What about my business??

For a limited time we are offering FREE design services to the first 100 business to contact us about this program,  you will be given an option of hosting packages, to qualify for the free design you must prepay 1 year of hosting services,  this ranges from $99 to $259 depending on the plan.  You get a FREE mobile and desktop web design and a 20% off any print design services (brochure, business card, letter head, etc)

The first thing you should be aware of is that moving a site is a multiple day process in order to ensure proper and limited or no service interruption.

Changing Registers?

If your planning on changing your registration company for your domain name,  I recommend you do that before moving the actual web site,  this will make things go much smother,  It can take up to 3-4 days for a Transfer to complete,  each registrar has a different process for Transfers so ask the company your moving the domain name TO for help,  many times they can walk you through step by step what to do in order to move your domain name to their services.

Whats in a name?

The next step is to recreate the current Dynamic Name Server (DNS) records at your new hosting provider.  If you use an external (not with your current hosting provider) you can skip this.  You need to set up each A , CNAME, MX, SOA, and other DNS Records on the new DNS Server,  for now just Duplicate them Exactly as they are. Most hosting providers have an interface for you to view these records, if not ask your current hosting provider for a list

Time to LIVE!!!

Now this is the most important step,  many hosting companies do not do this step and it really matters,  You need to Adjust the Time to Live,  or TTL, for each record,  during the Transfer I normally set it to 300, which is 5 mins,  meaning other DNS servers will only save or cache the record for 5 mins,  standard is 4 hour to 12 hours.

The TTL time is listed in seconds.

Update the Name

Now you need to go to your Registrar and change the Name Server Records to your new hosting company (again skip this step if you use an external DNS system). Once you change these records your new hosting company will be directing the traffic for your sites, if you followed the the steps above nothing should change for your sites visitors, their computers will simply be getting instructions from a different place

Now wait 36-48 hours before going to the next step, this will allow the name server changes to propagate worldwide.

But what about the files

You probably wondering why I have not even transferred even a single file yet,  well we are getting to that,  at this point you can use what ever transfer method you have available,  FTP, sFTP, SCP, etc, to move all of the files from your old host to your new host.  If you have a control panel like cPanel, or interworx you should be able to import and export directly from those system, even if your moving to a different control panel many have importers that will read the export from other systems.

If you do not have a control panel you need to move everything under the “public_html” dir to the new “public_html” dir (this is also called www in some places) if you have subdomains those could exsist out side of this dir and should be moved as well.

Also create a copy of any Databases,  Set up the databases and database users on the new server and import a copy of the databases in to the new server. mysqldump is great for this.
Warning: Some applications do not have portable passwords, if you these apps new passwords will have to be generated for all users

At this point DO NOT transfer any emails or maildir’s,  we will do that later.

Test, Test, Test

Now we need to test the site(s) to make sure it works on the new server,  the best way to do this is to manually edit your PC’s “Hosts File”  On windows it located at “C:\windows\system32\drivers\etc\hosts“  on linux/unix it is located at “/etc/hosts“ edit as admin/root this file to add

#new.ip.add.ress  mydomain.com
69.72.130.144    example.com

This will force your site to be directed to your NEW server,  Test your site,  correcting any errors. After your satisfied that your sites work properly on the new server then remove that line from the hosts file to make sure everything goes back to normal, you will now be viewing the site on the old server.  It is a good idea to Change something,  add a post, or add a header to the new and old site to indicate what is being served. This allows you to know what server your looking at.

Email,  What email?

Now you can set up all of the email accounts you have on the old hosting company,  if you use IMAP do not move any mail yet, we will do that last.

Lets get the move on?

Now it is time for the big move,  It is best to do this when you have the LEAST amount of traffic for alot of sites that is around midnight  but some sites see their peak at midnight so it is not a one size fits all, doing it when you have the least amount of traffic is always best.

Put all of your applications, forums, blogs, etc, in to “Maintenance mode” or somehow make them Read only so no new content is posted to the sites

Download a fresh copy of all the databases, and import them to the new server, replacing any data already there.

Change the IP Records in all of the DNS Zones, to the new server,  it should only take 5 mins if you followed my advice from step one for it to be live for EVERYONE.

Take the Sites out of maintenance mode (this should only be applicable to sites that store the settings in the database,  sites with file based settings should automatically  return to normal mode)

Check to make sure your site is being present from the new server (you can look at access logs, databases activity, use iptools.com to check the dns records etc to ensure this)

OMG my Mail is GONE, I Hate you!!!

Email should now also be arriving on the new server, if you use IMAP you might be scared that “all your mail is gone” but fear not,  Log back in to your old server,  probably need to use the IP address instead of the domain name now. Find the Mail Directory,  Nomally just called “mail”  inside that will be a folder for every email account,  you should find the same structure on the new server,  simply transfer the files from 1 server to the other for each mail box and your mail will be back like it was never gone,  we do this last to ensure no mail was lost in transition.

Time is far to Short…..

Now we need to go back to the DNS Records and change the TTL again, this time back to the normal rate of 4 to 12 hours,  I recommend 4 hours,  value 7200.  This will lessen the load on your name server.  Remember TTL is stored in Seconds, so if you want anything different than 4 hours (7200) you need to do the math

WHOA,  Am I done yet

Test everything, if everything works fine you have successfully transferred your site

Shameless Plug Alert!!!!!

If you need help moving a site, even if you are not and never been a MP Technology Company,  We offer Consulting Services to everyone,  so we can professionally move your site to any vendor from any vendor for you,  for a nominal fee.

