LeBokov21.com

Gathering Requirements for Website Development

LeBokov — Sun, 13 Jul 2008 07:34:07 +0000

Before you actually start building a website for your client using Joomla, you first need to understand the requirements and have a general idea of how to meet those requirements. So you will need to sit down with your client and ask him a number of questions to help you gain a better understanding of the website. The following is a list of questions you should ask.

What is the purpose of the website? Is it for selling products? Is it for selling products and services? Or, is it for conveying information?
What are the big sections on the website? (e.g. Home, Products, News, Contact, FAQ)
Does it support multiple languages?
Does it have restricted areas where only registered users can view the restricted content?
Will it send out newsletters to subscribed users?
Is there a theme color representing the company?
Are contents updated frequently or are they pretty much static?
Will there be any video streaming contents?

This is just a very short list of the questions you can ask but they are some good questions to get started. Some questions will lead to more questions, depending on the responses. For example, if the purpose of the website is to sell products online, then you will need to ask about the payment and shipping methods, return policy, customer information, and so on. Remember, the more information you can gather and the more specific the information is, the easier for you to build the website. The gathered information will determine how to configure Joomla, what plug-ins you need to use, what kind of template to choose, and so on. So it is important for you to spend the time with your client to discuss all the requirements of the website.

Research Domain Names

At this stage, you should also ask your client what domain name they want to use. Most likely it is somewhat similar to the company name. You should provide a few choices for your client to choose from. However, before providing the list to your client, you should first research on the availability of each domain name. If a domain is already taken, then don’t include it on the list. To check the availability, you can search for the WHOIS record of a domain using some online WHOIS lookup tools such as the following:

http://www.internic.net/whois.html

http://whois.domaintools.com

You can simply enter a domain name in one of these sites to search for its WHOIS record. If the WHOIS record exist for a specific domain, then it means the domain is already taken and it will tell you who the registrant and registrar are. If the WHOIS record doesn’t exist, then it means the domain is available.

Connecting Wireless Router to Telus ADSL Gateway Modem

LeBokov — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 19:48:01 +0000

A friend of mine got me a D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N Router. I wanted to hook it up on my home network and use it to replace the current wireless gateway that is built-in to the Telus ADSL modem. To do that, you need to disable UPnP and DHCP functions on the D-Link router and change its Router IP Address to have the same network ID as your existing network. So make sure you have connected your computer to your new router using a network cable. Then follow the steps below.

Disabling UPnP

Login to D-Link DIR-655 router.
Click on “Advanced” on the top menu
Click on “Advanced Network” on the left menu
Uncheck the “Enable UPnP” option
Click “Save Settings” and let your router reboot.

If you just got your new router and have not configured it before, then I recommend you to configure its wireless settings at this stage. You can do this by clicking on “Setup” at the top, then click on “Wireless Settings” on the left. Then you can choose to use either the wizard or the manual method. You should also change the Admin password as well.

Disabling DHCP and Changing Router IP Address

Before going any further, you should login to your Telus Gateway Modem and configure its network settings so that it will play well with your new router.

Connect your computer to your Telus gateway with a cable
Go to your Telus gateway IP address in a browser (e.g. 192.168.1.254)
Click on “Home Network” at the top
Click on “Advanced Settings”
Enter your password to login
Under Private Network, choose “configure manually”
Enter 192.168.1.254 for the “Router Address” and 255.255.255.0 for the “Subnet Mask”
Check the option “Enable DHCP” and enter 192.168.1.111 and 192.168.1.120 for the First and Last DHCP address (10 dynamic IPs to use).
Click “Save”

Then reconnect your computer to the D-Link Router and login to it.

Click on “Network Settings” on the left
Uncheck the “Enable DHCP Server” option
Change the “Router IP Address” to 192.168.1.1
Enter 255.255.255.0 for the subnet mask
Click “Save Settings”

At this point, you will probably not able to login to your D-Link router because your computer is not getting an IP address from it since DHCP is disabled. All you need to do now is to connect your D-Link router to your Telus gateway modem using a network cable. Make sure you are plugging the cable into one of the LAN ports on both sides, not the WAN or Internet ports. For wired connections, you can connect your computers to either of them using a cable. For wireless, you can have two wireless network running at the same time, one on each router. However, I strongly recommend you to disable the wireless function on your Telus gateway so that there is less radio frequency interference in your area.

