Lifelog

Seems like Europe is getting a lot of critique on the management / handling / registration of .eu domain names. Wired news published an article that handles some of these problems

“It was badly handled from start to finish,” said John McCormac, who runs an Irish domain monitoring service and whose blog tracks the .eu controversy.

To make sure my company was able to get the .eu domainname, i tried to register the digitalbase.eu domain name during the sunrise 2 phase , so i used google to find a decent Belgian .eu registrar compared it to the certified registrars on the eurid site, mainly because i knew alot of fake companies were popping up…

After signing up, filling in all datails and paying the bill (about 300 euro’s), i got documents i needed to fill in and send to PriceWaterHouse coopers, and international law firm that was appoined by the .eu to handle the sunrise paperwork. I sent the filled in request 5 days after registering my domainname, on the day the sunrise2 period started. There i made a terrible mistake by not sending it by ‘registered letter’. My registrar told me i had 30 days to make sure my file would reach PWH (price waterhouse coopers), and as i sent it in 5 days after sunrise 2 phase opened, i was pretty sure there wouldn’t be any problem, right ?

After 30 days, i got a message from my registrar saying my application suspended, because the period was over, WTF?
I immidiately called them :

Me : I sent the application form 5 days after i registered my domain with you, i think it should have arrived by now ?
Registrar : I’ve had several complaints the past days, but i can’t help you, as it is PWHC desponsability, i suggest you give em a call ?
Me : Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr……ok

After this phone conversation i was starting to realise it was going to be a terrible job, getting someone to talk to at PriceWaterHouse coopers, but i gave it a try without any luck (i didn’t have a confirmation of sending the application). To make sure i had my domainname, i immidiately pre-registered my domainname with the landrush period, as i had a fast & solid registrar i was the first to register it in landrush…but i still lost my 300euro.

Now i ask myself, this lawfirm appoined by the .eu just has the complete control of what they do with your application ? During the period (after paying 300euro, for a minimal level of service), you do not get informed ONCE that your file still didn’t came through…I did send my letter immidiately, but even if it didn’t came through, for this amount of money you would expect a basic service and/or follow-up concerning your application, but i guess not…

Untill now, the letter didn’t came back, neither did i get a word from PWHC, and i am pretty sure i am not the only….

(@damned) one time, my mom asked me if she copied something, and then unplugged the mouse and plugged it into another computer she could paste it

from bash.org

Alright. 5 reasons why I’m convinced that my penis runs Linux.
1. I can create child processes
2. I can handle multiple users on any platform at once.
3. I’m VERY user friendly.
4. I have incredible uptime.
and 5. When my system load gets too heavy, I end up dumping my core and the system shuts down.

from bash.org

I created this page mostly for myself to have an overview of software i use on my systems.

Allway Sync : This freeware apps allows you to syncronize multiple devices. The app accepts commandline arguments for all your scripting needs. You also have the option to set the syncronisation direction & analyse before you sync. Great app !

Flashfxp : Without a doubt the best FTP/FXP client on the market, this software costs 25$ (see below)

PuTTy : A very good free ssh/telnet client, works like a charm, i tend to use the portaputty release so i can take it wherever i want

Truelaunchbar : Because windows (and kde/gnome) is lacking the ability to create custom root application menu’s, i use this nifty thirth party app to add menu’s to the top & bottom of my screen to have quick access to the common utils/commands. A personal licence costs 19$, and it’s worthy it.
WinSCP : Freeware SFTP and SCP client, i wouldn’t trade it for anything

Xplorer Pro : a very nice explorer replacement, very handy for file management because this application has 2 windows (similar to norton commander), i use the pro version that will cost you EUR 19.95, i couldn’t live without this anymore.

Zend Studio Pro : a PHP IDE that has cvs/svn integration aswell as an advanced debugging system. Best PHP IDE Around
As you already know by reading my blog, i like open-source software, but i also think that good software needs support, and there is no shame in asking money for a nice piece of software. I would like to urge you, if you like to work with the above software, to support the company and buy a licence !

OpenVPN : i use VPN to connect to the office from outside. OpenVPN is a free & very stable client for Windows machines.

