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There seem to be dozens of instructions on how to get this done but from my personal experience somehow your mileage will vary depending on what type of ISO image you’re operating on. As this blog in part journalizes my journey (and yes, I also use it to offload stuff I sometimes forget), listed below are the currently most useful references that have gotten me through some projects:
- OSXDaily – Burn an ISO Image from the Command Line
- NightLionSecurity – Burn ISO to bootable USB flash drive in Mac OSX terminal
- Web Upd8 – 4 Ways to Create Bootable Live USB Drives
By far, for those of you into system building will appreciate NLS’s instructions and the interesting nuances of converting ISO to IMG files when creating a bootable flash drive. It’s worked so well, I’m pasting the instructions below:
First thing to note is that this procedure requires an IMG file, not an ISO. So the first thing we will be doing is converting the ISO file to the accepted DMG format.
- Download the desired file
- Open the Terminal (in /Applications/Utilities/ or query Terminal in Spotlight)
- Convert the .iso file to .img using the convert option of hdiutil (e.g., hdiutil convert -format UDRW -o ~/path/to/target.img ~/path/to/ubuntu.iso)
Note: OS X tends to put the .dmg ending on the output file automatically.
- Run diskutil list to get the current list of devices
- Insert your flash media
- Run diskutil list again and determine the device node assigned to your flash media (e.g. /dev/disk2)
- Run diskutil unmountDisk /dev/diskN (replace N with the disk number from the last command; in the previous example, N would be 2)
- Execute sudo dd if=/path/to/downloaded.img of=/dev/rdiskN bs=1m (replace N with your disk number)Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes
- Using /dev/rdisk instead of /dev/disk may be faster.
- If you see the error dd: Invalid number ’1m’, you are using GNU dd. Use the same command but replace bs=1m with bs=1M.
- If you see the error dd: /dev/diskN: Resource busy, make sure the disk is not in use. Start the ‘Disk Utility.app’ and unmount (don’t eject) the drive.
- Run diskutil eject /dev/diskN and remove your flash media when the command completes
- Restart your Mac and press alt while the Mac is restarting to choose the USB-Stick
There are several ways to post this badge in HTML as well as in Adobe Flash but the latter wouldn’t display if you were on an iOS device. Yeah, that kinda sucks in the meantime — lets all gear up for HTML5!
As you may have surmised by now, we’re using Hurricane Electric‘s excellent 6to4 stack to be reachable via IPv6. In reality, this blog has been compatible since last year during IPv6 Day but its only the past month where the final piece of an IPv6 compatible DNS was resolved. I’m using a modified script of the instructions in the DD-WRT Wiki which details how to use OpenDNS to get this all done.
I’ve always used Speedtest.net to find out my current network speed as well as my connection’s external IP address. However, if you haven’t yet setup your browser or possibly when trying to automate this process a hat tip goes to Debjit for this useful command line:
dig myip.opendns.com @resolver1.opendns.com +short
Moving forward with my web content series I was looking at some easy ways to spruce up the default templates for both my WordPress and Joomla! installations. In the course of doing so, and like most predominantly via search engines, surely many of us have come across dozens of premium as well as free websites that offer just what we need. I’ve come to trust the basic default offerings more than the pre-configured ones for the simple reasoned assumption that given the large user base of most content management systems they have usually done the cautious job of vetting every piece of code. Granted we’ve heard of site compromises from time-to-time but those yet again get the proper response of re-validation — not so similar it appears when considering all these free stuff one can download from elsewhere.
In the year review for 2010, Trend Micro called out WordPress as one of the most dangerous website software owing to the numerous attacks and exploits that happened that year. By itself, that statement caused an uproar in the community and perhaps rightly so. Personally, I attribute this to the fact that WordPress alongside Blogger/Blogspot have the largest chunk of user-base out there. Blogging in itself is just a means to an end which is to get your thoughts out there and focus on content rather than the usual to-do-list of first securing one’s blog from the threat of attack. It goes without saying that a lot of bloggers could be facing several levels of security issues including mis-configured databases, easy to guess passwords, publicly shared directories, and so on. However, at the bottom of it is the fact that it’s your blog so pay attention. I’d also like to mention that as part of protecting users from compromised blog sites this could result in your site being temporarily blocked until its been cleaned out. Thus, let me revise that statement with the above lengthy explanation of the many underlying issues that brought about this situation.
One of the oldest examples of bad guys redistributing a hack modified WordPress plugin that I was able to find in my haste was a blog entry from Derek in 2007. He points out one important security tip which is to always download from the original author’s site when considering any add-on to your public blog.
An example of a sneaky trojanized WordPress theme was analyzed in detail by Otto in December of 2010. In it he points out another rule of thumb which is to only download themes from the official WordPress distribution site (which, as I’ve mentioned above will at least go through community review and follow some rules).
