your domain

Login to your domain registrar site, and change your WordPress blog domain's nameservers from your shared hosting's to your new server's, then you can bind your domain to your new server with the following two ways:

8.1. Via domain name system

For a dedicated server, you may bind your domain to it with its domain name system.

8.2. Via Hosts file

Whether for a VPS or a dedicated server, you can bind your domain by adding it into the server's hosts file. To do so, just enter the following command:

vi /etc/hosts

And add your domain behind the "localhost" as what you can see from the above screenshot.

By the way, you can bind your domain with the above two ways together, which won’t hurt indeed. And after that, you’d better not change anything of your shared hosting or blog until the domain has been forwarded to your VPS or dedicated server successfully.

Troubleshooting

During the moving process, I’ve met the following two problems:

1. Apache restart error

For the following error:

Could not reliably determine the server’s fully qualified domain name, using 127.0.1.1 for ServerName

You can fix it by entering the following command line:

/etc/apache2/httpd.conf

And add the following line into it:

ServerName localhost

After that, restart the Apache, then the error will be resolved.

2. Host name error

If you failed to install something into your remote server via SSH, you need to make sure that the host name in the "hosts" file is same as that in the "hostname" file.

Bonus:

If you are using database backup plugins for your WordPress blog, you will need to install Sendmail to send the backup to your email box. To do so, just login to your remote server and enter the following command line:

apt-get install sendmail

Press the Enter key and then you are done when the installation is finished.

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How To Import Database Via SSH

Young — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 00:48:01 +0000

phpMyAdmin is easy for you to import a MySQL database, but which will not work if your database is too large.

As what you can see from the following captured screen, the max file size that phpMyAdmin can import is only 2,048K:

Which means that if your database is larger than 2,048K, you can’t import it through the phpMyAdmin dashboard, instead, you can import it via SSH.

The following will show you how to import a database from a shared web hosting service to a VPS or a dedicated server via SSH using the Terminal application of a Mac computer:

1. Create a same database

You need to create a database with the same database name, username (with same PRIVILEGES) and password as those of the database you want to import, which you can done via the phpMyAdmin or Terminal (for Mac) or Putty (for Windows) app according to WordPress.

2. Export your database

3. Upload the gzip file

Open your Terminal (for Mac) or Putty (for Windows) app, and upload the gzip file to your remote server with the following one command line:

scp /xxx/jingpin.sql.gz root@184.173.223.114:/var/www

Remember to replace "/xxx/jingpin.sql.gz" with your gzip file's path, to replace "184.173.223.114" with your server’s public IP address, and to replace "/var/www" with the folder you want to upload the gzip file to. After that, enter the root password, then you can upload your gzip file.

By the way, if you don’t know the path of your gz file, you can just drag and drop it behind the "scp" command.

4. Uncompress the gzip file

Login to your remote server, and get into the folder (such as /var/www) where your gzip file is hold, then enter the following command line:

gzip -d jingpin.sql.gz

Press the Enter key, you can uncompress the gz file to “jingpin.sql” file.

5. Import your database

After that, enter the following command line:

mysql -p -u root jingpin < jingpin.sql

Enter the MySQL root user password, then you can import your database to your new remote server.

By the way, you can also replace "root" with the username you set for your new database in the first step.

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How To Install phpMyAdmin On LAMP

Young — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 00:59:48 +0000

phpMyAdmin is easy for you to add, optimize and export databases, but it is not included in the LAMP package as default.

To install the latest version of phpMyAdmin, you can check out this VPS tutorial for reference, but which will be a little difficult, instead, you can install the default version on LAMP in the Ubuntu OS packages with the following one command line:

apt-get install phpmyadmin

Press the Enter key, then you will see something like the following window:

In the end of the window, you will see such a question:

Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Enter "y" and press the Enter Key, then you will see such a window:

As default, Apache will run phpMyAdmin, so you don’t need to do anything else but just press the Enter key, then you will come to the following window:

Just press the Enter key, then you will see the following window:

Remember to enter the password you set for the MySQL user "root" in the above window, press the Enter key, you will see another window:

In the above window, you can enter ANY password for the user "phpmyadmin", press the Enter key and enter the password again in the next coming window, then your phpMyAdmin will be installed successfully.

