Isles Tech

WikkaWiki as CMS

2009-12-06T02:14:00.002+08:00

Things you need to do to make WikkaWiki your content management system for your website:

1. Disable registration: in wikka.config.php change 'allow_user_registration' to '0'.

2. Change main_menu.inc and options_menu.inc - these files control how your header and footer menus (respectively) looks like.

My main_menu.inc contains only the following:

PageIndex
RecentChanges
RecentlyCommented
{{searchform}}

- I removed the categories link and the whoami bit.

My options_menu.inc contains the single bit [[UserSettings Login]] to show a login link.

WikkaWiki, 110mb.com and htaccess

2009-12-06T01:27:00.005+08:00

Some notes on the use of WikkaWiki at 110mb.com (box 4) with htaccess support:

1. 110mb.com seems to not include in the unzipping the .htaccess files which is needed by WikkaWiki. You have to manually upload .htaccess files to the following directories:

templates/<template>/css
templates/<template>/images
images/

/3rdparty/plugins/wikkaedit/
In the Base URL, you have to remove "wikka.php?wakka=".

3. WikkaWiki's favicon could not be fixed by simply overwriting the favicon.ico file in the templates directory. The simplest way to fix this, in my opinion, is to just use an absolute URL for the href value in the shortcut icon link. You have to go to the templates folder and look for the header.php file. Change the following two lines:

<link rel="icon" href="<?php echo $this->GetThemePath('/') ?>/images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="<?php echo $this->GetThemePath('/') ?>/images/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon" />

<link rel="icon" href="REPLACE_WITH_ABSOLUTE_URL" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="REPLACE_WITH_ABSOLUTE_URL" type="image/x-icon" />

Thus mine looked like:

<link rel="icon" href="http://i793.photobucket.com/albums/yy212/islesv/islesv-1.png" type="image/x-icon" />
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://i793.photobucket.com/albums/yy212/islesv/islesv-1.png" type="image/x-icon" />

The PhotoBucket file is the same favicon for my personal blog at blog.islesv.net.

How to spam forums

2009-11-14T09:39:00.002+08:00

Compare this from EduPhil.org:

and this, from Leonidas.phpbbnow.com:

They look similar, right? In fact, the one from leonidas.phpbbnow.com is a verbatim copy of SheMi's post at EduPhil.org.

Here's an algorithm to use in spamming forums:

1. Identify forums to get posts from.
2. From those identified forums, identify users. This must be done manually, and will require looking up some posts of certain users - disregard users which look like spam accounts.
3. Look for threads started by an identified user. Copy the first post from that thread.
4. Add your own spam to the message.
5. Post the message to another forum.

How to trace what's being copied from one's site

2009-11-14T09:32:00.002+08:00

I just discovered the tool Tynt Insight, which allows me to track what's being copied from my sites. I've just installed it at EduPhil.org, and would be interested in seeing the reports later.

In just a few seconds, I knew that someone copied the text on the legal bases of Philippine education, which appears to be on the top results from Google. Exciting!

Blair and Robertson's The Philippine Islands (or, create it and forget it site)

2009-11-06T21:14:00.002+08:00

I created the site Primary Sources in Philippine History about two years ago, when I had a lot more time in my hands and too little to do ;)

I am happy to take note that some people are finding value in the site, specifically, this table of contents for Blair and Robertson's monumental The Philippine Islands series.

Is sulit.com.ph spamdexing?

2009-11-06T20:08:00.003+08:00

Spamdexing includes using unrelated phrases in the text of a web page to manipulate the relevancy or prominence of resources indexed by a search engine.

I was using the search term "scholarship for Filipinos" when I noticed that one of the top hits (no. 5, in fact), is this web page from Sulit.com.ph. However, if you visit that page, you will realize that nothing is related to scholarship for Filipinos except the following:

the page is titled "scholarships abroad for filipinos Philippines"
in the breadcrumb of the page, the phrase above is repeated: "scholarships abroad for filipinos"
then at the bottom, there is again the title, now made into a completely out-of-place text at the bottom: "scholarships abroad for filipinos Philippines"

The reason for these three things is simple: to game Google. Accordingly, the page gets a very high rank for the Google search "scholarship for Filipinos".

