Informed Networker Blog

We said we were busy, and we meant it. Dozens of man hours later, we’re back with some great announcements:

• We’ve moved our hosting from Bluehost (a shared host) to Slicehost (a Virtual Private Server host). This provides us with significantly more flexibility and performance right now and the ability to scale quickly on an as-needed basis in the future.
• We upgraded to the latest and greatest version of our ad management software (OpenX).
• We upgraded to the latest and greatest version of our blogging software (WordPress).
• We moved our DNS over to DNSMadeEasy, which offers globally distributed, redundant, DNS servers.

All said, we feel pretty accomplished. On a downside, a major code rewrite that was outsourced has not yet materialized. Our contract with that individual has ended and we are pursuing alternative options. We expect to have this code completed within two weeks and it should bring with it some significant improvements to Informed Networker overall.

With all that said, please let us know if you see any problems around the site. These sorts of moves rarely go entirely smoothly…as can be seen by the fact I’m still writing at 2:30 a.m.

    In case you are interested what we have been up to…here’s the low-down:

• Rapid expansion of the Informed Networker intranet to provide all the information for the growing Informed Networker team.
• Coordinating the expansion of the Informed Networker team.
• Continued analysis of the Pligg codebase and annotations available for anyone to view here.
• Added a top navigation bar to move between stories on the main stories page.
• Currently working to allow in-line editing of story summaries by administrators. This will utilize AJAX and allow for much more streamlined story editing - a significant time saver for us. We hope to have this feature implemented before the end of this week.
• Attended a FundingPost hosted meet & greet for entrepreneurs/venture capitalists/angel investors. Will post about that in a separate post.

Here’s what we expect to be doing in the very near future:

• Continuing ramping up our team and intranet and resultantly expediting the speed of changes to Informed Networker.
• Moving to new servers for hosting providing faster speeds and more flexibility.
• Extending RSS Importer even further to allow for significant time savings (in conjunction with in-line editing).
• Fixing the private messaging system.

There’s a lot of other stuff in the wings, but that gives you an idea…and oh, we’re still working on the whole raising capital thing.

Its been a while since we’ve released an update on this blog, but don’t take that as a sign that we have been idle. Rather we have been working harder than ever. Some of the new developments include:

• A major push to raise venture capital ($100k).
• Formation of a Informed Networker Team (still in the works).
• Launch of internal wiki for Informed Networker team members (www.ininternal.com).
• Launch of a code base wiki for Pligg developers (www.informednetworker.com/pliggwiki).
• Moving to a new RSS Importer - v 0.6, extended.

I’ve personally been working non-stop on learning PHP (I was mainly a .NET developer) and familiarizing myself in particular with the Pligg codebase. I’m looking forward to what the additional manpower currently gathering around the Informed Networker project will facilitate in accelerated development as well as the potential for raising venture capital.

    Whew. That was a bit of work and trepidation. Using WinMerge we moved the template from 0.9.82 to 0.9.9, then applied the necessary database updates and pressed the button (after a full backup, of course). There were a few bumps, you might have seen one or two. At this point we believe everything is back in full working order. Please let us know if that is not the case.

So what changed? Not much from an end user perspective. This was mainly a maintenance release in preparation for the 1.0 release of Pligg. It included a number of changes to templates - especially the extraction of PHP from the templating engine. It also include several modules, but we had already upgraded to these due to a spam attack (e.g. Akismet).

    We are keeping crazy busy:

• Constantly adding new stories.
• Working on deploying to a virtual linux server instead of shared hosting.
• Business relationship development.
• Adding new junior editors to assist in ensuring story volume and quality.

Working on some big news. Keep your eyes peeled (thats disgusting, where did that come from?)

    Tonight I attempted to make the move to our new server. Unfortunately, things didn’t go so smoothly and two hours later I had to roll back the changes and admit defeat. A lot was learned that will help when I attempt the move again (most likely this weekend), and some of the prep work doesn’t need to be done again.

On a more positive note Azza Alameh has joined us as a Junior Editor. She has studied English Literature for three years and is now in her first year of study in Journalism. We’re looking forward to her contributions to the site.

    I’ve been sick since Friday (its now Tuesday). I’m much better now, though the coughing and sneezing continues. In any case, this put a bit of a monkey wrench in my work habits…But some progress has been made and I am looking forward to even more over the next several days. Here are some recent highlights:

• Removed vsftp and replaced with proftpd on VPS.
• Installed a test run of Pligg 9.9.0 - which was successful - on VPS.
• Eric Brown, our new Junior Editor, is doing a knockout job adding new stories.
• I am in the process of moving our DNS Servers to DNSMadeEasy, which offers highly available, geographically distributed DNS servers at extremely economical prices.
• I am in the process of hiring two or three additional Junior Editors and am currently in negotiations with two. Hoping to have more information on this matter soon…as quite honestly, the number of tech. stories in sheer volume is overwhelming.

Continuing work on deploying the new VPS. Tonight included:

• Installing mysql 5 (database backend).
• Installing webmin and phpmyadmin (web-based gui management for web and sql).
• Installing vsftp (ftp server).
• Installing webalizer (statistics).

    You might be wondering what’s happening over here at Informed Networker. Perhaps you have even noticed the slowdown in postings. Well, here is the short and long of it:

• I’ve purchased a VPS with Slicehost and deployed Ubuntu 7.10 Gusty Gibbon Server. I’m currently in the process of deploying Apache, PHP, and MySQL. I’ve also been making changes to iptables to lockdown the server. Yeah, yeah, I know its not a physical machine - but right now we are on a shoestring budget and most of the money is going elsewhere…
• I’m hiring Junior Editors (if interested visit the jobs page). This is an independent contractor position that pays dirt (I’ll admit) and requires commitment. Essentially the Junior Editors’ job is to help provide a steady stream of stories while I immerse myself in the Linux world (which if you haven’t been following, I’m mainly a Windows admin.) and the PHP/MySQL world (yes, I’m a .NET and SQL Server guy as well).
• PacketTrap has been awesome and decided to sponsor us for at least this month. So say hooray for them, as they are (knowingly or unknowingly) bankrolling a lot of these changes.  If you haven’t already - go download their software, its free. You can also encourage your boss or yourself to help bankroll the site by visiting our sponsors page and advertising with us.
• We’ve deployed openAds to handle ad distribution on Informed Networker.
• I am excited about what Informed Networker will become with your participation. A central source that allows for quick browsing (and optional in-depth reading) on the latest news and articles - a compelling one-stop shop for IT Pros.

    I’m mainly a Windows Network Engineer personally and while I’ve dabbled with Linux in the past, I’ve never really embraced it. With Informed Networker being written with a LAMP stack in mind it seemed time for me to take the leap and start working with Linux.

I have an old 700 Mhz machine with 768 MB of RAM with Windows 2000 installed. I downloaded Wubi and installed Ubuntu 7.04. Once this was completed I enabled Remote Desktop and installed TightVNC on my Windows Vista laptop - then I remoted in. Once in I began by ensuring all the software was updated and then by installing the rest of the LAMP stack - Apache, MySQL, and PHP. In addition I added Webmin for configuration management and phpMyAdmin for handling the MySQL databases. Now its late and I need to get some sleep, so hopefully tomorrow I will begin actually installing Pligg in this test environment.