After that, open the "apache2.conf" file with the following command:

vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

And add the following line of code in the end:

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Just as what you can see from the following screenshot:

Then, restart the apache with the following command line:

/etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Visiting http://yourdomain/phpmyadmin on your browser, if you can see such a landing page:

Then your phpMyAdmin is ready for use, and you can log in with the MySQL user "root" and its password.

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How To Install LAMP On Ubuntu

Young — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 02:40:25 +0000

To run a WordPress website, you can use LNMP (Linux-Nginx-MySQL-PHP) as mentioned before, but which will be a little difficult.

Instead, you can check out LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP), which will be easier to install on Ubuntu, and what you need to do is just to enter the following one command line:

apt-get install lamp-server^

Just as what you can see from the following screenshot:

Press the Enter key and you will see such a question:

Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Enter "y", press the Enter key, and you will see such a window:

Enter a password for the MySQL administrative "root" user, and enter the password again in the next pop-up window, and press the Enter key, then the LAMP package will be installed on your Ubuntu.

Bonus:

LAMP are so popular that some remote server providers (such as SoftLayer.com) may even preinstall them on their Ubuntu OS as default, in that case, you can either to change the MySQL password only or to uninstall the whole LAMP package.

1. How to change the MySQL password?

Generally, the default password for the MySQL user "root" will be empty, and you can reset it with the following one command line (via Ubuntu):

dpkg-reconfigure mysql-server-5.1

Press the Enter key, then you can enter a new password.

2. How to uninstall LAMP?

To uninstall LAMP, you can just enter the following command line:

dpkg -l *apache* *mysql* | grep ^ii | awk '{ print $2}' | xargs sudo apt-get -y purge --auto-remove

The above command line is from Tux Tweaks, but without the "phpmyadmin" element, since which is not included in the LAMP package indeed.

By the way, DO NOT use the following command:

apt-get purge lamp-server^

Since the above command will remove "openssh-server", which will make you can’t login to your remote server via SSH any more.

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How To Update Ubuntu Packages

Young — Tue, 31 Jan 2012 02:06:10 +0000

When buying a VPS or a dedicated server, you need to choose which OS (operating system, such as CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.) to be used.

Among those OS, Ubuntu is my favorite for it is easy to use, whether to set up a VPN, to install WordPress, or to create a proxy.

There are different versions (such as 8.04, 10.04, 11.04, etc.) with 32 bit or 64 bit of Ubuntu, and basically, the higher version with 64 bit is better, but whichever version you choose, I think it will be good enough to run a WordPress blog.

When the Ubuntu OS is installed on your remote server, it is better for you to update its packages (such as Apache, MySQL, PHP, etc.) and make sure that it is up to date. By the way, you can’t update the OS from an old version (such as 8.04) to a newer version (such as 11.04) unless reloading your server OS.

The following will show you how to update Ubuntu packages via SSH using the Terminal application of a Mac computer:

First of all, open your Terminal app and login to your remote server, then enter the following command:

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

Just as what you can see from the following screenshot:

And press the Enter key, you will see such a question:

Do you want to continue [Y/n]?

Enter "y" and press the Enter key, then that's all and you can update your Ubuntu system successfully.

In fact, the above command line is combined with the following two:

1. apt-get update

This command line will update all the packages that have been updated).

2. apt-get upgrade

This command line will upgrade the versions of the updated packages.

So you can also enter the above two command lines one by one to finish the update. For more details, you can refer to the Ubuntu official documentation.

By the way, you can update your Ubuntu packages any time, but for a secure concerned, you’d better run this at the beginning, or you’d better back up before update.

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How To Login To A Remote Server

Young — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 03:11:54 +0000

Whether to set up a VPN, to install WordPress, or to create a proxy on a remote server (VPS or dedicated), the first thing we need to do is to login to the server via SSH.

The following will show you how to login to a remote server via SSH using the Terminal application of a Mac computer.

1. Open your terminal

Get into the "Applications" directory, open the "Utilities" folder, and double-click on the "Terminal" icon, then you will see a Terminal window opened.

