Ever heard of HiveMail? We’ll it’s a program which lets you run your own email server and provide your users with email addresses on your domain. This program uses PHP and MySQL to manage emails.

It’s a bit complicated to install, but once you get is installed, it runs smoothly.

There’s a pretty complete guide provided which explains how to install the whole thing.

I bought this program a while back and tried to install it on a domain for test.

After following the detailed steps in the guide, the Fata error I got was:

Fatal error: Cannot redeclare hash_update() in /home/*****/public_html/****/hivemail/includes/functions.php on line 58

Well, after a lot of research, the last solution was to comment out the whole “hash_update()” function in the “functions.php” file.

To comment out this function, just open the “functions.php” file which is located in “includes” folder under Hivemail root, and find : function hash_update(… and add double slashes ” // ” on the begining of each line of the function.

That solves this error and you can continue the installation.

After having installed the program, I used the PIPE method for the email gateway and everything seemed to be OK.

But when I tried to send emails to my hivemail address; the emails were getting bounced back. and the message said:

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

pipe to |/home/****/hivemail_process.php
generated by administrator@MyDomain.com
local delivery failed

The following text was generated during the delivery attempt:

—— pipe to |/home/****/hivemail_process.php
generated by administrator@MyDomain.com ——

Error in argument 1, char 3: option not found
Usage: php [-q] [-h] [-s] [-v] [-i] [-f <file>]
php <file> [args...]
-a              Run interactively
-C              Do not chdir to the script’s directory
-c <path>|<file> Look for php.ini file in this directory
-n              No php.ini file will be used
-d foo[=bar]    Define INI entry foo with value ‘bar’
-e              Generate extended information for debugger/profiler
-f <file>        Parse <file>.  Implies `-q’
-h              This help
-i              PHP information
-l              Syntax check only (lint)
-m              Show compiled in modules
-q              Quiet-mode.  Suppress HTTP Header output.
-s              Display colour syntax highlighted source.
-v              Version number
-w              Display source with stripped comments and whitespace.
-z <file>        Load Zend extension <file>.

—— This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ——

I could send emails FROM the hivemail program, but I was not able to recieve any mails.

After Googling a while, here’s the solution I found, and IT WORKS!!

on hivemail install guide it says:
“Next, you will need to set the default address for your domain, so
all email not sent to known POP3 accounts is routed to HiveMail?. To
do this, login to cPanel and click the ‘Mail’ link from the main
page. Click ‘Default Address’ on the resulting page. Then click ‘Set
Default Address’.
On the next page, choose the domain that you wish to route HiveMail?
emails from. (Usually, you will want to set this to yourdomain.com,
unless you are planning to offer email@subdomain.yourdomain.com or
something similar.)
Type a pipe (the | character) followed by the to the
hivemail_process.php file that you uploaded above, so it looks
similar to this:
|/home/mysite/hivemail_process.php”)

but in fact you need to do |/usr/bin/php -q /path/to/your/hivemail_process.php

So, after installing, you may want to add some skins, to do so; create a “skins” folder inside you hivemail installation root and upload each skin’s folder there, and in the admin control panel, go to skin manager and import the “.skn” file.

That’s all about how to install and run HiveMail. If you need more information, don’t hesitate to post in the comments.

More is available on www.Hive2.com

In the previous tutorial we talk about designing a wordpress template and some point to keep in mind while designing. We talked about a website being User-Friendly, Search Engine Optimized, Fast to load and Monetized. Let’s continue:

Multi-Browser, Multi-Platform Compatibility:

A well made website is a website that is showing well in different types of browsers, i.e. when you open it in Firefox, it should look as well as it might look in Opera or Internet Explorer; this is a Multi-Browser compatible site.

A website that can adapt its look and functionalities to the platform it is visited from is a multi-platform website. As example, if you browse Gibni from your mobile device, you’ll get a page that is adapted for the device you’re using, and not the full version you get on your PC’s (or MAC’s) browser! That makes is just EASIER for you to access Gibni from a mobile device and navigate easily on it.

