The Simpleton

I really don't know how all this really happened! I recently introduced my brother to the Xisto forums. He registered just yesterdaty. He has a good grip on spirituality and was going to post there today. But I don't know how - my session (as 'kasperooney') was still active even though I remember pressing 'log out'. So guess what happened? The posts that he wrote with great effort came under my account and I got a hefty amount of myCENTs for that! I am hardly active in the spirituality section and it was kind of amusing to read one member's post appreciating my brother's views but thinking that I wrote all that....I remember reading somewhere that myCENTs are not transferrable. But is it possible to make an exception in this case? Btw, I'm not making this all up!

Notice from rvalkass: http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ Copied from above link.

HOLDING YOUR HAND, I WILL LEAP ACROSS THE CHASM OF DESPAIR My journey so far has led me to this- A chasm seperating me and Your Bliss Oh! It streches so wide, its depths unknown, I have heard of the depths of despair, but never such dread had I known! The sins of my past, the pains of my present, The fear of the future, the times with worries spent All of them loom down below, ready to devour me, My hope, my joy and my love for Thee Oh! My eyes search in desperation For a bridge mocking this seperation None can I see, for 'tis a chasm that I made on my own, No wonder then, that there is no bridge, no friend, I am alone In silent prayer, I seek your advice, To cross the chasm, what is the price? No riches can build a bridge so long, For there are countless dangers all along Your answer at last, has come today, The price to pay, is to let go of dismay With faith and joy, I will free myself from care, Holding your hand, I will leap across the chasm of despair

]T h e P u r s u i t o f H a p p Y n e s sI recently watched the movie with that title. (The " Y " is not an enigma to those who've seen it. ) A good question is asked by the lead character Chris Gardner - " How is that the guy who wrote the constitution know that happiness is only something that can be pursued ? "I only said to myself, " how true ! " I mean, look around you. How many people whom you know are really happy ? Perhaps you could name a few. Well, for how long are they happy ? It would not be long before that happiness wanes into something else and they start raving about this thing or that. Why look to others ? Are YOU happy ? You'd say yes, coz you're reading a blog in your leisure. I'd say, stop kidding yourself, coz there's something you're bothered about or planning to do after you're done doing this. Isn't it so ?I think there is a mass hypnosis going on here. Who is doing the hypnotizing part ? All of us. We're basically just reassuring ourselves that everything will be alright. Why else do you think the punch line of so many hit Hindi movies is, " ghabrao mat, sab theek hojaayega " ?This only hit me today, which is why I'm writing. Ever since I was a child, I was told whenever I was unhappy, that I would be happy, EVENTUALLY. That's the magic word, the hypnotic word. The cause for not being in a good mood can be anything from a tussle in the family to a dear one's death. Now, I would not say laughing out loud in pretense of happiness at a funeral is advisable, but look at daily life.In a family of four or five, more often than not, the parents are both at work. If they are fortunate enough, they may have the grandparents living, if not, just them and the children. How many members are happy ? The kids are busy playing and the mother always has to double up as a housewife and a professional who has a career to handle. Even though we are in the "modern" age by now, rare is that household where the husband shares work with his wife equally.....you get the idea, don't you ? Now then, even when the kids become teenagers and teens become adults, families are not happy. Why is that so ?To me, the answer lies in the fact that everyone likes to kid themselves into thinking that they would be " aish karofying " at some point in the future - to some it may be 2 years, to some it may be 10 years after his children go to the States and get them dollars. I only need to close my eyes to recollect all the hundreds of faces that I've seen - friends, relatives, passers by, neighbors....hardly anyone whose face tells me " I'm happy ".What then, is the way to happiness ? A hungry or a shabbily dressed man can never be happy. Nor can a diseased man. Nor can someone who is in debt. Or can they ? The way I see it, if you keep extending these definitions of hunger,debt,disease,etc. they would cover the entire gamut of human emotions, what to speak of the silly ways into which we all get into trouble?A poor man always earns enough, somehow, to take his family to a movie on a Rs.10 ticket. A middle class " aam aadmi " somehow buys a car and sees to it that his family has at least one flight, even if it is only from Hyderabad to Vizag. All this, even if it means debt.A life spent trying to even out stuff can never be possible on this planet, because it's nature is imperfection. Whatever happened to all the "great rulers" who tried establish things ? Nothing changed. People can never come to happiness so long as they turn a blind eye to death and relegate their happiness quotient to the body. Happiness lies within, don't you think ?

