SoftwareProjects - Internet Marketing and Web Development http://www.softwareprojects.com/images/logo.png Internet Marketing and Web Development http://www.softwareprojects.com en SoftwareProjects Inc support@softwareprojects.com (Adrian Singer) support@softwareprojects.com SoftwareProjects 3000 http://www.softwareprojects.com/images/logo.png SoftwareProjects - Internet Marketing and Web Development http://www.softwareprojects.com/images/logo.png 142 55 <![CDATA[SoftwareProjects to attend Affiliate Summit West]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-softwareprojects-to-attend-affiliate-sum-1928.html Thu, 14 Jan 2010 13:03:48 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-softwareprojects-to-attend-affiliate-sum-1928.html Affiliate Summit Las Vegas is the largest gathering of affiliates, merchants and pay-by-performance networks.



SoftwareProjects is sending a small team of rainmakers to meet and network with our respected clients and partners.

We will be blogging live from the event, covering session highlights here on SoftwareProjects.com

If you'd like to get together and learn why more than 3,000 businesses in 14 countries rely on SoftwareProjects when it comes to Shopping Carts, Product Launches, PPC, Email Marketing and Software Development, please drop a comment here or email us to setup a meeting.

See you in Vegas!]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-softwareprojects-to-attend-affiliate-sum-1928.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-softwareprojects-to-attend-affiliate-sum-1928.html <![CDATA[How to fix Mercurial Corrupt Repository]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-fix-mercurial-corrupt-repository-1926.html Fri, 08 Jan 2010 02:17:33 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-fix-mercurial-corrupt-repository-1926.html Mercurial HG and keep running into the "premature EOF reading chunk" error, there's hope. As part of this post, I will walk you through the process of repairing a damaged repository where HG .i files are corrupt and no one can successfully "Pull Changes".

Step 1: Connect to your HG server, cd to the repository folder and run
Code:
hg verify

If you get something like

Quote:
error_file_name.extension@553: unpacking 646ac1c08e97: ./../Objects/stringobject.c:4124: bad argument to internal function
10662 files, 567 changesets, 11475 total revisions
1 integrity errors encountered!

Voila, you're dealing with HG index corruption.

Step 2: Backup the file path_to_project/.hg/store/data/error_file_name.extension.i backup/error_file_name.extension.i

Step 3: In the path_to_project/ folder create a new empty file
Code:
echo "" >> new_file.extension

Step 4:
Code:
hg add new_file.extension

Step 5:
Code:
hg commit

You might need to do hg commit -u hg_user_name

Step 6: Go to path_to_project/.hg/store/data/ and
Code:
cp new_file.extension.i error_file_name.extension.i

This will replace the current file

Step 7: Pull the files from your local HG client and you should be all set!

-

Tip: To avoid unnecessary merges, always "Pull Changes" - "Commit" and "Push" as close to each other as possible.]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-fix-mercurial-corrupt-repository-1926.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-fix-mercurial-corrupt-repository-1926.html <![CDATA[iContact 2.0 API Integration PHP Example]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-icontact-20-api-integration-php-example-1925.html Fri, 25 Dec 2009 05:12:15 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-icontact-20-api-integration-php-example-1925.html SPI's Autoresponder service, is its ability to seamlessly integrate with third party autoresponders.

Once you designate an autoresponder as a third-party one, SPI will continue applying your predefined rules for adding/removing members from that autoresponder, while notifying the third-party service (GetResponse, iContact, AWeber) automatically.

Over the last few days, we have battling with iContact's new API. iContact announced their 2.0 API back on February 2009, but it's still labeled as "beta" and there's little to no documentation available online.

The SPI-iContact integration was using version 1.0 and our intention was to continue using that version until 2.0 is officially released.

Unfortunately, with no prior warning, version 1.0 stopped working and is no longer honoring requests to add contacts / subscriptions records.

iContact's API external login page is down. The help section is down:



And the developer forums are ghost town USA.



Ok, rant over.

We really like the folks at iContact. They offer an easy to use and inexpensive entry-level autoresponder service. I just wish they would update the API documentation.

The purpose of this post is to help others who are going through integrating with the iContact 2.0 API by providing simple PHP examples for adding a contract, subscripting a contact to a list and unsubscribing.

We haven't been able to find anything like this online, so I'm pretty sure this will help others going through the integration process.

The code below is self-contained. No need to use any other libraries.


function IContactLogin($account_id, $key, $user, $pass, &$client_folder_id)
{
  // Build iContact authentication
  $headers = array(
  'Accept: text/xml',
  'Content-Type: text/xml',
  'Api-Version: 2.0',
  'Api-AppId: ' . $key,
  'Api-Username: ' . $user,
  'Api-Password: ' . $pass
  );

  // Connect to iContact to retrieve the client folder id
  $ch=curl_init("https://app.icontact.com/icp/a/$account_id/c/");
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
  $buf = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);

  // Extract client folder id from response
  $client_folder_id = "";
  if (($pos=strpos($buf,"<clientFolderId>"))!==false)
  {
    $client_folder_id = substr($buf, strlen("<clientFolderId>")+$pos);
    if (($pos=strpos($client_folder_id,"<"))!==false)
    {
      $client_folder_id = substr($client_folder_id, 0, $pos);
    }
  }

