Blog

How to Change YouTube Adsense Account association

2013-10-20T19:23:00.000+01:00

I would like to associate a different AdSense account with my YouTube account

Google/YouTube has hidden the adsense change feature however, I will explain a work around for this feature that works at the time of writing this (20 October 2013).

It is possible to change the AdSense account associated with your YouTube account if you already have an active, approved AdSense account to change to. To change the AdSense account associated with your YouTube account, please follow the steps below:

Log in to your YouTube account and go to your Account Settings page
Click the "Monetisation" link on the left hand side of the page
Select "Review or change Adsense association" If you can not see this link use the one provided here)
Change your AdSense account association by clicking on "Change"
Select the option at the bottom of the page to choose the Google Account you wish to use.
Enter the password for your Google Account.
Accept the association and you will then be redirected back to YouTube

Google does not officially or publicly support this method any longer but it works. Currently Google does support a similar set of steps for this service for YouTube Partners and users who are eligible to monetize all their channel content and have their accounts in good standing order.

If you have never created an AdSense account before:

Access the Monetization page in your Channel Settings.
From the AdSense Association page, you will be directed to AdSense.
Select the option at the bottom of the page to choose the Google Account you wish to use.
Enter the password for your Google Account.
Confirm the association and provide your billing information before submitting.
You will then be redirected back to YouTube. (Note: AdSense may email you an update.)

Here are a few questions that people have posted to me regarding Change of YouTube Adsense Association recently.

How do I change my AdSense account to a brand new account?

How do I change adsense accounts on my youtube channel?

Move a Youtube channel from one AdSense account to another?

Improvements to Blogger Template HTML editor

2013-04-13T16:16:00.002+01:00

Previously I wrote a post about how to integrate Facebook comments with blogger and I received a lot of question about how to modify the positioning of the comment box. Particularly as some people have used highly customized blogs or used the new dynamic blog templates.

Anyway, Blogger summer interns have posted about two new features that should make finding and re-positioning code slightly easier. One is a formatting feature that makes the code indentation nicer and uniform across the whole template and the second feature is a menu which takes you to the code of a widget with a single click.

You can read the full post on the two links below(they are identical posts)

Autopost YouTube Videos (Uploads) to Blogger using Google FeedBurner

2013-04-13T12:02:00.002+01:00

There are many easy ways to post your YouTube videos to Blogger using third party tools/websites such as ifttt.com, however the method I explain here relies solely on Google products (YouTube, FeedBurner and Blogger).

1. Enable posting to Blogger via Email

1.1) Login to Blogger.com

1.2) Browse to the section shown in the screen shot below:

1.3) Enter a secret word for your auto blogging via email.

1.4) Click "Save settings" to make the changes permanent.

From now on you will be able to create blog posts via sending emails to this secret email address.

2. Find the URL of the RSS feed for your YouTube uploads

This is an example my YouTube account so make sure you replace my username(jenson) with that of your own.

This is the URL of my YouTube uploads which retrieves them as an RSS XML file. Replace my name(jenson) with the name of your YouTube channel.
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/users/jenson/uploads?alt=rss&v=2&orderby=published&client=ytapi-youtube-profile

here is a simpler alternative URL for the same purpose:
http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/base/videos?orderby=published&author=jenson

3. Add your YouTube RSS URL to Feedburner

3.1) Go to feedburner.google.com

3.2) Enter the URL from step 1 into the only text box on the webpage, as shown in the screen shot below:

3.3) Click Next and you will see the screen below:

3.4) On the above screen you can safely ignore the given options(As these can be changed later if you wish to do so). So click next once more and you will be presented with the below screen:

3.5) Click Next once more and you will see the screen below:

3.6) In the above screen you can ignore all options and click next. (I have checked all the available options to be able to see some more stats about the feed but this is irrelevant to what we are doing here). So click Next one last time!

4. Enable Email Subscription for your newly created RSS feed on Feedburner

4.1) Click on the "Publicize" tab and you will see the screen below:

4.2) Click on "Email Subscription" link on the left hand side and you will see the screen below:

4.3) On the above click the activate button to enable this feature. You will see a success message as shown below:

4.4) Click the RSS icon in the top left corner to view your newly created Feed(e.g. http://feeds.feedburner.com/JensonTaylor) on feedburner. You will be presented with the page displayed below(containing a list of your YouTube uploads. I have cut the screenshot short):

4.5) Click on the link that reads "Get Videos delivered by email". A popup will appear, so make sure it is not blocked by a pop-up blocker.

5. Subscribe to your FeedBurner RSS Feed using your secret Blogger email

5.1) Enter your secret blogger email address in the popup window and click "Complete Subscription Request" button:

4.6) You will then see a confirmation message which you can dismiss it by clicking on the "close window" link:

6. Confirm the subscription

Once you have subscribed to the feed on feedburner, an automatic blog post will be made to your blog that looks like the following:

6.1) Click on the confirmation link in the above Blogger post (which was automatically created on your blog)

6.2) Go to your blogger interface and delete this blog post because it will no longer server a purpose and it makes your blog look bad.

7. Enjoy

From now on any YouTube video that you upload to your channel will be posted to your blog.

Potential Problems:

Updates can take up 48 hours to happen but not longer(This is the worst case scenario) because:

Feedburner emails are only sent once every 24 hours(The time of day that emails are sent can be chosen by you)
YouTube API extracts your uploads through its search mechanism which lags behind the uploads of users, hence the extra delay in this part as well

The unsubscribe link is displayed at the bottom of the blog post so anyone of your blog readers can stop this from happening on the next occasion.
The emails that are sent to Blogger create ugly blog posts which look a bit spammy, although you can modify the email content to some extent through Feedburner(see below).

Tips

1. In step 1 of this guide you can choose the "Save emails as draft post" option in the settings which means your posts will not be automatically posted to your blog but saved as a draft blog instead which means you can review it and modify it before you actually post it. One important editing task here would be to remove the details at the bottom of the email/post which allows public readers of your blog to unsubscribe your blog from receiving these auto posts.

2. I recommed changing the Feedburner email title to something more suitable as shown on the screenshot below:

I have marked where you need to click and what you can enter to change the email title and logo. I believe it's easy to follow and also I am feeling lazy so I haven't explained it in more details but if you need clarification please let me know.

As always any questions, suggestions or comments are most welcome.

Useful Google Analytics Dashboard for Bloggers

2012-03-29T19:00:00.000+01:00

Google Analytics Dashboard for Blogspot, Wordpress or any content website
I previously wrote a blog post about using Google Analytics with Blogger. So if you have become familiar with Google Analytics and you feel comfortable using it, you might want to add some better reporting tools that will help you view the stats of you blog in a more friendly way. So here is a nice dashboard that selects a few items to report on. Following this link will give you the option to add this new dashboard to your Google Analytics profile: Add Cool Blogger Dashboard

Assuming you are already logged into Google Analytics you will see a popup like the one shown below:

1. Select you blog profile (e.g. bloggerpost3.blogspot.com) then
2. Select "Create Dashboard"

You will be able to see a pretty neat dashboard that is already setup and ready to use as shown below (The screen shot below is from another blog) as I have only recently setup Google Analytics for my personal blog there wasn't enough data to make the dashboard look good:

One of the nice features of this dashboard view is that you can see the stats against the page titles as opposed to seeing the stats against an obscure URL address.

Blogger Stats vs. Google Analytics - Report Very Different Values

2012-03-28T19:30:00.000+01:00

This is follow up post on Using Google Analytics with Blogger Tutorial. I encourage everyone to use Google Analytics instead of Blogger Stats however when people make the switch the first question everyone asks is why is there such a big difference/drop in Google Analytics stats versus Blogger Stats. In particular the Blogger stats shows much larger number for page views than Google Analytics.

Before I go into details, I like to point out that Google Analytics is showing the "more" correct statistics of user activity on your blog.

