Posts Tagged ‘business school’

Installing the phpbb forum on Debian (Squeeze/Sid) Linux

Saturday, September 11th, 2010

howto-easily-install-phpbb-on-debian-gnu-linux

I've just installed the phpbb forum on a Debian Linux because we needed a goodquick to install communication media in order to improve our internal communication in a student project in Strategic HR we're developing right now in Arnhem Business School.

Here are the exact steps I followed to have a properly it properly instlled:

1. Install the phpbb3 debian package
This was pretty straight forward:

debian:~# apt-get install phpbb3

At this point of installation I've faced a dpkg-reconfigure phpbb deb package configuration issue:
I was prompted to pass in the credentials for my MySQL password right after I've selected the MySQL as my preferred database back engine.
I've feeded my MySQL root password as well as my preferred forum database name, however the database installation failed because, somehow the configuration procedure tried to connect to my MySQL database with the htcheck user.
I guess this has to be a bug in the package itself or something from my previous installation misconfigured the way the debian database backend configuration was operating.
My assumption is that my previously installed htcheck package or something beforehand I've done right after the htcheck and htcheck-php packages installation.

after the package configuration failed still the package had a status of properly installed when I reviewed it with dpkg
I've thought about trying to manually reconfigure it using the dpkg-reconfigure debian command and I gave it a try like that:

debian:~# dpkg-reconfigure phpbb3

This time along with the other fields I've to fill in the ncurses interface I was prompted for a username before the password prompted appeared.
Logically I tried to fill in the root as it's my global privileges MySQL allowed user.
However that didn't helped at all and again the configuration tried to send the credentials with user htcheck to my MySQL database server.
To deal with the situation I had to approach it in the good old manual way.

2. Manually prepare / create the required phpbb forum database

To completet that connected to the MySQL server with the mysql client and created the proper database like so:

debian:~# mysql -u root -p
mysql>
CREATE database phpbb3forum;

3. Use phpmyadmin or the mysql client command line to create a new user for the phpbb forum

Here since adding up the user using the phpmyadmin was a way easier to do I decided to go that route, anyways using the mysql cli is also an option.

From phpmyadmin It's pretty easy to add a new user and grant privileges to a certain database, to do so navigate to the following database:

Privileges -> -> Add a new user ->

Now type your User name: , Host , Password , Re-type password , also for a Host: you have to choose Local from the drop down menu.

Leave the Database for user field empty as we have already previously created our desired database in step 2 of this article

Now press the "Go" button and the user will get created.

Further after choose the Privileges menu right on the bottom of the page once again, select through the checkbox the username you have just created let's say the previously created user is phpbb3

Go to Action (There is a picture with a man and a pencil on the right side of this button

Scroll down to the page part saying Database-specific privileges and in the field Add privileges on the following database: fill in your previosly created database name in our case it's phpbb3forum

and then press the "Go" button once again.
A page will appear where you will have to select the exact privileges you would like to grant on the specific selected database.
For some simplicity just check all the checkbox to grant as many privilegs to your database as you could.
Then again you will have to press the "Go" button and there you go you should have already configured an username and database ready to go with your new phpbb forum.

4. Create a virtualhost if you would like to have the forum as a subdomain or into a separate domain

If you decide to have the forum on a separate sub-domain or domain as I did you will have to add some kind of Virtualhost into either your Apache configuration /etc/apache2/apache2.conf or into where officially the virutualhosts are laid in Debian Linux in /etc/apache2/sites-available
I've personally created a new file like for instance /etc/apache2/sites-available/mysubdomain.mydomain.com

Here is an example content of the new Virtualhost:

<VirtualHost *>
ServerAdmin admin-email@domain.com
ServerName mysubdomain.domain.com

# Indexes + Directory Root.
DirectoryIndex index.php index.php5 index.htm index.html index.pl index.cgi index.phtml index.jsp index.py index.asp

DocumentRoot /usr/share/phpbb3/www/

# Logfiles
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain/error.log
CustomLog /var/log/apache2/yourdomain/access.log combined
# CustomLog /dev/null combined
<Directory /usr/share/phpbb3/www/>
Options FollowSymLinks MultiViews -Includes ExecCGI
AllowOverride All
Order allow,deny
allow from all </Directory>
</VirtualHost>

In above Virtualhost just change the values for ServerAdmin , ServerName , DocumentRoot , ErrorLog , CustomLog and Directory declaration to adjust it to your situation.