  // If we have a non empty client_folder_id,
  // then everything worked well
  $result = ($client_folder_id+0 > 0);

  // Return result
  return $result;
}


function IContactSubscribe($account_id, $key, $user, $pass, $email, $list_id, &$result_str)
{
  // Get client folder id
  if (!IContactLogin($account_id, $key, $user, $pass, &$client_folder_id))
  {
    $result_str = "Failed retrieving client_folder_id for '$user'";
    return 0;
  }

  // Build iContact authentication
  $headers = array(
  'Accept: text/xml',
  'Content-Type: text/xml',
  'Api-Version: 2.0',
  'Api-AppId: ' . $key,
  'Api-Username: ' . $user,
  'Api-Password: ' . $pass
  );

  // Find contact_id for the given 'email'
  $ch=curl_init("https://app.icontact.com/icp/a/$account_id/c/$client_folder_id/contacts/?email=".URLEncode($email));
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
  $buf = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);

  // Extract contactId from response
  $contact_id = "";
  if (($pos=strpos($buf,"<contactId>"))!==false)
  {
    $contact_id = substr($buf, $pos+strlen("<contactId>"));
    if (($pos=strpos($contact_id,"<"))!==false)
    {
      $contact_id = substr($contact_id,0,$pos);
    }
  }

  // If we don't have a contactId, can't add subscription
  if (empty($contact_id))
  { 
    $result_str = "Failed finding a contact with the email address of '$email'";
    return 0;
  }

  // Build subscription record
  $data = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'."\r\n<subscriptions>\r\n";
  $data.= "<subscription>\r\n";
  $data.= "<contactId>$contact_id</contactId>\r\n";
  $data.= "<listId>$list_id</listId>\r\n";
  $data.= "<status>normal</status>\r\n";
  $data.= "</subscription>\r\n</subscriptions>";

  // Add subscription
  $ch=curl_init("https://app.icontact.com/icp/a/$account_id/c/$client_folder_id/subscriptions/");
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
  $buf = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);

  // Extract subscriptionID from response
  $subscription_id = "";
  if (($pos=strpos($buf,"<subscriptionId>"))!==false)
  {
    $subscription_id = substr($buf, $pos+strlen("<subscriptionId>"));
    if (($pos=strpos($subscription_id,"<"))!==false)
    {
      $subscription_id = substr($subscription_id,0,$pos);
    }
  }

  // If we have a subscription id OR this subscription already existed, we're good
  $result = !empty($subscription_id) || strpos($buf,"could not be updated")!==false;

  // Set result string
  $result_str = ($result ? "Updated subscription $subscription_id" : $buf);

  // Return result
  return $result;
}

function IContactAddContact($account_id, $key, $user, $pass, $email, $firstname, $lastname,
&$result_str)
{
  // Get client folder id
  if (!IContactLogin($account_id, $key, $user, $pass, &$client_folder_id))
  {
    $result_str = "Failed retrieving client_folder_id for '$user'";
    return 0;
  }
 
  // Build iContact authentication
  $headers = array(
  'Accept: text/xml',
  'Content-Type: text/xml',
  'Api-Version: 2.0',
  'Api-AppId: ' . $key,
  'Api-Username: ' . $user,
  'Api-Password: ' . $pass
  );
         
  // Build contact record
  $data = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'."\r\n<contacts>\r\n";
  $data.= "<contact>\r\n";
  $data.= "<email>$email</email>\r\n";
  $data.= "<firstName>$firstname</firstName>\r\n";
  $data.= "<lastName>$lastname</lastName>\r\n";
  $data.= "<status>normal</status>\r\n";
  $data.= "</contact>\r\n</contacts>";

  // Add contact
  $ch=curl_init("https://app.icontact.com/icp/a/$account_id/c/$client_folder_id/contacts/");
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
  $buf = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);

  // Extract contactId from response
  $contact_id = "";
  if (($pos=strpos($buf,"<contactId>"))!==false)
  {
    $contact_id = substr($buf, $pos+strlen("<contactId>"));
    if (($pos=strpos($contact_id,"<"))!==false)
    {
      $contact_id = substr($contact_id,0,$pos);
    }
  }

  // If we have a contact id, we're good
  $result = !empty($contact_id);

  // Set result string
  $result_str = ($result ? "Added new contact $contact_id" : $buf);

  // Return result
  return $result;
}

function IContactUnsubscribe($account_id, $key, $user, $pass, $email, $list_id, &$result_str)
{
  // Get client folder id
  if (!IContactLogin($account_id, $key, $user, $pass, &$client_folder_id))
  {
    $result_str = "Failed retrieving client_folder_id for '$user'";
    return 0;
  }

  // Build iContact authentication
  $headers = array(
  'Accept: text/xml',
  'Content-Type: text/xml',
  'Api-Version: 2.0',
  'Api-AppId: ' . $key,
  'Api-Username: ' . $user,
  'Api-Password: ' . $pass
  );

  // Find contact_id for the given 'email'
  $ch=curl_init("https://app.icontact.com/icp/a/$account_id/c/$client_folder_id/contacts/?email=".URLEncode($email));
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
  $buf = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);

  // Extract contactId from response
  $contact_id = "";
  if (($pos=strpos($buf,"<contactId>"))!==false)
  {
    $contact_id = substr($buf, $pos+strlen("<contactId>"));
    if (($pos=strpos($contact_id,"<"))!==false)
    {
      $contact_id = substr($contact_id,0,$pos);
    }
  }