The major difference in statistics between Google Analytics and Blogger Stats comes from the method they use to track page views and visitors. Google Analytics uses a more accurate method by setting a cookie on the user's browser which means the user is most likely to be a real user as opposed to an automate computer program.
There are many automated computer programs that visit your blogs on regular basis(known as bots) that fetch your content in order to create an index for search engines such as Google, Yahoo and Bing. Google Analytics will not recognize these as valid visits whereas Blogger Stats counts each one of these as a valid visit. Aside from search engines viewing your blog there are many other automated programs that are designed for spamming and email harvesting that visit your blog. These visits are added up to your Blogger Stats, therefore inflating your ~~ego~~ visitor numbers.

If you have previously used solutions other than Blogger Stats, other factors can contribute to a difference in numbers such as their use of third party images or third party cookies. Some statistic-collection websites place a small image on your blog such as a counter or their logo or even a transparent image. Every time that image is loaded a "hit" or "page view" is recorded on their servers. Whereas Google Analytics only counts a "visit" to the same page if it's not within the same 30 minutes.

It's also worth knowing that some security programs such as firewalls and anti-viruses change the settings of your browser to stop these third party images from loading which means even more incorrect statistics are recorded.

Also, it is worth pointing out that Blogger Stats will record your visits to your own blog. So disabling this feature is a great help toward getting more consistent statistics across Blogger Stats and Google Analytics, even though Google Analytics also records your visits to your own blog. You can find the procedure on how to disable tracking your own visits to your blog below however since the country code domain name changes have gone live, disabling tracking will not be as accurate as it was before the top level domain name changes.

You can find more information on this topic via the Google Help pages.

Stop Tracking your own views
For bloggers that have very popular blogs, it will not make a noticeable difference whether you track your own visits to your blog or not. However if your blog doesn't get that many views then your own visits could account for a large portion of page views on your blog. Hence it is important to stop tracking your own views in Blogger Stats. So:

1. Go to your Blog dashboard
2. Click on "Stats" (Overview)
3. Click on "Don't track your own pageviews" as shown in the screenshot below

4. You will be presented with a popup, select the "Don't track my pageviews" option.

5. Click "Save"

and you're done!

If you'd like to be updated on new blog posts please subscribe to my RSS feed and/or via email.

Blogger Service Unavailable Error 503 after top level domain name changes (country code extensions)

2012-03-27T21:01:00.002+01:00

I previously wrote about how Google Blogger has changed top level domain names (country codes) for censorship purposes. After these recent changes to Bloggers' country code domains, I have experienced a lot of 503 Server Errors. The changes to the country domain name extension coincided with other changes rolled out by Blogger such as Search Preferences for SEO optimization. So it is not clear where the 503 errors stem from but it appears that other users/bloggers are experiencing the same problem.

If you have seen this error please leave a comment so that I know, I am not the only one!

HTTP 503 Service Unavailable Error means the server is currently unavailable (because it is overloaded or down for maintenance). Generally, this is a temporary state.

Here is the HTML code returned by the Blogger servers:

<HTML><HEAD><TITLE>Service Unavailable</TITLE></HEAD><BODY BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" TEXT="#000000"><H1>Service Unavailable</H1><H2>Error 503</H2></BODY></HTML>

It's interesting to see the error pages served by Blogger servers do not comply to HTML 4 standards.

Guide to YouTube Captions (Subtitles) and Transcripts Tutorial

2012-03-24T22:06:00.000+00:00

Sum-up
Subtitle
Facebook
Tracking
Wall-Off
Technology
Michael Moral

If you have viewed videos on YouTube you have probably noticed a small icon marked as "cc" in the bottom bar of the video player(See the image below)

If video owners upload captions(subtitles) for their videos, you will be able to select from a range subtitles based on language or whatever variation of subtitles(captions) the video owner provided. However for most videos on YouTube, nobody uploads the subtitles so YouTube has a voice recognition software that attempts to provide subtitles for English spoken videos. I must point out that although the automatic speech to text feature is technologically impressive, it is not adequate from a user's perspective.

Creating subtitle files is a fairly time consuming process, however creating a transcript is much less work. Because you don't need to set start/stop times for each piece of text which you would need to do for subtitles. So if you have a transcript of your video you can upload it for your video and not only will YouTube provide an interactive transcript of your video(accessible via an icon below your video) but the automatic speech recognition software by YouTube will use this same transcript for the subtitle captions. So the subtitle captions will be 100% accurate. YouTube does a very good job at matching the transcript to the audio so the timing of subtitles appearing on your video will be in sync with the audio itself.

Transcript Toggle: shows the transcript as video is playing.

There might be very rare occasions where the timing of the audio and a subtitle caption is not perfect, however this can easily be fixed. All you need to do is follow the steps below (This guide assumes you have uploaded your transcript file otherwise there will be an auto-generated one which will be fine as well):

1. Go to your video.
2. Click the "Edit captions/subtitles" link above your video (this will take you to another page)

3. Click on your caption link which will be something like "English - your transcript name" (this will take you to another page)

4. In the bottom right corner of this page you will see a button which says "Download" click this button to download the "caption/subtitle" file. (Note: you never uploaded a subtitle/caption file, YouTube create this file from your transcript file) save this file on your computer.

5. Open the download file using Notepad or your favorite text editor.

6. You will see that each line of text has two sets of times above it, these times indicate at what point in your video the subtitle will appear and at what point it will disappear. Change the times to match your video.

Here is an example:

0:00:01.000,0:00:05.200Weakness of attitude becomes weakness of character.

7. Bring back your browser now and click on the link "Return to All Tracks"

8. Click the "Add new captions or transcripts" button

9. Choose the subtitle file.

10. Make sure the option selected is "Caption file(includes time codes)" this is the default option so you shouldn't need to change anything here.

11. Select a name for the captions. I usually call it "subtitles (captions)" because when your video starts it will show the language name of your subtitles with this text appended to it for about 2 seconds.

12. Click "Upload file"

and you're done.

Assuming you have a transcript for your video, this is by far the easiest method for providing subtitles/captions for your videos. If you don't have a transcript for your video you can download the auto generated captions then edit them and upload the new file to fix any errors that YouTube had produced.

Here is an example video that I created:

Applications for Subtitling / Captioning your YouTube Videos
Alternatives to the above method exist in the form of software that look like video editing applications. Using this software you will need to play the video then pause it, type in a sentence for the caption and set when it should disappear. I have tried a few of such applications and I can tell you they are all really time consuming. But if you would like to try one these application, here are a few:

Online Captioning Websites:

http://captiontube.appspot.com/ (I'm not a big fan of this one)
http://yt-subs.appspot.com/ (YouTube authorization for this app doesn't happen over a secure connection)
http://www.universalsubtitles.org/ (This one is probably the best one out of them but it is still quite time consuming and demanding)

Desktop Applications

http://www.urusoft.net/products.php?cat=sw (Subtitle Workshop)
http://www.synchrimedia.com/ (MovCaptioner)

Tools and approaches aside, here are some usability guidelines for creating subtitles: http://www.dcmp.org/ciy/

You might also find these YouTube help files useful:

Uploading YouTube Transcript File Tutorial

Just in case anyone has problems with this, I made this small addition to the how-to guide for uploading a transcript file. Here are the steps:

Go to your video
Click the "Edit captions/subtitles" link above your video (this will take you to another page)
Click the "Add new captions or transcripts" button
Choose your transcript file
Select the option "Transcript file"
Select a name for the Transcript
Click "Upload file"

Subscribe to RSS feed or via email

Integrate Facebook Comments for Blogger Tutorial

2012-03-24T00:56:00.002+00:00

Display Facebook comments on your blog and let Facebook users comment on your blog without signing up for Blogger or other services.

This tutorial assumes that you have a Facebook account and a Blogger account with a blog.

1. First you need to create a Facebook App for your blog. In order to do this go to https://developers.facebook.com/apps

2. In the top right of your screen click on the "+ Create New App" button as shown in the screen shot below:

3. You will be presented with the screen below in which you need to choose:

A name for your app which can be anything you like; I have chosen "JT Blog Comments"
A namespace for your app this can be anything you like as well but it must be in all lower case letters without any spaces. Don't worry about what these attributes do, but just know that they are necessary for any Facebook App.
Do NOT tick the web hosting option. This is not necessary for our comment application.