ThemeLab’s Leland called out to stop downloading templates from untrusted sites and even addresses that fact that one of his seem to be victim back in 2009. In it he suggests using the Theme Authenticity Checker (TAC) plugin, except for the fact that its now 2012 and the latest from BuiltBackwards only shows tested compatibility for WordPress 2.8? However, it still looks to be working when combined with other tools like Donncha’s Exploit Scanner plugin (incidentally he’s also the developer for the WP MU Domain Mapping plugin). Siobhan in his blog entry at WPMU in early January 2011 notes why you shouldn’t look for WordPress themes using a search engine and does a follow-up review a week later on some alternative sites that have gone through the knife in a separate development sandbox.
Yet, again I digress. I was telling you about using search engines to find your next content management theme or template earlier. There are a bunch of templates in my downloads directory, mostly Joomla!-based as thats whats on my plate now, that I’m now considering. Its so tempting to just go through the pile and see what works.
I went through the Joomla! forums looking for some good sites to download 1.7.xx compatible templates. It was in the second page where Ken mentioned that a bunch of these apparently free goodies were being distributed with untrusted and a bunch of embedded encrypted code. That sent my Spidey senses on overdrive and will explain my decision. There are just too many pieces of code to check and its a little more cumbersome to sift through the various code modules each time. Perhaps I’ll go back to these downloaded templates when I have the proper tools and mindset. But for now, Let’s not.
The next steps for me seem to be really learning about the innards of Joomla! with several nice guidebook and build my site from scratch. If you decided to do otherwise, then please ….
Let me reiterate:
- download themes and templates from the official content management distribution site
- download the original items from the author’s own website
- be careful or refrain from using a search engine to grab your extensions from a possible blackhat SEO site
Stay safe out there.
Now that the WordPress Multisite is stable, its time to start playing around with another web content management system (WCMS) favorite – Joomla!
First and foremost, on the QNAP the offical QPKG version is Joomla! 1.5.20 which is as of today two-(2) versions down from the latest Joomla! 1.7.3 stable release. According to the Joomla update pages there doesn’t seem to be a direct path to the latest and the best way is to do staged updates via Joomla! 1.6.3 and then upwards. That is easier said than done due in part to the fact that there were several database improvements and field additions done in the latest release. So, how does one correctly upgrade without the prospect of possible errors once installing 1.7.xx given an existing 1.5.xx version of the MySQL/MySQLi database?
Give me a few hours to finish, time to start my Qigong class in a few minutes.
The official instructions for version 1.5.xx to 1.6.xx migration is hyper-linked right here. Doing it this way will technically fix the possible issues one might meet as it is the base of which the version 1.7.xx database references.
However, for us QNAP users there are two options if you prefer that Joomla! stays as a QPKG option in your NAS admin interface. You can either (a) build from scratch and overwrite the current installation with the extracted release downloaded straight from Joomla!’s servers, or you can (b) use the un-official QPKG package availalbe at the QNAP Forums — myself I’d rather take the latter easy route as my start point.
(a) Build from Scratch. Instructions for these are actually mentioned in passing at the bottom of the QNAP Wiki. Basically just download the latest package, extract the folder, and overwrite whatever is in the original subfolders in either /share/Qweb/Joomla/ or /share/Web/Joomla/
(b) Un-official QPKG. This is my recommended route as it has worked for me. Cristian has been nice enough to provide a Joomla! 1.6.3 package that you can directly install instead of the outdated official Joomla! 1.5.20 available from QNAP’s servers. Once installed via the QNAP NAS interface you should just go through the official Joomla! Wiki update procedure to get to Joomla! 1.7.3 stable.
It will happen eventually. You’re uploading snapshots to better explain your thoughts and then suddenly WordPress refuses to do so with this error message:
This file exceeds the maximum upload size for this site.
Using WordPress Multisite the controls for increasing the upper limit is through the Network Admin panel and in Network Settings:
You should look into your pending upload list and set the upper limit to the largest file size (in KB) in the list.
Another point of consideration is that depending on how you built your blog farm and if using multi-domain and multisite that the settings could also be slightly located differently and instead above your multisite section:
Previous to this I had tried modifying the .htaccess file as recommended in other places but that doesn’t seem to work when hosting on a QNAP TS-859 Pro+ (or any other version for that matter).
Somewhat related to the above issue is that during file uploads WordPress may also flag for security reasons as a file type it doesn’t like. You’ll notice that in my laziness I simple modified the Upload file types settings to cover possible file extensions and conventions that I use. A very important trouble shooting tip is that WordPress does not have file type checking and will base uploads on the file extensions, so check these out first before scratching your head (yes, I mean you/us Linux users!).
As mentioned a few moments ago, I just did some open heart surgery on this WordPress installation. It looks like my choice is true, but really only time will tell.
A good thing is that the current entries from prior are still in the test and staging sites and for now will serve as the ad-hoc backup. I’ve redirected the vhosts and the DNS settings so all is done.