The actual page returned by sulit.com.ph does not serve the user at all, and only wastes the user's time and network resources. Nothing on it has something to do with scholarship for Filipinos. It is a clear case of spamming Google's index to increase the chances that it (sulit.com.ph) will have a share of the traffic from search engines. If you do an index (site:) search for sulit.com.ph to check how many pages it has in Google's index, you get a very high number: 11,200,000 (for comparison, the English Wikipedia has about 11,600,000).

(P.S. And yes, I have my own sulit.com.ph website.)

UPDATE: Another spamdexing page, this time for the search term "Philippine historical documents". This is personal, since I intended a year ago to be the number 1 Google result for such search term.

Also, sulit.com.ph uses cloaking such that for Google, the short link provided in the page (e.g. http://sulit.com.ph/philippine+historical+documents) redirects to the front page (http://www.sulit.com.ph). To test that, download the User Agent Switcher plugin for Firefox and visit the previous link using the default user agent and using Googlebot's user agent.

How to reset BPI Express Online password

2009-11-05T03:11:00.004+08:00

If you have forgotten your BPI Express Online password, here are the steps to recover it:

1. Go to the login page and click "Forgot Your User ID or Password" (or go straight here):

2. Choose "Activate your nominated password in any BPI Express Teller ATM" (or go straight here):

3. Fill up the required fields and activate your password at any BPI Express Teller ATM.

Take note that if you complete the activation procedure before 10:00 PM on a banking day, you can only access your account the following day. If you complete the activation procedure after 10:00 PM, over the weekend, or on a holiday, you can only access your account two days after you have activated it.

You may also activate your nominated password by calling any of the following BPI Express Phone Numbers:

If you are in the Greater Metro Manila Area - 89-100
If you are outside Metro Manila - 1-800-188-89100 (toll-free)
In other countries, take a look at this list or call +63 +2 +891-0000

How to search documents and files at RapidShare.de and MegaUpload.com

2009-11-05T03:02:00.001+08:00

Here are some of the best specialized search engines for RapidShare and MegaUpload:

http://rapidlibrary.com/

http://www.filestube.com/

http://loadingvault.com/

http://fileshunt.com/

http://4megaupload.com/

http://www.megadownload.net/

http://rapidshare-search-engine.com/

http://www.oneclickfiles.com/

http://www.shareminer.com/

http://filespump.com/

http://www.rapidshareindex.com/

http://www.rapidshare1.com/

http://www.avun.com/

How to download all pages linked from a page

2009-11-05T02:53:00.003+08:00

Situation: Say you needed to download all pages linked from http://example.com/page.html and you don't want to do it manually one page at a time. (Additional benefit: the directory structure is kept.)

Solution: Use Backstreet Browser with the following settings:

Project URL: The URL of the page (in our example, http://example.com/page.html)
Maximal link depth: 2 (so that only page.html and the pages linked from page.html will be downloaded)
Under the Others tab, clear the Filename for the Starting HTML page (by default index.html)

Note 1: All pages linked from the current page will be downloaded, whether they are relevant to your goal or not.

(Note: There might be a more elegant way using Python.)

Free online crossword maker (no download required)

2009-09-08T22:20:00.002+08:00

If you are looking for an online crossword puzzle maker which you do not need to download and install to use (just input the words and clues online and get the result online), the following links may help:

1. puzzle-maker.com/CW/ - the best in my opinion

2. Armored Penguin crossword maker

3. Puzzle Maker from DiscoveryEducation.com

4. crossword maker from teach-nology.com

5. free crossword maker from The Teachers' Cornet.net

6. CrosswordPuzzleGames.com

7. Crossword maker from edHelper.com

8. Free crossword puzzle generator from Tools for Educators

What's wrong with the Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009

2009-08-29T00:26:00.003+08:00

The House of Representatives just passed on the third and final reading House Bill No. 6440, their counterpart to Senate Bill No. 2317. Together, the two bills will be consolidated to become the "Anti-Child Pornography Act of 2009".

But, hey, how about Section 8?

Don't get me wrong. I don't support child pornography, and just like 99% of Filipinos, condemn it. But the problem is, with all these hullabaloo of "Yes, the Philippines finally passed an anti-child porn law", no one seems to have read the actual text of the two bills. I honestly have not read the House of Representatives version, because it's not available on their website. But I suspect Section 8 is still there.