Once you have entered all the details click "Continue"

4. You will then be asked to pass the "captcha" test. i.e. type in the letters in the image in order for Facebook to verify that you are a human and not a spamming computer program. Enter the correct letters or numbers the click "Submit".

4.a) If you have not setup your Facebook account with a mobile phone number you will see the message below. If you don't see the message below skip to step 5 (that means you have already setup your account with a mobile telephone). For those of you - such as myself - who come across this message, click on the link in the red box which says "mobile phone".

4.b) You will then see the screen below;

Select your country
Enter your mobile phone number
Then click the "Confirm" button

4.c) You will be taken to the page below and at the same time receive a text message(SMS) on your mobile phone. Enter the code from the SMS you received on your mobile phone in the box and click "Confirm"

4.d) You will then see a success message as shown below stating that your account has been verified. Close this page and go back to where you left off when you came across the popup at step (4.a).

4.e) Follow instructions in step 3 again.

4.f) Follow only the first part of step 4 which is only entering the skewed text displayed in the image. Then jump to step 5.

5. You will see the page displayed below;

Make a note of your App ID or copy it
Where is says "App Domain" enter "blogspot.com". (If you host your blog on your own domain name then enter your domain name here)
In the "Website" section where it says "Site URL" enter the address of your blog e.g. "http://bloggerpost3.blogspot.com"
Click "Save Changes"

6. After saving the changes to your Facebook app, you will see a confirmation message in a yellow box at the top of the webpage.

Now your Facebook App is ready. Just make a copy of the App ID as you will need this number when integrating the Facebook comment application into your blog.

7. Change the code below by replacing FACEBOOK-APP-ID with your Facebook App ID number which you copied at step 5.

<meta content="FACEBOOK-APP-ID" property="fb:app_id" />

So my modified code looks like this:

<meta content="336995009681830" property="fb:app_id" />

8. Go to your blog dashboard on Blogger.com; Select "Template" then click on "Edit HTML" as highlighted in the screenshot below:

9. You will receive a popup with a few options. Click on the "Proceed" button as shown below:

10. You will then see the code in your template. Try to locate the <head> tag as shown in the screen below:

11. Just below the <head> tag paste your modified code from step 7. Here is how my code looked like after this change:

12. Click "Save Template"

13. Now you need to add some more code to your template (this is the actual code for the Facebook comment section below your blog posts). Go to you blogger dashboard for your blog then select "Template" > "Edit HTML" > "Proceed" to view your HTML code (i.e. follow steps 8 and 9)

Update 21/04/2013: Since 11th of April 2013 step 14 is no longer necessary. This check-box has been removed and instead each widget can be expanded using an arrow to the left of it. Also there is a drop down menu at the top of the editor which allows you to select the widget that you want to scroll to in one click.
14. Tick the "Expand Widget Templates" checkbox as shown below:

15. Find the code below in your template code using Ctrl-F shortcut and paste the code into the search box. Warning: Do NOT try to type the text below as your web browser could freeze.

<div class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>

The screenshot below shows how it would look:

If you were able to find the tag that you searched for jump to step 16.

15.a) Depending on the blogger template that you are using it is possible that the above search fails. In that case search for this tag:

<p class='post-footer-line post-footer-line-3'>

15.b) if the search at step 15.a failed then search for the following tag:

<data:post.body/>

16. Paste the code below immediately after the tag you found at step 15(or 15.a xor 15.b)

<b:if cond='data:blog.pageType == "item"'> <div id="fb-root"></div> <script>(function(d){ var js, id = 'facebook-jssdk'; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement('script'); js.id = id; js.async = true; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(js); }(document));</script> <fb:comments width='450' colorscheme='light' expr:title='data:post.title' expr:href='data:post.canonicalUrl' expr:xid='data:post.id'/> </b:if>

So the resulting code would look like this:

Optional: To change the width of your comment box in the code above change width="450" to whatever you see suitable for your blog.

Optional: To change the color scheme of your comment box you can change the word "light" to "dark" for the attribute colorscheme='light' which gives you the two coloring schemes available for Facebook comment boxes.

17. You now need to add the Facebook Namespace declaration in your code. If you go the top of your code you will see a tag as <html as shown below:

You need to add the code below right after the <html tag

xmlns:fb="https://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"

So it would look like this instead:

<html xmlns:fb="https://www.facebook.com/2008/fbml"

Here is a screen shot of the code after the change:

Note: The namespace added in the code above is used for all Facebook widgets and apps. So you only need to add this into your code once, regardless of how many different FBML widgets you use.

18. Click "Save Template"

19. Click "Close"

20. Enjoy!

Moderating comments, Administration options and housekeeping
Visit this URL http://developers.facebook.com/tools/comments in order to view all the posted comments on your blog. This is the screen you will see:

If you click the "Settings" link on the above page you will be presented with a few options that are self explanatory such as adding Moderators for your blog or allowing users with different logins to leave comments(e.g. Yahoo or Hotmail logins). Here is a screenshot of the settings page:

Removing Blogger Comments
Although I would not recommend to anyone that they remove blogger's default commenting feature, if you choose to do so you can easily hide or show it from your blogs dashboard by going to

Settings
Posts and comments
Comment Location then select "Hide"
Make sure to click "Save Settings"

If the screenshots are too small to read, you can click on them to enlarge them.

If you run into any problems, let me know in the comments' sectio.

UPDATE (17/01/2013)

Adding a Facebook Comment Section For Stand Alone Pages on Blogger

If you have a stand alone page then the above procedure for adding Facebook comments will not work as the above approach only applies for blog posts and not "pages". So in order to obtain the Facebook comment section on stand alone pages you need to follow the steps below in addition to the above steps. (Note that the steps below need to be repeated for every single page whereas the above guide which only includes blog posts will cover all your blog posts. Note 2; blog posts and blog pages are two different things)

1. Go to your page then select "Edit" as shown in the screen shot below:

2. Once you go through to the edit page, look at the URL in the address bar at the top of your browser. You will see an address similar to this:

http://www.blogger.com/blogger.g?blogID=363170316363135703#editor/target=page;pageID=1979633926023450196

3. Make a note of the last number from the URL address. (This will be unique to your own page so don't copy the number I have shown here.) In my example the number is 1979633926023450196.

4. Click on the "HTML" tab as shown on the screen shot below:

5. Now you will see the HTML code behind your page. Go to the bottom of this code and "Cope & Paste" the following text:

<div id="fb-root">
</div>
<script>(function(d){ var js, id = 'facebook-jssdk'; if (d.getElementById(id)) {return;} js = d.createElement('script'); js.id = id; js.async = true; js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_US/all.js#xfbml=1"; d.getElementsByTagName('head')[0].appendChild(js); }(document));</script> <fb:comments colorscheme="light" href="http://bloggerpost3.blogspot.com/p/jenson.html" title="Blog" width="450" xid="1979633926023450196"></fb:comments>

6. The above code is an example used for one my blog pages so you have to change 3 parts that are highlighted (in red) in the above code to suit your own blog page.
6.a. The URL of your blog page. (In my example it's http://bloggerpost3.blogspot.com/p/jenson.html)
6.b. The title of your page. (In my example it's Blog)
6.c. The page id of your page. This is the number that you made note of in step 3. (In my example it's 1979633926023450196)

7. After you have entered the code in your page it should look like the below screen shot so just press update and your page should be ready for facebook comments.

If the screenshots are too small to read, you can click on them to enlarge them.

If you run into any problems, let me know in the Facebook comments' section ;)

Blogger Changes Top Level Domain Names for Censorship Purposes - .com to .co.uk

2012-03-23T13:29:00.000+00:00

If you're a regular blogger you have probably noticed that Blogger has changed its top level domain name based on the country in which a blog is viewed from. It appears that this feature is based on the location of the visitor and not the Blog authors themselves.

