rvalkass

The invoice arrives early, but you are hosted up until the 10th October 2009. Your invoice should have a due date on it (most likely 10th October 2009), which is the date you have to pay by. If not, then I think we can assume it is 10/10/2009. If you haven't paid by that date, then of course your hosting is liable to be suspended until you have paid it.

Removing the words "top menu" If you want to remove the actual words "Top Menu", but leave the menu intact then go to Administer > Site building > Blocks. Nest to the Top Menu block, click configure. In the Block Title box at the top enter <none>. Click Save Block at the bottom. Without the large title text, however, the menu can appear slightly 'squished'. To get around this, replace <none> with simply a space. It won't be visible, and will keep the current height of the menu. Inserting a two-level navigation bar There are themes which can do this for you, but obviously that is not a viable solution if you don't want to change the theme. This module might do what you are after: https://www.drupal.org/project/dynamic_persistent_menu This one may also be able to be adapted to what you need: https://www.drupal.org/project/menu_block_split Removing the search box Go to (in the left hand menu) Administer > Site building > Themes. Click the word Configure at the top, and make sure the Search Box option is not ticked. Click Save Configuration. Changing the left-hand menu Members will only see links to things they have permission to do. So, if you don't give members permission to create content, they won't see the link. To check permissions, go to Administer > User management > Permissions. The two default user roles (anonymous and authenticated) refer to people who are logged out and logged in respectively. As an administrator, you always have access to everything. To test the anonymous permissions, just log out of your site and then browse around it. To test the authenticated permissions, create a new user account and then log in with that. Adding an ad-banner Take a look at this module: https://www.drupal.org/project/ad

Generally, games developed solely for the PC let you save wherever and however you like. However, games ported over from console releases, or developed simultaneously with console versions, often have very limited save points, or restrictions on when/how you can save. The Nintendo is Wii is the worst culprit for this - developers are very limited on how often they are allowed to write to the flash memory during a game, and have to stick to a fixed file size for their saved game file (similar to the old 'blocks' idea on original Playstations of old). Microsoft also limit developers on the 360 with a selection of "strange rules and regulations", complicated by the fact you can use your save games on different consoles. On a PC, developers are free to do whatever they like with save games. So, if a game is ported from consoles then it will likely stick to these rules and regulations at least to some extent, and fixed save points are usually fairly core to the game, so get left in. However, some developers like the idea of fixed or limited saves. If you can save whenever you like then the risk is removed from the game. You can save just before a big battle (for example), then attempt it. If you lose, load the save and build yourself up to be stronger before trying again - there's no risk. For a lot of developers (and gamers alike) that results in the games not being played how they were meant to be played, and removing some of the risk-taking and suspense elements.

You've hit the WSoD (White Screen of Death) - Drupal's version of Windows' Blue Screen of Death. Basically, something went catastrophically wrong. So catastrophically wrong, in fact, that Drupal couldn't even get an error page to you, or any output at all. While it sounds serious, we all know just how temperamental code can be, and thankfully the fix is an easy one. Delete the folder for the Archive module you installed and then try to get onto your Drupal site again. If that module was a problem, Drupal will notice it has disappeared, assume it was causing issues, and disable it in your site. Fingers crossed and everything will return Now, to see if we can get that module working right. Make sure you downloaded the right version of the module for your version of Drupal. Most modules have two or three versions out at the moment (for Drupal 6.x and 7.x, and some keep 5.x around). You have most likely downloaded Drupal 6.x, so make sure you have the module download that works with Drupal 6. Redownload it from the Drupal site and try putting it on your site again - it's possible that the download didn't go right. Extract it, and you should get a folder called 'archive'. Put that folder in ./htdocs/your-drupal-folder/sites/all/modules (if the modules folder doesn't exist, create it first). Go back to your Drupal admin panel and enable it again and see what happens. If you get another white screen then report a bug against the module at their site: https://www.drupal.org/project/archive (you'll need an account on the Drupal site first).