When designing a website you should ALWAYS keep these aspects in mind.

Sometimes this might be the most difficult part of designing a website as different browsers have different behaviours with the same code!

The look, The Design:

The look of your website, makes it unique, so use your creativity and search around for good designs to get new ideas, mix and remix them, and find a good design to make for your website. We’ll discuss this topic in a seperate post as it takes time and is a special topic.

Currentl Gibni’s look is a unique design made from my imagination and mixing other unique ideas together. The upcoming release is a different design, but still UNIQUE!

Tools and Software to use:

Making the design, editing images:

To make the design and also images you want to use, you need to have a good image editor software; best choice is ADOBE PHOTOSHOP. It’s not the easiest thing to learn, but once you get into it, you’ll have the best tool to make and remake and optimize graphic designs and images. I use Photoshop to do every image editing job. It’s the best and most complete solution.

Writing the code:

To design a Wordpress theme, we need a software to write the PHP code with, you can simply use NOTEPAD, but that is a very thought way to choose!

I personally use ADOBE DREAMWEAVER, as it is very robust and easy to use, and EXTREMELY professional. There are extensions which simply inserting wordpress functions. But I didn’t use these extensions because they get me confused sometimes.

Testing:

To test localy what you are making, you will need to have a local server. That might sound difficult, but ChSoftware made a VERY useful PORTABLE WEB SERVER that you download and just run! no need for installation, no complicated configuration. In WOS II (by ChSoftware), there are a lot of packages you can use, as phpMyAdmin, Wordpress, MySQL, PHP 4, PHP 5 and a lot more. Just visit their website, download WOS and run it on your PC. Instructions are clear and easy to understand on their website and in the software itself.

Browser:

I recommend that you use at least two browsers (Internet Explorer and Firefox) to test your code and design.

Host:

To host your website, either it is a blog or a CMS or an E-commerce website, you should choose the best hosting company that you can afford. I actually use LunarPages, as my hosting. They provide me avery good customer support and they offer very interesting plans, either for begginers or for professionals who need dedicated servers. The server response time is a fairly good one and scripts run very smoothly on their servers. The best thing is that THEY CARE ABOUT YOU! an exaple is that a long back, they got a problem with a hardware and their server went down for few hours, I contacted them and asked for help, I got a reply in the following hour and the problem got solved very quickly; the next day I got a phone call from Lunarpages customer service, the guy apologized for the problem and offered me a free month of hosting to show their good will! I was shocked and happy! firstly to get a month of free hosting and secondly to be with a hosting company that cares about its customers!!

Anyway, try to look for the best one you can afford, and check the availability of everything you will need before paying the host.

If you want to get a good offer from Lunarpages, click this link and make your purchase by following this link: Lunarpages.com - From Gibni

In next posts we’ll see how to start the work!

Detailed posts about the currently discussed topics will be available on Gibni, so I recommend that you subscribe to the RSS feeds.

All comments are welcomed

I’ve started to redesign and remake Gibni’s theme. As Gibni’s main technology relies on Wordpress, MySQL and PHP, so this post might be useful for many bloggers and for almost every theme designer.

User Friendly:

A lot of readers and visitors complain about Gibni being confusing and they say that they’re “lost”! I agree that the current look is full of information and users might get tiered reading pages. As this is a HUGE drawback a site can have, I’m trying to make the new theme look clean and net and though it will have a bundle of info and widgets and also be monetized; it should be easy to read and very user friendly.

Search Engine Optimization:

So far, the current theme which is Prince Theme v1.0, is very reliable and stable. But better than that, it is very well Search Engine Optimized. The current SEO score till date is 97% SEO, based on www.Domaintools.com SEO Calculator.