Before these changes my blog url was: jensontaylor.blogspot.com
After the recent Blogger changes, my blog address is: jensontaylor.blogspot.co.uk

My blog always ended in .com however it has now changed to .co.uk. I have noticed the same issue for other blogspots as well. The reason my blog url is ending in .co.uk is because I access my blog from UK. If you access my blog from another country you should see the extension of that country, appended to my blog. So if you access my blog from Australia you should see my blog address as jensontaylor.blogspot.com.au

Solution - NCR "No Country Redirect"
To access the .com version of your blog you must follow your blog URL with /ncr (blogname.blogspot.com/ncr). As an example my blog would be http://jensontaylor.blogspot.com/ncr

This stops my blog from redirecting to a .co.uk top level domain address.

Google Blogger Top Level Domain Name Changes and Censorship
The reason behind the change in the top level domain names is to accommodate Google with the facility to censor blogs based on country of access. Although you might think "censorship" sounds evil, this is actually a good compromise on Google's part. Because laws are local to each country so Google only needs to block/censor a blog in one country but still allow the rest of the world to see that content. So the restrictions are not world wide.
Perhaps the ethically correct thing to do would be to boycott countries such as Iran or China but Google's number one priority is financial income and the two countries I mentioned have huge blogosphere communities as well as many users on all the other services that Google offers such as search and GMail.

USA sanctions on Iran and its effect on Google
While on the topic of censorship I like to point that I am very surprised that Google does not have to conform to the business sanctions laid out by the American government against Iran. Seems like there are some double standards. After all Google ~~bribed~~ contributed a lot of money to the Obama's presidential election campaign.

More Info / Resources
Google posted some question and answers on this topic
Google Blogger content policy
Google's 2007 statement on the topic of freedom of expression and its content

If you'd like to be updated on new blog posts please subscribe to my RSS feed and/or via email.

How to link Blogger Profile to your Google+ Account Profile Tutorial

2012-03-23T11:54:00.000+00:00

Linking your Blogger blog to your Google Plus Account
Simply login to your Blogger account then click on the setting's icon in the top right and choose "Connect to Google+"

Blogger will then prompt you to confirm that have read and understood the changes that will take place. So tick the checkbox after reading and agreeing with everything and click the "Switch Now" button to complete the switch. (See the screen-shot below for the sections circled in red)

For more information you can see Google's frequently asked question help page on switching your Blogger profile to Google Plus.

If you have any questions, leave a comment below and I will get back to you.

Using Google Analytics with Blogger Tutorial Part 1

2012-03-22T21:41:00.003+00:00

Sum-up
Subtitle
Facebook
Tracking
Wall-Off
Technology Tuesday
Michael Moral

Tracking visits and activity on your blog is very important. The better the tool the better you can make your blog and when it comes to Tracking web-user statistics "Google Analytics" is the best tool out there, which is why I would recommend every blogger to start using it instead of(or in conjunction with) the Blogger Stats feature.

This tutorial aims to help you through setting up "Google Analytics" for your Blogger blog.

Open a Google Analytics Account and Use it with Blogger
Assuming you already have a Google account for GMail or Google+ visit: http://www.google.com/analytics. You will come across this screen:

Whether you choose "Access Analytics" or "Sign Up Now", you will end up at the same place, which is shows in the screen shot below:

In the above page will click the "Sign Up" button. You will come across the page below. In this page you need to enter the following information:

A name/label for your Google Analytics account. This can be anything you want. I have chosen to call mine "Jenson Taylor Analytics"
The website address(URL) of your blog. Mine is "JensonTaylor.blogspot.co.uk"
You can choose how you want to share your data. This doesn't make a difference at this point. I have chosen the options which will integrate my Google Analytics account better with other Google services such as Ad Words. I would recommend that you choose the same options as I have in the screen below. (If you would like more explanation on these options please leave a comment and I will get back to you)
Choose the country you live in
After reading the terms and conditions, assuming that you agree with all of them. Tick the check box which says "Yes, I agree to the above terms and conditions."

Click on "Create Account".

You will then see the page below which contains a unique identified called the "Tracking ID" and looks like UA-22222222-1. Make a note of this identifier (you will need to enter this identifier in your Blogger settings).

In the screen shot above you will see that I have highlighted the options for the section under "What are you tracking?". You can choose either one of those options that I have highlighted using the red arrows. The first option is what I would have recommended previously. However Blogger has started to roll out some changes recently that would affect this. Your blog address is going to change based on the country you are in, so previously the address of my blog was jensontaylor.blogspot.com however it has now changed to jensontaylor.blogspot.co.uk; It is because of this change that I would now recommend you to choose the last option on the screen above.

Now click "Save" and you're done with Google Analytics.

Note: Ignore the number 2 option in the screenshot above. (You do NOT need to copy/paste code anywhere)

Go to you blogger dashboard then browse to "Settings" > "Other" and enter the "Tracking ID" for your blog in the field which is labelled "Analytics Web Property ID" (You can see the Tracking ID in your Google Analytics - see screen shot above for details)

Click "Save" and you're done.

Older Templates (To be ignored for most bloggers)
Most bloggers do not need to worry about this issue but if you are using a really old template then adding your blog's Analytics Tracking ID here might not work correctly. So you will need to go back to Google Analytics and copy the code given to you in Google Analytics into your template. For this go to your blogger's dashboard then browse to "Template" > "Edit HTML" > "Proceed"
You should now see all the code, search for "</head>" without the quotes. Once you find it, insert the code just before it. So before changes your code will be:

</head>

After adding your Google Analytics code, it will look like this:

<script type='text/javascript'>
  var _gaq = _gaq || [];
  _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-222222-1']);
  _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', 'blogspot.co.uk']);
  _gaq.push(['_setAllowLinker', true]);
  _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
  (function() {
   var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
   ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
   var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
  })();
</script>
  </head>

Click "Save Template" and you're done.

Why use Google Analytics with Blogger?

You might ask yourself why should I use Google Analytics with Blogger when the Blogger stats already provides all the details I need but the more people follow your blogs the more important it becomes to adapt your blog to your readers advantage. Google Analytics not only gives you details about how many people visit your blog but also where they come from e.g. search engines, feed, email, Facebook, etc.

If that wasn't enough Google Analytics also lets you know whether your blog followers read your blog from the mobile phone or on a computer, it lets you know what operating system and browser they use.

My favorite feature is information about the screen size. By looking at the screen sizes that followers of my blog use, I make sure I change the width of my page to suit the majority of people that have a certain screen size which will enhance their experience.

Here is follow up blog for more adventurous users who like to experiment with a customized dashboard on Google Analytics.

If you'd like to be updated on new blog posts please subscribe to RSS feed and/or via email.

How to make a fan an Admin on a Facebook Fan Page that is not on your friend list and you don't have their email adress

2012-03-20T07:30:00.000+00:00

This is a question I had but couldn't find an answer on Google so I decided to find the solution and post a blog about it:

How can I make a fan(member) of a Facebook fan page, an administrator on Facebook without having them on my friend list and without knowing their email address?
The URL below can be used to view all members of a fan page. This URL is not presented anywhere obvious on fan pages any longer but it's one that becomes visible when notifications of new "likes" are presented on your fan page.

http://www.facebook.com/browse/page_fans/?page_id=329814337062047

The number you see in the above address is a unique ID for each fan page, so you need to find this unique number for your own fan page. So to find out what the ID of your fan page is, go to your Facebook fan page then click the "Edit Page" button(this button will only be visible if you are an administrator of that page). Now look in the URL and you will see something like:

https://www.facebook.com/pages/edit/?id=329814337062047

The number in the above URL (use your fan page's number number) is what you need to copy and paste into the URL below to view all members of a fan page:

http://www.facebook.com/browse/page_fans/?page_id=329814337062047

So all you have to do is replace the number which is presented in front of "page_id=" with that of your own fan page. Now press "Enter" and you will see a list of all members with a "Make Admin" button next to each name. Pressing this button will take you to a new page and ask for your password. Once you enter your password and press "ok", the new admin will be visible.

