Roboform Rocks - The Best Password Web Form Filler Software

Roboform’s got to be one of the most frequently used software on my system. I love it because it saves me soooo much time! I discovered Roboform accidentally after seeing my friend using it. And after giving it a shot myself, I’ve even upgraded to the Pro version!

But why is it so useful? Because what used to be so stressful and take loads of work and effort now becomes effortlessly! Roboform helps me to fill up any forms that I come across instantly with my data — so registrations for any new sites is so simple and quick!

Have you ever come across those lengthy registration forms and thought to yourself — “not again!”? Well, Roboform fills in forms with just one click!

Roboform’s also a great way to protect yourself from keyloggers, especially if you’re more susceptible to them. How it does this is simple — keyloggers log your keystrokes right? But Roboform allows you to login to website with just one click of your mouse button, so there AREN’T any keystrokes to log.

With its password management features, Roboform also allows me to store all my usernames and passwords in one handy place — so I just need to remember one master password to access all of my other different passwords. Also, whenever I come across a login box, Roboform actually knows the different profiles to that site — so I can login to both my Hotmail accounts with Roboform by choosing the correct account that I want from the handy list that Roboform gives!

I have so many usernames and passwords, and sometimes some places even have an account number instead. I would have gone crazy already if it weren’t for Roboform.

And don’t even think about the inbuilt password managers in your browsers. They can’t compare to Roboform in terms of ease-of-use, convenience, security and ease-of-backup!

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Simple Machine Forums (SMF) Photo Gallery Installation and Setup

Been playing around with Simple Machine Forums (SMF) — it’s a cool forum software that’s robust and well-supported by an active online community.

For those who are unaware of this software, SMF is a free open-source forum application that can be installed on web servers. In contrast to paid software such as vBulletin and Invision Forums, SMF is available for free.

I didn’t want to shell out any money for vBulletin, so this will suffice. If it grows, I might have to migrate the forum to vBulletin though. Each vBulletin license is USD $160, but well worth it — it’s the holy grail of forums!

Summary of New SMF Features:

* * Database abstraction - with support for PostgreSQL and SQLite planned alongside that of MySQL.
* * Automatic installation of packages into themes other than just the default.
* * Email templates to simplify customization of forum emails.
* * Moderation center including post, topic and attachment moderation - to allow approving of user content before it is made public.
* * User warning system.
* * Additional group functionally including group moderators and requestable/free assignable groups.
* * WYSIWYG editor to provide an intuitive user interface to those users not familiar with BBC.
* * Permission improvements such as group inheritance and permission profiles to further reduce the complexity of the permissions system.
* * File based caching for a performance increase on all forums regardless of whether an accelerator is installed.
* * Mail queuing system to stagger the sending of emails to improve performance on large forums.
* * Advanced signature settings to allow the administrator of a forum to more tightly control the contents of users signatures.
* * Personal messaging improvements including ability to automatically sort incoming messages and a variety of display options.
* * Improved upgrade script with better timeout protection and simpler user interface.
* * Custom profile fields to enable administrators to add additional member fields from the administration center.
* * User configurable posts and topics per page; an improved calendar interface.
* * Option to allow guests to vote in polls.

Installing SMF

Installation of SMF is a breeze! I only had to make sure that I had a database created, but other than that, SMF’s installation wizard guides you through everything, and tries to fill in whatever it can find out first. Pretty nifty!

Installing a Custom SMF Theme

SMF supports custom themes, and there’s a whole bunch of themes available at the SMF Theme Site, all for free! I found some that I really liked there, and installed them.

Installation of SMF themes is fairly straightforward. You’ll need to upload your theme files to the SMF themes directory, and then install them using the link in your Admin panel. After which, you have to remember to reset your forum’s default theme to that if you’re only planning to have one look for your forum.

Installing SMF Photo Gallery

I got the lite version of SMF Gallery and installed it. Installation of a SMF package (or SMF mod) is not that straightforward because packages only install to the default SMF theme. I installed a custom theme, so I had to manually create the link to the photo gallery.

This means that you need to edit the custom theme’s index.template.php file. To get to that, go to your Admin menu, click on Configuration >> Themes and Layout >> Modify Themes.

Then look for this line of code:

// the [member] list button

Found it? Mine was in the code block beginning from line 463. You’ll find a small chunk of code following that line, and right after that, paste the following code, and you should now see a link that says “Gallery” on your forum!

// the [SMF Gallery] button
if ($context['allow_smfgallery_view'])
echo'<td align="center" class="maintab_' , $current_action == 'gallery' ? '2' : " , '">
' , $txt['smfgallery_menu'] , '
</td>';

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New Firefox 3 Beta 1 Version Released!

Firefox 3 Beta 1 is a developer preview release of Mozilla’s next generation Firefox browser and is being made available for testing purposes only.. Firefox 3 Beta 1 is based on the new Gecko 1.9 Web rendering platform, which has been under development for the past 27 months and includes nearly 2 million lines of code changes, fixing more than 11,000 issues. Gecko 1.9 includes some major re-architecting for performance, stability, correctness, and code simplification and sustainability.

Firefox 3 has been built on top of this new platform resulting in a more secure, easier to use, more personal product with a lot under the hood to offer website and Firefox add-on developers. The latest version, 3 beta 1, adds one-click security info, improved malware protection, easier password management, a new star button for easier bookmarking, and a variety of other new features.

Download the latest Firefox 3 Beta 1 here!