Some of the more popular distributions (discounting Ubuntu, Kubuntu, Xubuntu, etc. etc.) are Fedora, openSUSE, Mandriva, Debian, PCLinuxOS and Gentoo. Of course there are plenty of others besides these few. To those first coming over to Linux, they generally ask for advice on how to do it, and will either search for articles comparing the distributions and explaining what a distribution actually is, or will have people they are already talking to about it and can ask for advice. Why do people use one distribution over another? They're all good for different things. Debian is a little behind the times but it is stable as a rock, so it's perfect for situations where the system cannot be allowed to crash, such as servers. Ubuntu uses slightly newer versions of all the software packages, but loses some stability and compatibility in the process. Distributions built on Ubuntu often use newer packages still, but you lose much of the community backing and support. Fedora and openSUSE are sponsored by producers of commercial Linux distributions (Red Hat and Novell respectively), and improvements made for the commercial versions often filter down to the free versions. Gentoo goes to the opposite end of the simplicity scale - everything is compiled from source, from scratch, when you install it. So, tailored for your computer and you get the latest versions of everything, but it takes a while to install and compiling can be a source of annoyance to those used to package managers. Ubuntu has become almost the de facto standard due to its popularity, and this can be seen in reviews; often a reviewer is comparing a distribution to Ubuntu (whether consciously or not) and reviewing on that basis, rather than considering the distribution on its own. This of course means they tend to mark down distributions that do anything different to Ubuntu. Of course, that doesn't apply to all reviews, but it's just a trend I have noticed. Some people are elitist, and just want to use something different to the mainstream, so shun Ubuntu and similar distributions. That, of course, is a ridiculous standpoint to base advice or reviews on. However, there are good reasons for choosing other distributions. They have different levels of stability, offer different versions of software in their repositories, have different communities, interact differently with their users, have different organisational and leadership structures, etc. etc. There are plenty of different reasons to choose a particular distribution. When I built my new PC I saw it as an opportunity to try out different distributions. I burned loads of CDs and tried out varying distributions, before settling on Kubuntu simply because it had the best support for my graphics card. Obviously there is no hard and fast definition. Generally, however, if a distribution is labelled as being for experts they mean that you have to compile all software from source or have to do extensive manual configuration of your system. Some people like that level of customisation and control, others don't. Again, it's a matter of personal preference.

Click this link: http://forums.xisto.com/index.php?app=forums&module=extras&section=stats&do=leaders On the row with BuffaloHelp's name (the top row I think), click the orange PM button on the right. In the message title box put something like "Requesting change of username". In the large Message box write that you want to change your username from livepcportal to digyourpc. Click the Send Message button at the bottom.

I'm most familiar with it and it's the one I know most about and have the most experience of using, along with Wordpress. Wordpress is simple and easy. Drupal is a bit more complicated, but much more powerful. Joomla for me was an unhappy medium; not powerful enough but not simple enough either. To get to the main page of your Drupal installation, click on the Drupal logo in the top left of the page (the blue head with white sunglasses on... who picked that logo?!). Until you make a post on the site then a default message will appear with some basic instructions. The admin area is "built in" as part of the site in the menu on the left. You just get a few more menu options that allow you to access all the admin stuff. To enable blogging, click Administer in the menu on the left, then Site Building then Modules. Click the 'enabled' checkbox next to the Blog module. Hit the Save Configuration button at the bottom. Blogging is now enabled. Click Create Content on the left and you should now see a Blog Post option

Yeah. Unfortunately the script doesn't seem to handle changing email addresses that well. Log in to your billing account and send a support ticket off asking them to confirm your change in email address and to make sure it all works. In the mean time you will continue to earn myCENTs just as you would have done, they'll just store up until your accounts are linked again and they get transferred.

If you do choose to use Drupal, this thread explains what you want to do. Check out the linked site (straight.com) and check if that is the sort of menu you want: https://groups.drupal.org/node/19225 If that is what you want, there is a URL to a module you can install in Drupal that gives you site the same functionality. Some people have also managed to get a similar thing going on with Drupal's default Primary and Secondary menus.

You can't change your username yourself. Instead, you need to send a PM to BuffaloHELP or OpaQue requesting your username be changed.