Make someone a Facebook Fan Page Admin with Email Address

To make someone an admin on a facebook fan page, if you have their email address you can enter their email address after browsing to "Edit Page" > "Manage Admins" and pressing save to make the changes permanent. (You will be asked for your password for security reasons)

Make someone a Facebook Fan Page Admin if they are your friend

The third approach is if the person is on your friend list, in which case you browse to "Edit Page" > "Manage Admins" and type in their name. You will see their profile name and photo popup. So you can select the user then press "Save" to make the changes permanent. (You will be asked for your password for security reasons)

Xtranormal (Beta) Animation Software Review, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

2012-03-08T20:19:00.000+00:00

I have been looking to find a nice and easy animation software to use for a while and the best one I have found so was was Xtranormal.

Xtranormal is an animation software that is available in two versions; a web version and a desktop application. Both versions need internet access and you must login to your account in order to use the application as well as for downloading components such as animation characters, background images, etc which you have to pay for.

The Xtranormal application is easy to use and their trademark slogan "If you can type, you can make movies™" is certainly true although creating a "movie" is rather a stretch on the capabilities of the software and its current features.

To make an animation all you have to do is:

select a background to be used
select one or more characters(actors/actresses)
Type the dialog for your character

and that's all there is to it. If you want to create something more than a simple animation, you can use the "market place" button to view more characters, backgrounds, voices or even use your own sound files. You can also select or set your own camera angles. Also there is a lot of flexibility in where your characters are standing, where they would be facing, so the characters could be moved anywhere in the 3D set.

There are additional features for characters to take on a more realistic personality, for example you can dictate that a character should perform a "gesture", hold a certain "posture" or look at the camera or another place.

All in all I would say it's a great piece of software, however it doesn't feel like a finished product or something one could use for an important or serious animation for the reasons I have listed below:

The text to speech conversion is quite bad and primitive. When I think of other software and technologies that I have used for text to speech conversion I can clearly see there is a lack of expertise in this area at Xtranormal. Since this type of technology has been around for a long time, I had much higher expectation for this core functionality. This is the single biggest problem with this animation application. If the speech isn't good enough, there isn't much use for any created animation that makes use of these voice libraries. This also contradicts Xtranormal's mission statement/slogan: "If you can type, you can make movies™". One of the problems with the speech is that it is too fast and un-natural. I try to compensate for this problem by inserting commas into my text however there is no control over the length of pause a comma makes.
The application consumes a lot of resources and is very slow. There seems to be a lot of memory leak by this application and no word of fixing this issue yet from the team. Obviously these issues only become prominent once you decide to create an animation that is more than a few minutes long and make use of a larger scope of features.
Although you can manually set the camera angles, this is a time consuming process so if you decided to let the application run on auto-pilot setting beware that it will make very poor camera selections. For example one character could be talking and the auto-pilot camera would show the other character.
There is an option to add a pause anywhere in a dialog and the length of a pause can be manually controlled(the default is set at 2 seconds) however the shortest pause currently available is one second which is too long in some cases. A more fine-grain control over the pause would be very useful because a one second pause in a conversation seems like a lifetime.
There is no synchronization between the desktop application and the web version. So if you started your work on the desktop version, you would not be able to continue your work from a browser or vice versa.
Some characters are not capable of performing all gestures that are listed to be available for them. For example the Albert Einstein character on the desktop version of the application can not perform "dance wave", "dance twist" or the "dance turn" gestures.
The application provides some nice gestures such as "folding arms" however the same concept does not exist as a stance, so a character can not remain in a stance with folded arms.
Bug: If you create an animation with enough dialog boxes to cause the scrollbar to appear, you will come across an annoying bug. Every time you add a new dialog, the page will automatically scroll to the top. So now you have to scroll all the way to the bottom to type something in the new dialog box.
Bug: If you click the preview(play) button the tool you had selected last will be unselected and once the preview stops the "orbit" tool is selected which happens to be the first tool in the right hand side tool set.
Bug: If you have imported your own sound files for a dialog box and try to play a preview it appears to be working fine but if you move click on a random location in the playing timeline progress bar the audio and video play out of sync.
Bug: There are inconsistencies between the different voice libraries for example some voices read "IV" as four while other voices read it out as the letters "I" followed by "V"

Although I like this application, at its current state I would not recommend it. I will be exploring some alternatives animation application in the future and post reviews of them here, but for now, here is a video I created using Xtranormal.

Feedburner removes Socialize feature and ability to post to Twitter

2012-03-01T20:04:00.001+00:00

Update - 02 March 2012
It is still possible to access "Socialize".

When you are in Feedburner, go to the Publicize tab, and the address looks like this: "http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/publicize?id=[a bunch of numbers i.e. the tab session key]"

Replace "publicize" with "socialize" in the url, and boom, you are in there. For example:

http://feedburner.google.com/fb/a/socialize?id=bdd8995cgccqii6padfg821380

Thanks to Chris Pine for the above work around.

Original Post
It appears that Google Feedburner has removed its support for posting to Twitter. If you have read my previous blog posts you'll know that I made use of this feature extensively.

It's not clear why this feature has been removed or whether it's a permanent change. But it's definitely a feature that will be missed. I am hoping Google has temporarily hidden this feature away while they are working on fixing all the current problems with it.

If you know anything more about this, please let me know.

One reasons I used Feedburner for, was that it lets you choose how you want your YouTube videos to be posted to Twitter. If you enable the YouTube to Twitter feature on YouTube itself, the resulting tweets will look very spam like. In the sense that YouTube tries to insert a reference to its own twitter account for promotions as well as making a decision on what text your tweet will contains. By filling your 140 character limit with useless text. The automatic tweets from YouTube look something like this:

"I uploaded a @YouTube video http://youtu.be/OgQlY-MdTH8 [Funny] Atheist vs. Christian - Why don't people believe in God?"

This means YouTube is taking up 28 characters unnecessarily as well as placing the content link before the content title. Aside from this annoyance, there is no option to include hashtags in your Tweet via the default YouTube application.

Google Feedburner's "Socialize" feature on the other hand would let me post something like the text below:

"[Funny] Atheist vs. Christian - Why don't people believe in God? http://youtu.be/OgQlY-MdTH8 #atheist #atheism #religion"

As you can see in the above text I would be able convey the content from the beginning of the tweet instead of the end of a tweet. Also the hash-tags would give my tweet more publicity.

Selective posting to Twitter and Facebook from Google+

2012-02-11T18:27:00.002+00:00

I previously wrote two blog entries about posting Google+ messages to Facebook and Twitter:

If you follow the second approach which only works for public posts. You can limit what is posted to your Twitter feed using a text similar to a hashtag. All you have to do is to include the word Twitter in your Google+ post for messages to be posted to your Twitter. I will explain how this is done.

Go to your previously setup feed on http://feedburner.google.com and change the settings on your feed to look like the screen shot below:

As you can see there are two differences between the settings in the above screen and the settings applies in the previous tutorial.

1. As the red arrow in the above image indicates you must enter the text Twitter or a unique text that you will add to your Google+ messages that you want to be posted to your Twitter account. Also note the drop down menu below the arrow should have the following option selected: "the title". Once these settings are saved the job is finished and you're read to go.

2. The second difference only applies for selective posting to Facebook. If you have followed my earlier tutorial but decide that not all your posts from Twitter should go to your Facebook wall remove the #fb that we had previously placed in the "additional text" text box. So now, if you want your Google+ posts that are submitted to Twitter to be also posted on Facebook you should include the word #fb in your Google+ post. Assuming you're currently using the "Selective Tweets" app on Facebook.