So, what is so evil with Section 8 of SB 2317, and why is Isles Tech using some of his precious time ranting about the bill instead of catching up with the cases to read at law school? Here's the actual text of Section 8, SB 2317:

"Section 8. Responsibility of Internet Service Providers. All Internet Service Providers (ISPs) shall notify the PNP or the NBI within seven (7) days from obtaining facts and circumstances that Child Pornography is being committed using its server or facility. Nothing in this Section may be construed to require an Internet Service Provider (ISP) to engage in the monitoring of any user, subscriber or customer, or the content of any communication of any such person; provided that no Internet Service Provider (ISP) shall be held civilly liable for damages on account of any notice given in good faith in compliance with this Section.

All Internet Service Providers (ISPs) shall install available technology, program or software to ensure that access to or transmittal of Child Pornography will be blocked or filtered.

The National Telecommunications Commission (NTC) shall promulgate within six (6) months from the effectivity of this Act the necessary implementing rules and regulations which shall include, among others, the installation of filtering software that will block access to or transmission of Child Pornography."

Here are two practical effects for you, who read blogs and access the Net almost daily:
1. Your ISP will be required to "install available technology, program or software" to make sure that "access to or transmittal of Child Pornography will be blocked or filtered" - in other words, every ISP will be required to watch what you are doing. (I'm not sure how they are going to do this, but possibly through some blacklisting scheme, just like in Germany and New Zealand.)

That's not so evil from my perspective - I've been surveillanced all my life (although I am not a subversive) and firewalls are good to force me to do more useful things anyway. And, most importantly, I'm not hiding anything :).

But this?

2. If your ISP mistakenly identifies you as a patron of child pornography, you cannot make it pay damages, since "no Internet Service Provider (ISP) shall be held civilly liable for damages on account of any notice given in good faith in compliance with this Section [8]."

Privacy advocates should find good ground against Section 8 of SB 2317, which presumably also appears in HB 6440.

How to share Internet connection between two laptops without using a router

2009-08-28T22:01:00.002+08:00

Situation: One laptop is connected to the Internet via a wired connection. Both laptops have working wireless adapters.

Essentially, the steps can be divided into two separate tasks: creating an ad hoc connection, and sharing the Internet connection once the ad hoc connection is established.

Creating an Ad Hoc Connection
1. In one of the laptops, go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections.
2. Select the correct wireless network connection and right-click then choose Properties.
3. Select the Wireless Networks tab and under Preferred networks click on Add...
4. Put a name for Network name (SSID) and uncheck the "The key is provided for me automatically" option under Wireless network key. Check "This is a computer-to-computer (ad hoc) network; wireless access points are not used." Input a five- or thirteen-character password for network key.
5. Click on OK and then the next OK.
6. Place the cursor on the wireless icon at the taskbar, right-click and choose "View Available Networks". You should see the wireless network that you've just created. Double-click on it to connect - you will be prompted for the network key you've set up earlier. Once you connect to the ad hoc network, the current laptop will send radio beacons to the other laptop and the other laptop can now detect the ad hoc network.
7. Connect to the ad hoc network from the other laptop.
8. For best results, set up static IPs. Assign one laptop with an IP of 192.168.0.1, subnet 255.255.255.0, gateway 192.168.0.2, and DNS 192.168.0.2, while the other will have an IP of 192.168.0.2, subnet 255.255.255.0, gateway 192.168.0.1, and DNS 192.168.0.1.

Sharing the Internet Connection
1. Here you have to use the laptop connected to the Internet. Go to Start > Control Panel > Network Connections.
2. Select the connection to the Internet. Click on the Advanced tab.
3. Under Internet Connection Sharing, check "Allow other network users to connect through this computer's Internet connection" Uncheck the "Allow other network users to control or disable the shared Internet connection".

Try connecting to the Net now.

Philippine jurisprudence database

2009-08-05T22:16:00.003+08:00

Finally, I got a chance to update this technology blog. Two holidays in a row for those in Cebu. :)

I've been busy with law school nowadays, but this did not stop me from planning yet another website (which I may not be able to finish anyway). This one is a collection of Philippine laws and jurisprudence, with one twist: hyperlinking among the cases, and a user feature. One can create a user account, and "watch" a case. Watching would mean that the user will be informed via email when a new case referencing the watched case is uploaded.

Expected time-frame (if I don't get tired of it :)) is by November 2009.