I know that most of the members here are active at other forums as well, based on their interests and tastes. And some of the members (including me) have their own forums and are forever looking for new members! Well I just wanted to know which forums you are active in. This isn't a place where you can advertise, just leave the names of the forums (no referral links please!) and whoever is interested in that can go and check it out. I'm not giving the address to my forum since it's not ready yet, but am mentioning two forums which are my favourite.(MODS: If you feel this topic will hurt Xisto in any way, please remove it at once )1. Legendfire.com:This is a forum for all creative writers, where they can post their written work and get feedback from users all over the world.It is a test for your work because all the reviewers will be budding writers themselves so they will surely criticize your work with interest!2.chip.in/forums:I think most of you might have heard of the CHIP computer magazine. It is available in many countries and I'm sure each country has it's own version of these forums. This one is the Indian version and the people out there are very friendly giving advice on technical issues and buying advice, etc.and topping my list, of course, is Xisto. I don't have much time for other forums but visit these three regularly. So what about you all?

HI there Sara! It's nice to meet you and don't worry-you'll pick up your intro-writing skills soon I'm sure you'll feel right at home here and since you're passionate about the internet you'll find lots to do and learn here. Here are some links to help you get around the forum (it's a kind of a tradition to point these links to a new comer ) Readme! Xisto BIlling Site Credit System V3 If you have any doubts feel free to start a thread in the relevant forum. Have a nice time and see you around

well it's good to know that there's an option - I'll send a PM right away - thanks for the tip jlhaslip But I still somehow feel that members should get an option to change their name, even if it is only once in a year! Anyway, for now this system is good - thanks a lot for the help

I wouldn't depend entirely on google adwords and such other services because most people rarely click on them and even if they do they are only partially interested. In my opinion, you should try out a bit of everything, if you have the time and money to spare. Flyers may not be very effective, but you never know who may get attracted by it. An attractive flyer is glanced through thoroughly before it finds its way into the bin and that glance could get you some clients! I too throw a lot of flyers but sometimes I do stop and look at some of the bright ones. So if you can use your designing skills on paper, this could be a good idea ;)Since you're at a university, you already have a large audience at your end! Someone in my college once started a social service campaign and they got 600 members in one hour just because they called out for members only in the college and nowhere else. So this is the best place to start looking for clients, as these days everyone wants to get a snazzy website done!Advertising through sigs in forums is not a bad idea but you have to see if you can juggle your time between so many forums. That depends on you of course. Getting through so many media will naturally give out the best output. This are just my insignificant thoughts - hope you can make something of them. Do tell us how your business gets going

I too use paypal for the same purpose and haven't had a problem till now even though my account is unverified as well. I think your account might be having some weird problem which the support team might be able to solve. And I think the caps on sending and receiving funds are different in different countries, because I once opened a US account by mistake and found that I could only receive money but not send it without being verified. Then I checked again and opened an account in my country and this time there was a cap of $500 on sending and withdrawing money. So I guess something like this happened in your case too. But why the $0.01..........???

there is a small lead in favour of my question right now but no one else seems to be interested in it Oh well all I'm waiting for is a mod/admin to look at this, because 'suggestions' ought to be monitored by those guys isn't it?

It is always better to keep a backup of your website content at all times because you can never predict what will happen with your computer or maybe even the hosting company! Anyway, just keep a soft copy of all the files in your site and set it aside and continue taking backups of everything, like databases, images, etc. If you have the time and energy to do a daily backup then that's the best thing possible.

thanks very much - I will be configuring it in a day or two and will report back here

Hooray the problem has been fixed! Just a strange thing though - my previous dollar was credited to my account but I didn't receive a notification. Maybe the bug was just gone at that time so I didn't get any notification. Oh well, the problem is solved and things are back in action. That's enough!

Sorry for the confusion - I didn't mean the regular website bandwidth I meant the internet usage bandwidth. I think most of you here have unlimited internet plans but my ISP gives me limited b/w every month and manually installing all software is bound to cost me a lot!

I know there is no reason to panic, but all the same it will help to know if all of us are getting this error or only users from a particular area. When you log into your account at Xisto - Support (https://support.xisto.com/) do you get a blank screen with just one line saying "License Validation Failed." ? Or are you able to log in as usual? As everyone knows, the xisto account is the crux of our work here and whatever time we spend in the fourms sees benefit through that account, as we can purchase/modify various products. So it is important that we get back onto this account soon. So if anyone has any kind of information regarding this please say so here for everyone to know. Thanks!

The "License Validation Failed" problem has got met too but I'm not really worried coz problems like these have occurred before and have been solved pretty soon. Hopefully it will all be over in the morning There are members who are more active and more intelligent than me - I think it's just a coincidence that I find more of your threads in the forums than others and I'm sure that in no time you'll get to know a lot of things too so don't worry about these things. That's a good point - installing manually is a very good idea as we get to know what exactly is happening. Auto-installers are useful when you want to add something instantly to your site. I prefer to use auto-installers because they save me a lot of bandwidth. If I had to do everything manually I would have to download the software package and again upload it to my site and in all this process a lot of my bandwidth is consumed so for me the auto-installer is a good option. Oh well, to each his own!