So now to automatically post something from Google+ to Twitter include the text Twitter and if you want to post it to Facebook as well as Twitter include the text: Twitter #fb

Note 1: This approach will only let you post to Facebook if you're posting it to Twitter as well.
Note 2: Since we are now including the #fb text in our Google+ post it must be towards the beginning of the message so that Twitter does not cut it off due to its limited message size.
Note 3: Since the #fb text is no longer appended to the end of our message you must go to facebook and change the setting in your "Selective Twitter" app on Facebook. Tick the checkbox which reads "Allow the #fb tag anywhere in the tweet?" as shown on the screen shot below:

I admit my solutions are always cumbersome and super geeky but they do work. If you have any questions don't hesitate to ask me on Google+, or Facebook, or Twitter. Also please subscribe to my blog via email or RSS feed

How to get Twitter RSS Feed (Since Twitter started hiding it)

2011-12-14T22:00:00.000+00:00

After Twitter changed its user interface from its simple initial design it also decided to hide the public RSS feed which was available on all profiles. Although the RSS feed is no longer visible, the functionality is still fully working.

The URL for an RSS feed looks like this:

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/101086296.rss

or alternatively with the atom extension:

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/101086296.atom

The problem that remains is finding the number which corresponds to a Twitter username. You can find out this number by using the Twitter API however there is a website that does this for you. Visit the website below and enter a Twitter username then click "Get ID" and you will be presented with the identification number of that particular Twitter user.

http://www.idfromuser.com/

So all you have to do now is replace that number into this URL (101086296 is my Twitter id):

http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/101086296.atom

and you will have an RSS/Atom feed for any Twitter account.

If you'd like to be updated on new blog posts please subscribe to my RSS feed and/or via email. I'm also on Twitter @JensonTaylor, Facebook and Google+.

Follow @JensonTaylor

Automatically publish your Google+ Plus "Public" posts to Twitter (and Facebook)

2011-07-21T20:05:00.001+01:00

How to post your Public Google Plus posts to Twitter (and Facebook)

This technique will only work for *Public* posts.

Copy this URL but replace the ending number with your own Google Plus account number http://plusfeed.appspot.com/106166623138751182431
Go to http://feedburner.google.com and sign in with your Google account.
Paste the above URL in the area which says "Burn a feed right this instant." Here is a screenshot:
Click "Next" and you will see this screen:
On the above screen click "Next" which will take you to the below screen:
Click "Next" on the above screen and you will be presented with the following screen:
Click "Next" on the above page, which will take you to this screen:
On the above page click the "Publicize" tab
Then click the "Socialize" link from the left hand side links
Click the button which says "Add a Twitter account". Assuming you are logged in on Twitter confirm the authorization page presented by Twitter.
On the "Socialize" adjust your settings as shown on the screen shot below:
Click the "Activate" button at the bottom of the page. From now on all your "Public" messages on Google plus will be posted to Twitter. The message that is posted on twitter will include the beggining of your post with a link to your message on your Google+ profile. So hopefully your Twitter followers will gradually migrate to Google Plus. Note, there will be a delay from your messages being posted on Google Plus to them appearing on Twitter.
To reduce the delay between posting something on Google Plus and it appearing on Twitter click on "PingShot" link on the left hand side, which will take you to the below page:
Then click "Activate" to enable this feature, (above screen shot)

The automatic Twitter posting is now complete and ready to go, and all tweets will include a link to your message posted on Google Plus.

For those of you who want these messages to automatically post to Facebook as well, there are many options available to synchronize the two. I will mention two methods:

Method 1: If you're looking to automatically post all your Twitter updates straight to Facebook, the Twitter application (by Twitter) is the best option. It's really simple to use; just install the application and then click to allow Twitter to update your Facebook status.

Method 2: However I prefer that only some of my tweets to be automatically posted to my Facebook wall so I use an applications called Selective Tweet Status. This application will only post tweets that end in #fb to your Facebook profile. Once you go to this application's page, enter your Twitter username and click save. So for our automatic tweets that are generated from Google+ we need to add the three characters #fb to the end of our tweets. To do this:

Go to http://feedburner.google.com
Click on the appropriate link for your Google+ link. e.g.
Click on the "Publicize" tab
Click on "Socialize" from the left hand side links
Enter #fb in the "Additional text" section. like the screen shot below:
Make sure the drop down menu below it is set to "end of the post"
Click the "Save" button at the bottom of the page.
Enjoy! (Usually your updates will appear on Facebook within 2 minutes of them being posted on Twitter, however sometimes when Twitter is having difficulties (fail whale..) it can take quite a bit longer.)

Problems:

If your tweets do not appear on your Facebook status it could be because your tweets are set to private or due to spamming type behaviour Twitter has stopped your tweets from appearing in search. The selective tweets application uses Twitter search mechanism to locate the tweets that are destined for Facebook. For more info see http://apps.facebook.com/selectivetwitter/help

Recommendation:
The major "Plus" of this method is that posts made on Google+ are automatically posted to both Facebook and Twitter with a link back to your Google+ post. So Google+ remains your main communication head quarters while Twitter and Facebook just act as mediums for letting people who are not yet on Google+ what's happening. So the people on Facebook and Twitter will get the information but with a delay. You can read the instruction on link below to get your Google+ posts to instantly post to Facebook, however messages longer than 47 characters will be chopped and there will be no link back to your Google+ post on Facebook.
http://jensontaylor.blogspot.com/2011/07/automatically-publish-your-google-plus.html

I have enabled both approaches on my profile, i.e. the nice but delayed approach described here as well as the instant but limited approach described in the above link. So my Facebook page shows each message twice. Once it displays a chopped message and then after a delay a more complete message is posted. The way I view Google+ is my updates' center. The fact that my posts are ~~spammed~~ shared on other social networks is just a bonus. If people reply to my posts on other social networks I will receive their messages on my mobile phone so I will still interact with users from other social networks but the interaction will be more one way in the sense that I respond to people who have interacted with me explicitly as opposed to me commenting on their photos or wall posts or reacting to someone's tweets, because I will not spend much time on those networks, now that Google+ does a better job for my needs.

Personally I don't like the approaches that I have suggested at all because it relies on too many unreliable services and the slow updates, however so far it has worked perfectly for me. Google has indicated that they will provide xml/rss feed for Google+ so once that feature is available we can cut out the third party website. I will update you on this as soon as it becomes available.

P.S. Don't forget to subscribe to this blog via email or feed

Automatically publish your Google+ Plus posts to Facebook

2011-07-20T19:22:00.008+01:00

Updating your Facebook status via Google Plus+

Access Facebook
Go to http://facebook.com/mobile
Copy your email address unique (underneath where it says "Upload via Email")
Go to the circle's page on Google+ and create a circle called "Facebook Status"
Add the e-mail from Facebook in your new circle(Facebook Status)
When you want to publish something on Facebook, simply add the circle.(and don't forget to tick the checkbox which says "Also email 1 person not yet using Google+ yet")

Photos are not uploaded on Facebook
Works with public posts as well (As long as you include the "Facebook Status" circle)
Your posts on Facebook will take the default permission("Everyone" or "Friends of Friends" or "Friends Only")
UPDATE: If the message is longer than 47 characters you will see the first 44 characters followed by three dots in your Facebook status. (I have informed Google+ of this problem and I hope they will solve it)

Firebird/Interbase SQL Add/Update/Alter Column/Field Type and Default Value

2011-06-22T11:24:00.004+01:00

Note: Using double quotes for a string(varchar) fails! (not sure if this has anything to do with the utility I use to connect to the DB or the Firebird database itself.

ALTER TABLE my_table_name ADD my_column_name Varchar(30) default 'Not Processed' NOT NULL;

----

Changing the length of the email field varchar to 45 (In the users table).

ALTER TABLE users ALTER COLUMN email_address TYPE VarChar(45);

Install Apache 2.2 with mod_proxy module for Tomcat 7.0.2

2010-10-19T11:18:00.000+01:00

Installing/building Mod Proxy for integration of Apache with Tomcat
Install mod_proxy from apache source
Installing everything from source as usual results in leaner installation so that's the way I prefer to go on production servers. Also, the stop/start and restart time gives us less down time when not including dynamic shared object modules. So no dynamic modules is a plus even though it's less flexible and has a steeper learning curve.

To enable mod_proxy with necessary modules run the command below:

./configure --prefix=/usr/local/apache2.0 \
--enable-proxy \
--enable-proxy-connect \
--enable-proxy-http

Note: the backslash lets you spread out a single command over more than one lines, which improves readability. So after the backslash once you press return the command will not be executed.

