How-To Tutorials - CMS and E-Commerce

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.) Choosing a web host that meets your security requirements In this article, you'll learn what you, as the site administrator, can do to keep your site safe. However, there are also some basic but critical security measures that your web hosting company should take. You'll probably have a shared hosting account, where multiple sites are hosted on one server computer and each site has access to their part of the available disk space and resources. Although this is much cheaper than hiring a dedicated server to host your site, it does involve some security risks. Good web hosting companies take precautions to minimize these risks. When selecting your web host, it's worth checking if they have a good reputation of keeping their security up to standards. The official Joomla resources site (http://resources.joomla.org/directory/support-services/hosting.html) features hosting companies that fully meet the security requirements of a typical Joomla-powered site. Tip 1 – Download from reliable sources To avoid installing corrupted versions, it's a good idea to download the Joomla software itself only from the official website (www.joomla.org) or from reliable local Joomla community sites. This is also true when downloading third-party extensions. Use only extensions that have a good reputation; you can check the reviews at www.extensions.joomla.org. Preferably, download extensions only from the original developer's website or from Joomla community websites that have a good reputation. Tip 2 – Update regularly The Joomla development team regularly releases updates to fix bugs and security issues. Fortunately, Joomla makes keeping your site up to date effortless. In the backend control panel, you'll find a MAINTENANCE section in the quick icons column displaying the current status of both the Joomla software itself and of installed extensions. This is shown in the following screenshot: If updates are found, the quick icon text will prompt you to update by adding an Update now! link, as shown in the following screenshot: Clicking on this link takes you to the Joomla! Update component (which can also be found by navigating to Components | Joomla! Update). In this window, you'll see the details of the update. Just click on Install the update; the process is fully automated. Before you upgrade Joomla to an updated version, it's a good idea to create a backup of your current site. If anything goes wrong, you can quickly have it up and running again. See the Tip 6 – Protect files and directories section in this article for more information on creating backups. If updates for installed extensions are available, you'll also see a notice stating this in the MAINTENANCE section of the control panel. However, you can also check for updates manually; in the backend, navigate to Extensions | Extension Manager and click on Update in the menu on the left-hand side. Click on Find Updates to search for updates. After you've clicked on the Find Updates button, you'll see a notice informing you whether updates are available or not. Select the update you want to install and click on the Update button. Be patient; you may not see much happening for a while. After completion, a message is displayed that the available updates have been installed successfully. The update functionality only works for extensions that support it. It's to be expected that this feature will be widely supported by extension developers; but for other extensions, you'll still have to manually check for updates by visiting the extension developer's website. The Joomla update packages are stored in your website's tmp directory before the update is installed on your site. After installation, you can remove these files from the tmp directory to avoid running into disc space problems. Tip 3 – Choose a safe administrator username When you install Joomla, you also choose and enter a username for your login account (the critical account of the almighty Super User). Although you can enter any administrator username when installing Joomla, many people enter a generic administrator username, for example, admin. However, this username is far too common, and therefore poses a security risk; hackers only have to guess your password to gain access to your site. If you haven't come up with something different during the installation process, you can change the administrator username later on. You can do this using the following steps: In the backend of the site, navigate to Users | User Manager. Select the Super User user record. In the Edit Profile screen, enter a new Login Name. Be creative! Click on Save & Close to apply changes. Log out and log in to the backend with the new username. Tip 4 – Pick a strong password Pick an administrator password that isn't easy to guess. It's best to have a password that's not too short; 8 or more characters is fine. Use a combination of uppercase letters, lowercase letters, numbers, and special characters. This should guarantee a strong password. Don't use the same username and password you use for other online accounts, and regularly change your password. You can create a new password anytime in the backend User Manager section in the same way as you enter or change a username (see Tip 2 – Update regularly). Tip 5 – Use Two-Factor authentication By default, logging in to the administrative interface of your site just requires the correct combination of username and password. A much more secure way to log in is using the Two-Factor authentication system, a recent addition to Joomla. It requires you to log in with not just your username and password, but also with a six-digit security code. To get this code, you need to use the Google Authenticator app, which is available for most Android, iOS, Blackberry, Windows 8, and Windows Mobile devices. The app doesn't store the six-digit code; it changes the code every 30 seconds. Two-Factor authentication is a great solution, but it does require a little extra effort every time you log in to your site. You need to have the app ready every time you log in to generate a new access code. However, you can selectively choose which users will require this system. You can decide, for example, that only the site administrator has to log in using Two-Factor authentication. Enabling the Two-Factor authentication system of Joomla! To enable Joomla's Two-Factor authentication, where a user has to enter an additional secret key when logging in to the site, follow these steps: To use this system on your site, first enable the Two-Factor authentication plugin that comes with Joomla. In the Joomla backend, navigate to Extensions | Plugin Manager, select Two Factor Authentication – Google Authenticator, and enable it. Next, download and install the Google Authenticator app for your device. Once this is set up, you can set the authentication procedure for any user in the Joomla backend. In the user manager section, click on the account name. Then, click on the Two Factor Authentication tab and select Google Authenticator from the Authentication method dropdown. This is shown in the following screenshot: Joomla will display the account name and the key for this account. Enter these account details in the Google Authenticator app on your device. The app will generate a security code. In the Joomla backend, enter this in the Security Code field, as shown in the following screenshot: Save your changes. From now on, the Joomla login screen will ask you for your username, password, and a secret key. This is shown in the following screenshot: There are other secure login systems available besides the Google Authenticator app. Joomla also supports Yubico's YubiKey, a USB stick that generates an additional password every time it is used. After entering their usual password, the user inserts the YubiKey into the USB port of the computer and presses the YubiKey button. Automatically, the extra one-time password will be entered in Joomla's Secret Key field. For more information on YubiKey, visit http://www.yubico.com. Tip 6 – Protect files and directories Obviously, you don't want everybody to be able to access the Joomla files and folders on the web server. You can protect files and folders by setting access permissions using the Change Mode (CHMOD) commands. Basically, the CHMOD settings tell the web server who has access to a file or folder and who is allowed to read it, write to it, or to execute a file (run it as a program). Once your Joomla site is set up and everything works OK, you can use CHMOD to change permissions. You don't use Joomla to change the CHMOD settings; these are set with FTP software. You can make this work using the following steps: In your FTP program, right-click on the name of the file or directory you want to protect. In this example, we'll use the open source FTP program FileZilla. In the right-click menu, select File Permissions. You'll be presented with a pop-up screen. Here, you can check permissions and change them by selecting the appropriate options, as shown in the following screenshot: As you can see, it's possible to set permissions for the file owner (that's you), for group members (that's likely to be only you too), and for the public (everyone else). The public permissions are the tricky part; you should restrict public permissions as much as possible. When changing the permission settings, the file permissions number (the value in the Numeric value: field in the previous screenshot) will change accordingly. Every combination of settings has its particular number. In the previous example, this number is 644. Click on OK to execute the CHMOD command and set file permissions. Setting file permissions What files should you protect and what CHMOD settings should you choose? Here are a few pointers: By default, permissions for files are set to 644. Don't change this; it's a safe value. For directories, a safe setting is 750 (which doesn't allow any public access). However, some extensions may need access to certain directories. In such cases, the 750 setting may result in error messages. In this case, set permissions to 755. Never leave permissions for a file or directory set to 777. This allows everybody to write data to it. You can also block direct access to critical directories using a .htaccess file. This is a special file containing instructions for the Apache web server. Among other things, it tells the web server who's allowed access to the directory contents. You can add a .htaccess file to any folder on the server by using specific instructions. This is another way to instruct the web server to restrict access. Check the Joomla security documentation at www.joomla.org for instructions.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.) Case study Our project meets the following requirements: It depends on org.codehaus.jedi:jedi-XXX:3.0.5. Actually, the XXX is related to the JDK version, that is, either jdk5 or jdk6. The project is built and run on three different environments: PRODuction, UAT, and DEVelopment The underlying database differs owing to the environment: PostGre in PROD, MySQL in UAT, and HSQLDB in DEV. Besides, the connection is set in a Spring file, which can be spring-PROD.xml, spring-UAT.xml, or spring-DEV.xml, all being in the same src/main/resource folder. The first bullet point can be easily answered, using a jdk-version property. The dependency is then declared as follows: <dependency> <groupId>org.codehaus.jedi</groupId> <!