No thanks, OpenDNS

2009-05-21T14:59:00.003+08:00

Okay, it is not really right to be blogging during office hours, but it is my break time. And I am not using company resources except for the network connection. :)

I've been checking my GMail account for (yes) work-related concerns, but of course, GMail shows you all your messages, not just the work-related. So I came across Kevin Paquet's Pinoy Teens Online FeedBurner message - I recently subscribed to him when I realized that I had not really been keeping track of one of the brightest bloggers this side of the country. Earlier, I noticed that kevinpaquet.com showed domain parking ads. Since we are contacts at Facebook (not accessible from school again, no thanks OpenDNS), I sent him a chat message about the matter and I was informed that he just actually put up those domain parking ads purposely.

Pinoy Teens Online mentioned us in their latest post, and I wanted to check on the actual site - even though Kevin thoughtfully provided the entire text of the post via feed, it is always better to read what is on the site, and you can comment too - but look what comes up:

No thanks OpenDNS. Nudity? Pornography? Hey Kev, what do you have there, the Hayden Kho and Katrina Halili scandal?

How to set up a two-PC network

2009-05-07T08:17:00.000+08:00

There are at least two ways of setting up a two-PC network, if you just want to play games with your brother using the desktop PC and you using the laptop.

The easier but more expensive way is to use a router or a switch. Enabling DHCP on the router would then assign different IPs to the computers; the only thing you need to remember is to set the default gateway to your router's IP address (usually 192.168.0.1 - this is the address you type on the address bar which allows you to go to your router's configuration).

The more difficult way, but is less expensive because you don't have to buy a router is to use a crossover cable. This is simply a LAN cable with some wires interchanged. You can go to your nearest computer supplies store which also do services and ask them that you need a crossover LAN cable of a certain length. This is not something which you can buy right away, at least not in Cebu City. This is so because not so many people requests for these; only the very geeky (or cheap) ones do. Then you have to manually configure the network. Assign different IPs to the network cards of each PC, and use the IP address of one as the default gateway for the other. For example, if the network card in PC1 has the IP address 192.168.0.1, and that in PC2 has the IP address 192.168.0.2, then the default gateways are as follows: 192.168.0.2 for PC1 and 192.168.0.1 for PC2.

How to set up different network profiles in Windows XP

2009-05-07T08:02:00.002+08:00

So I finally got myself a laptop. At our boarding room, I play network games with my brother; he uses the desktop PC and I use the laptop, via an adhoc two-PC network. At my girlfriend's boarding place, I've installed a router which connects to the Internet and assigns a unique IP to my laptop automatically. At my workplace, I have to connect using a preconfigured IP and gateway.

Unfortunately, there has never been an easy way to change from one network profile to another in Windows XP. So I have to do everything manually.

Windows Heaven's suggestion does not seem to work from my end.

Thank goodness I've found the NetSetMan utility via LifeHacker. Now I can set different profiles at will. The free version of NetSetMan allows up to six profiles, pretty well above what I really need.

Irony

2009-04-18T10:40:00.001+08:00

Laptop cannot detect and connect to wireless connection

2009-04-13T22:49:00.002+08:00

I'm in my girlfriend's provincial house (Hilongos, Leyte), where they have a non-conventional wireless connection (by non-conventional, I mean you have to specify the IP and gateway addresses). It took me some time to figure out that to enable my Internet connection, I have to enable selection of non-preferred network. To do this, go to Control Panel > Network Connections > Wireless Network Connection > Wireless Networks > Advanced. Make sure that the "Automatically connect to non-preferred networks." is checked.

ODP application

2009-03-08T19:15:00.002+08:00

I've applied to be an editor of the Open Directory Project, for its Philippine education category. Wish me luck :)

Tip: Choose a password which is 7 or 8 characters long, and has at least one non-letter (either digit or punctuation). Took me three tries.

UPDATE: Application denied :(

How to increase forum signups by using information hiding

2009-03-08T18:21:00.002+08:00

If you are looking for a teaching job in the Philippines, you should probably head to the Jobs for Teachers sub-forum of the Education in the Philippines Forum at http://eduphil.org/, or go to the more specialized Teaching Jobs Search Forums at http://educjobs.net - I administer the former, while the latter is administered by my co-teacher at PAREF Springdale School, Mr. Archie Sacay.

The problem with this kind of forums is the fact that most users would go there, get some information (specifically, jobs available and contact information of the schools) and then leave, leaving nothing to the forum administrator(s) who spent resources compiling the information. The obvious remedy would be to disable guest access, and force users to register and activate an account before allowing them access to the information. The problem with this approach is that the information that you would not like unauthenticated users to see could not be seen by Google either. So your site does not get indexed, and you do not get visitors. (The alternative technique of cloaking, that is, providing different content to GoogleBot when it visits the site, and the register-first-to-access-info if a human visitor does the same, is admittedly black hat, and frowned upon by many webmasters, although I know that many are using that technique. If you are caught doing this, Google could potentially exclude you from their index.)