5. Restart the Apache webserver for the new Virtualhost to take affect

debian:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now accessing your http://mysubdomain.domain.com should display the installed phpbb3 forum
The default username and password for your forum you can use straight are:

username: admin
password: admin

So far so good you by now have the PHPBB3 forum properly installed and running, however if you try to Register a new user in the forum you will notice that it's impossible because of a terrible ugly message reading:

Sorry but this board is currently unavailable.

I've spend few minutes online to scrape through the forums before I can understand what I have to stop that annoying message from appearing and allow new users to register in the phpbb forum

The solution came natural and was a setting that had to be changed with the forum admin account, thus login as admin and look at the bottom of the page, below the text reading Powered by phpBB © 2000, 2002, 2005, 2007 phpBB Group you will notice a link with Administration Control Panel
just press there a whole bunch of menus will appear on the screen allowing you to do numerous things, however what you will have to do is go to
Board Settings -> Disable Board

and change the radio button there to say No

That's all now your forum will be ready to go and your users can freely register and if the server where the forum is installed has an already running mail server, they will receive an emails with a registration data concerning their new registrations in your new phpbb forum.
Cheers and Enjoy your new shiny phpbb Forum 🙂

My E-Marketing Report Final Godaddy.com Versus Enom.com for Download (Godaddy.com compared to Enom.com)

Monday, April 4th, 2011

Some few months ago, I’ve posted some study materials for e-marketing & commerce course (discipline) that I followed in Arnhem Business School (ABS)
Apart from that I had a final assignment which was supposed to be handed in some few weeks before the begging of the Christmas break.

The Emarketing assignment’s aim was to make a comparison of two websites which are operating in the same or very similar business field

The report’s goal was to present to the E-marketing teacher which in my case was Peter Stemers that the student has been acquainted with the basic theories of Emarketing.
The project was actually rather easy and the main issue to build up a project like this is the start up to complete it you just need to put a start and persist in expanding the document.

As the topic was very interesting to myself I started quite early in preparing my assignment (just a few weeks after it was assigned).

I’ve considered my profound interest into Information and Computer Technology (ICT) and decided to create a report which evaluates two websites which are into the IT sphere.
After a examination over a few possible domain names like for example:
Verizon – verizon.com and AT&T – att.com
1& 1and1.co.uk and Godaddy etc.

I’ve finally set my websites to compare choice on: Godaddy.com and enom.com

The criterias for selection of Godaddy and Enom as a target companies to compare their online business was as follows::

1. Both Godaddy and Enom are into the same business online industry, ( e.g. domain selling, reselling, blog hosting, webhosting, SSL certificates, online presence Search Engine optimization etc.)
Some other selection factor that convinced me to choose exactly Enom.com and Godaddy were that this are the biggest companies in the domain names selling IT sector and even better the Domain Selling industry has a tight relation to the History of how the Internet emerged.

The report became really thoroughful, the Godaddy vs Enom emarketing report has the size of 59 pages. Officially the study criterias has been that normally the usual student emarketing reports contains about 15 to 20 pages, however as the business products and services that this huge internet domain reseller companies has, I was forced to exceed the set teacher limitation of 20 pages and do it in 59 pages.

I’ve handed in my emarketing report and Peter Stemers graded it with 8.5 points from 10 possible (which by the way is quite a high mark for Arnhem Business School)

By the wat the E-marketing course was quite a silly one though for people that are not have an avarage computer knowledge and interest into Internet Commerce it was okay.

To read the table of contents of the Report comparison Enom compared to Godaddy click over here
Here is also my Emarketing Final Report Godaddy.com vs Enom.com (Godaddy.com compared to Enom.com) in both PDF and DOC, I hope this reports will be helpful to some marketing researchers out there to get an estimate on how the two companies are performing in the domain selling and reselling business:

1. Download My Emarketing and E-commerce report Godaddy Versus Enom.com (Godaddy Compared to Enom.com) doc version

2. Download E-marketing report Godaddy.Com VS Enom.Com (Godaddy.com Compared to Enom.com) in PDF

Compiling this Emarketing report costed me a lot of effort and time, the overall completion of the report has took me about a two weeks time, whether each day I worked a couple of hours on it.
I express also my big thanks to Alex Petrov (a friend of mine) for helping me read and review the report and fix some minor errors in sentence structures and my language of expression.

The Godaddy VS Enom Emarketing report outlines, numerous pitfalls that both Enom Company and Go Daddy has done in terms of SEO, Emarketing, user friendliness and usability

I believe this report could be really helpful for the these two competitive companies and could help them improve both their user image, their accessibility and Search Engine indexing.
On the other hand the report could be a good example for (HAN – Arnhem Business School E-Marketing) students on how to write a good looking Emarketing report to give themselves a pass.