--For this dependency two artifacts are available, one for jdk5 or and a second for jdk6--> <artifactId>jedi-${jdk.version}</artifactId> <version>${jedi.version}</version> </dependency> Still, the fourth bullet point is resolved by specifying a resource folder: <resources> <resource> <directory>src/main/resource</directory> <!--include the XML files corresponding to the environment: PROD, UAT, DEV. Here, the only XML file is a Spring configuration one. There is one file per environment--> <includes> <include> **/*-${environment}.xml </include> </includes> </resource> </resources> Then, we will have to run Maven adding the property values using one of the following commands: mvn clean install –Denvironment=PROD –Djdk.version=jdk6 mvn clean install –Denvironment=DEV –Djdk.version=jdk5 By the way, we could have merged the three XML files as a unique one, setting dynamically the content thanks to Maven's filter tag and mechanism. The next point to solve is the dependency to actual JDBC drivers. A quick and dirty solution A quick and dirty solution is to mention the three dependencies: <!--PROD --> <dependency> <groupId>postgresql</groupId> <artifactId>postgresql</artifactId> <version>9.1-901.jdbc4</version> <scope>runtime</scope> </dependency> <!--UAT--> <dependency> <groupId>mysql</groupId> <artifactId>mysql-connector-java</artifactId> <version>5.1.25</version> <scope>runtime</scope> </dependency> <!--DEV--> <dependency> <groupId>org.hsqldb</groupId> <artifactId>hsqldb</artifactId> <version>2.3.0</version> <scope>runtime</scope> </dependency> Anyway, this idea has drawbacks. Even though only the actual driver (org. postgresql.Driver, com.mysql.jdbc.Driver, or org.hsqldb.jdbcDriver as described in the Spring files) will be instantiated at runtime, the three JARs will be transitively transmitted—and possibly packaged—in a further distribution. You may argue that we can work around this problem in most of situations, by confining the scope to provided, and embed the actual dependency by any other mean (such as rely on an artifact embarked in an application server); however, even then you should concede the dirtiness of the process. A clean solution Better solutions consist in using dynamic POM. Here, too, there will be a gradient of more or less clean solutions. Once more, as a disclaimer, beware of dynamic POMs! Dynamic POMs are a powerful and tricky feature of Maven. Moreover, modern IDEs manage dynamic POMs better than a few years ago. Yet, their use may be dangerous for newcomers: as with generated code and AOP for instance, what you write is not what you execute, which may result in strange or unexpected behaviors, needing long hours of debug and an aspirin tablet for the headache. This is why you have to carefully weigh their interest, relatively to your project before introducing them. With properties in command lines As a first step, let's define the dependency as follows: <!-- The dependency to effective JDBC drivers: PostGre, MySQL or HSQLDB--> <dependency> <groupId>${effective.groupId}</groupId> <artifactId> ${effective.artifactId} </artifactId> <version>${effective.version}</version> </dependency> As you can see, the dependency is parameterized thanks to three properties: effective.groupId, effective.artifactId, and effective.version. Then, in the same way we added earlier the –Djdk.version property, we will have to add those properties in the command line, for example,: mvn clean install –Denvironment=PROD –Djdk.version=jdk6 -Deffective.groupId=postgresql -Deffective.artifactId=postgresql -Deffective.version=9.1-901.jdbc4 Or add the following property mvn clean install –Denvironment=DEV –Djdk.version=jdk5 -Deffective.groupId=org.hsqldb -Deffective.artifactId=hsqldb -Deffective.version=2.3.0 Then, the effective POM will be reconstructed by Maven, and include the right dependencies: <dependencies> <dependency> <groupId>org.springframework</groupId> <artifactId>spring-core</artifactId> <version>3.2.3.RELEASE</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>org.codehaus.jedi</groupId> <artifactId>jedi-jdk6</artifactId> <version>3.0.5</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> <dependency> <groupId>postgresql</groupId> <artifactId>postgresql</artifactId> <version>9.1-901.jdbc4</version> <scope>compile</scope> </dependency> </dependencies> Yet, as you can imagine, writing long command lines like the preceding one increases the risks of human error, all the more that such lines are "write-only". These pitfalls are solved by profiles. Profiles and settings As an easy improvement, you can define profiles within the POM itself. The profiles gather the information you previously wrote in the command line, for example: <profile> <!-- The profile PROD gathers the properties related to the environment PROD--> <id>PROD</id> <properties> <environment>PROD</environment> <effective.groupId> postgresql </effective.groupId> <effective.artifactId> postgresql </effective.artifactId> <effective.version> 9.1-901.jdbc4 </effective.version> <jdk.version>jdk6</jdk.version> </properties> <activation> <!-- This profile is activated by default: in other terms, if no other profile in activated, then PROD will be--> <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault> </activation> </profile> Or: <profile> <!-- The profile DEV gathers the properties related to the environment DEV--> <id>DEV</id> <properties> <environment>DEV</environment> <effective.groupId> org.hsqldb </effective.groupId> <effective.artifactId> hsqldb </effective.artifactId> <effective.version> 2.3.0 </effective.version> <jdk.version>jdk5</jdk.version> </properties> <activation> <!-- The profile DEV will be activated if, and only if, it is explicitly called--> <activeByDefault>false</activeByDefault> </activation> </profile> The corresponding command lines will be shorter: mvn clean install (Equivalent to mvn clean install –PPROD) Or: mvn clean install –PDEV You can list several profiles in the same POM, and one, many or all of them may be enabled or disabled. Nonetheless, multiplying profiles and properties hurts the readability. Moreover, if your team has 20 developers, then each developer will have to deal with 20 blocks of profiles, out of which 19 are completely irrelevant for him/her. So, in order to make the thing smoother, a best practice is to extract the profiles and inset them in the personal settings.xml files, with the same information: <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> <settings xsi_schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/ SETTINGS/1.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/ settings-1.0.0.xsd"> <profiles> <profile> <id>PROD</id> <properties> <environment>PROD</environment> <effective.groupId> postgresql </effective.groupId> <effective.artifactId> postgresql </effective.artifactId> <effective.version> 9.1-901.jdbc4 </effective.version> <jdk.version>jdk6</jdk.version> </properties> <activation> <activeByDefault>true</activeByDefault> </activation> </profile> </profiles> </settings> Dynamic POMs – conclusion As a conclusion, the best practice concerning dynamic POMs is to parameterize the needed fields within the POM. Then, by order of priority: Set an enabled profile and corresponding properties within the settings.xml. mvn <goals> [-f <pom_Without_Profiles.xml> ] [-s <settings_With_Enabled_Profile.xml>] Otherwise, include profiles and properties within the POM mvn <goals> [-f <pom_With_Profiles.xml> ] [-P<actual_Profile> ] [-s <settings_Without_Profile.xml>] Otherwise, launch Maven with the properties in command lines mvn <goals> [-f <pom_Without_Profiles.xml> ] [-s <settings_Without_Profile.xml>] -D<property_1>=<value_1> -D<property_2>=<value_2> (...) -D<property_n>=<value_n> Summary In this article we learned about Dynamic POM. We saw a case study and also saw its quick and easy solutions. Resources for Article: Further resources on this subject: Integrating Scala, Groovy, and Flex Development with Apache Maven [Article] Creating a Camel project (Simple) [Article] Using Hive non-interactively (Simple) [Article]

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.) Publishing a Video Demo project Due to its very nature, a Video Demo project can only be published as an .mp4 video file. In the following exercise, you will return to the encoderVideo.cpvc project and explore the available publishing options: Open the encoderVideo.cpvc file under Chapter08. Make sure the file opens in Edit mode. If you are not in Edit mode, click on the Edit button at the lower-right corner of the screen. (If the Edit button is not displayed on the screen, it simply means that you already are in Edit mode.) When the file is open in Edit mode, take a look at the main toolbar at the top of the interface. Click on the Publish icon or navigate to File | Publish. The Publish Video Demo dialog opens. In the Publish Video Demo dialog, make sure the Name of the project is encoderVideo. Click on the … button and choose the publish folder of your exercises as the destination of the published video file. Open the Preset dropdown. Take some time to inspect the available presets. When done, choose the Video - Apple iPad preset. Make sure the Publish Video Demo dialog looks similar to what is shown in the following screenshot and click on the Publish button: Publishing a Video Demo project can be quite a lengthy process, so be patient. When the process is complete, a message asks you what to do next. Notice that one of the options enables you to upload your newly created video to YouTube directly. Click on the Close button to discard the message. Use Windows Explorer (Windows) or the Finder (Mac) to go to the publish folder of your exercises. Double-click on the encoderDemo.mp4 file to open the video in the default video player of your system. Remember that a Video Demo project can only be published as a video file. Also remember that the published .mp4 video file can only be experienced in a linear fashion and does not support any kind of interactivity. Publishing to Flash In the history of Captivate, publishing to Flash has always been the primary publishing option. Even though HTML5 publishing is a game changer, publishing to Flash is still an important capability of Captivate. Remember that this publishing format is currently the only one that supports every single feature, animation, and object of Captivate. In the following exercise, you will publish the Encoder Demonstration project in Flash using the default options: Return to the encoderDemo_800.cptx file under Chapter08. Click on the Publish icon situated right next to the Preview icon. Alternatively, you can also navigate to File | Publish. The Publish dialog box opens as shown in the following screenshot: Notice that the Publish dialog of a regular Captivate project contains far more options than its Publish Video Demo counterpart in .cpvc files. The Publish dialog box is divided into four main areas: The Publish Format area (1): This is where you choose the format in which you want to publish your projects. Basically, there are three options to choose from: SWF/HTML5, Media, and Print. The other options (E-Mail, FTP, and Adobe Connect) are actually suboptions of the SWF/HTML5, Media, and Print formats. The Output Format Options area (2): The content of this area depends on the format chosen in the Publish Format (1) area. The Project Information area (3): This area is a summary of the main project preferences and metadata. Clicking on the links of this area will bring you back to the corresponding preferences dialog boxes. The Advanced Options area (4): This area provides some additional advanced publishing options. You will now move on to the actual publication of the project in the Flash format. In the leftmost column of the Publish dialog, make sure the chosen format is