Joe Duck » blogs

Database Connection Strings

JoeDuck — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:47:26 +0000

I wanted to post this to help others who have run into trouble with the message along the lines of “Cannot Establish Database Connection”. This can happen for several reasons but usually the fix is fairly easy – you just need to modify a single file in your WordPress or Drupal or other file system according to the instructions below using FTP access.

If you move servers or rename the database or change your password you’ll want to go in and carefully put in the new database name or password.

If you’ve forgotten either of those, you may need to dig in to your control panel to find them. Ask your web host how to do that part as it depends on many things, but the part below is usually simple and done via FTP to your server.

Source: Godaddy

Connection strings for website databases:

NOTE:You will have to obtain these files referenced below by FTPing into your hosting account and into the application’s directories. For more information on this, see your application’s manufacturer’s Web site.

WordPress

Edit the wp-config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);

Joomla

Edit the configuration.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

var $host = ‘youroldhostname’;

Simple Machine Forum

Edit the Settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$db_server = ‘youroldhostname’;

DotNetNuke

Edit the web.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

connectionString=”Server=youroldhostname;Database=DBName;uid=DBUser;pwd=DBPass;”

Drupal

Edit the sites/default/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$db_url = ‘mysqli://DBUser:DBPassword@youroldhostname/DBName’;

Zen Cart

Edit the includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php files. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘DB_SERVER’, ‘youroldhostname’);

Gallery

Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$storeConfig['hostname'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

Coppermine

Edit the include/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$CONFIG['dbserver'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

OSCommerce

Edit the includes/configure.php and admin/includes/configure.php files. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘DB_SERVER’, ‘youroldhostname’);

PhpBB

Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;

Vanilla Forum

Edit the conf/database.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$Configuration['DATABASE_HOST'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

paFileDB

Edit the includes/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$dbServer = “youroldhostname”;

Noah’s Classifieds

Edit the app/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$hostName=”youroldhostname”;

OpenX

Edit the var/yoursitename.com.conf.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

host=”youroldhostname”

BlogEngine.NET

Edit the web.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

Geeklog

Edit the db-config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$_DB_host = ‘youroldhostname’;

Lifetype

Edit the config/config.properties.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$config['db_host'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

reBlog

Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘REF_DB_HOST’, “youroldhostname”);

Serendipity

Edit the serendipity_config_local.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$serendipity['dbHost'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

Mantis

Edit the config_inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$g_hostname = “youroldhostname”;

MediaWiki

Edit the LocalSettings.php and config/LocalSettings.php files. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server. $wgDBserver = “youroldhostname”;

WebCalendar

Edit the includes/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

db_host: youroldhostname

anyInventory

Edit the globals.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$db_host = “youroldhostname”;

Mambo

Edit the configuration.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$mosConfig_host = ‘youroldhostname’;Community Server

Edit the connectionStrings.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

MODx

Edit the includes/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$database_server = ‘youroldhostname’;

Moodle

Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$CFG->dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;

Nucleus

Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$MYSQL_HOST = ‘youroldhostname’;

PostNuke

Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$pnconfig['dbhost'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

SilverStripe

Edit the tutorial/_config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

“server” => “youroldhostname”,

Xoops

Edit the mainfile.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define( ‘XOOPS_DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’ );

Pinnacle Cart

Edit the content/engine/engine_config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);

BidWare

Edit the configuration/configure.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$bidwareTsohbD = ‘youroldhostname’;

Elgg

Edit the engine/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$CONFIG->dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;

4Images

Edit the config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$db_host = “youroldhostname”;

YetAnotherForum

Edit the yafnet.config file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

user id=DBUser;pwd=DBPassword;data source=youroldhostname;initial catalog=DBName;timeout=90Brim

Edit the framework/configuration/databaseConfiguration.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$host = ‘youroldhostname’;

dotProject

Edit the includes/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$dPconfig['dbhost'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

OpenDB

Edit the include/local.config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

‘host’=>’youroldhostname’, //OpenDb database host

OrangeHRM

Edit the lib/confs/Conf.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$this->dbhost = ‘youroldhostname’;

phpCollab

Edit the includes/settings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘MYSERVER’, ‘youroldhostname’);

PHProjekt

Edit the config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘PHPR_DB_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);

Aardvark Topsites

Edit the settings_sql.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$CONF['sql_host'] = ‘youroldhostname’;

Advanced Guestbook

Edit the admin/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$GB_DB["host"] = “youroldhostname”;

Advanced Poll

Edit the db/include/config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$POLLDB["host"] = “youroldhostname”;

PHCDownload

Edit the include/config.ini.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$config['db_server'] = “youroldservername”;

phpMyFAQ

Edit the inc/data.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$DB["server"] = ‘youroldhostname’;

phpmyvisites

Edit the config/config.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

‘db_host’ => ‘youroldhostname’,

PHPOpenChat

Edit the config.inc.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

define(‘DATABASE_HOST’, ‘youroldhostname’);

MediaWiki

Edit the LocalSettings.php file. You will need to update the following line with the name of the new database server.