  // If we don't have a contactId, can't add subscription
  if (empty($contact_id))
  {
    $result_str = "Failed finding a contact with the email address of '$email'";
    return 0;
  }

  // Build subscription record
  $data = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>'."\r\n<subscriptions>\r\n";
  $data.= "<subscription>\r\n";
  $data.= "<contactId>$contact_id</contactId>\r\n";
  $data.= "<listId>$list_id</listId>\r\n";
  $data.= "<status>unsubscribed</status>\r\n";
  $data.= "</subscription>\r\n</subscriptions>";

  // Add subscription
  $ch=curl_init("https://app.icontact.com/icp/a/$account_id/c/$client_folder_id/subscriptions/");
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPHEADER, $headers);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, $data);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
  curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYHOST, false);
  $buf = curl_exec($ch);
  curl_close($ch);

  // Extract subscriptionID from response
  $subscription_id = "";
  if (($pos=strpos($buf,"<subscriptionId>"))!==false)
  {
    $subscription_id = substr($buf, $pos+strlen("<subscriptionId>"));
    if (($pos=strpos($subscription_id,"<"))!==false)
    {
      $subscription_id = substr($subscription_id,0,$pos);
    }
  }

  // If we have a subscription id OR this subscription already unsubscribed, we're good
  $result = !empty($subscription_id) || strpos($buf,"could not be updated")!==false;

  // Set result string
  $result_str = ($result ? "Updated subscription $subscription_id" : $buf);

  // Return result
  return $result;
}
]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-icontact-20-api-integration-php-example-1925.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-icontact-20-api-integration-php-example-1925.html <![CDATA[How to run SSH on a different port]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-run-ssh-on-a-different-port-1922.html Mon, 21 Dec 2009 12:15:27 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-run-ssh-on-a-different-port-1922.html
Open up /etc/ssh/sshd_config and add this line at the top:

Code:
Port 1234

Replace 1234 with the port number you'd like to run ssh on. If there is already a Port line in your sshd_config file, comment it with a #

Now, Restart sshd by issuing:

Code:
/etc/rc.d/init.d/sshd restart

Test ssh works properly by connecting locally (replace 1234 with the new port number):

Code:
ssh -l USERNAME localhost -p 1234
]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-run-ssh-on-a-different-port-1922.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-run-ssh-on-a-different-port-1922.html <![CDATA[MapReduce 101: Parallel Programming]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mapreduce-101-parallel-programming-1919.html Mon, 21 Dec 2009 08:25:00 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mapreduce-101-parallel-programming-1919.html
If you're used to MySQL, you can think of "Map" as several queries running "SELECT" where data is extracted from multiple tables. And you can think of "Reduce" as the "GROUP BY" operator where data is joined together to form a short result.





For more information about MapReduce, see Google's Introduction to Parallel Programming and MapReduce]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mapreduce-101-parallel-programming-1919.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mapreduce-101-parallel-programming-1919.html <![CDATA[Never use VARCHAR in MySQL]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-never-use-varchar-in-mysql-1916.html Tue, 15 Dec 2009 19:37:28 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-never-use-varchar-in-mysql-1916.html
* VARCHAR: String of 0..65,535 characters with an extra byte to designate the length.
* CHAR: String of a fixed length of 0 to 255 characters.
* TEXT / BIGTEXT: String of 1..4GB characters with an extra byte to designate the length. Unlike VARCHAR, text fields cannot be compared, can't "order by", can't use "like" on them etc.
* BLOB: For binary or unicode strings. Supports 8bits per character and unlike the previous types, the string is not converted to a character-set prior to insertion.

Quick tip: Never ever use varchar.

While VARCHAR offers slightly improved storage space (it will only take up n+1 characters on disk), there are a few major pitfalls with this variable type:

#1. If you have any field in the table that is a CHAR (fixed size) field, all VARCHARs will be stored as n+1, so you don't get any reduced storage benefits.

#2. If you're using MySQL replication, you may end up with a few nasty "master/slave table column type mismatch" errors - this is a big one

#3. CHAR fields offer better performance than VARCHAR

-

We first learned about the issues with VARCHAR when replication began breaking with these cryptic messages:

"Table definition on master and slave does not match: Column 37 size mismatch - master has size 255, testtable on slave has size 256. Master's column size should be <= the slave's column size."

Both tables were identical and mysqldump'ing one on top of the other didn't help. It seems to be rooted to MySQL's internal implementation of VARCHAR.

