芳草苑

Category: 小小草

IT 技术领域学海无涯。其实任何领域都学海无涯，无非 IT 发展太快了，让我有更多嘘唏。希望我掌握的技术有如小小草，虽然渺小，却有旺盛的生命力。

  • Magento extensions worth my trying

    I went through Magento Community Extensions, and short listed the following extensions worth my trying.

    MagentoLiveChat

    This module will provide a LiveChat support in Magento.
    It don’t depends third party platform
    It don’t require to fill a form before start a conversation
    It identify automatically registered user
    It provide information about the current page of the customer
    It can provide useful information about transformation rate
    Conversation are archived and available forever
    It support multiple site
    It support multiple operator
    LiveChat behaviour can be customised with advanced configuration options
    Apppearence can be easily customised with css

    YALC – Yet Another Live Chat

    This module was designed as an alternative to Magento Live Chat module. This module will help you integrate your Magento store with Google Talk. YALC – will allow you to use Google Talk service to support your customers. The main advantages of the module Luxe YALC module is:
    1. Reliability. Server, even at the most reliable hosting services less reliable than Google.
    2. Speed. Since the entire load on the transmission of messages rests with the Google Talk service is the work of IM does not affect the speed and load on your server.
    3. Privacy. Communication takes place completely anonymously, ie, your client can not even your Google Account.
    4. You can chat simultaneously with an unlimited number of users.
    5. Increased number of users does not affect the speed of chat.
    6. Free of charge. All you need – register Google Account for your support service.
    7. You do not have to constantly keep running a third-party chat client. You can use for chat your favorite IM
    8. All chat history is stored in Google Account, so you can always revert to it if you have forgotten. Google search helps you quickly find the needle message.

    I do not agree with “Server, even at the most reliable hosting services less reliable than Google”. In April I noticed Google Chatback had been down for several days. My server can be more reliable than that record. Anyway, it does not devalue this extension.

    Magento Community Modules – Chinese Simplified (China) Language Pack

    Chinese Simplified (China) Language Pack

    Customer Groups Configurable Catalog

    This extension enables you to hide categories and products from customers depending on the customer group.

    J2T Points & Rewards

    Points and rewards module

    Magento EasyLightbox

    Magento Easy Lightbox Community Module

    Magento EasyFlags

    This small extension will help to convert default magento store view switcher into nice flag buttons. Installation and configuration will take approximately 5 minutes. No files are replaced and no codding experience needed to install!

    Magento Easy Catalog Images

    Magento Easy Catalog Images Community Module

    Blog

    A Blog build from scratch to work seamlessly in magento.

    Customer Universal Password

    Log in on front as any customer using universal password for administration purposes

    Drupal

    Drupal extension is a set of Core API extensions that offers a full access for Drupal modules to Orders, Catalog and so on.

    This extension, will offer you to TOTALLY bypass Magento front office, using Drupal instead.

    When a new user is created a Magento user is automatically created also.
    Orders can be created from Drupal, cart is managed from Drupal.
    Catalog is syncrhonized, so each Magento Product is a Drupal node that you can push into Views, etc….

    Exploded Menu

    Replaces the standard single column drop down with a multi-column dropdown as used on sites like www.asos.com This style of menu is ideally suited to sites with a large number of categories/sub-categories. Templates and skins are provided for the default and modern themes

    Gift Certificates / Cards

    Allow your customers to purchase and use Gift Certificates.

    Fontis reCAPTCHA

    Adds reCAPTCHA to “Send Email to a Friend”, “Contact Us” and “Account Creation” pages.

    Google Maps Store Locator

    Google Maps Store Locator

    Magento Community Modules – English (United Kingdom) Language Pack

    Magento Community Modules – English (United Kingdom) Language Pack

    Change Attribute Set

    In Magento every product has a fixed attibute set. This module enables you to switch it.

  • Preinstalled package groups of a hosting server

    Godaddy CentOS:

    Installed Groups:
    MySQL Database
    Editors
    System Tools
    Text-based Internet
    Legacy Network Server
    DNS Name Server
    FTP Server
    Network Servers
    Web Server
    Windows File Server
    Mail Server
    PostgreSQL Database
    Yum Utilities

    1&1 CentOS:

    Installed Groups:
    DNS Name Server
    Editors
    Legacy Network Server
    Legacy Software Development
    Legacy Software Support
    Mail Server
    MySQL Database
    PostgreSQL Database
    System Tools
    Text-based Internet
    Web Server
    Yum Utilities

  • How to open an mdb exclusively opened by others

    Do not be over excited – my solution is not about how to open an mdb which is truly exclusively opened by others, but to cope with the situation when you can not open the mdb over the network.

    For example, from time to time, Actinic crashes. And sometimes after crash, you see this message:

    There was a problem with the database

    Operation: Opening the table

    The Microsoft Jet database engine cannot open the file ‘\\(netbios name)\Actinic v8\Sites\Site1\ActinicCatalog.mdb’. It is already opened exclusively by another user, or you need permission to view its data.

    Action: Contact your Actinic reseller or Actinic Support as appropriate

    The problem is caused by mdb, not Actinic specific. You may have seen something similar.

    microsoft jet database cannot open file
    microsoft jet database cannot open file

    If you are sure no one else has opened the mdb file, you know Access is talking nonsense. To solve the problem, copy this file, delete the source file (you may have to operate on the local computer), move the copied file to the original place, and that’s it.