$wgDBserver = “‘youroldhostname’”;

Medical Traveling and other sites back up and on better server

JoeDuck — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 16:01:19 +0000

Drama here at the mini web empire over the past few days. I was critical of Godaddy for taking down several of my sites after an advertising traffic surge of about 9800 unique visits to the new medical tourism blog MedicalTraveling.net put a strain on the shared server. After the blog post / tweet and intervention by CEO Bob Parsons my issues were very quickly resolved and now I’m on a much better server setup that should be able to better handle the high traffic I expect at that blog.

Still trying to figure out why it took Dr. Bob’s clout to resolve this. The tech folks I talk with at Godaddy are usually very capable and attentive, yet two of them had insisted to me there was no way to expedite things after what they seemed to believe was a ”network violation” caused by the traffic surge to the new blog. Uptime was particularly important to me on my new Medical Tourism blog because it’s being reviewed by Thai tourism as my entry in their Medical Tourism blogging contest where finalists will be flown to Thailand for an introduction to the country and to their very advanced medical tourism infrastructure.

So … we’ll see if there is a happy ending to another installment in the great lifetime blogging adventure, and I do want to thank Godaddy for coming through with a fast fix after the initial frustrations of having sites taken down.

Feeling Good vs Doing Good

JoeDuck — Mon, 13 Sep 2010 17:21:28 +0000

It seems these days I’m often pissing off friends and family for suggesting something that, frankly, is pretty obvious. Most of what passes as “doing good” these days are activities that make the feel-gooders feel good about themselves, their community, and life in general (that’s fine of course), but don’t do much to make the world a better place. It’s fine to engage in things that you enjoy that do not contribute to the greater good, but it is very important to recognize the difference, and not to conflate feel-good stuff with actual do-good stuff.

Real good comes in many forms, and thank goodness their are a LOT of people doing real good all around us. Friends and neighbors working and volunteering in health care, teaching, law enforcement, and hundreds of other public service jobs, NGOs building schools all over, Church groups teaching, etc, etc. Many of the folks doing that stuff are heroic, braving all kinds of bad conditions to bring health care, education, food, and good will to those who need it most.

But without even pointing out those obvious ‘feel good’ activities I’m going to hope we make better progress than we seem to be *re-defining* what it means to “do good”.

Those of us in the middle and up classes here in the USA enjoy historically unprecedented standards of living, and even those on welfare here in the USA live well by any reasonable global standards. Bringing this higher *standard of living* to the small numbers in the US and the huge numbers in other countries who do not benefit from our system is the greatest moral challenge of our time, yet I can’t help but think that the many “feel gooders” (and even worse – the political spenders on both sides of the political aisle) are distracting us and redirecting resources very inefficiently to projects that will have little significant positive impact.

As always, hoping folks chime in with their views about this, and for what it’s worse I’d agree that blogging is probably NOT an example of doing much if any good! Maybe I’m my own best example of the problem?

Got Travel? Travel Blogs and Travel Bloggers, Unite!

JoeDuck — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 15:12:48 +0000

For some time (100,000 years in internet dog years), I’ve wanted to collect *all* the travel blogs in one spot and organize them by destination. That’s not happening … yet … but I’m very happy to see so many great folks online blogging travel now as well as many lists of bloggers popping up.

An interesting issue in finding the holy grail of travel information is whether people would rather hear from *travelers* or from *locals*. I used to lean to the former – ie I wanted to hear from other folks who had visited a place to get the best information, but it’s become clear to me now that the best source for travel information are well informed local folks – ideally those who are in the travel industry and therefore familiar with a lot of attractions, hotels, restaurants, history, customs, etc. An example for Oregon is … me.

I worked in the travel industry for many years and I know a *lot* about Oregon, especially Southern Oregon. Unfortunately there are not very many people blogging “local travel” from a local perspective. Ironically pretty much all the travel writing blog folks (including me) are so busy talking about their own trips out and about, they are not writing much about their local places – the kind of information that would be simply wonderful if you were to visit a place.

So … my challenge to travel bloggers is to write a few posts about things to see and do in your own neck of the woods. Let me know if you do and I’ll be happy to feature it prominently at our heavy traffic site ”Travel and History”. Please include a bit of history in the travelogue if you can.