As mentioned the other day, a recap of which of the available WordPress Multisite plugins out there make blog farm management easier and which of them could potentially cause you to loose some hair was in the works. I’m currently parallel testing three-(3) of these as I write and will constantly update this post until its finished. Do note that my tests take into consideration the fact that we are:
- QNAP TS-859 Pro+ NAS hardware (any version applicable)
- WordPress Multisite installed via QPKG package and updated
- Planned multi-domain and multi-subdomain blog farm
The downloaded Plugins listed in no particular order:
- WordPress MU Domain Mapping
- WP Multi-Network
- Networks for WordPress
Donncha’s WordPress MU Domain Mapping was initially a pain to install and it caused a bit of confusion on first use. On subsequent installs, however, I was able to tame the beast by installing it after the initial network setup was stable and ensuring that all the relevant users and roles as well as all the other individual blogs had been imported. I believe this is key since by doing so you’ve already tested that each individual blog (albeit all served on the initial single domain) actually works and that your Apache virtual hosts and DNS host settings work as a base. The instructions to map a particular blog profile as any domain or sub-domain was quite straightforward. Just to note that you won’t actually get to manage your multi-domains via the Network Admin page. Each domain or sub-domain assignment is static and actually just masked so it redirects to the original sub-domain in your initial domain setup. I’d say this plugin is halfway towards full multi-domain readiness.
Jacoby’s WP Multi-Network was easy enough to figure out. Once network activated the only way to manage your network is not via the Network Admin page but rather the initial default landing page. A caveat so far is that not all of your plugins may be compatible with it, in fact you may even loose access to the Plugin section altogether as was the case during my tests. It may be possible to forego network activation and instead just singularly activate the plugin. I’ll do that test a little later as it’s currently what I have installed. To note, I’ve lost the ability to track my traffic since I can’t find a way to activate or add the relevant Google Analytics and GoingUp! plugins on this blog but they’re just running fine and dandy on my main domain’s blog network. Sorry folks, this plugin doesn’t seem to be multi-domain-aware but it will probably help those who would rather skip the official WordPress Multisite setup and instead do everything via plugin on their non-MU site. Given this series I’m writing it may be just as well if you’re just itching to try out adding the odd domain and sub-domain in your menagerie.
JerseyConnect’s Networks for WordPress seem to be the most compatible. To note I was surprised that this plugin was actually developed by individuals at the New Jersey State Library (nice one guys!). Quite similar to my SEO Ultimate discovery this plugin is a refreshing change allowing you to simply move blogs around and create multi-domains and sub-domains at will. That and the fact that the rest of my currently used plugins seem to work right across is the main reason I’m now in the process of backing-up my posts and other blogs in attempt to migrate to it sometime today.
See you on the other side.
Unless you prefer to individually manage Akismet accounts in your Multisite blog farm, you’re better-off modifying your wp-config.php and adding the lines below to use a single Network key:
/** Define WordPress.com API Key */
define(‘WPCOM_API_KEY’,'your_api_key’);
Whether you Network Activate prior or after is up to you but its of course always best to do it after prepping everything.
Starting from my yearly blog reboot I’ve been documenting some of my WordPress Multisite adventures and unfortunate misadventures. One of the fundamental changes using plugins in face of possible installation and database hiccups would be the proper choice of SEO extensions.
I am fortunate to have a few domains and GoDaddy’s easy to configure DNS interface (it could stand to be a tad more intuitive, guys!) and so was able to do a few tests. Of my installation tests included a bunch of multisite extensions as well as the usual SEO enhancing suspects. That didn’t go well, its worth a separate blog entry for later.
However, on the SEO side of the house the most popular plugins according the stats on at the WordPress Plugin repository were (in alphabetical order):
- All in One SEO Pack
- SEO Ultimate
- WordPress SEO by Yoast
Personally in my non-multisite past Joost and Torbert’s were two-(2) among my favorites combined with HeadSpace2 SEO from Johnny. Another worth mentioning is Greg’s High Performance SEO plugin which was also in my original QNAP installation. I didn’t put the others in my list above as they weren’t in my original test bed, perhaps sometime later if there is some interest. Moving along …
Terra Nova is coming-up in a few minutes so I’ll try to finish-up without being too brief!
In my sub-domain tests it appears that the current version of All in One SEO Pack isn’t multisite-aware. That being said, I believe if you simply install the plugin from Network Admin and forego network activation then it should be possible to activate the plugin individually from relevant instances in your blogging farm.
SEO Ultimate was a nice discovery. It allowed for simple toggles instead of check-marks and was multisite-aware on first install. I might give it another whirl once my blog installs settle down and become stable so there’s a good traffic platform for comparison.
Yoast is truly one of my favorite SEO gurus. His WordPress SEO plugin combined with a very informative blog website is one of the reasons he deserves the #1 top-spot when searching for “wordpress seo plugin” and the 3rd-down just below WordPress and the Codex itself when searching for “wordpress seo”.
I’ve only just begun cleaning-up this blog and haven’t even touched on what advantages this default theme provides above what my previous Atahualpa did, but I sure have BytesforAll in mind while I continue churning out my thoughts.
Until next time.
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