An interesting fact is that before I decide to publish the report online and make it available to everyone I tried a known selling marketing report, I tried to offer to both Godaddy.Com and Enom.Com to sell them this report by sending the offer to their marketing and sales guys.
Enom.com has returned me an email, that they will look forward to my request, whether with Godaddy I have received an email by Go Daddy founder and CEO Bob Parons and the COO Warren Adelman

I will present you here the reply just to show you how impodent this mans are! My offer to sell them this great report for the symbolic sum of 200 EUR which will help their companies grow was considered I quote: “Unsolicated Report”.
Below I present you my offer email plus the impudent reply email by GoDaddy’s CEO and CEO:


SNAP – My Email to Godaddy
Hi Bob,

My name is Georgi Georgiev and I’m currently completing my bachelor in
Business Administration in HAN University of Applied Sciences (The
Netherlands).

Currently I’m developing an E-marketing report which is comparing the 2
largest internet domian registrars
godaddy.com and enom.com.

The report is a in depth SEO and E-marketing analysis of current
positioning in major search engines of Godaddy.com and Enom.com as well
as an overall analysis of user user friendliness, screen resolution
readiness of the two websites.
In the report I also analyse the behaviour of the enom.com and
godaddy.com as tested with different major Internet web browsers,
general user experience. External statistical websites etc. etc.

This research document does also concludes what are the strengths &
weaknesses of both your company and enom.com. The aim of the report is
to show, what Godaddy advantages and pitfalls if compared to Enom.com.

It also includes a number of suggestion for improvements which will be
beneficial for your company to drive more internet traffic to you as
well as increase your number of customers.

The report is 60 pages long document and includes many things that might
be beneficial for your business.

If you’re interested into the report and you’d like to buy it for me for
a very cheap price of 200 EUR, please contact me on my mail
hipo@www.pc-freak.net or systemexec@gmail.com.

Best Regards,
Georgi


Georgi Georgiev

——
END of SNAP

SNAP – Godaddy’s Bob Parson and Warren Adelman Reply Email:

Office of the President Response
Dear Georgi Georgiev,

Thank you for contacting the Office of the President. Our CEO, Bob Parsons, and President and COO, Warren Adelman, have asked me to respond on their behalf.

We value your time and appreciate the information you have provided regarding this request. Please understand that we are not seeking to acquire any unsolicited reports of this nature at this time.

Thank you for your understanding.

Sincerely,

Jordan McAlister

Hope this post is helpful to some students stucked with writting their E-marketing report
I also hope it shows how proficient, I’m in building reports and might be a good exapmle on how qualitative my work is and enhearten somebody to hire me as an E-marketing consultant 😉

Easy way to travel from Belarus to Holland hopping through Lithuania or other Shengen country

Friday, January 4th, 2013

Shengen tourist visa travel to Holland from belarus via Lithuania

Over the last 2 months or me and my girlfriend from Belarus, had quite a lot of pondering on how and if is easy possible to travel from Belarus to Holland. As with every new undertaking, obtaining enough information on how to proceed put a lot of stress on her and me.

I will explain in short the whole situation in hope that someone else who is in a situation like this can benefit out of our experience.

I am born in Bulgaria with Bulgarian nationality, but currently living in the Netherlands, because of my studies. I study here in Arnhem, Holland in Arnhem Business School. My Belarusian girlfriend is with Belarusian ID and since Belarus is not in EU. They're not allowed to freely travel within the EU without a VISA. To receive a VISA for EU Belarusians obliged to have first invitation send by a person – (priglashenie) as called in Russian language) and then it is up to government authorities to issue the Visa.

We wanted to meet each other here in Holland for the Christmas holidays somewhere in period 20 Dec – 05 January 2013 and thus she needed a tourist VISA. My first idea was to send her invitation through a Bulgarian friends family who live and work and have a registered company here in Netherlands. I asked them to check about if it is possible they somehow invite Svetlana, through their company, but it never happened I received an answer. Then failing this I thought about asking a Slovenian friend if it is possible, that he send Svetlana invitation using his Offshore Company which is already offering clients issuing Business VISAS for few destinations.

My logic was since Slovenia is within Shengen, it should be possible to invite Svetlana to Netherlands. However as I heard from him he contacted the embassy  of Germany / Netherlands to ask them but received a reply this is not possible. Failing this as an  option then  I thought of a friend of mine who is a citizen of the Netherlands – I asked him if he can send her invitation, but he refused to do so fearing maybe, Svetlana will stay as illegal emigrant here in Holland and he might have problems with police.

