Free Tools · Dominic Foster

How To Set Up Subversion On Dreamhost

March 2, 2007 on 7:51 am | In Free Tools, Software, Tools | 1 Comment

If you want to set up a great the great open source version control software, Subversion, on your favourite webhosting company, DreamHost, then this post is for you.

I have been wanting to set up an online version control system for everything that I am working on for some time but had always shied away thinking that it was too hard to sort out (read: I’m lazy).

I thought that my hosting company DreamHost had a ‘One Click Install’ of this, but whenever I checked the install page I could never see it, so continued to trawl the net for a tutorial that would make setting it up manually seem easier than it would ever be.

Subversion picture However, yesterday, I noticed that Subversion has a page all to itself in the DreamHost ‘Goodies’ menu!

So I clicked on the link and there is a page which makes it look easy as to install it and get it working.

So here is what I did:

Created a new subdomain on the domain where I wanted to install Subversion. I’m not sure if it would work by installing it into a directory in a domain that is also a website. Maybe it would and maybe it would take a whole load more configuring and maybe it would stuff up your website an corrupt your repository … so when you don’t need to pay anything extra for as many subdomains (or domains) as you want, then you may as well create a dedicated subdomain and save yourself the grief.
Wait for the subdomain to propagate. If you install when the subdomain is created but not properly propagated then you run the risk of creating a dodgy repository. It took about 4 hours for the subdomain to propagate.
Install Subversion:
1. Go to the Subversion page in the Goodies tab (pictured).
2. Choose a Project Name - e.g. “My Subversion Project”.
3. Choose a Project ID. This must be alpha-numeric (no spaces etc..). Just use something descriptive that will identify the project - e.g. “mysubversionproject”.
4. Select the URL you want to install it into from the drop-down list. The URL will be the subdomain that you created. You will notice that the text box next to the drop-down list is filled with the same text as your project ID. Change it if you must, but I wouldn’t bother.
5. Add you usernames and passwords in the format - 1 user per line:
  username password
  username password
  username password
6. Select to make it private or public.
7. Click the “Create my new project repository now” button.
You’re good to go!

Now, if like me, you are planning on developing on you workstation and you hate using SSH to administer website stuff, then you will want to use Tortoise SVN. This gives you a Windows GUI application to work with your subversion repository. It will embed itself into windows explorer and give you ‘right click’ functionality for your working folders and files.

Each time you perform an action with Tortoise, you will need to supply you username and password that you gave for your Subversion install. You can select for this to be saved by Tortoise so that you don’t have to keep typing it in.

Now I can develop on my workstation and pull the code down to my laptop when I’m working in Starbucks! Also, all my client work can be rolled back easily when the client decides that they don’t actually want the feature that they screamed and shouted for anymore. No more unpicking code of reverting to backup up copies.

Performancing Metrics

April 5, 2006 on 10:42 am | In Free Tools, Geek, Tools | No Comments

I’m now using Performancing Metrics for this blogs stats.

When I first read about Performancing Metrics, I was not convinced that it would be of any value to me. However, I managed to brush aside this initial assumption and actually had a look at what it offered.

The first thing that I liked was it’s no-fuss interface. A very pleasant Web2.0 style look to it, with simple navigation and easy to read graphs.

Next, it is really simple to install. Using the easy interface, you add your blog and then copy and paste the code it spits out into the the selected blogs footer. A logo is optional and you can copy and paste this code too.

Now I can check all my blogs stats from one central location using a simple tool.

And finaly, you get all this for free!

From now on I’m going to make the effort to look into the recommendations that are made on websites that I regularly read and respect. I wouldn’t want to miss something like this again.

Technorati Tags: performancing, performancing+metrics, stats

Website Marketing with WP-Noteable Plugin

March 23, 2006 on 9:23 am | In Entrepreneur, Free Tools, Tools, Wordpress Plugin | 3 Comments

Today I wrote about Public Relations (PR) For Your Website as part of my Blog Boost effort as part of my activity with LinkedIn Bloggers for a blog called Conversation Blog by Philippe Borremans.