So what's the solution? My idea is simple: hide some of the information. That is, if a guest accesses the page (and by guests, we would include GoogleBot), he will only see some of the information, perhaps the job openings, and the school (at the very least that is what I implement at EduPhil). But we hide some of the information, say the contact information of the school. Of course, if one already knows the school, it should be easy to get the contact information online, as long as the school has a website or some information about it online. Otherwise one will have a problem. And if the administrator would really like to be cruel (I don't want to), he could leave out the name of the school, and include it in the hidden information. Still further ideas would be to limit the information seen by number of posts, time spent on the forum, etc. but as of now that is beyond my programming skills :-)

Anyway, to implement this in MyBB (which is the forum software used at EduPhil), one would need to create a plugin. I based my code on Dragon Fever's Hide Links from Guests plugin but unfortunately the license of that plugin states that I cannot offer a modified version of the plugin for download. Just a hint how to do it: the preg_replace at the end of the file will be replaced with a preg_replace for a given block of HTML that you want to hide. In my case, I would put the information to be hidden in a block of HTML inside (for an example, look at the source of this page). If the user is a guest, unactivated member, or banned member, the hidden information will be replaced with some other text.

How to use first bolded words/phrase as WikkaWiki title

2009-03-08T05:06:00.002+08:00

One of the things I love about MediaWiki is the ability to use the first bolded word or phrase as the page title. Since MediaWiki is too slow for shared hosts, such as the one hosting the Encyclopedia of Philippine Education, I could not use MediaWiki, and instead I opted for the less resource-hungry WikkaWiki. With WikkaWiki, the default title is the first word or phrase which is made into a header. In order to change this behavior, we have to change the file lib/Wakka.class.php. Find the following code snippets:

function PageTitle() {
$title = "";
$pagecontent = $this->page["body"];
if (ereg( "(=){3,5}([^=\n]+)(=){3,5}", $pagecontent, $title)) {
$formatting_tags = array("**", "//", "__", "##", "''", "++", "#%", "@@", "\"\"");
$title = str_replace($formatting_tags, "", $title[2]);
}
if ($title) return strip_tags($this->Format($title)); # fix for forced links in heading
else return $this->GetPageTag();
}

We have two things to change:
1. The ereg value - instead of the one given, it should be ereg( "\*\*([^=*\n]+)?\*\*", $pagecontent, $title)

2. The $title should be then be $title = str_replace($formatting_tags, "", $title[1]); // take note of the [1], from [2].

How to redirect domain.com/index.php to domain.com using .htaccess

2009-03-03T18:33:00.002+08:00

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[^/]*/index\.php [NC]
RewriteRule (.*)index\.php(.*) $1$2 [R,L]

If you want to redirect index.html as well, you can have

RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} ^[^/]*/index\.html [NC]
RewriteRule (.*)index\.php(.*) $1$2 [R,L]

Never underestimate unregistered visitors

2009-03-02T15:52:00.002+08:00

It's almost the anniversary of EduPhil.org, the Philippines' first (and so far only) independent online forum for teachers, parents, students, policymakers, and stakeholders of Philippine education. I had been a bit disappointed with the number of active posters in the forum; there had been only a very few of us, and these past few days, some of the more active posters have spent less and less time at the forums.

I installed a MyBB plugin which would tell me, in the index page itself, how many members and guests there had been in the past 24 hours. The numbers were a bit of a surprise for me: for today, there had been 172 users: 167 guests and 5 registered. Look at the disproportion.

The information shown by the plugin is very useful for me, since it would force me to think of ways to get the guests engaged and get themselves an account at the forum.

MyBB won't do SEF URLs

2009-02-28T12:36:00.002+08:00

It took me some time to figure this out. In some servers, using the default .htaccess file provided by the MyBB download won't let you do the search-engine friendly URLs. In this case, you should add the following line:

RewriteBase /

(Note: The MyBB installation at EduPhil.org is at the root.)

MyBB thread number of views won't update

2009-02-27T16:32:00.003+08:00

The profile design plugin is responsible for this, if you can make it work at all.