My next, idea was to ask the Slovenian guy to invite Svetlana to Slovenia and hence she make VISA for Slovenia; Slovenia is in the European Union and in Shengen agreement for Free re-location and work within all Shengen countries, thus she might first fly to ljubljana and then from ljubljana take another flight to Holland. This "doorway" is far away from convenient, even if possible (I was not sure if even possible it was just an idea), the ticket prices for flight from Minsk to Lubljana and Lubljana to somewhere in Holland costed around 400 EUR!

In one of our consequent Skype conversations with Svetlana, I've learned she researched on some Belarusian internet forums many people claim it is actually possible to travel from Lithuania to any of the 27 countries of the European Union. Meaning she needed to get a tourist (Shengen) VISA for Lithuania. Issuing VISA for Lithuania is comparatively easy cause Belarus and  Lithua are neighbor border countries and many people frequently travel from Belarus to Lithuania and vice versa.

Issuing a VISA from Belarus to Lithuania is possible through using few agencies in Belarus helping people to have a vacation trip to Western Europe. Svetla applied for one of those agencies, promising to issue a VISA for a week / week en a half or so. However as Belarus is still living on  a plenty of government structures inherited by the Communism which was until 1991 and which were kept after the fall of communism there and perestroika, it is necessery that a special government institution approves the Tourist Visa after the Lithuanian government  issues it. It seems there were plenty of people from Belarus who applied for Tourist Visa to western European countries, so Svetla was put in a queue line not knowing for sure  if the Visa will be possible to be issued until 22nd of December. The big trouble here was I already booked a flight ticket ticket from Lithuania capital Vilnius to Eindhoven Holland with low cost company – Wizzair. BTW I flight with Wizzair 2 times so far and the flight experience was pretty decent for its low ticket price.

Finally after the agency failed to confirm whether it will be able to help her in issuing the tickets before 22nd of Dec, she had to go herself to the Embassy  of Lithuania to sign up on a queue with other people to receive a VISA to Lithuania. The situation was quite uncertain, as it was not clear if this Embassy of Lithuania will issue her Visa or not or even if her queue turn will come before 22-nd. In theory it should have but it also depended on Belarusian governmental athorities who had to also approve the visa. Like in all complex situations like this, all left was we pray God to help us and hope it all will just run smoothly with issuing and approvel of visa.

One important note to make here is Svetla asked a lady in the Embassy of Lithuania, if she can use her Lithuanian VISA to travel within the rest of the member states of the European Union and she was given a negative response – a fact which discouraged and saddened both of us.
The encouraging thing was Svetla asked other people waiting for entering the embassy to request a Visa and as she spoke with them they all said it is possible to use the Lithuanian Visa to travel freely with no check to any country within the EU.

It was days of waiting and a lot of stress mainly for her because, I was in Holland and I couldn't help her (physically) in arranging the visa.

Praise God all went Okay and she was issued VISA few days before the flight date!!!! 🙂 🙂 🙂

Now to take the flight which was early in the morning of 22 of December 2012, Svetla had to travel quite a lot. First on a bus from Belarusian capital Minsk, she had to travel to Metro (if not mistaken), from Metro to Bus-Station, then take bus fr Minsk – Vilnius and after going down on Bus Station in Vilnius to take another bus to Vilnius Airport. After this long travel  finally had to check in on Airport and fly on Wizzair airplane in 06:15 morning.
She had to spend about 6 hours waiting for the check-in on Vilnius Airport, because the bus from Minsk arrived about midnight.

Thanksfully by God's Grace she met a nice Russian family travelling to Brussels, through Eindhoven and hence flying on same flight to Eindhoven like her, so she had a nice chat time on the Airport. Thanks God again, all went smoothly with the flight and about 08:30 she was on Eindhoven's airport waiting for me and I take her about 09:15.

There was no need for passport and security check on Eindhoven airport – as I heard from her, cause there is no border control of passengers travelling within the circle of Shengen EU country zone. In Vilnius she had the usual security check before entering the plane, but in Holland it was not needed. In Holland all she had to do is to collect her laggage from the luggage circling platform.

Hopefully this little post will help other Belarusians who need to travel to any country within the Shengen zone to meet friends, beloved or family.

