Now that I’ve had the chance to test Wordpress 3 with its new multi-site feature (formerly WordPress MU), I’m happy to start the integration process. Over the next week or so, I’m going to move my other blog here.

This will allow me to upgrade both my blogs at the same time. This goes for the plugins and themes too, which is cool.

So, to all my German readers, stay tuned.

What I was trying to achieve is:
Make example.com available as a domain on my local Windows PC using XAMPP. Why example.com you ask?
The answer is given in the above mentioned tutorial:

Example.com [or example.org, example.net] is a special domain as defined in RFC 2606 used for, you guessed it, examples. These domains will never be available to the public, so there’s no need to worry about not being able to access the actual site in the future.

So it’s perfect for our purposes.

Foolish assumptions

• I am assuming that you installed XAMPP on your Windows PC and that you installed it in c:\xampp
• I am assuming that your local IP address is 192.168.2.102 – it most certainly isn’t, but mine is. Please change the code I will give you accordingly. If you don’t know how, what your local IP is, here’s how to find it: Press and hold the Windows key and press R. You will see a new little promt thing. Type: cmd
  Then you will see a black DOS command promt. Enter: ipconfig
  This will give you a list of network connections. Chances are, there’s only one. Look for the line starting: IPv4-Addres. The number that comes after this is your local static IP address. If you have more than one Ethernet Adapter showing up there, try each one.

What we need to point example.com to our XAMPP is, we need to set up a so called Virtual Host. Now, it’s REALLY important for you to understand exactly, what a Virtual Host is and how it works! Nah, just yanking your chain.
It’s beyond the scope of this little article, but if you want to find out what a Virtual Host is exactly, click here.

Step 1

Open the file httpd.conf in your favorite text editor. If you installed XAMPP in c:\xampp then it’s located at: C:\xampp\apache\conf

Scroll aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaall the way down.

Now, copy and paste this code at the end of the file:

<VirtualHost 192.168.2.102:80>
ServerName example.com
UseCanonicalName Off
DocumentRoot C:/xampp/htdocs
</VirtualHost>

Now remember: change 192.168.2.102 to YOUR local IP address. The :80 after the IP address must remain there. And if you didn’t install XAMPP in c:\xampp, then change C:/xampp/htdocs to the correct setting!

Now save the file and close it.

Step 2

If you are using Windows XP, open up the Notepad program. If you are using Vista or Windows 7, you need to open it with Administrator privileges. If you don’t know how to do that, here’s how:

Open Notepad with Administrative privileges by clicking Start, All Programs, Accessories, and then right-click Notepad and select to open as Administrator.

In Notepad, click File, then Open. Or hit Ctrl+O

Go to this folder:

C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc

Can’t see anything? Not to worry. Notepad only displays text files by default, so we need to tell stupid Notepad to show ALL the files. At the bottom right corner, you’ll see a little dropdown menu that has “Text files (*.txt)” in it. Click that and set it to “All files”. And voilá!

Now open the file called hosts.

Scroll down to the bottom and enter this code:

192.168.2.102            example.com
192.168.2.102            www.example.com

Obviously, again, you must change 192.168.2.102 to your own local IP.

Then save the file and close Notepad.

Now, restart Apache, then enter www.example.com in your browser and watch the magic happen.

If you don’t know how to restart Apache, just restart your PC.

In other news, I have decided to stop using my Firefox bookmarks for storing all the many (links to) tutorials that I’ve read or want to read (again). Instead I will use my blog with the Web Directory plugin. It’s built on the links feature in Wordpress and it’s very easy to use. So here’s the tutorials page.

I’ll probably make a few adjustments as I go along, but hopefully this is the look that my site will keep for a while. Knowing how fickle I can be about these things though… Oh well, we’ll see.

So, for posterity: at the time of this writing, this website looked like this:

PS: From now on, all the English blog entries I would have put on paulvoth.net will now be posted here. I will keep paulvoth.net for my German blog entries. I keep running into problems with multi-lingual blogs and I think I’ll lay off that for a while.

So for my faithful English speaking readers: from now on you won’t need to know der, die, das to understand my blog.

I’ve never worked with theme frameworks before, so it’s interesting to try this. It’s not actually less work – only the work is a lot more pleasant. Once I’ve gotten to know the framework, I’m sure the amount of looking/adjusting time will be reduced greatly.

What I’m REALLY struggling with at the moment is finding the right music to work to. I always have music running while I’m working, but it has to be just right. Not too boring and not too attention-grabbing. Music that is so good that it doesn’t have to be all in your face. It’s perfectly happy to just stay in the background because it just knows it has class and style and doesn’t feel the need to convince anyone of it.

If you have any recommendations, let me know here or via Twitter (@BeenTold).

I’m still in the process of transfering all my (and my clients’) websites to two servers in the USA. One is a managed VPS and one is an unmanaged Dedicated Server. And I just want to let people know how happy I am with the two companies involved.

I’m using Servint for VPS and they have been outstanding. Very helpful, competent and fast!

As for my dedicated server, I’m using InterServer and they are MAGIC. I had a problem that turned out to be a little kernel issue. One of those things that a lot of hosts like to say “can’t see anything wrong on our side” about. Not InterServer. I submitted a ticked – just saying that the server was slower than usual.

Within 3 minutes (!) I had an answer from support. They said, it was a little kernel issue and they were recompiling a new version at the moment.

I have to say, this is by far the best customer service I have ever seen anywhere.

So if you are looking for a host, click one of the banners below. Also, have a look at Webhostingtalk.com and check on the customer reviews there – all positive.

PS:
Yes, I realize this sounds like a sales pitch – and it kind of is. I’m “advertising” the fact that I’ve found two awesome hosts. And I hope that I’ll be able to save a few people a headache or two.

However, I have finally gotten around to creating a little mascot for this website. His name is Drummy (how original, I know) and he’s a friendly little fella.

Having a regular job really sucks sometimes. Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up a little this weekend. Especially with this website, as it is getting quite  a bit of traffic and has virtually no content yet.

So please bear with me, I will definitely get to this.

If you are looking for the Drummy Random Image Script – that is coming ASAP. I have already received some e-mails about it and I want you guys to know I’m on it. Coming really as soon as I have the time. This weekend hopefully.

Update September 19, 2009:

Good news everyone (Futurama rules ) – Drummy’s Random Image Script wizard is back online!

Use the wizard to generate a random image script for your website, forum, myspace page, whatever. All you need is the URLs of the images you want to use and the wizard.

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I’m really looking forward to making buttons for vBulletin 4 though, when it’s out. Because I have read somewhere that the buttons won’t be all graphics anymore. The actual button will be a graphic, but the text on it will be just normal text. So the button image will be used as a background for the text. It’s really neat!

That should make the process of creating those buttons a lot faster and easier..

Well, be that as it may – here’s the Sweet Blue vBulletin 3.x Button Set.