On my site, i'd like to make some little "sections". For example, I would like to have a section on bash scripting, the section being just a single page that i can put some blocks on (like a block with all my forums related to bash scripting, a custom block with a little search engine in it, stuff like that). The page wouldn't even have to do anything - just be there and have an entry in the main menu so i can put blocks there. Is that what modules like "cjay content" are for? Or is there a better or more efficient way to do this? Thanks.

I'm getting the same thing, and for the life of me can't figure out what it is.

Yeah, you're right. I guess I'll go through the themes I'm planning to use and check with the designers. I try to be really good about it - i always leave their footer links, and link to them in my links and give them credit. I just want to really make sure I don't screw anyone over on accident.

I have a quick question about modifying themes. In general, is it ok to modify the theme graphics? Like modifying them to have the website name and stuff? I'm trying not to step on anyones toes.

Yeah, I would check and make sure it is there, that the permissions are right, and that it was uploaded correctly (i forget which ftp mode, i havn't used ftp in quite awhile).

I am trying to switch theme (to an awesome Xoopstuner theme). The new theme has a dark, black background as opposed to the older themes lighter background. When I switch the themes - the text in the news section (and blocks) is black and cannot be read. Is this something I need to change in the theme itself? Or is it a news template issue? Thanks.

Apparently the "g00ns" have too much time on their hands. Just make yourself a good security policy and backup procedure and stick to it - and log everything. Maybe they'll get in, maybe they won't, but i guarantee one thing: they'll *%$*! off the wrong admin and end up in trouble. No good can come of going around and messing with peoples sites. Oh, and don't acknowledge them too much, that's what they live for. In my experience, they'll try a bunch of windows root kits on your Linux server, puff out their chests and scream "n00b!" for awhile then give up and find an unpatched Windows box somewhere.

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Absolutely, phpMyAdmin is just more or less running that sql command. I try not to use phpMyAdmin, because i'm trying to learn more about SQL statements, but definitely use it if you can - it can save you alot of trouble.

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Right - the files on a CD will be read only, because you can't write to a cd (well, you can, but not like you write to a hard drive). You will probably have to change them when you take them off the CD and put them on your hard drive. This isn't bad though - just a few commands and your done. I usually just use: chmod -R 755 *

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from the top level of your site, the -R makes it recursive, so it will change the permissions of every file underneath. (in your case, you would cd to /opt/lampp/htdocs/ then run it).

then there are the few directories/files that need to be set to other permissions:

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(there may be others, depending on which modules you have installed, but those are the really important ones.)

if you run into problems you think might be related to permissions, just remember that for a script to be run by apache, by default, it cannot be writeable (for security reasons) - so all the php scripts, with the exception of mainfile.php, have to be chmodded to 755 in order to be executed.

hope that helps you out

Ubuntu is awesome, I use regular old Ubuntu myself. I don't know much about Xubuntu itself (i've been using Linux for quite awhile), but i'll assume it's good.

Manually backing up a XOOPS site can be as simple as you want it to be:

First, I always compress the files for my site using the tar command (Apache is setup to serve files from the public_html directory on my server, your mileage may very)

for example, if i had a site called MYSITE, located in the directory /home/MYSITE/public_html/ I would enter:

tar cfvz MYSITE.tar.gz /home/MYSITE/public_html/*

that would create the file MYSITE.tar.gz, which you can copy somewhere (more) secure.

Next, I dump the MySQL database tables. This just takes all the stuff stored in the database and dumps it in a file, so that it can be put back in. Depending on the way MySQL is setup on your machine, you might need to enter the password. This is the command, with the MySQL username being MYUSER, and the database containing the tables for my site is called MYDATABASE:

mysqldump -u MYUSER MYDATABASE > MYDATABASE.sql

This creates the file MYDATABASE.sql - which you should put in the same place as the rest of your backup (the MYSITE.tar.gz from above). **if you need a password in your MySQL setup, the command looks like this:

mysqldump -u MYUSER -p MYDATABASE.sql

That's pretty much it - anything else is just extra to make it either easier, faster, or more secure. Doing this, and sending it to another machine (or burning it to a cd, putting it on a thumbdrive) will keep you pretty safe.

As for how often to backup, I always judge by how often the content on the site changes - you obviously don't need to backup a site once an hour if it only gets 10 posts a day, but if it gets a lot of posts and contains things like development type work, I would backup as much as I possibly could in regards to the system overhead (you don't want your site to be slow because of constant backups.)

*btw - tarring it wouldn't work for a high traffic site, at least not very well, it would be much faster and a ton more efficiant to use the Linux rsync command, but we can cross that bridge when we get to it.

good luck, hope it works out!*/

If it gives http://yoursite.com/user.php gives you a blank page - usually it's because you're already logged in as a user. (i don't have login blocks on some of my pages and it happens to me all the time). if you scroll through your address bar you should be able to find the URL (with user.php) that you use to log out, assuming you've logged out before. Then go to http://yoursite.com/user.php and log in as admin.