To convert all table VARCHAR fields to CHAR, use this code:

Code:
@mysql_query("SET GLOBAL WAIT_TIMEOUT = 600000");
@mysql_Query("SET WAIT_TIMEOUT = 600000");

$Result1 = @mysql_query("SHOW TABLES FROM $DBNAME");
$cnt1 = @mysql_num_rows($Result1);
while ($cnt1)
{
        $cnt1--;
        if (!($Row1 = @mysql_fetch_array($Result1)))
        {
                continue;
        }

        $tablename = $Row1[0];

        $Result3 = @mysql_query("DESCRIBE $tablename");
        $cnt3 = @mysql_num_rows($Result3);
        while ($cnt3)
        {
                $cnt3--;
                if (!($Row3 = @mysql_fetch_array($Result3))) continue;

                if (strpos($Row3['Type'],'varchar')!==false)
                {
                        $pos = strpos($Row3['Type'],'(');
                        $length = substr($Row3['Type'],$pos+1);
                        $pos = strpos($length,')');
                        $length = substr($length, 0, $pos);

                        // If length is over 255, nothing we can do about it
                        if ($length>255) continue;
                        if ($length<1) continue;

                        // Length is below 255, we can convert
                        $sql = "alter table $tablename change ".$Row3['Field']." ".$Row3['Field']." char($length) default '' not null";
                        @mysql_query($sql);
                }

        }
}
]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-never-use-varchar-in-mysql-1916.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-never-use-varchar-in-mysql-1916.html <![CDATA[How to Flush DNS]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-flush-dns-1913.html Sun, 06 Dec 2009 05:23:53 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-flush-dns-1913.html
This is useful when you've recently updated the ip-address of a domain and want your machine to see the new changes, without relying on any previously stored cache.

Here's how to flush your DNS cache:

Windows

Open a CMD dos box and run:

ipconfig /flushdns

If you get an error about "this requires elevation", do this: Click on the Windows Start button, type "cmd", then right click on the program and select "Run as Administrator"

Mac

In Mac OSX Leopard, you can use the command
dscacheutil to flush the DNS resolver cache:

dscacheutil -flushcache

In Mac OSX versions 10.5.1 and before, the command lookupd -flushcache performed the same task:

lookupd -flushcache

Linux

In Linux, the nscd daemon manages the DNS cache.
To flush the DNS cache, restart the nscd daemon.
To restart the nscd daemon, use the command:

/etc/init.d/nscd restart]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-flush-dns-1913.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-flush-dns-1913.html <![CDATA[Mercurial Hook: Forbid 2 heads]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mercurial-hook-forbid-2-heads-1910.html Sun, 06 Dec 2009 04:07:44 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mercurial-hook-forbid-2-heads-1910.html Mercurial version control system offers a powerful mechanism to let you perform automated actions in response to events that occur in a repository. In some cases, you can even control Mercurial's response to those events. No comments

The name Mercurial uses for one of these actions is a hook (aka trigger).

One of the most popular hooks is the ability to reject multiple heads.

What are multiple heads?

Multiple heads are a case where the code repository contains changes from two (or more) developers, that haven't been merged. These changes may potentially overlap and break the application flow.

Having multiple heads occurs in two cases:

* As part of a merge (generally temporary)
* Bugfix versions (generally permanent)

At any time, you can view the head(s) of a repository with the command: hg heads

Pitfalls to watch-for with Multiple Heads

Consider the following scenario:

* It's Monday morning. Bob and Linda each pull a copy of the repository to their local Mercurial HG.

* Bob makes a few changes to index.php and pushes them to the server Monday afternoon.

* Linda makes a few additional changes to index.php and pushes them to the server on Tuesday morning.

Since Linda doesn't have the most recent copy of index.php (with Bob's changes), her copy of index.php will create a second "head" to the project.

There are now two development branches - the one with Bob's changes and the one with Linda's changes, neither one having all changes in place.

While TortoiseHG will often block Linda's push with a warning that it will create multiple heads, it is possible to push with -f (force). Some Mercurial plugins automatically push with -f, creating the second head on the live server repository.

Yes you can run 'hg merge' on the live server to merge Bob and Linda's changes (the two heads) locally, but you never ever want to run hg merge on a live server.

Running 'hg merge', adds "<<<<< local >>>>> other" comments into the source files, as part of its file-diff process. This temporarily breaks the syntax of your source files for the duration of the merge.

If this is a live server, your scripts will all STOP WORKING until the merge is complete and the "<<<<< local >>>>> other" notations are removed from the source files.

Rejecting Multiple heads - Do the merge offline

Instead of allowing multiple heads on the live server, a much better approach is to reject multiple heads, forcing the engineers to merge changes locally, before pushing any change that will create a second head.

In the example above, when Linda attempts to push the changes on Tuesday, her push will be rejected with an error message of "Trying to push more than one head, try run hg merge before it."

Linda then has to pull the recent changes, retrieving Bob's additions, merge the changes locally and then push a version that incorporates both her changes and Bob's into the server.

The benefits of this approach are:
#1. Server scripts are never rendered inactive by a local 'hg merge' run

#2. Engineers always need to retrieve (and test) the latest version, prior to being able to upload changes that may conflict with others.

#3. The live server always has a single development graph, containing the most recent changes.

Installing NetBeans Forbid2Heads Mercurial hook

Step 1: Locate your HG extensions folder

The folder name is 'hgext' and it is typically installed under Mercurial's home folder. For example:

/usr/home/mercurial/work/mercurial-1.3.1/hgext

Step 2: Install forbid_2heads Python script

Create a new folder named 'forbid_2head' under 'hgext' and save this file under /hgext/forbid_2head/forbid_2head.py:

Code:

# win32text.py - LF <-> CRLF translation utilities for Windows users
#
# This software may be used and distributed according to the terms
# of the GNU General Public License, incorporated herein by reference.
#
# To forbid pushes which creates two or more headss
#
# [hooks]
# pretxnchangegroup.forbid_2heads = python:forbid2_head.forbid_2heads

from mercurial import ui
from mercurial.i18n import gettext as _

def forbid_2heads(ui, repo, hooktype, node, **kwargs):
    if len(repo.heads()) > 1:
        ui.warn(_('Trying to push more than one head, try run "hg merge" before it.n'))
        return True

Step 3: Add hook to Mercurial config file

Update your Mercurial hgweb.config, adding the new hook under the 'hooks' section, like this:

[hooks]
pretxnchangegroup.forbid_2heads = python:forbid_2head.forbid_2heads

--

Attempting to push changes to the repository that will create multiple heads is now blocked.