 

The day, Today

Tuesday, May 20th, 2008

The day started a bit normal. I did my morning excercise, then I prayed. I spoke with Dzemil (A macedonian colleague of mine) and we set up a meeting for 12:30, I ate. I received few calls from the office with requests to do few little things. At 12:30 I met Dzemil at the College restaurant. We spend some time talking with him and another turkish colleague. Then we went to speak with Bozhidar Bozhkov about the applications for Holland, what is the procedure of transfering from the college here to Arnhem Business School etc. Laters I went home and did some work on the servers and red and did my fourth cisco test. I went to my cousin and after that went to Javor, we went out with Ina and Javor for a coffee to Kukla. Afterwards I went home and played with Dynamips. For all that wonder what the hack Dynamips is. Well Dynamics is a Cisco emulator just like VMWare is an OS emulator with the exception that Dynamics is builded to run only Cisco’s IOS. I found that nice Video tutorial Cisco Router Emulation Software Dynamips Video Tutorial, check it out here Here . Since I needed a Cisco IOS image and I’m not a Cisco customer I used torrents to download a collection of Cisco ISO’s and used one of the isos to make it work on my Windows Vista. I have problems running it because of lack of permissions, caused by the famous UAC ( User Access Control ). The solution for me was to use a privileged command prompt and start, both the Dynamips sever and my custom configured simple1.net which connected to the server and loaded the cisco image. There is also a very nice and extended tutorial on the topic of Dynamips it’s located Here . Alto today tested the previously installed Wireshark. Wireshark is a very nice substitute for iptraf for windows it has a nice and easy to use graphical interface, supports capturing and has lot of traffic analysis possibilities I strongly recommend it to anyone coming from a Linux/BSD background like me and searching for a nice Windows substitute for iptraf. Check out wireshark on the following URL . Now I’m going to change the topic and say a few words for my spiritual state. Today it was a hard day. I was tempted by the devil to think bad thoughts and did sinned for which I search forgiveness. Life it so hard I realize it more and more day by day. Very often old spirits which tormented me for a long time are trying to come back. I haven’t smoked today also and again thanks for that should fly to God who delived me from this terrible vice. As a conclusion I should say that for everything I should thanks to God and pray for him to forgive my unfaithfulness. END—–

My Individual Strategic Human Resources Management (SHR) research paper for Arnhem Business School

Thursday, April 7th, 2011

The previous semester in Arnhem Business School, I’ve followed a module called Strategic Human Resources Management
as a part of the so called G-cluster (Grand Cluster) (the 3rd year second semester).

The Stragic HR subject (module) is a completely meaningless one and the best short way to describe it is with the word (an insanity!).
In reality there is no aim of this module, and it’s content is vague and irrelevant.

If you’re a student in Arnhem Business School (ABS) and you have as oligitory to follow this course you’re seriously in trouble.

The whole subject is a lot of bla, bla, the teachers attitude towards you is like they’re invincible and you’re a victim and you have to always obey the teacher or you’re out (fear based)

Anyways I would skip to describe how the Strategic HRM went through as it was a complete nightmare ..

As a part of the Strategic HRM course It was necessery to write the so called Strategic Paper, the paper was required as a proof to the teachers that the student has realized what Strategic HRM is.

I believe my paper became quite good and thus I decided to share it here on my blog in hope that some other students might benefit from my Strategic Human Resources and Management research paper.

Here is the strategic paper assignment document and the paper itself:

1. Assignment Strategic Paper for semester 2010-2011
2. Strategic Human Resources Research Paper in DOC format
3. Strategic Human Resources Research Paper in PDF format

As I passed the Strategic HRM and it was one of the weighting factors for the subject end mark, it appears my research paper was found to be a good one by the teachers and therefore I assume other students from HAN might like to read it as a sample if they have to write something similar.

Emarketing & E-commerce study materials (Emarketing Reader, Search Engine Marketing, SEO Guide) for download

Wednesday, December 22nd, 2010

I’m preparing myself for my E-marketig & E-commerce exam part of the EMarketing & E-commerce module I follow in Arnhem Business School.

The study materials for the Emarketing exam are very basic and give some very basic information related to E-marketing & E-Commerce, however the readings has some good points. The electronic documents related to the E-marketing were available for a download from HAN Scholar (The University electronic documents study resource).

Since the documents lacked any copyrighting I thought it’s a good idea to share the documents for the public here in my blog, that some other followers of the Emarketing discipline either in Arnhem Business School, can benefit from them or any other students following the same course.

Here are the Emarketing related resources:

1. Emarketing Reader – The basic study documents for the E-marketing course in doc file and EMAR_Reader in pdf
2. SEO Guide doc file – a very basic guide for Search Engine Optimization
3. Basic concepts behind Search Engine Marketing – CPC, CPP, Site search engine submit, meta tags, web directories, Optimizations etc.
4. Powerpoint (PPT) Presentations archive for E-marketing, E-business, E-procurement, E-business Strategy
5. Emarketing & E-commerce comparison assignment student reports for 2 websites

all the files I have gathered throughout the study of E-marketing course are avialable here.

I hope this study resources will be of use to some future students in Arnnehm Business School or other university students following the same course.