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The Increasingly Connected World - The Power of Mobile Technology

I’m going to make a prediction - just like how the mobile phone has penetrated our lives, the laptop is going to do so as well.

Make no mistake about it - all the signs are there - people are going to get connected. With mobile broadband getting cheaper as well, and free wireless hotspots popping up all over the place, you’re going to see people opening up their laptops everywhere you go.

With this trend, gone will be the days where people walk aimlessly around the place, or sit around watching life go by. People are going to start doing work anywhere and everywhere they go. If you thought that life got busier; if you thought that the line between work-life and leisure-time got fuzzy; then you will need to adapt quickly, because all that is only going to get even more pronounced. Heck, even this post is typed out while I’m on my commute back home, and I’m not the only one of the bus using a laptop.

New social networks like Facebook will emerge, only that they’ll incorporate a strong use of mobile technology - finding out where you are, and where your friends are. With everyone “on the grid” all the time, you’ll start to see people with increasingly powerful smart phones as well, and a spike in location-based services.

How cool would it be to have your friends (all pre-approved, of course) able to tell your current location? You’d be able to discover who’s in the area. Parents will also be wanting to use this service to keep track of their children. Give their children a mobile phone, and they’ll never be out of touch - every parent would want to do so.

Miss someone? Wish someone was by yourside? With mobile wireless broadband, it’s so easy to talk to another person over the Internet through your laptop. You can even make a video call, or hold a video conference, and not just converse, but be able to see the opposite parties as well. Just how far away can you be, if you can open up your laptop, and instantly be connected with your loved ones, seeing them just like how you would in person.

Technology Trends:
1. Cheaper, even free mobile broadband so you’ll always be connected.
2. Proliferation of cheaper, and better performance laptops and smart phones.
3. Increasing lifespan of batteries. Think of day-long laptop battery life, so that chargers need not be carried around anymore.

I believe it will take as fast as 8-10 years to see all this well-established and in place, and it would be something that I’d look forward to seeing.

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Free ZenCart Templates / ZenCart Themes / Zen Cart Skins

If you’re thinking of creating an online ecommerce store, then you’ve probably seen the exorbitant prices that web design firms charge for creating a customised ecommerce shopping cart system.

Well, the good news is that there are really powerful open-source (read: free) software available that can do a good job. That’s right - not just cheap, but really free. ZenCart’s a great example of a free ecommerce store - it’s a customised branch of the popular osCommerce shopping cart software. There are thousands of successful live ZenCart stores, so it’s a proven, reliable shopping cart - one of the best you can get for that price!

The only trouble you have when you’re dealing with open-source software like ZenCart is the fact that the default template’s really ugly - functional no doubt, but it really shouldn’t be used for your live ecommerce store.

So you will need templates - nice looking templates that lend your ecommerce store some measure of credibility, so that your potential customers will actually become your customers. Now if you’re interested, TemplateMonster has some really nice templates. Problem is, the templates cost around USD $150.

The alternative is free ZenCart templates. However, they aren’t that common, and they’re pretty hard to find. I’ve been sourcing around for free ZenCart templates, and I’ve put all the templates that I found into a list of free ZenCart templates below. Enjoy!

Free ZenCart Templates

1. Apple Zen - Demo | Download
2. Cherry Zen - Demo | Download
3. Clean Business - Demo | Download
4. Red Passion - Demo | Download
5. Virtual Shop - Demo | Download
6. Mihluna - Demo | Download
7. Zencart Zen - Demo | Download
8. Pretty in Pink - Demo | Download
9. Acadame - Demo | Download
10. Atheme- Demo | Download
11. Clothing Shop - Demo | Download
12. Darkness - Demo | Download
13. Amplify - Demo | Download
14. Free Yellow, Free Red, Free Blue - Demo | Download

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Recursively Download Folders using FTP with wget in UNIX (even SSH)

Okay, so you don’t have SSH access to your server, but you do have FTP access to it, and you need *all* the files in a folder.

Worse, your directory structure is many levels deep, and extremely messy. Normal FTP won’t cut it, because command-line FTP doesn’t do recursive downloading of folders. Turning off interactive mode and using mget doesn’t work too.

The easiest solution? Use wget to recursively download folders using FTP. Here’s the wget command:

wget -r ftp://username:password@yourftphostname.com/directory1/directory2/

You can replace yourftphostname.com with an IP too. So with wget, and the -r flag (for Recursive) that’s all that you need to recursively download folders using FTP. Took me a while to figure that out, but what a relief when I finally discovered how to

wget -r -c ftp://username:password@yourftphostname.com/directory1/directory2/

And if you happen to get disconnected, don’t fret, because wget has the -c flag too, which probably stands for Continue. This useful wget flag actually provides a resume function, which is very handy when you are transferring large files!

(Of course you really shouldn’t be running plain old insecure ftp when sftp is available…)

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Checking your website speed

It’s interesting to know that even though the Internet is all one big connected web of sites, not everyone sees the same thing. For example, based on your location, Google directs you to a Google datacenter nearest to where you are, and the results that you get may be different from someone else living elsewhere in the world.

In addition, one other factor that location has is speed. So if a website is hosted in a datacenter in Singapore and a visitor from the US visits it, that visitor’s going to experience a slightly slower speed than someone in Singapore.

So I dug up a few free online tools that allow you to check your website speed. Some show you what speeds your website have from North America and South America, while some have a more international network.

http://www.hostpulse.com/hosting/networktools/internet-speed-test.asp

http://www.vertain.com/?sst

http://www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze/

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