Users will be presented with an error message and the transaction rolled back, until the user merges changes locally, so that no multiple heads are created:

Quote:
pushing to http://mydomain.com/
searching for changes
4 changesets found
adding changesets
adding manifests
adding file changes
added 4 changesets with 2 changes to 7 files (+1 heads)
Trying to push more than one head, try run "hg merge" before it.
transaction abort!
rollback completed
abort: pretxnchangegroup.forbid_2heads hook failed
[command returned code 1]

--

The live server repository will always have a single development branch. Engineers will be forced to merge changes locally, before new changes can be pushed:

]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mercurial-hook-forbid-2-heads-1910.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-mercurial-hook-forbid-2-heads-1910.html <![CDATA[Were you just banned from Google Adwords?]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/traffic-attract-customers/t-were-you-just-banned-from-google-adwords-1907.html Fri, 04 Dec 2009 18:29:10 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/traffic-attract-customers/t-were-you-just-banned-from-google-adwords-1907.html
Google just completed another round of banning PPC affiliates, providing no information on the cause, other than a canned email.

Unlike a "Google Slap" which is a temporary increase of bid-prices due to low quality-scores, a "Google Ban" is permanent and prevents you from ever advertising on Google using your credit-cards or ip-addresses that you previously used with Google.

We've heard from hundreds of PPC affiliates who got banned on this recent round. Search Engine Marketing forums are exploding with angry marketers who've lost their entire business over-night.

Quote:
Dear advertiser,

We are writing to let you know that your Google AdWords account has been disabled due to one or more serious violations of our advertising policies related to Landing Page and Site Quality. As a result, your ads will no longer run through the Google AdWords system and we are unable to accept advertising from you in the future. Please note that future accounts you open will also be disabled.

...

Please note that this action is related to sites that have recently been advertised through your account. In a review of your account history, we found that your account had submitted a least one site that egregiously violated our advertising policies. Although you may have removed these sites since our latest review, advertisers that have a history of promoting these types of sites are still subject to account-level disabling.

...

If you have additional questions or concerns not addressed by our policies or help center, you can contact support by replying to this email.

Sincerely,
The Google AdWords team

Is affiliate marketing on Google Adwords dying a slow death? This remains to be seen.

The recent ban wasn't limited to affiliates running rebill offers but rather a mix of accounts promoting anything from Clickbank products, CPA offers, poor landing pages, etc.

If you're a PPC marketer, you're going to be forced to evolve or close shop.

Remember this -

Google accounts for about 15% of the traffic available online.

Look into other avenues such as Email Marketing, PPC on other engines such as Yahoo and MSN, Media buys, Product launches and Social media marketing, as a way of driving traffic to your offers.]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/traffic-attract-customers/t-were-you-just-banned-from-google-adwords-1907.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/traffic-attract-customers/t-were-you-just-banned-from-google-adwords-1907.html <![CDATA[How to install PHP 5.2.11 with php-fpm]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-5211-with-php-fpm-1904.html Tue, 10 Nov 2009 09:39:29 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-5211-with-php-fpm-1904.html
NGinx doesn't have built-in support for running PHP, it uses a third-party daemon to spawn instances of php-cgi and then communicates with those instances over sockets.

PHP-FPM is a replacement for spawn-cgi. Runs faster and is more reliable.

Step 1: Download PHP 5.2.11 and apply PHP-FPM patch

Code:
cd /home
mkdir temp
cd temp
wget http://www.softwareprojects.com/files/auto/php-5.2.11.tar.gz
wget http://www.softwareprojects.com/php-5.2.11-fpm-0.5.13.diff.gz
tar zxvf php-5.2.11.tar.gz
gzip -cd php-5.2.11-fpm-0.5.13.diff.gz | patch -d php-5.2.11 -p1

Step 2: Configure PHP

Code:
cd php-5.2.11
'./configure' '--enable-fastcgi' '--enable-fpm' '--enable-calendar' '--enable-ftp' '--enable-mbstring' '--enable-mysql' '--with-curl' '--with-dom' '--with-mcrypt' '--with-gd' '--with-iconv' '--with-jpeg-dir=/usr/lib' '--with-mysql=/usr/local/mysql' '--with-openssl' '--with-soap' '--with-sockets' '--with-zlib' '--enable-zip'
make all

Step 3: Install

Code:
make install
strip /usr/local/bin/php-cgi

Step 4: Start PHP-FPM

Code:
/usr/local/sbin/php-fpm start
]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-5211-with-php-fpm-1904.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-5211-with-php-fpm-1904.html <![CDATA[How to install PHP ChartDirector under FreeBSD]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-chartdirector-under-f-1901.html Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:54:42 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-chartdirector-under-f-1901.html here.