2. Login to your remote server

To login to your remote server, you just need to enter the following one command line in the Terminal window:

ssh root@184.173.223.114

Remember to replace "184.173.223.114" with your server’s public IP address.

After that, press the Enter key, and you will see such a question:

Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no)?

(This question will be only asked once unless you reload the OS of your remote server later.)

Enter "yes", press the Enter key, enter your root password and press the Enter key, then you can login to your remote server.

Troubleshooting:

If you’ve reloaded (or rebuilt) the OS of your remote serve, you may meet the following error:

Host key verification failed.

In that case, enter the following command line:

ssh-keygen -R 184.173.223.114

Remember to replace "184.173.223.114" with your server IP address. After that, you can login to the server with the SSH command mentioned before.

Bonus:

If you want to login to more than one remote server at the same time, or to manage one remote server with different commands, such as to upload a file while to install a software, you can open another Terminal window.

To do so, you can just right-click on the Terminal icon in the Dock bar and click on "Basic" in the "New Window" menu.

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Tweets Will Always Flow

Young — Sat, 28 Jan 2012 11:28:49 +0000

Twitter is challenging to the freedom of expression during its expanding into different countries.

In 2011, it said "The Tweets Must Flow" when being asked to release some user information to the US government; in 2012, it said "Tweets still must flow" when trying to withheld tweets in some other countries; in 2013, I guess it would say "Tweets Will Always Flow" when entering China.

The following will show you how the tweets will look like during the challenges:

1. Tweets must flow

When a tweet is removed for a "legal reason"(such as DMCA), it won’t be exist on the Twitter website any more, and you can’t read it wherever you are.

For those tweets removed because of DMCA, you can see the reasonable requests on the Chilling Effects website.

2. Tweets still must flow

When a tweet is withheld for a country reason (such as religion), it won’t be seen in that country only, but not the rest of the world.

I have no dear how Twitter will do that technically, but people in that country I think can also see the withheld tweet by visiting its webpage with VPN or Proxy, which will hide their real IP addresses so that Twitter can’t tell where they are from.

And for the tweets withheld for a country request, you can also see the reasons on the Chilling Effects website as said by Twitter.

3. Tweets will always flow

In case that Twitter did enter China, it would find out that it was impossible to remove or withhold any tweets in a transparent and technical way as what they can do now, since there wouldn’t be any written reasons, but just some phone calls. So there won’t be anything to be seen on Chilling Effects, but an obscure reason on the Twitter error page.

As a result, Twitter would have to hire many employees to manually remove the "sensitive" tweets just as what Sina, Sohu, Tencent and all the other Chinese microblogging websites are doing. Otherwise, it would have to leave China as what Google has already done.

As you can see from the above, Twitter is just following Google to deal with the freedom of expression, so the tweets will always flow, as long as no one to "Occupy Twitter".

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Top 50 Social Media Influencers

Young — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 14:11:19 +0000

The Forbes website just listed the top 50 powerful social media influencers.

Although it was not 100% correct and there should be someone else that are more powerful, the list is a good reference for you to check out who are influencing the social media fields (such as Twitter, Facebook, Google+, etc.) a lot and to learn what they are saying.

The list was something like the following:

#1. Chris Brogan @chrisbrogan – Chris, President of Human Works, has a social pull of 3,019
#2. Ann Handley @marketingprofs. Ann manages the contributory blog at marketingprofs and has a social pull of 2,962
#3. Guy Kawasaki @guykawasaki, former Apple evangelist, with a social pull, 2,651
…

The "social pull" is powered by PeekYou as mentioned. There is a Twitter account with link for every influencers, so that you can follow them and/or add them to your Twitter list.

But the list was not strict enough, since there were links to the websites or blogs for some people (such as Chris Brogan), but not for the others (such as Mark Schaefer), though who did also have websites or blogs.

By the way, I did try to add all those 50 people to a new Twitter lists, but which was failed to be created with the following error:

Your account may not be allowed to perform this action. Please refresh the page and try again.

This is a well-known error discussed on Twitter indeed.

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