Fast Track Sites Blog
Upgrade Discount
After much thought and deliberation, we will be discontinuing the free version of all of our applications. This will allow us more time to focus on the Professional versions and give more features to our customers. In the coming days we will be releasing a security update for our applications that build upon the last update and will allow us to pave the way for the future.
As a Thank You gesture to the users of the Free versions of our applications we are offering a 50% discount until the end of March. Simply add the products you wish to buy and enter the code free50 at checkout. We will verify that you currently have the free version installed and we will then send you everything you need to use the professional version of our applications.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for more info on updates and coming discounts!
All Application Update
We have released updated packages for all of our applications that implement a new version checker system and have placed a few fixes to make sure this check and others succeed.
There are 4 main files that need to be uploaded from these packages:
php.ini
index.php
includes/constants.php
includes/functions.php or includes/functions/general.php
If your application contains a functions folder you will use the latter version of file 3. The included php.ini is used to make sure that fopen and associated functions are available to the system as some hosting providers block this by default.
In the coming months we will also be working on bringing our Simply AJAX Forum System up to par with our other applications, expect plenty of new features, an updated administration panel, more AJAX, and some new icons. As we have in the past, current license holders will get an upgrade discount.
Stay tuned to our main site and our Twitter page for more info.
New Updates to Our Applications
We’ve begun the process of revamping our custom applications to make them not only better, but easy to use, and with more features than they have in the past. For all of our applications we are utilizing a new icon set and letting you, the user, customize these with your themesinstead of having to use ours and ours alone. We are also doing code cleanup and small bug fixes in each application and rebuilding our free versions from the professional codebase.
So far the following applications have been updated:
- Fast Track Sites Blogging Technology System
- Fast Track Sites Content Management System
- Fast Track Sites Serial Number Tracker System
- Fast Track Sites Trouble Ticket System
That leaves only the following applications:
- Fast Track Sites Client Management System
- Fast Track Sites Simply AJAX Forum System
We are also now offering modules for our applications starting with modules for our Fast Track Sites Blogging Technology System.
For our current clients we are offering discounts on our applications as a way to say “Thank you for your conftinued support!”. For more information please contact a representative today.
An Error You Never Want to See
If you’ve ever used Norton you know the woes of subscription, whenever we see someone having to subscribe to these types of services we always recommend AVG Antivirus from Grisoft.
Image from: http://www.b3ta.com/board/7320069
Feisty Review
April marked the month of the newest release of Ubuntu: Ubuntu 7.04 Feisty Fawn. Read the following review to see how stable the system is and how easy upgrading from the extremely stable Dapper Drake release is.
Our Setup:
For our setup we have 3 year old computer running on the following specs.
PC Specs
Ubuntu Dapper Drake
Abit IC-7G Motherboard
Intel Celereon 2.6 GHz Processor
512MB DDR SDRAM
160GB Western Digital Harddrive
LG DVD-ROM Drive
LG CD-RW Drive
nVidia MX440 Graphics Card
Other Hardware:
HP Photosmart Printer
Logitech LX710 Laser Mouse and Keyboard
USB Thumbdrives
Programs We’ll Use:
Envy
Overview and Upgrade:
This review is going to be over upgrading my main computer, i’ve been working on a replacement but since thats noot finished and Dapper is over a year old i decided id test the upgrade. Edgy had given really bad issues with this pc before and a total reinstall became necessary back then, so i was a little on edge about the upgrade.
Before i began the process i made sure i had backups of everything i would need in case of data loss and then fired off the first command:
gksu “update-manager -c ”
Sure enough i was able to click and begin the upgrade to Feisty. After several screens i got a few errors about broken packages and the installer stopped from here i edited my /etc/apt/sources.list and changed all my dapper entries to feisty and ran the following:
sudo apt-get -f install sudo apt-get dist-upgrade
I had to do this several times to get it working right, finally after a restart i had a new kernel and some new errors, seemed like my system had hit edgy then feisty and one of my new kernels wasn’t working properly. After fixing my sources.list, running the above commands a few more times, installing the nVidia drivers using envy, and changing to the new usplash(the custom one i had wasnt working) i had most of my applications working.
Problems:
Other than some boot up errors that were fixed by removing a flash drive on booting, i only have a few complaints, but also a few congrats as well.
My thumbdrive always automounted as usbdisk, in feisty this gets changed to disk. If you try and change the mount point, the drive no longer automounts and you then have to manually mount it, remove the custom mount point, and then unmount it, and replug it in. Apparently if you change the label the drive will mount with that name though.
Something nice but irritating is that Feisty tries to repair or add broken menu items. I had to manually make a kasablanca menu item in the past, when i upgraded, Feisty threw in its own instead of replacing the one that was there. There are both positive and negative sides that could be argued, but hey its just a heads up.