SWF/HTML5. In the central area, change the Project Title to encoderDemo_800_flash. Click on the Browse… button situated just below the Folder field and choose to publish your movie in the publish folder of your exercises folder. Make sure the Publish to Folder checkbox is selected. Take a quick look at the remaining options, but leave them all at their current settings. Click on the Publish button at the bottom-right corner of the Publish dialog box. When Captivate has finished publishing the movie, an information box appears on the screen asking whether you want to view the output. Click on No to discard the information box and return to Captivate. You will now use the Finder (Mac) or the Windows Explorer (Windows) to take a look at the files Captivate has generated. Use the Finder (Mac) or the Windows Explorer (Windows) to browse to the publish folder of your exercises. Because you selected the Publish to Folder checkbox in the Publish dialog, Captivate has automatically created the encoderDemo_800_flash subfolder in the publish folder. Open the encoderDemo_800_flash subfolder to inspect its content.There should be five files stored in this location: encoderDemo_800_flash.swf: This is the main Flash file containing the compiled version of the .cptx project encoderDemo_800_flash.html: This file is an HTML page used to wrap the Flash file standard.js: This is a JavaScript file used to make the Flash player work well within the HTML page demo_en.flv: This is the video file used on slide 2 of the movie captivate.css: This file provides the necessary style rules to ensure there is proper formatting of the HTML page If you want to embed the compiled Captivate movie in an existing HTML page, only the .swf file (plus, in this case, the .flv video) is needed. The HTML editor (such as Adobe Dreamweaver) will recreate the necessary HTML, JavaScript, and CSS files. Captivate and DreamweaverAdobe Dreamweaver CC is the HTML editor of the Creative Cloud and the industry-leading solution for authoring professional web pages. Inserting a Captivate file in a Dreamweaver page is dead easy! First, move or copy the main Flash file (.swf) as well as the needed support files (in this case, the .flv video file), if any, somewhere in the root folder of the Dreamweaver site. When done, use the Files panel of Dreamweaver to drag and drop the main .swf file onto the HTML page. That's it! More information on Dreamweaver can be found at http://www.adobe.com/products/dreamweaver.html. You will now test the compiled project in a web browser. This is an important test as it closely recreates the conditions in which the students will experience the movie once uploaded on a web server. Double-click on the encoderDemo_800_flash.html file to open it in a web browser. Enjoy the final version of the demonstration you have created! Now that you have experienced the workflow of publishing the project to Flash with the default options, you will explore some additional publishing options. Using the Scalable HTML content option Thanks to Scalable HTML content option of Captivate, the eLearning content is automatically resized to fit the screen on which it is viewed. Let's experiment with this option hands on using the following steps: If needed, return to the encoderDemo_800.cptx file under Chapter08. Click on the Publish icon situated right next to the Preview icon. Alternatively, you can also navigate to File | Publish. In the leftmost column, make sure the chosen format is SWF/HTML5. In the central column, change the Project Title to encoderDemo_800_flashScalable. Click on the Browse… button situated just below the Folder field and ensure that the publish folder is still the publish folder of your exercises. Make sure the Publish to Folder checkbox is selected. In the Advanced Options section (lower-right corner of the Publish dialog), select the Scalable HTML content checkbox. Leave the remaining options at their current value and click on the Publish button at the bottom-right corner of the Publish dialog box. When Captivate has finished publishing the movie, an information box appears on the screen asking whether you want to view the output. Click on Yes to discard the information box and open the published movie in the default web browser. During the playback, use your mouse to resize your browser window and notice how the movie is resized and always fits the available space without being distorted. The Scalable HTML content option also works when the project is published in HTML5.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.) Configuring the NFS storage NFS storage is a fairly common type of storage that is quite easy to set up and run even without special equipment. You can take the server with large disks and create NFS directory.But despite the apparent simplicity of NFS, setting s should be done with attention to details. Make sure that the NFS directory is suitable for use; go to the procedure of connecting storage to the data center. The following options are displayed after you click on the Configure Storage dialog box in which we specify the basic storage configuration: Name and Data Center: It is used to specify a name and target of the data center for storage Domain Function/Storage Type: It is used to choose a data function and NFS type Use Host: It is used to enter the host that will make the initial connection to the storage and a host who will be in the role of SPM Export Path: It is used to enter the storage server name and path of the exported directory Advanced Parameters: It provides additional connection options, such as NFS version, number of retransmissions and timeout, that are recommended to be changed only in exceptional cases Fill in the required storage settings and click on the OK button; this will start the process of connecting storage. The following image shows the New Storage dialog box with the connecting NFS storage: Configuring the iSCSI storage This section will explain how to connect the iSCSI storage to the data center with the type of storage as iSCSI. You can skip this section if you do not use iSCSI storage. iSCSI is a technology for building SAN (Storage Area Network). A key feature of this technology is the transmission of SCSI commands over the IP networks. Thus, there is a transfer of block data via IP. By using the IP networks, data transfer can take place over long distances and through network equipment such as routers and switches. These features make the iSCSI technology good for construction of low-cost SAN. oVirt supports iSCSI and iSCSI storages that can be connected to oVirt data centers. Then begin the process of connecting the storage to the data center. After you click on the Configure Storage dialog box in which you specify the basic storage configuration, the following options are displayed: Name and Data Center: It is used to specify the name and target of the data center. Domain Function/Storage Type: It is used to specify the domain function and storage type. In this case, the data function and iSCSI type. Use Host: It is used to specify the host to which the storage (SPM) will be attached. The following options are present in the search box for iSCSI targets: Address and Port: It is used to specify the address and port of the storage server that contains the iSCSI target User Authentication: Enable this checkbox if authentication is to be used on the iSCSI target CHAP username and password: It is used to specify the username and password for authentication Click on the Discover button and oVirt Engine connects to the specified server for the searching of iSCSI targets. In the resulting list, click on the designated targets, we click on the Login button to authenticate. Upon successful completion of the authentication, the display target LUN will be displayed; check it and click on OK to start connection to the data center. New storage will automatically connect to the data center. If it does not, select the location from the list and click on the Attach button in the detail pane where we choose a target data center. Configuring the Fibre Channel storage If you have selected Fibre Channel when creating the data center, we should create a Fibre Channel storage domain. oVirt supports Fibre Channel storage based on multiple preconfigured Logical Unit Numbers (LUN). Skip this section if you do not use Fibre Channel equipment. Begin the process of connecting the storage to the data center. Open the Guide Me wizard and click on the Configure Storage dialog box where you specify the basic storage configuration: Name and Data Center: It is used to specify the name and data center Domain Function/Storage Type: Here we need to specify the data function and Fibre Channel type Use Host: It specifies the address of the virtualization host that will act as the SPM In the area below, the list of LUNs are displayed, enable the Add LUN checkbox on the selected LUN to use it as Fibre Channel data storage. Click on the OK button and this will start the process of connecting storage to the data centers. In the Storage tab and in the list of storages, we can see created Fibre Channel storage. In the process of connecting, its status will change and at the end new storage will be activated and connected to the data center. The connection process can also be seen in the event pane. The following screenshot shows the New Storage dialog box with Fibre Channel storage type: Configuring the GlusterFS storage GlusterFS is a distributed, parallel, and linearly scalable filesystem. GlusterFS can combine the data storage that are located on different servers into a parallel network filesystem. GlusterFS's potential is very large, so developers directed their efforts towards the implementation and support of GlusterFS in oVirt (GlusterFS documentation is available at http://www.gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/Main_Page). oVirt 3.3 has a complete data center with the GlusterFS type of storage. Configuring the GlusterFS volume Before attempting to connect GlusterFS storage into the data center, we need to create the volume. The procedure of creating GlusterFS volume is common in all versions. Select the Volumes tab in the resource pane and click on Create Volume. In the open window, fill the volume settings: Data Center: It is used to specify the data center that will be attached to the GlusterFS storage. Volume Cluster: It is used to specify the name of the cluster that will be created. Name: It is used to specify a name for the new volume. Type: It is used to specify the type of GlusterFS volume available to choose from, there are seven types of volume that implement various strategic placements of data on the filesystem. Base types are Distribute, Replicate, and Stripe and other combination of these types: Distributed Replicate, Distributed Stripe, Striped Replicate, and Distributed Striped Replicate (additional info can be found at the link: http://gluster.org/community/documentation/index.php/GlusterFS_Concepts). Bricks: With this button, a list of bricks will be collected from the filesystem. Brick is a separate piece with which volume will be built. These bricks are distributed across the hosts. As bricks use a separate directory, it should be placed on a separate partition. Access Protocols: It defines basic access protocols that can be used to gain access to the following: Gluster: It is a native protocol access to volumes GlusterFS, enabled by default. NFS: It is an access protocol based on NFS. CIFS: It is an access protocol based on CIFS. Allow Access From: It allows us to enter a comma-separated IP address, hostnames, or * for all hosts that are allowed to access