This tutorial will show you how to install it under FreeBSD.

1. Download PHP ChartDirector

The download page is located here -
http://www.advsofteng.com/download.html

Make sure you pick the FreeBSD version for PHP, and make sure you choose the good version between 32 and 64-bit. At the time of writing this post, the latest 32-bit version available for FreeBSD was this one -
http://download2.advsofteng.com/char...freebsd.tar.gz

Now that you have the download link, the first thing to do is to find out where is your PHP extensions directory. You can find it by checking at phpinfo()'s output or in your php.ini file (which is usually located in /usr/local/lib/php.ini). Just search for "extension_dir" in php.ini - you will find it right away. In our case, our extensions directory was "/usr/local/lib/php/extensions/current". We can now download and extract ChartDirector...

Code:
cd /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/current
wget http://download2.advsofteng.com/chartdir_php_freebsd.tar.gz
tar xvfz chartdir_php_freebsd.tar.gz

When extracting ChartDirector, it creates a "ChartDirector" folder that contains these files/folders:

Code:
doc/
lib/
phpdemo/
LICENSE.TXT
README.TXT

We are mainly interested by the "lib" directory. Let's copy the files that we need...

Code:
cd /usr/local/lib/php/extensions/current
mv ChartDirector/lib/* .

You can get rid of these 2 PHP files:

Code:
rm FinanceChart.php
rm phpchartdir.php

2. Determine the right version

To determine the right version of the DLL that you must use, refer to this page -
http://www.advsofteng.com/doc/cdphpdoc/phpinstall.htm

For example, if you have PHP 4.4.9, you will use this one -
PHP Version 4.2.1 and above: phpchartdir421.dll

Even if it's FreeBSD and not Windows, you are going to specify a DLL as the extension in your php.ini file. You can delete all the others DLL's that you are not using, but make sure you keep the "fonts" folder and the "libchardir.so" file - they are required. So your extensions directory might look like this:

Code:
fonts/
libchartdir.so
phpchartdir421.dll

3. Configure the extension in php.ini

Now that we have all we need, we're going to configure php.ini to add the PHP ChartDirector extension.

Open your php.ini and add a line like this one in the extensions section:

Code:
extension=phpchartdir421.dll

Make sure you use the right DLL for your PHP version. Save your php.ini file and restart your PHP engine and/or Web server (Apache, FastCGI, etc.) to reload your PHP configuration.

To test PHP ChartDirector, you can use the "phpdemo" directory that you can find in the PHP ChartDirector archive. Just copy the folder in the root of your Web server and point it with your browser (ex: http://yourWebAddress/phpdemo). This demo is also very convenient for charts examples.]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-chartdirector-under-f-1901.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-install-php-chartdirector-under-f-1901.html <![CDATA[How to count unique visitors in an nginx access.log]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-count-unique-visitors-in-an-nginx-1898.html Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:25:06 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-count-unique-visitors-in-an-nginx-1898.html NGinx web-server access.log file, for a given day:

Code:
grep "\[04/Nov/2009" access.log | cut -d" " -f1 | sort | uniq | wc -l

Replace 04/Nov/2009 with the date you'd like to count the number of unique visitors for.]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-count-unique-visitors-in-an-nginx-1898.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-how-to-count-unique-visitors-in-an-nginx-1898.html <![CDATA[FreeBSD No Ports Fix]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-freebsd-no-ports-fix-1895.html Wed, 04 Nov 2009 23:52:34 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-freebsd-no-ports-fix-1895.html
Option 1 - CVSup

Code:
csup -L 2 -h cvsup.FreeBSD.org /usr/share/examples/cvsup/ports-supfile
csup

Option 2 - Portsnap

Code:
portsnap fetch
portsnap extract
]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-freebsd-no-ports-fix-1895.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-freebsd-no-ports-fix-1895.html <![CDATA[How to: Add a Lead Opt-in Web Form]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-how-to-add-a-lead-opt-in-web-form-1892.html Wed, 28 Oct 2009 09:21:38 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-how-to-add-a-lead-opt-in-web-form-1892.html


Unlike other shopping carts, the SPI cart doesn't limit you to a single form style or any specific fields.

You can create whatever html form you like, using any design and combination of fields (text, radio button, checkboxes, textareas) as needed.

The only requirement is to have at least the emailaddress field, whenever saving a new lead to the database.

Step 1 - Design your opt-in form

Use your favorite HTML editor to design your lead opt-in form.

For simplicity, use 'name' as the fieldname for the user's name (or 'first_name' + 'last_name'), use 'emailaddress' as the fieldname for the user's email address and use 'phone' as the fieldname for the user's phone number.

Here's a typical lead opt-in form with the basic name,emailaddress,phone fields as well as a few additional custom ones:


<form action="#" method="post">
<p>First Name: <input type="text" name="first_name" /></p>
<p>Last Name: <input type="text" name="last_name" /></p>
<p>Best Email: <input type="text" name="email" /></p>
<p>Best Phone Number: <input type="text" name="phone" /></p>
<p>Have you traded individual stocks?
Yes <input name="traded_indi_stock" type="radio" value="Yes" /> No <input name="traded_indi_stock" type="radio" value="No" />
</p>
<p>Have you traded options
Yes <input name="traded_option" type="radio" value="Yes" /> No <input name="traded_option" type="radio" value="No" />
</p>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

Step 2 - Add custom fields to Leads table

Since we're using a few custom fields in this example (traded_indi_stock, traded_option), we need to add those fields to the 'leads' table.