The overall Experience:
The actual upgrade wasn’t as bad as it seemed, no life threatening errors, no bricked system(the new .20 gave me a scare though), and completely stable in the end. There are several nice new features in feisty. The ability to add desktop effects is nice, my systems kind of buggy with it, but its nice that its there. There’s also a tomboy sticky note replacement that is nice, as well as several new programs.
All in all the new release is extremely stable and extremely great, its also very fault tolerant as i found out. Thumbs up to the Ubuntu team for a great and timely release!
FTSBTS Update 1.07.04.27
Today an upgrade for the pro edition of the Fast Track Sites Blogging Technology System has been released. This update fixes the list options for the bbcode section, and also adds lightbox support.
Usage:
[lightbox=path/to/big/image]path/to/small/image[/lightbox]
[list]
[item]Text[/item]
[item]Text[/item]
[/list]
[olist]
[item]Text[/item]
[item]Text[/item]
[/olist]
Guaranteed Painting Website Finished
We usually don’t blog about our finished websites, but i think it’s time we started. I’m really proud of the way the final website turned out.
History behind the Site:
The Guaranteed Painting website marks a sectioning off of the original Guaranteed Resurfacing website. The website has a lot of colors and a few new features such as a image gallery with easy uploading capabilities, a different style of counter, and is built to allow easy upgrades. We’ve also added a blog system and integrated it into the website.
If you’re looking for a great paint job, or need your kitchen or bathroom refinished, check out Guaranteed Painting and Resurfacing.
Ubuntu DST Changes
This year marks the start of the new Daylight Savings Time standards set in place by congress. Everyone seems to be scrambling around to get every PC, router, switch, phone, and any other piece of hardware that keeps time updated.
Below are the instructions on how to accomplish this on Ubuntu.
Open up a terminal window or go to tty1 and enter the following command:
sudo zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
Youll see 4 lines being returned, if they match the lines below than youre ok:
/etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 07:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 01:59:59 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600 /etc/localtime Sun Mar 11 08:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Mar 11 03:00:00 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000 /etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 06:59:59 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:59:59 2007 CDT isdst=1 gmtoff=-18000 /etc/localtime Sun Nov 4 07:00:00 2007 UTC = Sun Nov 4 01:00:00 2007 CST isdst=0 gmtoff=-21600
If your lines dont match then youll need to following the following steps:
1. Open up terminal or switch to tty1(youll need to login)
2. cd /tmp
3. ftp elsie.nci.nih.gov
user: anonymous
pass: you@you.com –Substitute the _(at)_ for @
4. cd pub
5. ls
6. use ‘get’ to get the latest tzdata file like so:
get tzdata2007a.tar.gz
7. quit
8. mkdir tzdata
9. mv tzdata*.gz tzdata/.
10. cd tzdata
11. tar xzvf *.gz
12. sudo cp /etc/localtime /etc/localtime.LAST
13. sudo rm /etc/localtime
14. sudo zic northamerica
15. sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/EST5EDT /etc/localtime
16. sudo zdump -v /etc/localtime | grep 2007
You should now show the correct lines from above.
Info from: Ubuntu Forums
A Journey Into Python and Glade: Inventory Management Program
The last couple of weeks Ive been busy learning python, and i thought that id share my experience. So far i have to say that i really like it, the documentation can sometimes be lacking, but the ease of use in creating a GUI is one of the best that i have ever seen/endured.
With just a few minutes i had the GUI looking how i wanted it, it was also easy to make changes if i needed to. The next part, and also the hardest, was to write the code. Theres actually an excellent site to get most people started: http://www.learningpython.com
The site has many in depth tutorials, the code really helped me be able to code this program. They cover working with several of the widgets in Glade. Anyways back to the story.
The Background:
To learn Python, I wanted to make a program to manage my company’s inventory, it didnt need to be too complicated, i could always add to it later, but it needed to at least track the following information:
Name
Serial Number
Description
Type
Quanity
Later on i plan on adding an option for pictures, but for now this is usuable. It also needed to be easy to use so that anyone can open the program and run with it, we also needed the ability to save(duh) and open(duh again), and create dynamic types that could be chosen from a dropdown box.
After many days of coding, heres what I’ve come up with:
The program is licensed under the GPL, so please make sure that if you use this program you do it right. Links back to me and LearningPython would definately be appreciated. Comments and questions are always appreciated as well.
Installation:
Extract the files to any directory
From terminal run “python pyitem.py”
Enjoy!
Download:
You can get the entire program(which is the source code) from the link below:
Download
Easy Server Maker
Easy Server Maker is designed to install the programs needed to make a computer a server. With a few clicks your webserver will be up and running.
Currently it only installs web servers but in the future i plan to make it support others as well.
Current Configurations Available:
PHP4 LAMP
PHP5 LAMP
Special Thanks To:
The Easy Ubuntu team – thanks guys for all your hand work, without you i couldnt create my fork.
Installation:
Please download the file and run it like so:
sudo dpkg -i easyservermaker.deb