The new theme will be also optimized to the maximum and I am trying to make the keywords density and relativity increase. I thought of a technique to show a special output for search engine spiders and bots, but I’m studying the impact on loading speeds.

Monetized:

The current version (v1.0) is monetized with Adsense, Kontera, PepperJamNetwork and few affiliates.

Main issue here is that ads take a huge amount of space and on the other side make the pages look ugly sometimes. My goal is to try making ads camouflaged and prevent them from disturbing the reader as well as providing the visitors relative ads based on the content they’re viewing. For this, firstly I’ll need to choose an efficient way to keyword the pages and posts and more important, to put the right ads on the right places!
Loading Times:

I call “Loading time” the time a page takes to load on a visitors browser. You may have noticed that Gibni loads pretty fast the first time you visit (with an empty cache) and after that it load EXTREMELY fast! Well, I actually use advanced caching and data loading technologies that not all designers know about. I’ll explain these technologies in a seperate post. What I aim at now is to make pages load even faster than now and make caches more reliable and load important content FIRST, to not keep the visitor waiting for what (s)he is searching for to appear!

In next parts we’ll talk about the look, the code, testing, browser compatibility…

Detailed posts about the currently discussed topics will be available on Gibni, so I recommend that you subscribe to the RSS feeds.

All comments are welcomed.

Epson Stylus DX8450

Today I purchased the All-in-One printer, which does also scanning and copying and has got card reader and an LCD for printing right from a memory card.

Easy to Use:

The Epson DX8450 is a very beautiful and well design printer. It’s really easy to install and to use. To start using it, i had just to put in the ink and it’s ready to go. But you should be careful to install the drivers and required software BEFORE connecting the printer to your computer.

Seperate inks:

The big advantage about it is that it had got seperate inks, that is each color has got it’s own cartridge, and whenever one gets over, I won’t need to change all of them.

Plus on the running costs, it’s a very cost effective printer, as each of the original ink would cost me around 8 to 10 Euros, which is quite an interesting price.

Print Speed and Quality:

The DX8450 is a quite fast and has very high quality for printing. It prints very nice photos (on special photo paper) and perfect quality for normal document printing.

I will test the Transfer printing in the next few days, and post some photos of the t-shirts i’ll be creating with.

Noise:

This is a quite low noise printer. Although I won’t say it’s the perfect one, but it’s a lot more quite than other brands and models I’ve seen on the market within the same price range.

Inks for Epson Stylus DX8450:

Are you worried about the inks and their costs? Don’t worry, I checked the prices and compared them to the other brands and in the long run, the epson inks will be cheaper for you than any other ones.

There are also “Compatible” inks, that cost less, but would “a bit” decrease the print quality. So even if you’re thinking about compatible inks, the DX8450 is still the best choice.

Price:

The price of this printer will depend on the country you purchase it from, but it usually ranges from 90 to 100 Euros ( 135 - 150 USD)

Just drop in your local computer store and ask them about DX8450!

Buy The Epson Stylus DX8450:

If can’t get one in your local store, You can buy one here on Gibni.com! To buy it from me, you have to take in account the shipping costs, but the price for a NEW Epson Stylus DX8450 will be 85Euros, and this offer is to promote my website!

So, don’t hesitate!

I’ve decided to propose free blog / Website reviews till 30 days starting from now.
So if you want to get a kickstart for you blog and take a useful step towards success, do not hesitate! Just join the crowd!

 
Well, we’re gonna set some rules:

1.  On your blog, you write a blog / website review about Gibni.com,
2.  When published you confirm the URL to me, and I start writing a review about your blog/website.
3.  Reviews are to be real and all aspects to be talked about, good as well as bad ones.
4. DO NOT DELETE reviews unless you confirm with the other party.
5. Provide useful and constructive information as well as useful and clear links.

If you want a blog review AND a link in the links section of Gibni (which is usually on the main page and all pages), Just write two reviews about with at least 4 days delay between both.