If you need to access files using ftp then add --enable-proxy-ftp to you list of modules when executing the above command.

Dynamic vs. Static
./configure --enable-proxy=static will build mod_proxy linked statically into the resulting httpd executable; this is the default if you specify ./configure --enable-proxy. ./configure --enable-proxy=shared is necessary to build the module as a loadable shared library.

Similarly, ./configure --enable-modules=proxy will link mod_proxy statically into the executable, while ./configure --enable-mods-shared=proxy will cause it to be built as a shared library. See the Apache configure documentation for more details.

Apache configure/installation/build from source Help

run the command ./configure --help to get the below output of the options available for configuring apache before building and installing it.

`configure' configures this package to adapt to many kinds of systems.

Usage: ./configure [OPTION]... [VAR=VALUE]...

To assign environment variables (e.g., CC, CFLAGS...), specify them as
VAR=VALUE.  See below for descriptions of some of the useful variables.

Defaults for the options are specified in brackets.

Configuration:
  -h, --help              display this help and exit
      --help=short        display options specific to this package
      --help=recursive    display the short help of all the included packages
  -V, --version           display version information and exit
  -q, --quiet, --silent   do not print `checking...' messages
      --cache-file=FILE   cache test results in FILE [disabled]
  -C, --config-cache      alias for `--cache-file=config.cache'
  -n, --no-create         do not create output files
      --srcdir=DIR        find the sources in DIR [configure dir or `..']

Installation directories:
  --prefix=PREFIX         install architecture-independent files in PREFIX
                          [/usr/local/apache2]
  --exec-prefix=EPREFIX   install architecture-dependent files in EPREFIX
                          [PREFIX]

By default, `make install' will install all the files in
`/usr/local/apache2/bin', `/usr/local/apache2/lib' etc.  You can specify
an installation prefix other than `/usr/local/apache2' using `--prefix',
for instance `--prefix=$HOME'.

For better control, use the options below.

Fine tuning of the installation directories:
  --bindir=DIR            user executables [EPREFIX/bin]
  --sbindir=DIR           system admin executables [EPREFIX/sbin]
  --libexecdir=DIR        program executables [EPREFIX/libexec]
  --sysconfdir=DIR        read-only single-machine data [PREFIX/etc]
  --sharedstatedir=DIR    modifiable architecture-independent data [PREFIX/com]
  --localstatedir=DIR     modifiable single-machine data [PREFIX/var]
  --libdir=DIR            object code libraries [EPREFIX/lib]
  --includedir=DIR        C header files [PREFIX/include]
  --oldincludedir=DIR     C header files for non-gcc [/usr/include]
  --datarootdir=DIR       read-only arch.-independent data root [PREFIX/share]
  --datadir=DIR           read-only architecture-independent data [DATAROOTDIR]
  --infodir=DIR           info documentation [DATAROOTDIR/info]
  --localedir=DIR         locale-dependent data [DATAROOTDIR/locale]
  --mandir=DIR            man documentation [DATAROOTDIR/man]
  --docdir=DIR            documentation root [DATAROOTDIR/doc/PACKAGE]
  --htmldir=DIR           html documentation [DOCDIR]
  --dvidir=DIR            dvi documentation [DOCDIR]
  --pdfdir=DIR            pdf documentation [DOCDIR]
  --psdir=DIR             ps documentation [DOCDIR]

System types:
  --build=BUILD     configure for building on BUILD [guessed]
  --host=HOST       cross-compile to build programs to run on HOST [BUILD]
  --target=TARGET   configure for building compilers for TARGET [HOST]

Optional Features:
  --disable-option-checking  ignore unrecognized --enable/--with options
  --disable-FEATURE       do not include FEATURE (same as --enable-FEATURE=no)
  --enable-FEATURE[=ARG]  include FEATURE [ARG=yes]
  --enable-layout=LAYOUT
  --enable-v4-mapped      Allow IPv6 sockets to handle IPv4 connections
  --enable-exception-hook Enable fatal exception hook
  --enable-maintainer-mode
                          Turn on debugging and compile time warnings
  --enable-pie            Build httpd as a Position Independent Executable
  --enable-modules=MODULE-LIST
                          Space-separated list of modules to enable | "all" |
                          "most"
  --enable-mods-shared=MODULE-LIST
                          Space-separated list of shared modules to enable |
                          "all" | "most"
  --disable-authn-file    file-based authentication control
  --enable-authn-dbm      DBM-based authentication control
  --enable-authn-anon     anonymous user authentication control
  --enable-authn-dbd      SQL-based authentication control
  --disable-authn-default authentication backstopper
  --enable-authn-alias    auth provider alias
  --disable-authz-host    host-based authorization control
  --disable-authz-groupfile
                          'require group' authorization control
  --disable-authz-user    'require user' authorization control
  --enable-authz-dbm      DBM-based authorization control
  --enable-authz-owner    'require file-owner' authorization control
  --enable-authnz-ldap    LDAP based authentication
  --disable-authz-default authorization control backstopper
  --disable-auth-basic    basic authentication
  --enable-auth-digest    RFC2617 Digest authentication
  --enable-isapi          isapi extension support
  --enable-file-cache     File cache
  --enable-cache          dynamic file caching
  --enable-disk-cache     disk caching module
  --enable-mem-cache      memory caching module
  --enable-dbd            Apache DBD Framework
  --enable-bucketeer      buckets manipulation filter
  --enable-dumpio         I/O dump filter
  --enable-echo           ECHO server
  --enable-example        example and demo module
  --enable-case-filter    example uppercase conversion filter
  --enable-case-filter-in example uppercase conversion input filter
  --enable-reqtimeout     Limit time waiting for request from client
  --enable-ext-filter     external filter module
  --disable-include       Server Side Includes
  --disable-filter        Smart Filtering
  --enable-substitute     response content rewrite-like filtering
  --disable-charset-lite  character set translation
  --enable-charset-lite   character set translation
  --enable-deflate        Deflate transfer encoding support
  --enable-ldap           LDAP caching and connection pooling services
  --disable-log-config    logging configuration
  --enable-log-forensic   forensic logging
  --enable-logio          input and output logging
  --disable-env           clearing/setting of ENV vars
  --enable-mime-magic     automagically determining MIME type
  --enable-cern-meta      CERN-type meta files
  --enable-expires        Expires header control
  --enable-headers        HTTP header control
  --enable-ident          RFC 1413 identity check
  --enable-usertrack      user-session tracking
  --enable-unique-id      per-request unique ids
  --disable-setenvif      basing ENV vars on headers
  --disable-version       determining httpd version in config files
  --enable-proxy          Apache proxy module
  --enable-proxy-connect  Apache proxy CONNECT module
  --enable-proxy-ftp      Apache proxy FTP module
  --enable-proxy-http     Apache proxy HTTP module
  --enable-proxy-scgi     Apache proxy SCGI module
  --enable-proxy-ajp      Apache proxy AJP module
  --enable-proxy-balancer Apache proxy BALANCER module
  --enable-ssl            SSL/TLS support (mod_ssl)
  --enable-distcache      Select distcache support in mod_ssl
  --enable-optional-hook-export
                          example optional hook exporter
  --enable-optional-hook-import
                          example optional hook importer
  --enable-optional-fn-import
                          example optional function importer
  --enable-optional-fn-export
                          example optional function exporter
  --enable-static-support Build a statically linked version of the support
                          binaries
  --enable-static-htpasswd
                          Build a statically linked version of htpasswd
  --enable-static-htdigest
                          Build a statically linked version of htdigest
  --enable-static-rotatelogs
                          Build a statically linked version of rotatelogs
  --enable-static-logresolve
                          Build a statically linked version of logresolve
  --enable-static-htdbm   Build a statically linked version of htdbm
  --enable-static-ab      Build a statically linked version of ab
  --enable-static-checkgid
                          Build a statically linked version of checkgid
  --enable-static-htcacheclean
                          Build a statically linked version of htcacheclean
  --enable-static-httxt2dbm
                          Build a statically linked version of httxt2dbm
  --enable-http           HTTP protocol handling
  --disable-mime          mapping of file-extension to MIME
  --enable-dav            WebDAV protocol handling
  --disable-status        process/thread monitoring
  --disable-autoindex     directory listing
  --disable-asis          as-is filetypes
  --enable-info           server information
  --enable-suexec         set uid and gid for spawned processes
  --disable-cgid          CGI scripts
  --enable-cgi            CGI scripts
  --disable-cgi           CGI scripts
  --enable-cgid           CGI scripts
  --enable-dav-fs         DAV provider for the filesystem
  --enable-dav-lock       DAV provider for generic locking
  --enable-vhost-alias    mass virtual hosting module
  --disable-negotiation   content negotiation
  --disable-dir           directory request handling
  --enable-imagemap       server-side imagemaps
  --disable-actions       Action triggering on requests
  --enable-speling        correct common URL misspellings
  --disable-userdir       mapping of requests to user-specific directories
  --disable-alias         mapping of requests to different filesystem parts
  --enable-rewrite        rule based URL manipulation
  --enable-so             DSO capability