Connect to your SPI database using PHPMyAdmin, locate the leads table and add the two new fields. You only have to do this once every time you're adding a new custom field to a table.



Make sure you're adding the custom fields to the 'leads' table and pay close attention to the fieldnames. The fieldnames you choose are going to have to match the fieldnames you pass to the do_addlead() function.

Step 3 - Save the lead to the database

Now that we have the custom leads in the 'leads' table, saving the lead to the database is the easy part.

The code below renders the opt-in form, saves the lead to the database and redirects the user to a thankyou.html page.


<?php
// Include SPICart shopping cart API
require_once("spicart.php");

// If this is a lead submit
if (!empty($_POST['email']))
{
// Save lead to the database
$input = array();
$input['first_name'] = $_POST['first_name'];
$input['last_name'] = $_POST['last_name'];
$input['emailaddress'] = $_POST['emailaddres'];
$input['phone'] = $_POST['phone'];
$input['traded_indi_stock'] = $_POST['traded_indi_stock'];
$input['traded_option'] = $_POST['traded_option'];
do_addlead($input, &$output, &$result_str);
Header("Location: thankyou.html");
die;
}
?>
<form action="#" method="post">
<p>First Name: <input type="text" name="first_name" /></p>
<p>Last Name: <input type="text" name="last_name" /></p>
<p>Best Email: <input type="text" name="emailaddress" /></p>
<p>Best Phone Number: <input type="text" name="phone" /></p>
<p>Have you traded individual stocks?
Yes <input name="traded_indi_stock" type="radio" value="Yes" /> No <input name="traded_indi_stock" type="radio" value="No" />
</p>
<p>Have you traded options
Yes <input name="traded_option" type="radio" value="Yes" /> No <input name="traded_option" type="radio" value="No" />
</p>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit" />
</form>

Note about Affiliate Tracking

Often times, affiliates will be sending their traffic to your lead opt-in forms. You're going to want to know which affiliate generated which leads.

Luckily the system takes care of this automatically.

One of the fields in the 'leads' table is aff_id. This is the ID of the referring affiliate and serves as the glue, associating leads with the affiliates who referred them.

When a user clicks on an affiliate link to visit the opt-in form on your website, they typically follow a link that looks like this:

www.YourDomain.com/?aff_id=1234

Where 1234 is the affiliate ID.

As soon as the user lands on the lead opt-in form, the spicart.php include at the top of your file, identifies the aff_id url-parameter and saves it in a cookie on the end-user's machine.

Later when you call do_addlead(), this method picks up the aff_id from the end-user's cookie and passes it along, so that when the lead is added, the referring aff_id is saved as well.]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-how-to-add-a-lead-opt-in-web-form-1892.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/the-platform-all-in-one/t-how-to-add-a-lead-opt-in-web-form-1892.html <![CDATA[Do It Yourself Web Server and Database monitoring]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-do-it-yourself-web-server-and-database-m-1889.html Wed, 21 Oct 2009 06:44:12 GMT http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-do-it-yourself-web-server-and-database-m-1889.html
Getting Started with website monitoring

One of our favorite monitoring tools is Pingdom. It's a $9.95/month easy-to-use service that will ping 5 of your servers, once every 60 seconds, alerting you via email & SMS whenever any server goes down.

In addition to downtime notifications, the service also provides response-time trends, raw data and uptime-over-time reports:



If you don't have any monitoring in-place right one, you should definitely try out Pingdom or a similar service.

In about 5 minutes of setting it up, you'll have the peace of mind, knowing exactly when your merchant website, affiliate landing page or payment gateway goes down.

Beyond simple HTTP monitoring

While Pingdom and other similar tools are great in letting you know once your website is -already- down, a lot of times the outage can be prevented in the first place, by detecting a decrease available memory, cpu, disk space etc.

At the pinnacle of server monitoring are tools such as Nagios and Munin.

Munin will monitor every single resource on your server, including: memory, cpu utilization, available handles, open connections, average load, running processes and more.

Nagios sends alerts to groups of users based on predetermined rules.



Do It Yourself Server Monitoring

In this post, I'd like to focus on how to create a simple monitoring script, that will survey remote servers for a few critical metrics, displaying the results on the screen.

Unlike Nagios+Munin, such a setup doesn't require installing a monitoring component on each server. Your monitoring script can run remotely, surveying all servers once every 60 seconds on a cronjob, sending an email/sms whenever detecting abnormal behavior.