Because i’ve read alot of good things about Ubuntu 6.06 TLS (codenamed Dapper Drake), i decided to give it a go this week. After seeing the movies (here, here and here) of the eyecandy (Compiz & XGL) i couldn’t wait to get it up & running to start drooling over my new & shiny laptop. I included some movies so you can see what i am talking about :

[gv data="PNWA1jT-gJ4"][/gv]
[gv data="IWQL56pMUSA"][/gv]
[gv data="qvRx_GCE8GQ"][/gv]

Update: after working with Compiz/XGL for a while, i’ve noticed there are still some major flaws/features missing, the ones i miss the most at this moment are :

• saving state/position/size of a window
• some windows suddenly dissappear without further notice, i can restore em by killing them and starting them again

I’ll post some more thoughts pretty soon…

EDIT : Because i got some negative e-mails, i want to point out (just to be clear), that the flaws in compiz/XGL do not have anything todo with Ubuntu Dapper release itself, i found this debian based distribution very easy to install, flawless and self-explanatory…

As a follow-up to my previous post (Internationalization – seo – mod_rewrite : Part I). If you followed my previous instructions, by now you should be the proud owner of a ‘google sitemaps‘ account and your webhost supports statistics that can tell you when a crawlbot visited your website (or raw logs, if you’re a sherlock holmes type).

Because you are reading this howto, i can conclude you have a website running on a domain or atleast a subdomain. For multi-language systems i prefer using the subdomain to set the language of the user. So if you were using www.mydomain.tld/index.php?lang=en before, you will now be using en.mydomain.tld. For a website with multiple languages that would become :

• www.mydomain.tld : would point to the default language, or will relocate the user based on browser/os/nslookup (whatever you prefer)
• en.mydomain.tld : would point to the website in english
• fr.mydomain.tld : would point to the website in french
• X.mydomain.tld : would point to the website in …

If you are using a subdomain this could be done with en.subdomain.mydomain.tld etc….
This way of working has some advantages :

• users will be able to bookmark directly in their language.
• Search engine optimalisation can be targetted on subdomains seperately
• crawlbots will easily know which language they are crawling (also due to tag)

Step 1 : Set up your nameserver records

Make sure the A records all point to the same adress, i prefer setting a records for all different languages as i do not want to point *.domain.tld to the website (for various reasons). As this is not a dns administration guide, try to find more information in the docs of your dns daemon, but before doing that check if undefined subdomains do not already point to the same ip as your main domain, this could be the case and then no configuration is needed…

You can check this by doing :

 ping mydomain.tld

Compare the result ip adress with a ping to a subdomain :

 ping en.mydomain.tld

If both ip match, you will most probably have the right nameserver configuration already, you can go straight to step 2.

Step 2 : Make sure the webserver catches the subdomain

As i am using apache only at this moment, i will only explain you briefly how to do this in apache, for all other webservers check the documentation. Try to look for the virtualhost directive of your domain in the webserver configuration, by default this will be in /etc/httpd/conf, searching for httpd.conf, apache.conf or apache2.conf will tell you where it’s located…If you split up your virtualhost directives in different files, you are most probably clever enough to find your virtualhost directive, if you didn’t check the bottom of your configation file, there should be something like this :

  ServerName yourdomain
  DocumentRoot "/path/to/your/webroot"
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  
   AllowOverride All
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from All
  

Add a serveralias, so apache knows to catch the subdomains, there are 2 ways of doing this, you can add a ServerAlias for all different languages, or you could add a * alias, so from now on apache will catch all unknown subdomains for this domain.

Option 1 : Catch only the subdomains i want

  ServerName yourdomain
  ServerAlias language1.yourdomain
  ServerAlias language2.yourdomain
  DocumentRoot "/path/to/your/webroot"
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  
   AllowOverride All
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from All
  

Option 2 : Catch all subdomains

  ServerName yourdomain
  ServerAlias *.yourdomain
  DocumentRoot "/path/to/your/webroot"
  DirectoryIndex index.php
  
   AllowOverride All
   Order allow,deny
   Allow from All
  

Save your virtualhost config file, or main webserver configuration file and restart your webserver

 apachectrl -k restart

More information on setting Apache virtualhosts serveralias’es.

You should now be able to see the same website you had before, using the lang.mydomain.tld subdomains, if this is not the case, check your include paths etc….I have to stop this howto for now, we will go the the coding itself in Part III