Slow Mind Keeps Right

Install Apache, MySQL, PHP, phpMyAdmin, and Tomcat on Windows

2007-04-17T11:55:00.000-07:00

LAMP is a widely used web server infrastructure. For some reasons, I need to install latest Apache, MySQL, PHP on Windows, and integrate Tomcat with Apache. (There are reasons for integrating and not integrating them together; interested readers can read this.)

Here are some quick tips of how I made it:

Install Apache, MySQL, PHP, PHPMyAdmin

Download
· Apache 2.2.4: http://mirror.olnevhost.net/pub/apache/httpd/binaries/win32/apache_2.2.4-win32-x86-no_ssl.msi
· MySQL 5.0.37: http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.0/mysql-5.0.37-win32.zip/from/http:/mysql.he.net/
· PHP 5.2.1: http://www.php.net/get/php-5.2.1-win32-installer.msi/from/a/mirror
· PHPMyAdmin 2.10.0.2: http://superb-west.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/phpmyadmin/phpMyAdmin-2.10.0.2-all-languages.tar.gz

Install Apache
1. Refer to instructions on http://www.webmasterstop.com/48-1.html
2. Change the installation directory to C:\Apache
3. Test the installation by typing http://localhost/ in the URL field of your web browser, you should see “It works!” on the page.

Install MySQL
1. Refer to instructions on http://www.webmasterstop.com/48-2.html
2. Change the installation directory to C:\MySQL

Install PHP
1. Refer to instructions on http://www.webmasterstop.com/48-3.html
2. Change the installation directory to C:\PHP
3. Choose “Apache 2.2.x Module” on Web Server Setup page
4. Fill in Apache Configuration Directory with “C:\Apache\conf\”
5. Select APC, GD2, Multi-Byte String, and MySQL under Extensions on Choose Items to Install page
6. Modify Apache’s configuration file C:\Apache\conf\httpd.conf, search for <IfModule dir_module>, add index.php to DirectoryIndex item
7. Create phpinfo.php in C:\Apache\htdocs with only one line code: <?php phpinfo(); ?>, restart Apache server, type http://localhost/phpinfo.php in your web browser, you should see a php configuration page

Install PHPMyAdmin
1. Refer to instructions on http://www.webmasterstop.com/48-4.html
2. Extract the directory to C:\Apache\htdocs, rename it to phpMyAdmin
3. In C:\Apache\htdocs\phpMyAdmin, copy config.sample.inc.php to config.inc.php
4. Copy libmysql.dll (in C:\PHP) and php_mysql.dll (in C:\PHP\ext) to C:\Apache\bin
5. Type http://localhost/phpMyAdmin in your browser, you should be able to login and browse the database

Install Java and Tomcat, Integrate Tomcat with Apache

Download
· JRE & JDK 6u1: http://java.sun.com/javase/downloads/index.jsp
· Tomcat 6.0.10: http://www.reverse.net/pub/apache/tomcat/tomcat-6/v6.0.10/bin/apache-tomcat-6.0.10.exe
· JK-apache-2.2.4: http://www.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-connectors/jk/binaries/win32/jk-1.2.22/mod_jk-apache-2.2.4.so

Install Java
1. Run the installation file
2. Change the installation directory to C:\Java\jdk and C:\Java\jre
3. Set JAVA_HOME to C:\Java\jre, add C:\Java\jre\bin to PATH

Install Tomcat
1. Run the installation file
2. Change the installation directory to C:\Tomcat
3. Start the service, enter http://localhost:8080/ in your browser, you should see Tomcat page

Integrate Tomcat with Apache
1. Copy mod_jk-apache-2.2.4.so to C:\Apache\modules
2. Create file workers.properties in C:\Tomcat\conf, like

workers.tomcat_home=C:\Tomcat
workers.java_home=C:\Java\jre
ps=\
worker.list=ajp13
worker.ajp13.port=8009
worker.ajp13.host=localhost
worker.ajp13.type=ajp13
worker.ajp13.lbfactor=1

3. Configure Apache, add index.jsp to DirectoryIndex, add the following lines to httpd.conf

LoadModule jk_module modules/mod_jk-apache-2.2.4.so
<IfModule jk_module>
JkWorkersFile "C:\\Tomcat\\conf\\workers.properties"
JkLogFile "C:\\Tomcat\\logs\\mod_jk2.log"
JkLogLevel info
JkMount /servlet/* ajp13
JkMount /*.jsp ajp13
JkMount /*.do ajp13
</IfModule>

4. Open C:\Tomcat\conf\server.xml, insert the following line between <host> and </host>
<context crosscontext="true" reloadable="true" debug="0" docbase="C:\Apache\htdocs" path="">
5. Restart Apache and Tomcat
6. Access http://localhost/ and http://localhost:8080/, you should see the same page
7. Create test.php (just one line: <?php echo “Welcome to PHP World!”; ?>) and test.jsp (one line also: <% out.println(“Welcome to JSP World!”); %>) in C:\Apache\htdocs, access http://localhost/test.php and http://localhost/test.jsp, you should see different welcome messages.

A Simple Model to Estimate Daily Visits of A Web Site

2007-02-22T13:25:00.000-08:00

yeeyan.com, a translation 2.0 web site, was launched (actually, re-launched because we had a same-url-blog-site before) around the middle of December, 2006. A month later, on January 21st, 2007, I developed the following model to help our team to foresee the growth of daily visits of our web site.

List of Symbols:

V(t): number of daily visitors at time t
V_new(t): number of daily new visitors at time t
V_old(t): population size of old (sustained) visitors at time t
p: the probability that an old visitor visits the site in a day
r_new: drop rate of new visitors
r_old: drop rate of old visitors

Note that a new visitor is defined as a visitor who hasn't visited the web site for a certain period, for example, a month.

