If you have a VPS or Linux server running Apache the goold old fashioned way without fancy control panels, you’ll quickly have to learn some Apache tweaks.

One of the main issues we commonly run into is a non-working .htaccess file.  Apache doesn’t come with .htaccess support automatically turned on.  You’ll have to turn it on in order for .htaccess files to have an effect.  Here’s what you do:

There are two ways,

1. Edit your httpd.conf manually using a text editor like vim, nano, vi, joe whatever you like.
2. Edit your httpd.conf through Webmin

Since the Webmin version is more graphical, we’ll show you how to do it through Webmin.  If you’re using a text editor, just skip to the portion with the AllowOveride command.

1. Login to your Webmin
2. Servers>Apache
3. Go to the Global Configuration tab
4. Click on EDIT CONFIG FILES
5. 
6. Search for AllowOveride and .htaccess and remove the # sign in front or type “AllowOveride All”.

This should fix it permanently and allow your .htaccess files to override pretty much and directive needed.

Invariably, you may find yourself with a missing YUM install or a corrupted installation and need to re-install yum to fix this problem.

Yum of course is used to easily install RPM packages like PHP or Apache or pretty much anything.  It’s equivalent would be “apt-get” on Debian based Linux systems.

So here’s how you would install YUM from scratch:
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/libxml2-2.6.16-10.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/libxml2-python-2.6.16-10.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/python-elementtree-1.2.6-5.el4.centos.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/sqlite-3.3.6-2.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/python-sqlite-1.1.7-1.2.1.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/rpm-python-4.3.3-22_nonptl.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh http://mirror.centos.org/centos/4/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/python-urlgrabber-2.9.8-2.noarch.rpm
rpm -Uvh ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/ftp.centos.org/4.6/os/i386/CentOS/RPMS/yum-metadata-parser-1.0-8.el4.centos.i386.rpm
rpm -Uvh ftp://ftp.pbone.net/mirror/ftp.centos.org/4.6/os/x86_64/CentOS/RPMS/yum-2.4.3-4.el4.centos.noarch.rpm

Just copy and paste the above RPM code into your SSH session.

So most of us here are Joomla fans while some are Drupal fans.  It’s a matter of choice really, they’re both quite good as far as CMS’ go.

But that’s not why I’m writing today.

One of the things that annoys me the most is Joomla’s quick timeout when you’re logged into the administrator back-end.  It seems that if you walk away for a few minutes, your Joomla’s timed out and you have to login all over again.  It’s especially annoying if you were working on a new article and didn’t save it prior to being logged out.  Yup, that means you have to type it all over again.

Well, if you’ve had enough of this nonsense, thankfully, you can change it pretty easily.

1. Go into your Joomla Administrative back-end
2. Click on the GLOBAL CONFIGURATION icon in the lower left of the page or you can use the menu SITE > GLOBAL CONFIGURATION.
3. Click on the SYSTEM tab
4. On the lower right side of the page, look for SESSION SETTINGS
5. Change the MINUTES to however long you want to stay logged in


That’s it, now you can safely go get another cup of coffee without having to worry about re-typing everything all over again.

Iron Mountain Hosting is pleased to announce a further security enhancement available to all users of our email services.

We now use SSL/TLS encryption to secure all our outgoing and incoming mail whenever the responding server accepts it. In addition, users can take advantage of a more secure connection by setting up SSL/TLS encryption in their email settings.

Please follow this guide for setting up email in Outlook 2007.

For existing mail accounts:

1) Open up your Outlook and go to Account Settings and select the account you wish to enable SSL on

2) Click the CHANGE button which will open up a new Pop-Up box

3) Now click on Require secure authentication (SPA) if you like and then click More Settings

4) Now a new Internet E-Mail settings box will pop up with a few tabs across the top. As this is an existing mail account, all you will have to change is the Outgoing Server tab and the Advanced Tab. So first the Outgoing server tab, change it so it looks like this

Now, let’s change the Advanced Settings tab to look like this (NOTE: For IMAP, use port 993 instead of Pop3 995):

5) Once you have made those changes click OK. Then on the next screen, just click TEST ACCOUNT settings. Outlook will then ask you if you want to accept the SSL/Security certificate…say YES or Accept the certificate.

If all is well, the server will run a send and receive test and tell you that it passed the test. Just click next and FINISHED.