An open source piece of software has to be released under a licence permitted by the OSI. All licences, and therefore all open source software, must comply with the following statement: So, open source software must itself be given away free. However, it can be included in applications and devices that are sold for a profit but the source code of any open source components must be made available. So, how do people make money out of it? Well, selling advertising space on their websites is probably the most popular way of getting money from open source software. However, this money is usually ploughed back into either the hosting costs or development costs, and using it for personal profit is often seen as a bit wrong - it's also difficult as your advertising revenue increases with the popularity of your software, but so do your hosting and development costs, so actually making a profit is difficult. The alternative is selling support contracts for your software. That only really works if you sell to businesses and have a piece of software people really want to learn to use, or need to work perfectly 24/7. Again, costs increase as more people order support contracts and you need to hire staff, but it is more similar to a traditional business than the ad-based method.

You'll need to change these lines, or make sure they are correct: curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $url); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_PORT, $port); curl_setopt ($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1); curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1); You'll therefore also need to check the values of $url and $port and make sure they are correct.

Watching that video, the word that leaps to mind is "cringeworthy". Then the thought that Microsoft is getting really, really, really desperate. One of these?

That error is coming from another file, so I can only take a random guess, but it looks like this line: $response_string = curl_exec($ch); Doesn't set $response_string equal to 200, which means you have got some of the server data wrong near the top of that file, so it can't access the server, or gets an error code from it.

I'm not doing this as a shameless plug, more for examples I started with my blog on Wordpress, and still use it at the moment. However, for any new sites I develop (such as this one) I tend to side with Drupal. Whether you find Wordpress or Drupal easier is a matter of personal preference, but to use either one effectively you have to put in the time to learn it. Saying that something is better is purely a matter of opinion. For me, Joomla isn't particularly good and Wordpress isn't powerful enough, so Drupal is better for what I want to do. It's all a matter of personal opinion and your exact requirements. One of the main reasons I now use Drupal (after using Wordpress and Joomla, and others) is the wide availability of plugins and themes, and it's power and extensibility. For reference, Drupal has a forum module included, so there is no need to bridge it to anything else. If you have an existing forum, or want to use a different one, then there are bridging modules available though.

I don't really notice a speed issue, so it may depend on the speed of your internet connection etc. If there is a bottleneck anywhere with the database, I think it would more likely be with the posts rather than the members (there are far more posts to search through when pulling them out of the database). Removing posts has numerous problems. Firstly, I think it would play havoc with the myCENTs system if old posts were removed, as members would be plunged into negative myCENTs for no good reason. Also, a lot of traffic is bought to Xisto from search engines, and the older posts and topics are good at bringing people in, increasing the size of Xisto and making the whole place better. We get rid of spam threads and posts as soon as we see them. If you see ones we haven't spotted then use the Report button to let us know. Moderators can't remove accounts (and I don't think the admins like to either), only ban them. Banning spammers stops them posting, but doesn't speed up the database - their accounts are still in there.

Exactly which error do you get? There are a few defined in the code above, and a load more that could be generated by your web browser, PHP or Apache. Please copy and paste the exact error you get into a new post so we can troubleshoot better.

Hopefully this is an improvement on my rushed attempt of last week! At the moment I'm pretty much just trying random things out to see what happens. As you can see, it's not always that successful! Still, you gotta experiment to get anywhere.

The .htaccess file is in the root directory of your Wordpress installation (the same folder that contains wp-config.php). You will need to make sure you can see hidden files and folders before it will appear. If there isn't a file there then all you need to do is create it and copy the code in that Wordpress gives you - simple as that! It's just a plain text file, nothing particularly special about it. You can create and edit it in any text editor.

My favourite subjects were always things like maths, physics, chemistry and electronics. I liked maths because I could do it, I was good at it and I've actually found quite a bit of it useful. Physics appealed because I like knowing how things work, including the universe as a whole. Chemistry was good because if you stick with it long enough you do finally get the chance to make lots of bubbling brightly coloured potions, clouds of smoke and explosions I never really liked IT simply because it was always so ridiculously easy - using word processors and the like. Now I'm studying physics at university