Here are some from some cool traveling folks:

Blogs/ Travelers list from Traveling Teri:

Blogroll from Travel Answer Man John Van Kirk:

From Elliot.org

Alaska TravelGram
Almost Fearless
Anders Meanders
Arthur Frommer
Brave New Traveler
Consumerist
Evan Sparks
Everett Potter
ExpertCruiser
Flight Wisdom
Gadling
Hidden Travel Gems
Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot
HotelChatter
Intelligent Travel
Jaunted
Jeanne Leblanc
LLWorldTour
Marriott on the Move
MaxaBlog
Online Travel Review
Peter Greenberg
PlaneBuzz
Rick Seaney
Roads Less Traveled
Safe Cruise
Ship Critic blog
Southwest Airlines
T2Impact
The BOOT
The Cruise Log
The Daily Traveler
The Practical Nomad
This Just In…..
Tim Leffel’s Cheapest Destinations
Towers and Tarmacs
Travel Babel
Travel Gear Blog
Travel Log
Travel Maven blog
Travel Post
Travel Rants
Traveler 2.0
Traveler’s Check
Tripinator – Travel 2.0
Tripso
Upgrade: travel better
USA Today’s Hotel Hotsheet
World Hum
WSJ.com: The Middle Seat Terminal

WordPress Publishing Problems with Flickr or other programs?

JoeDuck — Mon, 19 Jul 2010 01:22:57 +0000

Another reminder (because I’ve needed this many times) that you must enable WordPresses “Remote Publishing” protocols if you want to blog photos directly from Flickr (a fantastic feature – I wish more people could do this but it remains a little tricky to set up both at Flickr and at WP unless you know this is needed (defaults have these boxes UNchecked). I think you only need the XML-RPC after correct configuration at Flickr, but do both so you have more ways to publish to your WP blog:

Remote Publishing

To post to WordPress from a desktop blogging client or remote website that uses the Atom Publishing Protocol or one of the XML-RPC publishing interfaces you must enable them below.

Atom Publishing Protocol	Atom Publishing Protocol Enable the Atom Publishing Protocol.
XML-RPC	XML-RPC Enable the WordPress, Movable Type, MetaWeblog and Blogger XML-RPC publishing protocols.

Climate Science Scandal – will Paleo Dendrochronology survive?

JoeDuck — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 19:37:50 +0000

For new readers please NOTE that I am NOT a climate skeptic, I am just wondering why groupthink seems so pervasive in the climate science community, especially over at the key climate blog RealClimate .

Update: Two very thoughtful and balanced pieces written – by climate scientist Judy Curry – and by Peter Kelemen at Popular Mechanics .

Here’s the Wall Street Journal’s take on this.

Here are the infamous hacked emails.

There’s a remarkable development today on the climate front [thanks to Glenn for the link in the earlier post]. A huge amount of climate data, including some remarkable emails between scientists, have been hacked from the University of Anglia in England. These mails and data may shed some light on some of the more contentious points in climate science.

The odd methods and math seem especially conspicuous in tree ring studies of climate trends. Called Paleo Dendrochronology, these studies are VERY often used either alone or with other data in climate studies and often are used alone or with other data to make the case that global climate change is potentially catastrophic.

The best scientific work critical of global warming science seems to focus mostly on attacking this weakest link – or should I say the weakest rings – over at ClimateAudit.org.

Here is a great balanced view at UK Guardian of the story so far: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/20/climate-sceptics-hackers-leaked-emails

A critical view of the implications of this data is here at ClimateAudit

A sympathetic view is here at RealClimate where I tried to post I posted this comment and I appreciate the good sportsmanship of them letting it through moderation. When they do allow me to post this type of comment I wonder if I’ve been too hard on them for what seems like censorship, but possibly could be the crappy posting system they have over there where moderation, timestamps, and other factors seem to confuse everybody.

Somebody naively wondered why there are so few comments on this post. IMO the answer is that RealClimate is effectively content-censored to a large degree for conformance with the prevailing ideas here.

Uninformed dissenters are sometimes let in so the comment crew can bash them around, but reasoned dissenters are usually banned outright. Many don’t bother trying to post here for that very reason.

Gavin in the interest of transparency would you at least roughly estimate how many of the comments have been moderated out for this post? I would guess 95% have been zapped.

[RealClimate wrote] Scientists often use the term “trick” to refer to a “a good way to deal with a problem”

Could you give a few examples? I searched right here at Realclimate for uses of that term they tend to relate to “trickery”, not good science.

More climate updates: Here’s the Copenhagen Diagnosis, an excellent summary of the latest climate science since the last big IPCC report. For the record I do think this does suffer from the prevailing “somewhat alarmist” tone in some of the interpretations of the research. For example a key observation is the current pause in warming noted by satellite measures, and this is given short shrift here.

China shuts access to Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live, Hotmail, Blogger via the “Great Firewall” filters

JoeDuck — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 17:23:08 +0000

China is closing down access to various internet services as they approach they anniversary of the Tiananmen Square democracy protests in 1989. The early report from TechCrunch says that Twitter, Flickr, Bing, Live, Hotmail, Blogger have all been made hard to access via the “Great Firewall” filters. I did notice when in China last year that there are various programs like ‘Great Ladder” that allow people to bypass these filters, but obviously not many are going to have the combination of nerve and savvy to do this.