Website Business - Getting Started with Hosting

LeBokov — Thu, 22 May 2008 07:52:20 +0000

One important requirement for starting a web development business is to have a hosting server to store the websites online. For starting up, the easiest way is to sign up a hosting account at a web hosting company that will allow you to host more than one domain. This way, the websites will share the same resources and you can minimize your start-up cost. Most often, a website doesn’t use a lot of resources like storage space and bandwidth so it is fine to put multiple websites on the same hosting account. However, if a website generates a lot of traffic, or it has a lot of large files such as videos, then you may want to consider putting it on a separate account so that it won’t affect the other websites.

Make Money from Hosting

A web hosting account is usually less than $100 USD per year. You can charge your clients $5 - $10 per month. So you only need to find one or two clients and you will be able to cover up the hosting expense. For the rest of the clients, you have the choice of either charging them or giving them first year free hosting if you want to build-up a better relationship with them. Also, you don’t have to sign up a hosting account until you have found your first client so you don’t really need to pay for the hosting at your expense.

Which Hosting Service?

So where can you sign up a hosting account? I have been using Bluehost’s service for a couple years and I think their package is a very good deal. If you sign up 2 years with them, the rate is only $6.95 USD per month. They let you host maximum 999 domains, 307200 MB of storage space, 307200 MB of monthly traffic, create 2500 email accounts, and much more. This is more than enough for hosting small scale websites which is our target. Also, I am 100% sure that you can install Joomla on Bluehost without any problems. For more information about Bluehost, please go here.

Cannot Install Windows XP on New HP Laptops

LeBokov — Mon, 19 May 2008 08:39:20 +0000

My client is trying to downgrade his new HP laptop from Windows Vista Home Premium to Windows XP Pro. However, after he boots up the laptop with a Windows XP Pro installation disc, the installation process couldn’t proceed because it could not find a hard drive. The problem is that the laptop is using a SATA hard drive and Windows XP was not designed to support SATA by default. Normally on a desktop computer, you will need to press F6 at startup to tell the installation wizard that you can provide additional drivers from a floppy disk. Because this is a laptop, it doesn’t have a floppy drive so it is hard to get the drivers in.

SATA Native Support

Fortunately, for some laptops, there is an option in the BIOS to disable SATA Native Support. After disabling this option, in return for lower hard drive performance, Windows XP should be able to recognize the hard drive in the system and you can proceed with the installation as usual. No additional drivers should be required with this method. In the BIOS from the HP laptop that I am troubleshooting for my client, it even gives you a tip about disabling the SATA Native Support option when using an older operating system. (i.e. Windows XP is old!)

D-Link Router Blocking MSN Messenger

LeBokov — Sat, 17 May 2008 17:03:14 +0000

Recently, two of my friends just bought a new D-Link router to replace their old one. After installing the new routers, both of them were experiencing problems with their MSN Messenger. They were not able to sign in and send messages. After testing different configurations in the router, it was determined that the problem was related to UPnP. If UPnP is turned off in the router, then MSN Messenger is working fine. If UPnP is turned on, then the problem comes back again.

Searching on D-Link’s website, you would be able to find in its FAQ regarding the use of MSN Messenger with D-Link router and UPnP. They have documented a step-by-step tutorial on how to setup Windows XP properly to work with UPnP. You can find the tutorial here.

What is UPnP?

So what is UPnP? UPnP stands for Universal Plug and Play. In short, UPnP is a technology to simplify the networking of devices on a home and business network. Some network applications doesn’t work well with Network Address Translation (NAT) behind a router to share a public IP address with other applications on the network. UPnP comes in here to automatically configures the settings so that the network application can function properly behind the router. MSN Messenger is one of those applications that doesn’t work well with NAT by default. Because UPnP is not configured in Windows XP, therefore when you plug in a UPnP enabled router to your network, MSN Messenger may encounter problems like not able to sign in and not able to send messages.

So if you are having problem with your MSN Messenger behind a router, then you may want to check the UPnP settings in Windows as well as in your router.