Archive for September, 2007

Sep
20
Why Do I Choose Drupal?
Filed Under (Drupal, CMS) by Ernest Luk on 20-09-2007

There’s no silver bullet for web based content management system (CMS) ! Instead of building a new CMS, I wanted to work on an open source CMS. So, I don’t need to spend days and nights to build features around the system. I have evaluated over dozens of open source CMSs such as Drupal, Joomla, Mambo, Xoops, MODx, PHP-Nuke, PostNuke, SimpleCMS, CMS Mades Simple, Typo3, WordPress etc. Yet, it is extremely difficult for me to choose from one of them. Many times, I wanted to build a new CMS that customized for my needs.

Yeah, I built a web based CMS for Computerworld and PCWorld back in 1999 when I was working for IDG Hong Kong. It’s highly customized for online publish using ASP and SQL Server. I built the system from scratch in 3 months myself with the implementation of software and hardware architecture. I named the system "WebPub". The features of the system include article management, categorization, user management, access permission, newsletter subscription, online polling and front page management etc. In addtion, it supports Chinese or double-byte characters as we publish titles in Chinese as well. Following is a screen shot of the system.

  
WebPub 2.0

Easy of use or user friendly, shorter learning curve, flexible, extensible and community support are main criteria for me to evaluate a CMS. Most importantly, search engine (SEO) friendly and multi-languages support (I18N) are essential factors. Because, being indexed by Google and major search engines and ranked on top of the search engine result page (SERP) are vital for today’s web sites - it means business. And this is one of my goals for my clients at work.

After comprehensive evaluation and comparison,  I decided to go with Drupal. Because Drupal provides clean URL or user friendly URL through Apache’s mod_rewrite and support for multi-languages or translation. The learning curve for studying the Drupal API is relatively short and easy to learn. However, it’s not as easy as osCommerce – a robust open source ecommerce system for online stores, which I have worked on since 2003. Still, I can master Drupal in a few weeks. it gives me more time to build solutions on it rather than coding on a core system for a new system. Even people at IBM are using the same aproach to building solutions, Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site http://www-128.ibm.com/developerworks/ibm/library/i-osource1.

My first Drupal site is the company site for Affine Communications Inc., which is optimized for SEO purpose. I will build more solutions based on Drupal.

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Sep
20
Unix FTP Command Reference
Filed Under (Linux) by Ernest Luk on 20-09-2007

Common FTP Commands 

? to request help or information about the FTP commands
ascii to set the mode of file transfer to ASCII
(this is the default and transmits seven bits per character)
binary to set the mode of file transfer to binary
(the binary mode transmits all eight bits per byte and thus provides less chance of a transmission error and must be used to transmit files other than ASCII files)
bye to exit the FTP environment (same as quit)
cd to change directory on the remote machine
close to terminate a connection with another computer
  close brubeck closes the current FTP connection with brubeck,
  but still leaves you within the FTP environment.
delete to delete (remove) a file in the current remote directory (same as rm in UNIX)
get to copy one file from the remote machine to the local machine
  get ABC DEF copies file ABC in the current remote directory to (or on top of) a file named DEF in your current local directory.
  get ABC copies file ABC in the current remote directory to (or on top of) a file with the same name, ABC, in your current local directory.
help to request a list of all available FTP commands
lcd to change directory on your local machine (same as UNIX cd)
ls to list the names of the files in the current remote directory
mkdir to make a new directory within the current remote directory
mget to copy multiple files from the remote machine to the local machine;
  you are prompted for a y/n answer before transferring each file
  mget * copies all the files in the current remote directory to your current local directory, using the same filenames. Notice the use of the wild card character, *.
mput to copy multiple files from the local machine to the remote machine;
  you are prompted for a y/n answer before transferring each file
open to open a connection with another computer
  open brubeck opens a new FTP connection with brubeck;
  you must enter a username and password for a brubeck account
      (unless it is to be an anonymous connection).
put to copy one file from the local machine to the remote machine
pwd to find out the pathname of the current directory on the remote machine
quit to exit the FTP environment (same as bye)
rmdir to to remove (delete) a directory in the current remote directory

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