GBTV.com XBMC Video Plug-in
Original Code: by DrivingMule  -- http://forum.xbmc.org/member.php?u=37373
Modified by: MP Technology Group -- http://www.mptechnologygroup.com
Stay up with the current Releases at http://mptechnology.bitbucket.org/xbmcaddons/
+-------------------ChangeLog------------------------------+

[2011-11-23] Version 0.0.4
- Fixed Live Show Links
- Moved Show logos to Websever
    No Longer distributed with Addon,
- New Custom Logos for Radio Show and TV Show
- Add Show Descriptions for Views that show Descriptions
- Added "Todays Archived Shows" to isolate all shows broadcasts that day
- Moved Inactive Shows Off Main Page
    Inactive shows are Making of, GBInsider,Documentaries,Beck U, Specials, Restoring Courage
- Main Show listing only show last 3 Episodes, Archived List moved to Subdir
- Changed Query URL to only pull Premium Content on Premium content pages
- Moved to git version control
- removed releases from source
- releases can now be found at http://mptechnology.bitbucket.org/xbmcaddons/

I will pick back up the weekly posting on 12/2/2011.

Until then have a Great Thanksgiving

Download

If you want the source code, or if you use git Here is the Git Code Repository on BitBucket

Changes:

Premium Content Separated from Free Content

Only Episodes are now listed in the main directory of the show,  Highlight, clips and free content is displayed in a subfolder

For non-subscribers only the shows with free content are listed and it works like the current plug-in.

Show Logos

More of the actual show logos are included

I also cleaned up the code a little to make adding new shows easiers
ToDo:

• Add Todays Shows, Yesterdays Shows, and so forth back 1 week
• Move Shows that are not active to an Archive Dir
• Paginate the listing to speed up the plugin

This system includes the latest Class N Wireless Network access point that connect all of your wireless electronics in to a network that operates at speeds up to 300 mbps.  This can be often time faster than existing wired networks that can have a upper limit of 100 mpbs.

After upgrading your internal network we will install our 3 office Typhoon system includes the secure and stable Minx OS system in place of Windows.  Mint OS has 100′s of free programs for you to use, and most Windows applications can be installed the Mint OS Platform.  Our specialists will work with your staff for upto 3 hours per workstation (9 hours of in-house training per workstation) to get them upto speed with the changes in the operating systems, this training can take place BEFORE we install your new workstations as to lessen the impact on your business.  We can also work with you to ensure all of the applications you currently use can be used on the new work stations.  We recommend switching to Mint OS because of the lower cost, lower support requirements, and the continual updates that Mint OS provides over that of Windows.  However we understand that many business want to stay with Windows so Windows is available as an add-on.

After that we install a 1 Terra byte (that is 1,000 Gigabytes, or 1,000,000 Megabyte) office drive to the network and configure all of the workstations in the office access it. This give you the ability to share files and backup all of your workstations easily, your techs will even setup automated backups (on request) free of charge for you.

All of this,  Installed, Setup, and Staff Training for only $999.95) that is less than $350 per office.

Addons (installed and setup at time of installation of workstations)

• Windows 7 Home Premium – $399.95
• 17in Monitors – $359.99
• Wireless Keyboard/Mouse – 99.99

So with out further ado

How to install Office 2007 on Linux Mint 10

Make sure you have WINE 1.3.31 installed

$ wine --version
   wine-1.3.31

That is the critical part, Previous Versions are known to cause errors in the installer, if the command above show you have a different version use the package manager to install it (as of right now it is the current package) if it is no longer in the package manager you can try the latest version of wine, if it does not work remove wine and find the correct version here (http://wine.budgetdedicated.com/archive/index.html)

64 BIT Systems
If you have a 32bit system you can skip to "Install Office"
create a new "win32" directory in your wine folder

$ mkdir /home/###YOURUSERNAME###/.wine/win32

run the following:

$ WINEARCH=win32 WINEPREFIX=/home/###YOURUSERNAME###/.wine/win32 winecfg

Replacing ###YOURUSERNAME### with your username

Install Offfice 2007
Set Wine to "Windows XP"

Insert your Install Disc or Media

Open a Terminal in location of the setup.exe file on the installation media

Run:

$ wine setup.exe

Now if you need the whole office suite you can install it, We have only tested this guide with Word and Excel as that is the only 2 programs in the office suite we use. If your like us:

• Choose Custom Setup
• Remove any applications from installation you will not use

doing so speeds up the installation and saves disk space so your not storing applications you have no use for.

The installer should run normally, if it seems to pause 2/3 of the way through just continue to let it run until complete.

Post Installation Configuration
Open Wine Configuration

 $ winecfg 

Go to "Libraries"
In the "Override Library" field type in "riched20.dll" click "Add"
Now click the Edit Button.
Set it to Native(Windows) and click OK

That is it, you should now have a working installation of the office applications you Selected to install.

This was only tested with Word and Excel, if you have any problems with the other applications in the suite feel free to post them in the comments below.

Next Week, I will feature the Automated Transcoding of Media Files using FuelPHP and FFmpegPHP2, so check back here next friday for MP Technology's -- Tech Talk 2......

According to Favbrowser.com Internet Explorer is down to  49.58%, Firefox is up to 21.2% and Chrome is coming on very strong and poised to take out Firefox from the #2 spot at 16.59%.

If your sill using Internet Explorer,  do yourself a favor and click on a banner below below and get yourself a real web browser…..

You can find our code library at http://bitbucket.org/MPTechnologyGroup

Our BitBucket account will also host all Code posted on our Tech Talk Blog so be sure to follow that Repository closely.

The week will be featuring how to Use phpFFMpeg2 + FuelPHP + ffMpeg to automate transcoding your media collection.

I will post this Tutorial on 11/5/2011 so check back then……