I believe that China’s censorship policies are probably counterproductive *even to the Chinese Government’s goals* in the long term, and I’d sure like to find a way for the internet community to make this clear to China’s leaders. Ironically China’s leadership has done a remarkable job transitioning away from the bulky, centralized, bureaucratic economy that had been stifling progress for decades. China’s citizens now enjoy a higher level of prosperity and *economic* freedom than they arguably have ever had in history. Much of this prosperity is the result of producing goods for the US market. What exactly does the government think will happen if they allow more open dialog in China? I’d suggest they’ll find this would tend to reduce the tensions created by unhappy citizens rather than increase them. Suppression of dissent in Tibet routinely brings international scorn to China, where a more open dialog will bring praise, respect, and support.

China needs to realize that the world’s fascination and respect for China’s culture and international influence will be enhanced by free speech, not reduced.

TechCrunch UK is reporting on this and I’m looking for more direct information now.

Sue the bloggers!? [gulp]

JoeDuck — Thu, 21 May 2009 23:36:25 +0000

Thanks to Paul for pointing us ot this interesting article about blogger liabilities. I’d be interested in how folks here view this topic. Do I need “blog comment insurance”?
Wall Street Journal on Blogger lawsuits

Bloggers are increasingly getting sued or threatened with legal action for everything from defamation to invasion of privacy to copyright infringement. In 2007 — the most recent data available — 106 civil lawsuits against bloggers and others in social networks and online forums were tallied by the Citizen Media Law Project at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, up from just 12 in 2003. There have been about $17.4 million in trial awards against bloggers to date, according to the Media Law Resource Center in New York, a nonprofit clearinghouse that tracks free-speech cases.

Dear WordPress – Now that you own Intense Debate, please get Intense Debate Comments going at WordPress hosted blogs.

JoeDuck — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 18:29:16 +0000

Problem: Cannot install Intense Debate at WordPress hosted blogs

The internet is a funny place, usually interesting, always provocative, and often frustrating. In typical internet fashion after learning about how nice it would be to have the “Intense Debate” comment system here to manage my comments more effectively and allow comment folks to get more out of the blog I spend a half hour learning that it can’t be installed here because I’m hosted at WordPress.

This is a bit odd since (in the typical topsy turvy ironic online world) WordPress actually *owns* IntenseDebate. They bought it last fall so I can hope they’ll provide support for it soon. I’m always reluctant to nag the excellent folks at WordPress because they don’t make much if any money from the blogging portions of their massive online programs (they do pretty well with Akismet anti-spamming software and they have one of the world’s largest and in my opinion extremely valuable online footprints).

However I do want to note this for others and hopefully save them the agony of trying to figure out how to install IntenseDebate at a WordPress hosted blog, which as far as I can tell is currently impossible because it’s only available via plugin and plugins are not allowed at WordPress hosted blogs aka WP hosted blog.

Note that you can easily install the IntenseDebate plugin via instructions at IntenseDebate if you have a WordPress.org setup, which is using WordPress Content management software at other sites. e.g. Our technology news blog Technology Report is such an external WordPress setup via Godaddy hosting, so I may try to set this up over there, but unfortunately Joe Duck is where all the comment action tends to be so this is where we need IntenseDebate!

C’mon Matt Mullenweg, can’t we have an intense debate widget for this or something?

Google Social Search Wiki Launches

JoeDuck — Fri, 21 Nov 2008 23:20:32 +0000

Today’s tech blogOsphere buzz is about Google’s new wiki search feature that allows users to rank their own results. This appears to me to be a splendid idea although I agree with some who say it won’t get used much.

However, for those who use this it may eventually allow a kind of search ranking we have never seen, where user defined preferences trump the mysterious algorithmic magic mistakes, gradually giving the user a great set of results well optimized to their needs.

I’d suggest that “perfect individualized search” may only require two basic steps – the first is a *discovery* part where you surface content relevant to your particular query and then plow through that manually to determine which sites best fit your needs. Google does a pretty good job of facilitating that right now. However a second piece would allow you to build on those “personally filtered” results in various ways – some as simple as just listing them in rough order of relevance to you as Google is now doing.

Is this a good Google idea? Yes! Will anybody much use this? Nope, because our habits as humans don’t incline us to be this organized. I had a great conversation a few days ago with the developer of Reuters Calais semantic search – a brilliant tool designed to surface relevancy and meaning from massive document archives. We were noting how difficult is is to simply break the habit of using Google search, even when it’s not the most appropriate tool for the job at hand.

Funny primates we !

Google Blog reports on the new search wiki