GlusterFS volume. Optimize for oVirt Store: Enabling this checkbox will enable extended options for created volume. The following screenshot shows the dialog box of Create Volume: Fill in the parameters, click on the Bricks button, and go to the new window to add new bricks with the following properties: Volume Type: This is used to change the previously marked type of the GlusterFS volume Server: It is used to specify a separate server that will export GlusterFS brick Brick Directory: It is used to specify the directory to use Specify the server and directory and click on Add. Depending on the type of volume, specify multiple bricks. After completing the list with bricks, click on the OK button to add volume and return to the menu. Click on the OK button to create GlusterFS volumes with the specified parameters. The following screenshot shows the Add Bricks dialog box: Now that we have GlusterFS volume, we select it from the list and click on Start. Configuring the GlusterFS storage oVirt 3.3 has support for creating data centers with the GlusterFS storage type: The GlusterFS storage type requires a preconfigured data center. A pre-created cluster should be present inside the data center. The enabled Gluster service is required. Go to the Storage section in resource pane and click on New Domain. In the dialog box that opens, fill in the details of our storage. The details are given as follows: Name and Data Center: It is used to specify the name and data center Domain Function/Storage Type: It is used to specify the data function and GlusterFS type Use Host: It is used to specify the host that will connect to the SPM Path: It is used to specify the path to the location in the format hostname:volume_name VFS Type: Leave it as glusterfs and leave Mount Option blank Click on the OK button; this will start the process of creating the repository. The created storage automatically connects to the specified data centers. If not, select the repository created in the list, and in the subtab named Data Center in the detail pane, click on the Attach button and choose our data center. After you click on OK, the process of connecting storage to the data center starts. The following screenshot shows the New Storage dialog box with the GlusterFS storage type. Summary In this article we learned how to configure NFS Storage, iSCSI Storage, FC storages, and GlusterFS Storage. Resources for Article: Further resources on this subject: Tips and Tricks on Microsoft Application Virtualization 4.6 [Article] VMware View 5 Desktop Virtualization [Article] Qmail Quickstarter: Virtualization [Article]

Social networks such as Twitter and Facebook are ever popular and can be a great source of new customers if used correctly on your store. In this article by Richard Carter, the author of Learning Magento Theme Development, covers the following topics: Integrating a Twitter feed into your Magento store Integrating a Facebook Like Box into your Magento store Including social share buttons in your product pages Integrating product videos from YouTube into the product page (For more resources related to this topic, see here.) Integrating a Twitter feed into your Magento store If you're active on Twitter, it can be worthwhile to let your customers know. While you can't (yet, anyway!) accept payment for your goods through Twitter, it can be a great way to develop a long term relationship with your store's customers and increase repeat orders. One way you can tell customers you're active on Twitter is to place a Twitter feed that contains some of your recent tweets on your store's home page. While you need to be careful not to get in the way of your store's true content, such as your most recent products and offers, you could add the Twitter feed in the footer of your website.   Creating your Twitter widget   To embed your tweets, you will need to create a Twitter widget. Log in to your Twitter account, navigate to https://twitter.com/settings/widgets, and follow the instructions given there to create a widget that contains your most recent tweets. This will create a block of code for you that looks similar to the following code:   <a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/RichardCarter" data-widget-id="123456789999999999">Tweets by @RichardCarter</a>   <script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s) [0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d. getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js. src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode. insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");</script> Embedding your Twitter feed into a Magento template   Once you have the Twitter widget code to embed, you're ready to embed it into one of Magento's template files. This Twitter feed will be embedded in your store's footer area. So, so open your theme's /app/design/frontend/default/m18/template/page/html/footer.phtml file and add the highlighted section of the following code:   <div class="footer-about footer-col">   <?php echo $this->getLayout()->createBlock('cms/block')->setBlockId('footer_about')->toHtml(); ?>   <?php   $_helper = Mage::helper('catalog/category'); $_categories = $_helper->getStoreCategories(); if (count($_categories) > 0): ?> <ul>   <?phpforeach($_categories as $_category): ?> <li>   <a href="<?php echo $_helper->getCategoryUrl($_category) ?>"> <?php echo $_category->getName() ?>   </a>   </li> <?phpendforeach; ?> </ul>   <?phpendif; ?>   <a class="twitter-timeline" href="https://twitter.com/RichardCarter" data-widget-id="123456789999999999">Tweets by @RichardCarter</a> <script>!function(d,s,id){var js,fjs=d.getElementsByTagName(s) [0],p=/^http:/.test(d.location)?'http':'https';if(!d. getElementById(id)){js=d.createElement(s);js.id=id;js. src=p+"://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js";fjs.parentNode. insertBefore(js,fjs);}}(document,"script","twitter-wjs");</script>   </div>   The result of the preceding code is a Twitter feed similar to the following one embedded on your store:     As you can see, the Twitter widget is quite cumbersome. So, it's wise to be sparing when adding this to your website. Sometimes, a simple Twitter icon that links to your account is all you need!   Integrating a Facebook Like Box into your Magento store   Facebook is one of the world's most popular social networks; with careful integration, you can help drive your customers to your Facebook page and increase long term interaction. This will drive repeat sales and new potential customers to your store. One way to integrate your store's Facebook page into your Magento site is to embed your Facebook page's news feed into it.   Getting the embedding code from Facebook   Getting the necessary code for embedding from Facebook is relatively easy; navigate to the Facebook Developers website at https://developers.facebook.com/docs/plugins/like-box-for-pages. Here, you are presented with a form. Complete the form to generate your embedding code; enter your Facebook page's URL in the Facebook Page URL field (the following example uses Magento's Facebook page):   Click on the Get Code button on the screen to tell Facebook to generate the code you will need, and you will see a pop up with the code appear as shown in the following screenshot:   Adding the embed code into your Magento templates   Now that you have the embedding code from Facebook, you can alter your templates to include the code snippets. The first block of code for the JavaScript SDK is required in the header.phtml file in your theme's directory at /app/design/frontend/default/m18/template/page/html/. Then, add it at the top of the file:   <div id="fb-root"></div> <script>(function(d, s, id) {   var js, fjs = d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0]; if (d.getElementById(id)) return; js = d.createElement(s); js.id = id;   js.src = "//connect.facebook.net/en_GB/all.js#xfbml=1"; fjs.parentNode.insertBefore(js, fjs); }(document, 'script', 'facebook-jssdk'));</script>   Next, you can add the second code snippet provided by the Facebook Developers site where you want the Facebook Like Box to appear in your page. For flexibility, you can create a static block in Magento's CMS tool to contain this code and then use the Magento XML layout to assign the static block to a template's sidebar.   Navigate to CMS | Static Blocks in Magento's administration panel and add a new static block by clicking on the Add New Block button at the top-right corner of the screen. Enter a suitable name for the new static block in the Block Title field and give it a value facebook in the Identifier field. Disable Magento's rich text editor tool by clicking on the Show / Hide Editor button above the Content field.   Enter in the Content field the second snippet of code the Facebook Developers website provided, which will be similar to the following code:   <div class="fb-like-box" data-href="https://www.facebook.com/Magento" data-width="195" data-colorscheme="light" data-show-faces="true" data-header="true" data-stream="false" data-show-border="true"></div> Once complete, your new block should look like the following screenshot:   Click on the Save Block button to create a new block for your Facebook widget. Now that you have created the block, you can alter your Magento theme's layout files to include the block in the right-hand column of your store.   Next, open your theme's local.xml file located at /app/design/frontend/default/m18/layout/ and add the following highlighted block of XML to it. This will add the static block that contains the Facebook widget:   <reference name="right">   <block type="cms/block" name="cms_facebook">   <action method="setBlockId"><block_id>facebook</block_id></action>   </block>   <!--other layout instructions -->   </reference>   If you save this change and refresh your Magento store on a page that uses the right-hand column page layout, you will see your new Facebook widget appear in the right-hand column. This is shown in the following screenshot:   Including social share buttons in your product pages   Particularly if you are selling to consumers rather than other businesses, you can make use of social share buttons in your product pages to help customers share the products they love with their friends on social networks such as Facebook and Twitter. One of the most convenient ways to do this is to use a third-party service such as AddThis, which also allows you to track your most shared content. This is useful to learn which products are your most-shared products within your store! Styling the product page a little further   Before you begin to integrate the share buttons, you can style your product page to provide a little more layout and distinction between the blocks of content. Open your theme's styles.css file and append the following CSS (located at /skin/frontend/default/m18/css/) to provide a column for the product image and a column for the introductory content of the product:   .product-img-box, .product-shop {   float: left;   margin: 1%;   padding: 1%;   width: 46%;   }   You can also add some additional CSS to style some of the elements that appear on the product view page in your Magento store:   .product-name { margin-bottom: 10px; }   .or {   color: #888; display: block; margin-top: 10px;   }   .add-to-box { background: #f2f2f2; border-radius: 10px; margin-bottom: 10px; padding: 10px; }   .more-views ul { list-style-type: none;   }   If you refresh a product page on your store, you will see the new layout take effect: Integrating AddThis   Now that you have styled the product page a little, you can integrate AddThis with your Magento store. You will need to get a code snippet from the AddThis website at http://www.addthis.com/get/sharing. Your snippet will look something similar to the following code:   <div class="addthis_toolboxaddthis_default_style ">   <a class="addthis_button_facebook_like" fb:like:layout="button_ count"></a>   <a class="addthis_button_tweet"></a>   <a class="addthis_button_pinterest_pinit" pi:pinit:layout="horizontal"></a>   <a class="addthis_counteraddthis_pill_style"></a> </div>   <script type="text/javascript">var addthis_config = {"data_track_ addressbar":true};</script>   <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_ widget.js#pubid=youraddthisusername"></script>   Once the preceding code is included in a page, this produces a social share tool that will look similar to the following screenshot:   Copy the product view template from the view.phtml file from /app/design/frontend/base/default/catalog/product/ to /app/design/frontend/default/m18/catalog/product/ and open your theme's view.phtml file for editing. You probably don't want the share buttons to obstruct the page name, add-to-cart area, or the brief description field. So, positioning the social share tool underneath those items is usually a good idea. Locate the snippet in your view.phtml file that has the following code:   <?php if ($_product->getShortDescription()):?