I'm sorry but I cant answer your first two questions - I may know the answers but I don't want to risk giving false information. So I'll just answer those which I know: 3) You don' t have to pay anything to use Fantastico and the other things such as Softaculous. They are merely auto-installers which make things a lot easier for maintaining your website. Personally I prefer Softaculous over Fantastico because the latter has old version software, and also, Softaculous gives much more choice than Fantastico and is more convenient to use. You don't have to pay a single thing to use these 4) By default, the auto-payment option is tuned on in your account. This means that Xisto automatically deducts the required amount each month from your account, provided that there is enough to pay. Otherwise you get a negative balance invoice which you must clear as soon as possible. If you want you can turn off this auto-payment option but it is not at all wise because it is very convenient and there are no bugs in the system so the correct amount gets deducted automatically each month. The yearly plan is not recommended because as someone pointed out earlier, paying monthly ensures that you stay active in the forums and keep your account alive 5) The additional information asked is merely to provide any other options that you may like. Set this to yes, because if not now, you are likely to put content which utilises the php language along with a database (for example- forums, blogs, etc) WAP is used in cell-phones so if you want your site modified suited to cell-phones, select this option. But at this stage, there is no need for this option for you, in my opinion If you are expecting people from a particular location to visit your site, fill this field. It is best to leave this blank or fill it with your country's name - no harm done I have an inkling of what this means but I better not risk it! This simply asks which language you would like your website control panel to be in. If your native language is given in the list select it, or simply choose English (unless both are one and the same ) Don't worry - the purpose of an online community is to help others in need. You may be meeting someone who doesn't know something that you know. Help them in that case and your debt is repaid Don't hesitate to ask when in doubt - we are all here ready to help

All this makes a lot of sense. And it is indeed a fair system. I never did anything like that till now but I'll be on guard not to get into any such situation anytime. Thanks for the replies

It so happens that this is not a unique name. I came up with it by accident but later I noticed that there were other 'kasperooney's on other forums, and I don't like that fact very much. I want my display name to be unique and that's why I want a single chance to change it. Right now the poll is at a deadlock with 50-50 chances for both 'Yes' and 'No'. I'm waiting for an admin or a mod to give their thoughts because obviously it is them who have the power to change things like these Anyway thanks to the others for sparing their thoughts and voting!

I agree with anwiii - paypal is only convenient but not entirely safe. I use it regularly but am still cautious about what I do with my account. What I don't like about paypal is its unpredictable actions. I almost lost all the money I earned on the net due to one small lapse on my part and due to paypal's meaningless actions. It was my mistake in the first place to give my paypal address to an untrusted person. That person sent some funds from a stolen account to my account, and for that paypal promptly froze my account, and all the money in it. I was asked to prove my identity (my acc is stlll unverified as I haven't got a card yet and I don't want to link my bank account)I submitted a ticket regarding this, and luckily, they unfroze my account because the amount transferred was small. Anyway, this action shocked me because there should have been a more sensible way to deal with this matter! Now I've decided to create a fresh bank account and link it to paypal, bring all my money out and put it in my real bank account, so that even if paypal screws with my account, there won't be any huge damage. I see paypal just as a convenient gateway to accept my funds. I would never say that it is entirely safe.

I've already got two websites from Xisto already and I'm very grateful for that. I created two hosting accounts for those two sites as one of them will be run along with my friend. Now I want to register another domain, but this one will be a personal website and I want to host it as an add-on domain on my first hosting package. Now my great doubt is, how do I configure this? I know the theory - I have to point the domain to Xisto's (Xisto - Web Hosting) nameservers. But I do not know what the addresses of those nameservers are and how I go about doing this configuration.So could someone please guide me as to how I can successfully add my personal domain to my existing hosting accout please? Thanks in advance

Hi there Traveller - that's a cool nick - welcome to the Xisto forums! You can meet travelers like yourselves all over the forum and get your own website along the way. This sure is gonna be a good place for you to be! Everything around is really simple but should you get any sort of doubts then I suggest you go to the following links for any assistance: Readme! Xisto - Support Info about myCENT credit system and if this isn't enough to get you going, you can always ask for assistance in the forums and a host of members will be ready to help you out. So have a nice time and hope to see you around soon.

Hey there freshpub! It is sort of a tradition here to give all new comers useful links to various parts of the site. (I personally feel it's just to garner more myCENTs ) Since a lot of people have already beat me to that, I will just give you a plain old WELCOME to the forums.I hope you have a wonderful time over here and that you will soon get your free website with hosting. If you have any doubts you are welcome to start a thread in the support forum and someone will immediately attend to it. So see you around soon!

Hi there Kathryn Small and welcome to Xisto We could surely use experienced folk like you here and I'm definitely looking forward to seeing some useful posts from your side. And don't worry you'll have a lot of people to bond with here! Have fun and see you around...

hmm that makes sense.....I just saw some user have [-1102] negative balance! That much spam and the user is still on the forums?!! This makes me think if there is some other reason, or maybe that user just got lucky? (no offense to anyone!)