For the purpose of this example, our script will monitor the following metrics:

= MySQL Database server
* Number of running threads
* Number of threads connected
* Queries per second
* Open tables
* Sample query response
* Number of tables in database

= Any FreeBSD/Linux server
* CPU load over the last 5 minutes
* Available memory
* Open sockets
* Number of running processes


// Set these for easier access
$USERNAME  = "root";
$SERVER  = "www.mydomain.com";
$DBHOST    = "www.mydatabase.com";
$DBUSER    = "root";
$DBPASS    = "dbpassword";
$DBNAME    = "dbdatabasename";

// Get load average, available memory and number of running processes
$load_average = "N/A";
$available_memory = "N/A";
$running_processes = "N/A";
$CRLF = "\r\n";
exec("ssh -l$USERNAME $SERVER \"top -b -n 1\"",&$buf);
for ($i=0,$str=""; $i<count($buf); $i++) $str .= $buf[$i].$CRLF;
if (($pos=strpos($str,"load averages:"))!==false)
{
    $str = trim(substr($str, $pos+strlen("load averages:")));
    if (($pos=strpos($str,$CRLF))!==false)
    {
        $load_average = substr($str,0,$pos);
        if (($pos=strpos($str,"up"))!==false) $load_average = substr($load_average,0,$pos);
    }
}
else
if (($pos=strpos($str,"load average:"))!==false)
{
    $str = trim(substr($str, $pos+strlen("load average:")));
    if (($pos=strpos($str,$CRLF))!==false)
    {
        $load_average = substr($str,0,$pos);
    }
}
if (($pos=strpos($str,"processes:"))!==false)
{
  $str = trim(substr($str, $pos+strlen("processes:")));
  if (($pos=strpos($str,","))!==false)
  {
    $running_processes = substr($str,0,$pos);
  }
}
else
if (($pos=strpos($str,"Tasks:"))!==false)
{
    $str = trim(substr($str, $pos+strlen("Tasks:")));
    if (($pos=strpos($str,","))!==false)
    $str = trim(substr($str, $pos+1));
    if (($pos=strpos($str,"run"))!==false)
    {
        $running_processes = substr($str,0,$pos);
    }
}
if (($pos=strpos($str,"Mem:"))!==false)
{
  $str = trim(substr($str, $pos+strlen("Mem:")));
  if (($pos=strpos($str,$CRLF))!==false)
  {
    $available_memory = substr($str, 0, $pos);
  }
}

// Get open sockets
$open_sockets = "N/A";
$buf = array();
exec("ssh -l$USERNAME $SERVER "netstat -n | wc -l"",&$buf); 
$open_sockets = trim($buf[0]);     

// Display server metrics
echo "== Server\r\n";
echo "    Load average: $load_average\r\n";
echo "    Open Sockets: $open_sockets\r\n";
echo " Running Processes: $running_processes\r\n";
echo "  Available memory: $available_memory\r\n";
echo "\r\n";

// Get running and connected threads
$db_threads_connected = "N/A";
$db_running_threads = "N/A";
mysql_connect($DBHOST,$DBUSER,$DBPASS);
$Result = @mysql_query("show status like '%thread%' ");
$cnt = @mysql_num_rows($Result);
while ($cnt)
{ 
    $cnt--;
    if (!($Row = @mysql_fetch_array($Result))) continue;

    if (empty($Row['Value'])) continue;

    if (Strcasecmp($Row['Variable_name'],'Threads_connected')==0)
    $db_threads_connected = $Row['Value'];
    else
    if (Strcasecmp($Row['Variable_name'],'Threads_running')==0)
    $db_running_threads = $Row['Value'];
}

// Get queries per second
$Result = @mysql_query("show status like 'questions' ");
$Row = @mysql_fetch_array($Result);
$questions = $Row['Value']+0;
$Result = @mysql_query("show status like 'uptime' ");
$Row = @mysql_fetch_array($Result);
$uptime = $Row['Value']+0;
$db_queries_per_second = number_format($questions/$uptime,0);

// Get open tables
$db_open_tables = "N/A";
$Result = @mysql_query("show status like '%tables%' ");
$cnt = @mysql_num_rows($Result);
while ($cnt)
{
    $cnt--;
    if (!($Row = @mysql_fetch_array($Result))) continue;

    if (empty($Row['Value'])) continue;
    if (Strcasecmp($Row['Variable_name'],'Open_tables')==0)
    $db_open_tables = $Row['Value'];
}

// Get query response
$Result = @mysql_query("SELECT 1");
$Row = @mysql_fetch_row($Result);
$db_query_response = $Row[0]=='1' ? "Good" : "BAD";

// Get total number of tables
@mysql_query("use $DBNAME");
$Result = @mysql_query("show tables");
$db_tables_in_database = @mysql_num_rows($Result);

// Display database metrics
echo "== Database\r\n";
echo "  Running Threads: $db_running_threads\r\n";
echo " Threads Connected: $db_threads_connected\r\n";
echo " Queries Per Second: $db_queries_per_second\r\n";
echo "    Open Tables: $db_open_tables\r\n";
echo "  Query Response: $db_query_response\r\n";
echo "  Number of tables: $db_tables_in_database\r\n";

The output of the script will look something like this:

Code:
== Server
        Load average: 0.09,  0.23,  0.23 
        Open Sockets: 226
  Running Processes: 1 running
    Available memory: 2203M Active, 112M Buf, 4668K Free

== Database
    Running Threads: 3
  Threads Connected: 16
  Queries Per Second: 320
        Open Tables: 200
      Query Response: Good
    Number of tables: 1648

Tip: If you're looking to monitor dozens of servers, consider applying our ssh no password approach, to save the hassle of having to exchange private keys with each server.]]> http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-do-it-yourself-web-server-and-database-m-1889.html http://www.softwareprojects.com/resources/programming/t-do-it-yourself-web-server-and-database-m-1889.html