>   <div class="short-description">   <h2><?php echo $this->__('Quick Overview') ?></h2>   <div class="std"><?php echo $_helper->productAttribute($_product, nl2br($_product->getShortDescription()), 'short_description') ?></div>   </div>   <?phpendif;?>   Below this block, you can insert your AddThis social share tool highlighted in the following code so that the code is similar to the following block of code (the youraddthisusername value on the last line becomes your AddThis account's username):   <?php if ($_product->getShortDescription()):?>   <div class="short-description">   <h2><?php echo $this->__('Quick Overview') ?></h2>   <div class="std"><?php echo $_helper->productAttribute($_product, nl2br($_product->getShortDescription()), 'short_description') ?></div>   </div>   <?phpendif;?>   <div class="addthis_toolboxaddthis_default_style ">   <a class="addthis_button_facebook_like" fb:like:layout="button_ count"></a>   <a class="addthis_button_tweet"></a>   <a class="addthis_button_pinterest_pinit" pi:pinit:layout="horizontal"></a>   <a class="addthis_counteraddthis_pill_style"></a> </div>   <script type="text/javascript">var addthis_config = {"data_track_ addressbar":true};</script>   <script type="text/javascript" src="//s7.addthis.com/js/300/addthis_ widget.js#pubid=youraddthisusername"></script>   If you want to reuse this block in multiple places throughout your store, consider adding this to a static block in Magento and using Magento's XML layout to add the block as required.   Once again, refresh the product page on your Magento store and you will see the AddThis toolbar appear as shown in the following screenshot. It allows your customers to begin sharing their favorite products on their preferred social networking sites.     If you can't see your changes, don't forget to clear your caches by navigating to System | Cache Management. If you want to provide some space between other elements and the AddThis toolbar, add the following CSS to your theme's styles.css file:   .addthis_toolbox {   margin: 10px 0;   }   The resulting product page will now look similar to the following screenshot. You have successfully integrated social sharing tools on your Magento store's product page:     Integrating product videos from YouTube into the product page   An increasingly common occurrence on ecommerce stores is the use of video in addition to product photography. The use of videos in product pages can help customers overcome any fears they're not buying the right item and give them a better chance to see the quality of the product they're buying. You can, of course, simply add the HTML provided by YouTube's embedding tool to your product description. However, if you want to insert your video on a specific page within your product template, you can follow the steps described in this section. Product attributes in Magento   Magento products are constructed from a number of attributes (different fields), such as product name, description, and price. Magento allows you to customize the attributes assigned to products, so you can add new fields to contain more information on your product. Using this method, you can add a new Video attribute that will contain the video embedding HTML from YouTube and then insert it into your store's product page template.   An attribute value is text or other content that relates to the attribute, for example, the attribute value for the Product Name attribute might be Blue Tshirt. Magento allows you to create different types of attribute:   •        Text Field: This is used for short lines of text.   •        Text Area: This is used for longer blocks of text.   •        Date: This is used to allow a date to be specified.   •        Yes/No: This is used to allow a Boolean true or false value to be assignedto the attribute.   •        Dropdown: This is used to allow just one selection from a list of optionsto be selected.   •        Multiple Select: This is used for a combination box type to allow one ormore selections to be made from a list of options provided.   •        Price: This is used to allow a value other than the product's price, specialprice, tier price, and cost. These fields inherit your store's currency settings.   •        Fixed Product Tax: This is required in some jurisdictions for certain types ofproducts (for example, those that require an environmental tax to be added). Creating a new attribute for your video field   Navigate to Catalog | Attributes | Manage Attributes in your Magento store's control panel. From there, click on the Add New Attribute button located near the top-right corner of your screen:     In the Attribute Properties panel, enter a value in the Attribute Code field that will be used internally in Magento to refer this. Remember the value you enter here, as you will require it in the next step! We will use video as the Attribute Code value in this example (this is shown in the following screenshot). You can leave the remaining settings in this panel as they are to allow this newly created attribute to be used with all types of products within your store.   In the Frontend Properties panel, ensure that Allow HTML Tags on Frontend is set to Yes (you'll need this enabled to allow you to paste the YouTube embedding HTML into your store and for it to work in the template). This is shown in the following screenshot:   Now select the Manage Labels / Options tab in the left-hand column of your screen and enter a value in the Admin and Default Store View fields in the Manage Titles panel:     Then, click on the Save Attribute button located near the top-right corner of the screen. Finally, navigate to Catalog | Attributes | Manage Attribute Sets and select the attribute set you wish to add your new video attribute to (we will use the Default attribute set for this example). In the right-hand column of this screen, you will see the list of Unassigned Attributes with the newly created video attribute in this list:     Drag-and-drop this attribute into the Groups column under the General group as shown in the following screenshot:   Click on the Save Attribute Set button at the top-right corner of the screen to add the new video attribute to the attribute set.   Adding a YouTube video to a product using the new attribute   Once you have added the new attribute to your Magento store, you can add a video to a product. Navigate to Catalog | Manage Products and select a product to edit (ensure that it uses one of the attribute sets you added the new video attribute to). The new Video field will be visible under the General tab:   Insert the embedding code from the YouTube video you wish to use on your product page into this field. The embed code will look like the following:   <iframe width="320" height="240" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/dQw4w9WgXcQ?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> Once you have done that, click on the Save button to save the changes to the product.   Inserting the video attribute into your product view template   Your final task is to allow the content of the video attribute to be displayed in your product page templates in Magento. Open your theme's view.phtml file from /app/design/frontend/default/m18/catalog/product/ and locate the followingsnippet of code:   <div class="product-img-box">   <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('media') ?> </div>   Add the following highlighted code to the preceding code to check whether a video for the product exists and show it if it does exist:   <div class="product-img-box">   <?php   $_video-html = $_product->getResource()->getAttribute('video')->getFrontend()->getValue($_product);   if ($_video-html) echo $_video-html ;   ?>   <?php echo $this->getChildHtml('media') ?>   </div>   If you now refresh the product page that you have added a video to, you will see that the video appears in the same column as the product image. This is shown in the following screenshot: Summary In this article, we looked at expanding the customization of your Magento theme to include elements from social networking sites. You learned about integrating a Twitter feed and Facebook feed into your Magento store, including social share buttons in your product pages, and integrating product videos from YouTube. Resources for Article: Further resources on this subject: Optimizing Magento Performance — Using HHVM [article] Installing Magento [article] Magento Fundamentals for Developers [article]

Celtx: Open Source Screenwriting Beginner's Guide Write and market Hollywood-perfect movie scripts the free way!      If you just write scripts, you won't need the features in this article. However, Indie (independent) producers, folks actually making movies, putting together audio visual shows, or creating documentaries will find these tools of immense value and here we look at visualizing all this good stuff (pun, as ever, intended). Sketching Celtx's Sketch Tool allows us to easily visualize ideas and shot setups by adding our drawings of them to projects. Sketches can be separate items in the Project Library (or in folders within the library) or added to a project's Storyboard (more on that in the next section of this article). The Sketch Tool comes with pre-loaded icons for people, cameras, and lights, which we can drag and drop into our sketches, making them look more polished. The icons are SVG images (Scalable Vector Graphics), which allow us to make them as large as we like without losing any quality in the image. The http://celtx.com site makes additional icons available (Art Packs) at low costs (example: $2.99 for 23 icons). Also provided in the Sketch tool are tools for drawing lines, arrows, shapes, and for adding text labels. Just to avoid confusion, let me tell you that there is nothing like pens or erasers or other free drawing features. We'll use various drag-and-drop icons and any of us, artistic talent or not, can turn out very professional-looking storyboards in no time at all. Celtx Projects are containers which hold items such as scripts, index cards, reports, schedules, storyboards, prop lists, and more including sketches. Time for action - starting a new sketch We have two ways of creating a new Sketch, which are as follows: First, open a project (new or already in progress) and look in the Project Library in the upper-left quadrant