If you go off and read the post mentioned above, you will notice that points 4 and 5 discuss the use of News Content Sites and Social Bookmarking sites as a way of marketing and promoting your website.

Now, if you look at the end of this post, you will notice there are a number of buttons which link this post (or which ever you are reading here at Accidental Entrepreneur) with a number of these types of websites - and I won’t be shy in coming forward and explaining that the reason they are there is hoping that there is a statistical possibility that some of my readers will click on these buttons to bookmark posts that they like or even submit them to news websites. This in turn will influence readers of these peoples bookmarks or new submission into visiting my blog and becoming a subscriber.

The buttons themselves are placed there courtesy of the brilliant WP-Noteable Plugin by Cal Evans. This plugin comes with all the images and has full configuration via a settings page int the options tab of Wordpress.

Up until now, I had only bookmarked a couple of my posts at deli.cio.us, but they are good for at least 2-3 visits a day, which even though a small number, shows that bigger things are possible.

So this got me to paying some closer attention to each of the buttons that appeared for the Public Relations (PR) For Your Website post and I thought I would document my findings for anyone who like me (until today) are relatively clueless about these opportunities.

- deli.cio.us - Possibly the most popular social bookmarking website there is. Register as a user and add links to web pages you like (your own for instance). Tag these links so that you can see what other people are linking to in the same category - and visit the pages that they like. Each link shows how many people link to that page and popular pages can get onto the front page and get loads of visits.

-Digg - Register as a user and submit web pages that you find interesting. Other Digg users vote on the stories and popular strories will make the front page. If you are lucky, your website makes the front page and you get heaps of visits. Then, if you are unlucky, your websites server shitakes itself from visitor overload and crashes and your webhosting company threaten to shut your site down for hogging bandwidth, CPU time, ect.

- Spurl - Social bookmarking webiste. Sign up and post your bookmarks. The front page has popular and most recent bookmarks as well as ‘what was bookmarked a year ago’ section.

- Wists - Looks like you need to create a login for this one. Has facilities to view latest and most populat items as well as links to yourself.

- Simpy - Another social bookmarking site. Looks like it has a lot of features apart from the usual bookmark-tag-share. Has sections with new users, most active users, recent posts, most popular posts. Also has and API so you can build spiffy integrations with your websie.

- Newsvine - A news content site where you can ’seed’ a news story. News appears on the front page in all sorts of categories from world to sports to entertainment to odd news. Once news is ’seeded’ readers vote on the story and this determines its importance and thus its order on the list of news. Like digg, it your website gets to the front page, expect lots of visitors.

- Blinklist - Social bookmarking site with the usual suspects - bookmark-tag-share. The front page lists popular tags, recent bookmarks and hot bookmarks.

- Furl - A popular social bookmarking website that provides a personal archive of 5MB to store snapshots of pages that you bookmark. Also has a Firefox pluging.

- reddit - A news submission and voting type website. Submit stories and vote on stories to send them to the front page. Appears to be a little more light hearted than Digg and Newsvine. They say you can submit your own stories, which from what I’ve gathered, is frowned upon by Digg and Newsvine and their respective users.

-Fark - A funny news website that lists oddities and funny stuff. News stories are posted and users comment on them.

- Blogmarks - Social bookmarking site - bookmark-tag-share theme.

- MyWeb2 - Yahoo’s offering in the social bookmarking sphere. Much like the rest.

- Smarking - More social bookmarking.

I can see that the descriptions of the social bookmarking sites appear to get rather terse towards the end. Please don’t take this that I think they are no good. It’s just that I could not think of anything new to say about them that I had not said about the ones closer to the top. It’s probably a good idea to visit them for yourself and discover each ones unique features.

As and experiment I submitted my Public Relations (PR) For Your Website post to each of the above to see how it affected my traffic.

However I didn’t submit to Digg of Newsvine for fear of backlash from their users for submitting my own content. However, in the interests of experimentation, feel free to submit them yourselves.