When you signed up with your hosting you should have been given an FTP username and password, along with the server address. If not, check the help section of the hosting provider's site for the details. The username and password are usually the same as your cPanel username and password. You'll then need an FTP client to upload files with. FileZilla is probably the most popular. Click the Download FileZilla Client button, then choose the Windows installer if you're on Windows (the file ending with .exe). Download it and save it somewhere on your PC, then run it to install FileZilla. At the top there are 4 boxed labelled Host, Username, Password and Port. Fill in Host, Username and Password with the details from your hosting provider (leave the port one blank), and click Quickconnect. In the two main panels in the middle are the files stored on your computer (shown on the left) and the files stored on your web hosting (shown on the right). Navigate through the folders on each side and drag and drop files between the two panels to transfer files. So, to upload your site use the left panel to find where it is stored on your computer. Then use the right hand panel to open the public_html or www folder on your hosting. Drag the files from the left panel to the right panel and the transfer will start. You can also drag whole folders too. Wordpress, as far as I know, doesn't have a way to add an integrated forum. So, your forum would be a separate part of the site, would look different, and people would need to use a separate login to get onto the forums (unless you code them to share log in details). Popular forums include phpBB, AEF and SMF. You can use Wordpress's permissions to achieve this. You can set it up so people can make posts when they make an account, and they will appear instantly, or you can set it so that they get added to your 'moderation queue'. and you have to approve each post before it appears on the site. It still appears under their username, but gives you the control to stop spammers etc. I can't remember if the profile pages are possible in Wordpress, but there is probably a modification out there that will add them. Creating separate blogs is more tricky. You would be able to separate out posts with tags and things, but they would still all appear as part of the same blog. I think there are Wordpress extensions that cover this. Once you have Wordpress up and running there is a section to install extra extensions - search through there and see if you can find one that accomplishes this for you. If I'm honest, for what you want to achieve, Wordpress is not the ideal solution. Something like Drupal is a much better solution. Drupal contains a forum built in, user profile pages, individual user blogs, and the ability to promote individual posts to the front page to make the best ones part of the main site. It also doesn't look like a Wordpress blog, and has a wide selection of themes and plugins to make it do what you want. Certainly take a look at it if you are serious about making your site something more than just a simple blog. cPanel is your control panel for your web hosting, allowing you to manage all your settings and controls. cPanel contains pretty good help, and even include video tutorials and walkthroughs for the most common tasks now, so try those if you need some help getting to grips with it. You should have the details for your FTP account if you have one. If you weren't given them then your username and password should be the same as your cPanel username and password, and you should be able to get the FTP host address from your hosting provider. That's the right attitude See it as an adventure, and don't be worried if it take time to learn or something goes wrong. We're all here to help, and remember that if things do go drastically wrong, it is usually possible to recover from them! Like I mentioned above, Wordpress is generally used for running one individual blog, with user interaction via comments on posts. It is possible to add extra editors to your blog, but you will all be posting to the same blog at the same time, rather than to individual blogs as you suggested you'd like. Also, as far as I know, Wordpress doesn't have any way to incorporate a forum, so adding one would require people to have a separate login and it would look different from the rest of the site. Drupal is a better bet if you want to build a community around your site, and is more versatile than Wordpress if you want more than just a blog.

I thought I'd leap straight in with the weird and wacky. It should be fairly easy to spot what I changed...For those who missed it, I have replaced a sword with a large inflatable novelty banana.

Yes. Both myCENTs customers and paid customers use the same hosting packages, the same billing area, everything. myCENTs is just another payment method that you can use for your hosting, just like paying with a credit card or posting a cheque. As far as I know, no. Under the old system, Xisto customers were hosted on a separate server, but I don't think this is the case now. As the paid and free accounts are now all running under the same system, I don't think they are separated in any way. myCENTs is just another payment method, so those accounts are mixed in with the paid ones. You can pay for a year in one go, so you would only have to pay each year (you also get a discount over paying monthly I think). Your invoices are also paid automatically if you have funds in your account, so you don't need to worry about not being there when they are due. If you're worried about not earning enough myCENTs then you can add funds to your billing account with traditional methods such as credit or debit cards.

It's a lot less cluttered than my physical real-world desktop that the monitor is sat on I'm gradually finding little plasmoids to scatter across it and fill up the space though! Kubuntu actually - Ubuntu, but with KDE. It was that, Fedora or openSUSE, but I decided to stick with Kubuntu for the time being.

My desktop at the moment:Just built this PC, so there's not a lot going on on my desktop at the moment! Of course what you can't see with this screenshot is the classic Flying Toasters screensaver I use