of the Celtx screen. Sketch is included by default, as shown in the following screenshot: The following steps show the second method for creating a new sketch: Click on File at the very upper-left of the Celtx main window On the drop-down menu, choose Add Item... Click on Sketch and then click on OK, as shown in the following screenshot: What just happened? The new Sketch is added to the Project Library window. If one was already there (likely since it is by default), you now have two with the same name. No problem; simply right-click on one of them, choose Rename, and change its name. We can also delete or duplicate a Sketch this way. To open the main Sketch Tool window from anywhere in a Celtx project, double-click on the name of the Sketch in the Project Library. In the case of a new Sketch created through the Add Item dialog box, as shown in the preceding section, it will already be open and ready for use. That is, the main window covering most of the center of the Celtx screen is where we sketch. Double-clicking on Screenplay or any other item in the Project Library window navigates us to that item and away from our Sketch. It is saved automatically. The following screenshot shows how the Sketch Tool looks when opened: Sketch Tool toolbar Along the top of the middle window (the Sketch Tool window), we have a toolbar. In the preceding screenshot, most of these tools are grayed out. They become fully visible when conditions are met for their use. Let's take a tour. The following screenshot shows the sketch toolbar in its entirety: Now, let's explore these tools individually and see what they do. In addition to the tool bar (shown in the preceding screenshot), I'll include an image of each individual tool as well: Select tool: The first tool from the left is for selecting items in the sketch. There's nothing to select yet, so let's click on the second tool from the left. The select tool is shown in the following screenshot: The diagonal line: It is the second tool from the left and it draws a line. Move the cursor (now a cross) to the point where the line begins, hold down the left mouse button, and drag out the line, releasing the mouse button at its ending point. The diagonal line is shown in the following screenshot: Line tool: Click on the first tool above. The mouse cursor becomes a hollow arrow on a PC but remains a black arrow on the Mac. Select the line we drew by clicking on it (a little hard for a line) or holding down the left mouse button and drawing a box all the way around the line (easier). When the mouse button is released, we know the line is selected because it has a dotted blue line around it and two small gray circles or "handles" at either end. Once the item is selected, just hold down the left mouse button and it can be moved anywhere in the Sketch Tool window.Select either of the handles by moving the cursor arrow over it and pressing the left mouse button. We can now move that end of the line all over the place and it stays wherever the button is released; it's the same for the other end of the line. While the line is selected, just hit the Delete key to erase it. This also works in the same way for all the other elements. Arrow Tool: The third tool from the left (the diagonal arrow) works exactly like the line tool, except there's an arrowhead on one end. It's a useful drawing tool for pointing to something in our diagrams or using as a spear if it's that kind of movie, eh? The arrow tool is shown in the following screenshot: Box and Circle Tools: The fourth tool (the box) draws a box or rectangle and the fifth (the circle) a circle or oval. Clicking on the select tool (the first tool on the left) and using its cursor to click inside of a square or circle selects it. There are two little gray circles which allow us to manipulate the figure just as we did with the line above. The box tool is shown in the following screenshot: And the circle tool is shown in the following screenshot: Text Tool: Suppose we want to label a line, arrow, box, or circle, we can use the sixth tool, that is, the little letter "A", which is shown in the following screenshot: Draw a box and click on the A. The mouse cursor is now an "I-beam". Click in the box. A mini-dialog box appears, as shown in the following screenshot: This Edit Text box allows the selection of the font, size, bold, italic, and provides a place to type in the label, such as the stirring This is a box. Click on OK and the label is in the box, as shown in the following screenshot: If we need to edit an existing label, click on the select tool, double-click on the text, the Edit Text mini-dialog box comes up, and you can edit the text. Keeping the labeled box as an example, we're ready to visit the next two tools, namely, the empty circle and his brother the solid circle, both of which are grayed out at the moment. Let's wake them up. Stroke and Fill Tools: Click on the select tool and then click inside the box. These two tools turn blue and allow us access to them. These are shown in the following screenshot: The empty circle controls the color of the stroke (that's the outline of the item, such as our box) and the solid circle, the fill (the inside color of the item). Note that there is a small arrow on the right side of each circle. Click on the one next to the solid (fill) circle. A color selection box drops down; choose a color by clicking on it. The box now has that color inside it as a fill, as shown in the following screenshot: If you want to change the stroke and/or fill colors, just click on the stroke or fill tool to drop-down the selection box again. Moving on, add another box (or circle, whatever) and move it. Use the select tool, hold down the Shift key, click on the new box, and move it over the original box. Layer Tools: Okay, we now have one item on top of another. Sometimes that's inconvenient in a scene diagram and we need to reverse the order (move one or more items up a layer or more). With the top box selected, look at the toolbar. The next four icons to the right of the stroke and fill circles are now "lit up" (no longer grayed out). The layer tools are shown in the following screenshot: These are, in the order, lower to bottom, lower, raise, and raise to top. In other words, the selected box would be lowered to the bottom-most layer, lowered one layer, raised one layer, or jumped all the way to the top-most layer. Group and Ungroup: Now, to save a few million electrons, let's use the same two boxes again. Select the one on top, hold down the Shift key, and both boxes are now selected. We can move them together, for example. However, note that the next icon to the right is now no longer gray (it's now two blue boxes, one over the other and four smaller black ones). This is the group tool, which is shown in the following screenshot: Clicking on it groups or bonds the selected items together. This, of course, lights up the next icon on the toolbar, the (wait for it) ungroup tool, which restores independence to grouped items. Undo and Redo Tools: The next two toolbar icons, the curved arrows, are undo and redo tools. They reverse an action to the previous state or restore an item to its next state (if there is one, that is, "undo" and "redo"). These tools are shown in the following screenshot: Cut, Copy, and Paste Tools: The last three tools on the Sketch Tool window toolbar are the cut, copy, and paste tools, as shown in the following screenshot: Cutting removes an item but retains it on the clipboard, copying leaves the item and also puts a copy of it on the clipboard, while paste puts the item from the clipboard back into the sketch. Now, we come to the fun part, icons! As in "yes, icon do a professional-looking sketch." (Sorry, couldn't resist.) Icons for a professional look Celtx provides icons, giving our sketches a polished professional look (neat, artistic, follows industry entertainment conventions) while requiring little or no artistic ability. The Palettes windows, found on the right side of the main Sketch Tool window, list available icons. The default installation of Celtx includes a very limited number of icons, one camera, two kinds of lights, and a top-down view of a man and a woman. Celtx, of course, is open source software and thus free (a price I can afford). However, one of the ways in which its sponsoring developer, a Canadian company, Greyfirst Corp. in St. John's, Newfoundland, makes money is by selling add-ons to the program, one type being additional icons in the form of Art Packs. In the following screenshot, if we click on the + Get Art Packs link, a webpage opens where one can order Art Packs and other add-ons at quite reasonable prices: Now, to use an icon in a sketch, let's start with the camera. Open a new sketch by doubleclicking on Sketch in the Project Library window or Add Item from the main File menu. In the Palettes window, move the mouse cursor over Camera and hold down the left mouse button while dragging the camera icon into the main Sketch Tool window. It looks like the following screenshot: Manipulating icons: When any icon is dragged into the main window of the Sketch Tool (and anytime that icon is selected by clicking on it with the select tool cursor described earlier) it has a dotted circle around it (as shown in the preceding screenshot) and two small solid circles (violet on top, olive below). Clicking on the violet circle and holding down the left mouse button while dragging allows rotation of the icon. Releasing the button stops rotation and leaves the icon in that orientation. Clicking on the olive circle (the lower one) and holding down the left mouse button and dragging allow resizing the icon, either larger or smaller. As these icons, like the lines, arrows, boxes, and circles we discussed earlier in this article are also SVG (Scalable Vector Graphics), we can have them as large as desired with no pixilation or other distortion. Using the Sketch Tool toolbar and the supplied icons, we can rapidly and easily draw professional looking diagrams like the scene shown in the following screenshot, which shows two lights, the camera, the talent, arrows showing their movement in the scene, and the props: Again, additional icons may be purchased from the http://celtx.com website. For example, the following screenshot shows the twenty-three icons available in Art Pack 1: Saving a finished Sketch Now is a good time for us to take a moment and discuss the limitations of the Sketch Tool. This feature provides a fast way of whipping up a scene diagram from inside a Celtx project. It does not replace an outside drawing program nor give us the functionality of something like Adobe Illustrator, but it is quite powerful and very handy. By the way, we can use external media files in Celtx and we'll do just that in both of the remaining sections of this article. Another limitation concerns saving sketches. There's no way of exporting the sketch as an external image such as .jpg or .bmp. In fact, even saving within the Celtx project is automated. Do the following to see what I mean: In a Celtx project, double-click on Sketch in the Project Library to start a sketch. Draw something. Double-click on Screenplay. Then double-click on Sketch. The drawing is still there. Save the Celtx project, exit, and open it again. Double-click on Sketch. Drawing's still there! We can even use Add Item from the File menu (a shortcut is the little plus symbol beneath the Project Library title) and add another Sketch (same name) to the Project Library and even draw a new sketch in it. Of course, having different drawings with the same name is hardly utilitarian, so here's how we really save a sketch.