Optional Packages:
  --with-PACKAGE[=ARG]    use PACKAGE [ARG=yes]
  --without-PACKAGE       do not use PACKAGE (same as --with-PACKAGE=no)
  --with-included-apr     Use bundled copies of APR/APR-Util
  --with-apr=PATH         prefix for installed APR or the full path to
                             apr-config
  --with-apr-util=PATH    prefix for installed APU or the full path to
                             apu-config
  --with-pcre=PATH        Use external PCRE library
  --with-port=PORT        Port on which to listen (default is 80)
  --with-sslport=SSLPORT  Port on which to securelisten (default is 443)
  --with-z=DIR            use a specific zlib library
  --with-sslc=DIR         RSA SSL-C SSL/TLS toolkit
  --with-ssl=DIR          OpenSSL SSL/TLS toolkit
  --with-mpm=MPM          Choose the process model for Apache to use.
                          MPM={beos|event|worker|prefork|mpmt_os2}
  --with-module=module-type:module-file
                          Enable module-file in the modules/
                          directory.
  --with-program-name     alternate executable name
  --with-suexec-bin       Path to suexec binary
  --with-suexec-caller    User allowed to call SuExec
  --with-suexec-userdir   User subdirectory
  --with-suexec-docroot   SuExec root directory
  --with-suexec-uidmin    Minimal allowed UID
  --with-suexec-gidmin    Minimal allowed GID
  --with-suexec-logfile   Set the logfile
  --with-suexec-safepath  Set the safepath
  --with-suexec-umask     umask for suexec'd process

Some influential environment variables:
  CC          C compiler command
  CFLAGS      C compiler flags
  LDFLAGS     linker flags, e.g. -L if you have libraries in a
              nonstandard directory 
  LIBS        libraries to pass to the linker, e.g. -l
  CPPFLAGS    (Objective) C/C++ preprocessor flags, e.g. -I if
              you have headers in a nonstandard directory 
  CPP         C preprocessor

Use these variables to override the choices made by `configure' or to help
it to find libraries and programs with nonstandard names/locations.

Manual Apache HTTPd 2.2 installation on Ubuntu Linux

2010-09-28T16:04:00.000+01:00

1. get sources
wget http://mirror.ox.ac.uk/sites/rsync.apache.org//httpd/httpd-2.2.16.tar.gz

2. extract sources

tar xzfv httpd-2.2.16.tar.gz

3. Configure various aspects of apache (you can choose where apache shall be installed and run from. These paths will be written and compiled into the binaries so this step is important).

Manually Installing Tomcat 7 on Ubuntu

2010-09-22T16:22:00.000+01:00

Installing Tomcat 7 on Ubuntu 9.10
I prefer the manual process of installing and upgrading software on a live server as it is less likely to break things and the reversal process is easier as well. So that's the way I choose to go;

Info
To find out which version of Ubuntu you have run the following command:
more /etc/lsb-release

On my machine the output is:
DISTRIB_ID=Ubuntu
DISTRIB_RELEASE=9.10
DISTRIB_CODENAME=karmic
DISTRIB_DESCRIPTION="Ubuntu 9.10"

If you want to find the kernel details run (uname -a).
To find the linux distro you can also run (cat /etc/issue).

Install Java
To check if Java is installed run:

dpkg --get-selections | grep sun-java

which should output:

sun-java6-bin install

sun-java6-jdk install

sun-java6-jre install

running the command (java -version) should give you the following output assuming the "java" executable is on your $PATH variable.

Output:
java version "1.6.0_20"
Java(TM) SE Runtime Environment (build 1.6.0_20-b02)
Java HotSpot(TM) Server VM (build 16.3-b01, mixed mode)

If you don't have Java installed the easiest way is run this command (sudo apt-get install sun-java6-jdk)

Tomcat 7 Installation
Download Tomcat
It's recommended to use your web browser to download Tomcat but if you know exactly which version you want and you know the url then wget would suffice.

wget http://archive.apache.org/dist/tomcat/tomcat-7/v7.0.2-beta/bin/apache-tomcat-7.0.2.tar.gz

Verify download
Calculate the md5 checksum using the command (md5sum apache-tomcat-7.0.2.tar.gz) it should output:

43b5ba6aec55dd9a30957e035d0aac5f apache-tomcat-7.0.2.tar.gz

The above is just to make sure your download wasn't corrupted.

Extract Tomcat 7.0.2 Beta
To extract the content of the archive run the following command (tar xvzf apache-tomcat-7.0.2.tar.gz)

Move the tomcat folder to a location which it will sit and serve webapps. I moved it to /usr/local/tomcat, but am not sure what the best place is, maybe someone could let me know?

sudo mv apache-tomcat-7.0.2 /usr/local/tomcat/

Set JAVA_HOME variable

To check if the $JAVA_HOME environment variable has been set or not run the following command (echo $JAVA_HOME) which should output:

/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Tomcat requires setting the JAVA_HOME variable. You can set it in .bashrc or startup.sh. Again not sure what the best place is.

To place it in your .bashrc file.

vi ~/.bashrc

Add the following line:

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

Logout of the shell for the change to take effect.

Startup Tomcat 7.0.2 Beta
Start tomcat by executing "startup.sh" script in the tomcat/bin folder.

Automatic Starting at boot
For a live server you need to make tomcat automatically start at boot up just in case you need to restart the server; Add a start/stop script to init.d script startup directory.

sudo vi /etc/init.d/tomcat

Paste in the following:

# Tomcat auto-start
#
# description: Auto-starts tomcat
# processname: tomcat
# pidfile: /var/run/tomcat.pid

export JAVA_HOME=/usr/lib/jvm/java-6-sun

case $1 in
start)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
;;
stop)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
;;
restart)
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh
sh /usr/local/tomcat/bin/startup.sh
;;
esac
exit 0

Make the script executable:

sudo chmod 755 /etc/init.d/tomcat

Link the start/stop script to the startup folders with a symbolic link.

sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc1.d/K99tomcat
sudo ln -s /etc/init.d/tomcat /etc/rc2.d/S99tomcat

You might also want to put some symbolic links in rc0 and rc6 directories.

Or alternatively let ubuntu create the symbolic links automatically by running this command:

sudo update-rc.d tomcat defaults

which outputs:
update-rc.d: warning: /etc/init.d/tomcat missing LSB information
update-rc.d: see <http://wiki.debian.org/LSBInitScripts>
Adding system startup for /etc/init.d/tomcat ...
   /etc/rc0.d/K20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc1.d/K20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc6.d/K20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc2.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc3.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc4.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat
   /etc/rc5.d/S20tomcat -> ../init.d/tomcat

The difference is that it makes sure tomcat start at each run level however in practical terms if runlevel 2 is reached tomcat will start so run level 3,4 and 5 will be ignored as tomcat would already be running from when run level 2 was reached. The nice thing about this automatic install of symbolic links is that it is easy to add/remove them. Also they add the "stop" script at run level 0 and 6 which should be done!