    Do not ask me why this kind of problem happens, or why an duplicated file can solve the problem. I don’t know. That is one of the reason I do not like microsoft – too many times I do not know where problems come, and where they go.

  • Email images not showing up in IE8

    I was asked by someone why on his PC images in html emails were not displayed.

    He was using google mail web interface (SSL enabled – Automatically enforce Secure Socket Layer (SSL) connections when your users access Gmail, Calendar, Docs, and Sites) and IE8. I was using the same google mail but Firefox. On my PC the images in html emails could show up. So I thought the problem was with some settings in IE8.

    Following this thought I found it was a setting in IE8: Internet Options -> Security -> Custom Level -> Miscellaneous -> Display mixed content. If it was disabled, IE8 would not http content in a page accessed via https. There should be a prompt before IE8 permanently disable it, but I guess few people can understand this security warning.

    IE8 mixed content security warning
    IE8 mixed content security warning

    This security setting is not only affecting email pages, but email pages are most likely being affected, specially marketing emails. Will we see more eshot programmes embedding img src with https?

  • Fed up with Actinic

    Actinic gave me some trouble this morning. I was reported that Actinic crashed when uploading. My close investigation found that Actinic crashed at the point of checking catalog. No error message was shown on screen. A Catalog_version_number_date_time.dmp was generated but that meant nothing to me.

    Fortunately, there were not many catalogue changes since last successful upload. The cause of problem was quickly isolated to a change of product sequence in a section. As a quick solution, I created a new section, and all products underneath by copying and pasting contents. It was not a desirable way, but what else could I do other than keeping away from Actinic?

    A late investigation when I had some more relax time found that shipping supplement, handling supplement and shipping quantity of the original products causing the crash were changed to some ridiculous figures. I am used to this kind of ridiculous behaviour of Actinic, so I am not keen on finding out the further reasons.

  • I switched Godaddy dedicated server to VPS

    原来在 Godaddy 的独立服务器到期没有续费，昨天我重新订了一台 VPS。其实，这台 VPS 也是并没有大用，只不过预算只能花给 Godaddy，权当是测试 Godaddy VPS 的性能吧。

    使用 Godaddy 的服务两年多，总体感觉满意，尤其满意 Godaddy support 响应比较及时。然而，如今我的资源不一样了，看问题的角度也不一样了，如果重新选择 server 或 VPS service provider 的话，Godaddy 这类名气大的不会是我的首选。一些规模相对较小，或者只是 reseller 级别的 ISP 成了我的首选。只是 reseller 良莠不齐，需要仔细甄别（以前不会甄别，所以只好找 Godaddy 求个省心）。

    Godaddy VPS 可以定制，但挑选余地不大，而且没有 64 位 OS（如果我可以把钱花在别的地方的话，这可以是淘汰 Godaddy 的一个因素）。

    VPS 到手以后，我先装了 vnc server（纯属研究，恐怕没人会拿 VPS 当 remote desktop用吧）。从 VPS 到 vnc server，除了正常的 vnc server 安装步骤，还需要 yum groupinstall "X Window System"，否则登录后是灰屏。GNOME 可以不装，使用 Twm，较 light weight。如果不喜欢，那就 yum groupinstall “GNOME Desktop Environment”。

  • php always takes apache as its session owner

    今天用 yum update php 到 5.2.10 版，发现升级了以后 /var/lib/php/session 的 ownship 又成了 root:apache。这有点恼人，难道每次升级我都要手工改一次 chown nginx:nginx /var/lib/php/session? 或是以后用 apache 的身份来跑 nginx? 我觉得都不太好，太多的场合只认 apache as an only http server，搞得 nginx 很孤立 :(

  • usb disk cannot be accessed by host and guest OS at the same time

    我才知道 host OS 和 guest OS 不能同时挂载一个 usb disk，但是大错已经酿成。

    当时我正在 host OS 里从 host OS 的硬盘移动一些文件到 usb disk 上，然后又在虚拟机里加载 usb disk 给 guest OS，结果，usb disk 就自动从 host OS 里卸载了。卸载时一些文件正在移动，突如其来的卸载造成这些文件未成功写入 usb disk，但源文件却已经从 host OS 的硬盘上删除了。

    Host OS 是 Fedora，这教训给我一个感觉，Fedora (或者说是 GNOME，我不清楚该责怪谁) 的文件操作机制不够可靠——移动文件时，应该在收到目的文件写入成功信号后才删除源文件。

  • Set server’s timezone

    The following command sets the timezone to British Summer Time (BST, UTC + 1) or Greenwich Mean Time (GMT, UTC)
    cd /etc
    ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/London localtime

    Or, update server timezone
    tzselect

    update server system clock
    ntpdate ntp.org

  • IE8 crash fix

    I recently installed Windows XP in VirtualBox, and did all necessary updates, including IE 8. However, IE 8 kept crashing. At first, I thought it was a problem with VirtualBox or its Guest Additions. The same problem exists in kvm. Then I thought it was a general problem of running IE 8 in virtual machines.

    But inspired by a comment of IE 8, I downloaded IE8-WindowsXP-x86-ENU.exe and re-installed IE 8. The problem has gone. I never expected I have to install IE 8 twice to get it working properly in a newly installed (clean) Windows XP.