These instructions are Windows based but Linux users should have no difficulty adjusting them for their environment. Checking your installation If you already have SOA Suite and JDeveloper installed, confirm that you have the correct version and configuration by following the steps in the section below called Testing your installation. In addition, you may want to complete the items in the section called Additional actions. Finally, you must complete the section called Configuration to run a tutorial. What you will need and where to get it This installation requires 3 GB or more available memory. If you have less memory, try separating the installation of the database, the servers, and JDeveloper onto different machines. Memory and Disk Space requirements This installation requires 3 GB or more available memory. If you have less memory, try separating the installation of the database, the servers, and JDeveloper onto different machines. The installation process requires about 12 GB of disk space. After installation, you can delete the files used by installation to save about 4 GB. As you can see, you are installing a lot of software with a large memory and disk footprint. Running your disk defragmentation program now, before you start downloading and installing, can significantly improve install time as well as performance and disk space usage later on. Downloading files Download all the software to get started. In the following steps, save all downloaded files to c:stageSOA. This document assumes that path. If you save them somewhere else then make sure there are no spaces in your path and adjust accordingly when c:stageSOA is referenced in this document. Go to: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/soa/soasuite/index.html, and download the following from SOA Suite 11g Release 1 (11.1.1.1.0) to c:stageSOA: WebLogic Server:wls1031_win32.exe Repository Creation Utility:ofm_rcu_win32_11.1.1.1.0_disk1_1of1.zip SOA Suite:ofm_soa_generic_11.1.1.1.0_disk1_1of1.zip JDeveloper Studio, base install:jdevstudio11111install.jar Unzip the SOA Suite ZIP file to c:stageSOA. Unzip the RCU ZIP file to c:stageSOA. Additional Files needed: Tutorial Files: In Chapter 3, you were directed to download the files needed for this tutorial. Do that now as some are used during installation. You can download the files from here:http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/soa/soasuite/11gthebook.html. Unzip the tutorial ZIP file to c:stageSOA. SOA Extension for JDeveloper: You will get this later using the JDeveloper update option. Oracle Service Bus: When you are ready to do the Oracle Service Bus (OSB) lab, you will download the install file to install OSB. Checking your database Having your database up and running is the most important pre-requisite for installing SOA Suite. Read the following bulleted requirements carefully to be sure you are ready to begin the SOA Suite installation: You need one of: Oracle XE Universal database version 10.2.0.1 Oracle 10g database version 10.2.0.4+ Oracle 11g database version 11.1.0.7+ You cannot use any other database version in 11gR1 (certification of additional databases is on the roadmap). Specifically, you cannot use XE Standard, it must be Universal. We have seen problems with installing XE when a full 10g database is already installed in the environment. The Windows registry sometimes gets the database file location confused. It is recommended to pick one or the other to avoid such issues. If you need to uninstall XE, make sure that you follow the instructions in Oracle Database Express Edition Installation Guide 10g  Release 2 (10.2) for Microsoft Windows Part Number B25143-03, Section 7, Deinstalling Oracle Database XE (http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B25329_01/doc/install.102/b25143/toc.htm). If you need to uninstall 10.2, be sure to follow the instructions in Oracle Database Installation Guide 10g Release 2 (10.2) for Microsoft Windows (32-Bit) Part Number B14316-04, Section 6, Removing Oracle Database Software(http://download.oracle.com/docs/cd/B19306_01/install.102/b14316/ deinstall.htm). Optional: Install OracleXEUniv.exe—recommended for a small footprint database. Make sure that you read step 1 above before installing. You can get XE from here: http://www.oracle.com/technology/products/database/ xe/index.html. When you are using XE, you will see a warning when you install the database schema that this database version is too old. You can safely ignore this warning as it applies only to production environments. If needed, configure Oracle XE Universal. When you are using Oracle XE, you must update database parameters if you have never done this for your database installation. You only have to do this once after installing. Set the processes parameter to >=200 using the following instructions. C:OracleMiddlewarehome_11gR1user_projectsdomains domain1binsetSOADomainEnv.cmdCODE 1sqlplus sys/welcome1@XE as sysdbaSQL> show parameter sessionSQL> show parameter processesSQL> alter system reset sessions scope=spfile sid='*';SQL> alter system set processes=200 scope=spfile;SQL> shutdown immediateSQL> startupSQL> show parameter sessionSQL> show parameter processes The shutdown command can take a few minutes and sometimes the shutdown/startup command fails. In that case, simply restart the XE service in the Control Panel | Administrative Tools | Services dialog after setting up your parameters. Checking your browser Oracle SOA Suite 11gR1 has specific browser version requirements. Enterprise Manager requires Firefox 3 or IE 7. Firefox 3—get a portable version, such as the one available from http://portableapps.com, if you want it to co-exist peacefully with your Firefox 2 installation. Firefox 2 and IE 6 are not supported and will not work. BAM requires IE 7. Beware of certain IE 7 plugins that can create conflicts (a few search plugins have proved to be incompatible with BAM). IE 8 is not supported with 11gR1 (but is on the roadmap). IE 6 has a few issues and Firefox will not work with BAM Studio. Checking your JDK If you are going to install WebLogic server and JDeveloper on the same machine, you will use the JDK from WebLogic for JDeveloper too. However, if you are going to install on two machines, you need Java 1.6 update 11 JDK for JDeveloper. JDK 1.6 update 11—from the Sun downloads page: http://java.sun.com/products/archive/ You must use Java 1.6 update 11. Update 12 does not work.