You can also order a blog review for your blog and pay through Paypal, but this month, there’s nothing to pay, from the next month, I’ll let you know how will work Review exchanges!

Just contact me and provide your name, URL, and the URL to the review you wrote about gibni.com.

Just Now I finished Call of Duty 4 -Modern Warfare game! It’s awesome, but the huge drawback is that the game is very SHORT!! There’s a lot of actions and graphics in-built which is really great, and the war stories even if they’re fictious, they can be of our days, I mean it’s a game in the present, not in world war period or a futuristic kinda war. I liked this game mostly because the movements and weapons and also the environment is close to reality.

For those of you who didn’t know about this game, first of all check if you can run it, here’s Call of Duty 4 minimum and also recommended system requirements:

Required (minimum) Specs
CPU: Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 2.4 GHz or AMD(R) Athlon(TM) 64 2800+ processor or any 1.8Ghz Dual Core Processor or better supported
RAM: 512MB RAM (768MB for Windows Vista)
Hard Drive: 8GB of free space
Video card: NVIDIA(R) Geforce(TM) 6600 or better or ATI(R) Radeon(R) 9800 Pro or better

Recommended Specs
CPU: 2.4 GHz dual core or better
RAM: 1G for XP; 2G for Vista
Hard Drive: 8GB of free space
Video card: 3.0 Shader Support recommended. Nvidia Geforce 7800 or better or ATI Radeon X1800 or better

My PC’s specs:

CPU: 3.0 GHz Pentium IV, 1MB Cache

RAM: 896 MB

Video Card: Ati Radeon HD 2600 PRO - 512MB , 128bit.

The game run PERFECT on my PC.

There are patches and maps as well as mission editors on the official website: http://www.callofduty.com/

Get The game from here and enjoy CRAZY PRICES:

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare For PC (USA):

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare For MAC (USA):

Call of Duty 4 Modern Warfare For PC (France):

You already played at this game? What do you think about the game?

A while back, I wrote a post about Windows - Write Delayed Failed error message, and I presented ways to resolve the problem. That worked for many people.

Recently, after installing a fresh copy of Windows XP (with SP3), I got the same problem, and I tried everything I knew to solve it, but no luck!! As the problem’s to do with the USB caching and data transfered from the cache to the disk, I went GOOGLEing again!

The last thing I found, which solved the problem is to use a piece of software from SysInternals (actually aquired by Microsoft) called Cacheset !

Download Cacheset.zip from my Downloads page, extract it, and run Cacheset.exe, then set the cache to either 64KB or 128KB,

I tried it and now, after one week of intensive tests, I didn’t get the Delayed Write Failed error! I suppose that the problem is solved.

Anyway, if it happens even after setting the cache, do the same process of cache setting (to 64KB or 128KB) again as Windows has tendency to go back to its initial configurations.

Note1: Test both the cases; 64KB as cache and then 128KB, if you get your disk working on 128KB, so keep it, as it runs faster.

Note 2: When applying the “Working set maximum” value in Cacheset, calculate the number by multiplying the required cache by 1024. example:  64*1024=65536 which is the value you should give.

PLEASE GIVE FEEDBACK!

This is tested and it works! Digg it if useful.

An awesome blog!

Few weeks ago, I found this interesting and entertaining blog, The Mom With Brownies. It’s got everything in it! There are so much information on the blog that you never wanna leave the page! I remember the last time I was on this blog, I stood for about 25 minutes reading, watching, and playing!

Something I really like, is that there’s no big ads on the blog, and you can focus on the content rather than trying to skip the ads!

 What is cool is that the page is wide and there’s a lot of white space between the content. There are a lot of ideas you can get from this blog, like adding a game (toy) on your blog to entertain your visitors and keep them coming back, or using different statistics tools together or even the idea of having everything discussed on your blog, I like the shoutbox too!

Go and visit The Mom With Brownies, you’ll love it!