The model consists of two equations:

(1) V(t) = V_new(t) + p * V_old(t)

(2) V_old(t) = (1-r_old)*V_old(t-1) + (1-r_new)*V_new(t-1)

In stable status:

V_new(1-r_new) = V_old*r_old => V_old = V_new*(1-r_new)/V_old
Thus, V = [1+p*(1-r_new)/r_old]*V_new

Static Analysis:

V is proportional to V_new, which represents how effectively the web site is promoted to potential users.

V is also somewhat proportional to p, which is a reflection of how often the content of the web site is updated.

V is inverse proportional to r_old, which reflects how "sticky" the web site is (the smaller r_old, the stickier the web site). r_old is often seen as the most critical factor. Some people believe this should be the only factor of concern. Theoretically, if r_old was zero, V would be infinite.

Dynamic Analysis:

p has nothing to do with dynamic characteristic. It doesn't appear in the recursive equation (2); any change in p directly goes to V and there is no transit time.

r_old, again, is the major factor that affects the system dynamics. If you know something about control theory and Z-transform, you will learn that (1-r_old) is the only root of the system. When r_old gets closer to zero, the root gets closer to 1 and it takes longer time for the system to reach its stable status.

Discussion:

(1) All parameters can be obtained by using Google Analytics;

(2) Though all parameters are time varying, within a certain period, they change slowly and thus can be seen as constants;

(3) The estimation / forecast is valid only for short term or intermediate term. I tracked the records of daily visits of our web site, and they are very close to my estimation by now.

Internet, Translation, and Copyright

2007-01-28T20:38:00.000-08:00

yeeyan.com is a web site dedicated to translating articles, web pages, and electronic books on the Internet from languages other than Chinese (mainly English) into Chinese. It went online in the end of July 2006, when two of my friends (Thunder and Dingding) and I started translating online essays written in English. At the beginning, the site was a blog, built using Wordpress. After Thunder and I translated Chris' classical essay "The Long Tail", we gradually attracted some loyal Chinese readers; some were willing to join us. We felt that a blog site wasn't enough.

In three months we built up a new site from a scratch. The visual style of the new site is pretty like - an SNS where users exchange opinions of books, music, and movies. Yes, our new site is indeed an SNS: anyone who volunteers to contribute his/her time, language skills and domain knowledge, can join us; readers can comment; we have ranking system and recommendation system; we have groups and discussion boards, and even internal mail system which we call YMail. Our slogan is: Together, we smash the language barriers and explore the entire Web world.

Today we are on our way toward the goal: within 40 days, about 40 translators posted more than 150 articles on the site; the areas have been expanded from IT and startups to investment, personal finance, general science, social issues, health & medicare, online video, travel, and even automobiles. The average Alexa rank is around 30,000 after the launch of the new site.

So far we haven't run into any serious copyright issues yet. We always recommend our translators to contact original authors first. Some high profile bloggers, such as Guy Kawasaki, granted us permissions to translate their articles. Seth Godin, in the communication with one of our active users, Anbudangche, allowed us to translate the electronic version of his book "The Bootstrapper's Bible". Shortly after that, another user Sinishell also got "go-ahead" from Trent on his series "31 Days to Fix Your Finances". Currently, a number of translators are working collaboratively on these projects; we even got volunteered users as proofreaders.

The only episode happened when I translated Wikipedia's page about Seth Godin as an introduction of the author of "The Bootstarpper's Bible" as well as a series of books, such as "Permission Marketing", "Purple Cow", "The Big Moo", "Unleashing the Ideavirus", ... After I posted the translation, Mountain, who is a Web administrator of Wikipedia China and a regular reader of our site, pointed out that I didn't strictly follow the instructions on Wikipedia's license page. So I went to the page, read the instructions, and added a sentence at the beginning of my translation, claiming the origination of the article and GFDL license.

Bloggers embody the spirit of freedom. Their happiness is maximized when more readers can reach what they write. They blog not for money (at least not directly), but for fun, for honors, for spreading their knowledge and ideas. Wikipedia is along the same line.

However, not all web sites, not all web content providers have the same spirit. Recently, I was intending to start a new column on yeeyan that talks about business and society. My wife helped me to collect some cases; but finally I figured out that most of them were from The Wall Street Journal Online, and might cause copyright infringement - a big problem for us. So, I had to give up my idea temporarily.

Internet is one of the greatest innovations in human history. It's a revolution! Information propagation has evolved from paper age into Internet age, and can never be as easy and fast as it is right now. Copyright, to the contrary, prevents free propagation of information and knowledge. Though aimed at protecting the interests of original authors, copyright had long fallen into the dark side and become a dirty weapon for business monopolies to gain huge profits.

The conflict of Internet and copyright is inevitable. OCILLA tries to resolve the conflict, but the issue can't be resolved unless the copyright owners can find a way that follows the Internet trend to make the distribution of digital media content much faster and cheaper. Today, Yahoo's Music JukeBox and Apple's iTunes both charge 99 cents for downloading a song from their sites. I myself am not a big music fan, but I do have downloaded a song (Dixie Chicks' "Landslide") from JukeBox. The song was beautiful, downloading was easy and fast, and the cost was a chicken feed to me. Thanks to Internet, I have more flexibility on paying for copyright that I believe deserve the cost. Though the profit for the labels is still huge, as long as I can afford it and feel comfortable, I have no complaints.

Back to my original plan of creating a new column about business and society on our site, my questions are: why can't those articles be distributed and used for derivative works for free? What interests does the copyright protect in this situation? Is the social benefit more valuable than the subscription fee if we allow free access and propagation?