(For more resources on Wordpress, see here.) The Loop is the basic building block of WordPress template files. You'll use The Loop when displaying posts and pages, both when you're showing multiple items or a single one. Inside of The Loop you use WordPress template tags to render information in whatever manner your design requires. WordPress provides the data required for a default Loop on every single page load. In addition, you're able to create your own custom Loops that display post and page information that you need. This power allows you to create advanced designs that require a variety of information to be displayed. This article will cover both basic and advanced Loop usage and you'll see exactly how to use this most basic WordPress structure. Creating a basic Loop The Loop nearly always takes the same basic structure. In this recipe, you'll become acquainted with this structure, find out how The Loop works, and get up and running in no time. How to do it... First, open the file in which you wish to iterate through the available posts. In general, you use The Loop in every single template file that is designed to show posts. Some examples include index.php, category.php, single.php, and page.php. Place your cursor where you want The Loop to appear, and then insert the following code: <?phpif( have_posts() ) { while( have_posts() ) { the_post(); ?> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <?php }}?> Using the WordPress theme test data with the above Loop construct, you end up with something that looks similar to the example shown in following screenshot: Depending on your theme's styles, this output could obviously look very different. However, the important thing to note is that you've used The Loop to iterate over available data from the system and then display pieces of that data to the user in the way that you want to. From here, you can use a wide variety of template tags in order to display different information depending on the specific requirements of your theme. How it works... A deep understanding of The Loop is paramount to becoming a great WordPress designer and developer, so you should understand each of the items in the above code snippet fairly well. First, you should recognize that this is just a standard while loop with a surrounding if conditional. There are some special WordPress functions that are used in these two items, but if you've done any PHP programming at all, you should be intimately familiar with the syntax here. If you haven't experienced programming in PHP, then you might want to check out the syntax rules for if and while constructs at http://php.net/if and http://php.net/ while, respectively. The next thing to understand about this generic loop is that it depends directly on the global $wp_query object. $wp_query is created when the request is parsed, request variables are found, and WordPress figures out the posts that should be displayed for the URL that a visitor has arrived from. $wp_query is an instance of the WP_Query object, and the have_posts and the_post functions delegate to methods on that object. The $wp_query object holds information about the posts to be displayed and the type of page being displayed (normal listing, category archive, date archive, and so on). When have_posts is called in the if conditional above, the $wp_query object determines whether any posts matched the request that was made, and if so, whether there are any posts that haven't been iterated over. If there are posts to display, a while construct is used that again checks the value of have_posts. During each iteration of the while loop, the the_post function is called. the_post sets an index on $wp_query that indicates which posts have been iterated over. It also sets up several global variables, most notably $post. Inside of The Loop, the the_title function uses the global $post variable that was set up in the_post to produce the appropriate output based on the currently-active post item. This is basically the way that all template tags work. If you're interested in further information on how the WP_Query class works, you should read the documentation about it in the WordPress Codex at http://codex.wordpress.org/Function_ Reference/WP_Query. You can find more information about The Loop at http://codex. wordpress.org/The_Loop. Displaying ads after every third post If you're looking to display ads on your site, one of the best places to do it is mixed up with your main content. This will cause visitors to view your ads, as they're engaged with your work, often resulting in higher click-through rates and better paydays for you. How to do it... First, open the template in which you wish to display advertisements while iterating over the available posts. This will most likely be a listing template file like index.php or category. php. Decide on the number of posts that you wish to display between advertisements. Place your cursor where you want your loop to appear, and then insert the following code: <?phpif( have_posts() ) { $ad_counter = 0; $after_every = 3; while( have_posts() ) { $ad_counter++; the_post(); ?> <h2><?php the_title(); ?></h2> <?php // Display ads $ad_counter = $ad_counter % $after_every; if( 0 == $ad_counter ) { echo '<h2 style="color:red;">Advertisement</h2>'; } }}?> If you've done everything correctly, and are using the WordPress theme test data, you should see something similar to the example shown in the following screenshot: Obviously, the power here comes when you mix in paying ads or images that link to products that you're promoting. Instead of a simple heading element for the Advertisement text, you could dynamically insert JavaScript or Flash elements that pull in advertisements for you. How it works... As with the basic Loop, this code snippet iterates over all available posts. In this recipe, however, a counter variable is declared that counts the number of posts that have been iterated over. Every time that a post is about to be displayed, the counter is incremented to track that another post has been rendered. After every third post, the advertisement code is displayed because the value of the $ad_counter variable is equal to 0. It is very important to put the conditional check and display code after the post has been displayed. Also, notice that the $ad_counter variable will never be greater than 3 because the modulus operator (%) is being used every time through The Loop. Finally, if you wish to change the frequency of the ad display, simply modify the $after_every variable from 3 to whatever number of posts you want to display between ads. Removing posts in a particular category Sometimes you'll want to make sure that posts from a certain category never implicitly show up in the Loops that you're displaying in your template. The category could be a special one that you use to denote portfolio pieces, photo posts, or whatever else you wish to remove from regular Loops. How to do it... First, you have to decide which category you want to exclude from your Loops. Note the name of the category, and then open or create your theme's functions.php file. Your functions. php file resides inside of your theme's directory and may contain some other code. Inside of functions.php, insert the following code: add_action('pre_get_posts', 'remove_cat_from_loops');function remove_cat_from_loops( $query ) { if(!$query->get('suppress_filters')) { $cat_id = get_cat_ID('Category Name'); $excluded_cats = $query->get('category__not_in'); if(is_array($excluded_cats)) { $excluded_cats[] = $cat_id; } else { $excluded_cats = array($cat_id); } $query->set('category__not_in', $excluded_cats); } return $query;} How it works... In the above code snippet, you are excluding the category with the name Category Name. To exclude a different category, change the Category Name string to the name of the category you wish to remove from loops. You are filtering the WP_Query object that drives every Loop. Before any posts are fetched from the database, you dynamically change the value of the category__not_in variable in the WP_Query object. You append an additional category ID to the existing array of excluded category IDs to ensure that you're not undoing work of some other developer. Alternatively, if the category__not_in variable is not an array, you assign it an array with a single item. Every category ID in the category__not_in array will be excluded from The Loop, because when the WP_Query object eventually makes a request to the database, it structures the query such that no posts contained in any of the categories identified in the category__not_in variable are fetched. Please note that the denoted category will be excluded by default from all Loops that you create in your theme. If you want to display posts from the category that you've marked to exclude, then you need to set the suppress_filters parameter to true when querying for posts, as follows: query_posts( array( 'cat'=>get_cat_ID('Category Name'), 'suppress_filters'=>true)); Removing posts with a particular tag Similar to categories, it could be desirable to remove posts with a certain tag from The Loop. You may wish to do this if you are tagging certain posts as asides, or if you are saving posts that contain some text that needs to be displayed in a special context elsewhere on your site. How to do it... First, you have to decide which tag you want to exclude from your Loops. Note the name of the tag, and then open or create your theme's functions.php file. Inside of functions.php, insert the following code: add_action('pre_get_posts', 'remove_tag_from_loops');function remove_tag_from_loops( $query ) { if(!$query->get('suppress_filters')) { $tag_id = get_term_by('name','tag1','post_tag')->term_id; $excluded_tags = $query->get('tag__not_in'); if(is_array( $excluded_tags )) { $excluded_tags[] = $tag_id; } else { $excluded_tags = array($tag_id); } $query->set('tag__not_in', $excluded_tags); } return $query;} How it works... In the above code snippet, you are excluding the tag with the slug tag1. To exclude a different tag, change the string tag1 to the name of the tag that you wish to remove from all Loops. When deciding what tags to exclude, the WordPress system looks at a query parameter named tag__not_in, which is an array. In the above code snippet, the function appends the ID of the tag that should be excluded directly to the tag__not_in array. Alternatively, if tag__not_in isn't already initialized as an array, it is assigned an array with a single item, consisting of the ID for the tag that you wish to exclude. After that, all posts with that tag will be excluded from WordPress Loops. Please note that the chosen tag will be excluded, by default, from all Loops that you create in your theme. If you want to display posts from the tag that you've marked to exclude, then you need to set the suppress_filters parameter to true when querying for posts, as follows: query_posts( array( 'tag'=>get_term_by('name','tag1','post_tag')->term_id, 'suppress_filters'=>true )); Highlighting sticky posts Sticky posts are a feature added in version 2.7 of WordPress and can be used for a variety of purposes. The most frequent use is to mark posts that should be "featured" for an extended period of time. These posts often contain important information or highlight things (like a product announcement) that the blog author wants to display in a prominent position for a long period of time. How to do it... First, place your cursor inside of a Loop where you're displaying posts and want to single out your sticky content. Inside The Loop, after a call to the_post, insert the following code: <?phpif(is_sticky()) { ?> <div class="sticky-announcer"> <p>This post is sticky.</p> </div> <?php}?> Create a sticky post on your test blog and take a look at your site's front page. You should see text appended to the sticky post, and the post should be moved to the top of The Loop. You can see this in the following screenshot: How it works... The is_sticky function checks the currently-active post to see if it is a sticky post. It does this by examining the value retrieved by calling get_option('sticky_posts'), which is an array, and trying to find the active post's ID in that array. In this case, if the post is sticky then the sticky-announcer div is output with a message. However, there is no limit to what you can do once you've determined if a post is sticky. Some ideas include: Displaying a special icon for sticky posts Changing the background color of sticky posts Adding content dynamically to sticky posts Displaying post content differently for sticky posts

Local User Management The first step to creating a user is in fact to create a group. Each user must belong to a group. Groups are sets of users who are associated with one another. So in your business, you might have a sales group and a engineering group. At home, you probably only want one group, for example home. To create a group, go to Access: Users and Groups and click on the Group tab. Now click on the add circle. The form is very simple; you need to add a name and a description. For example sales and "The sales people". Now click Add and then apply the changes. Only a-z, A-Z, and 0-9 are supported in the group name. _ (underscores) and spaces are not supported, neither are punctuation characters like $%&* etc. Now that you have a group created, you can create a user. Click on the Users tab. And then on the add circle. Login: This is the unique login name of user. If the user already has a login name on other servers or workstations, like a Windows user name or a Linux user name, it is best to keep it the same here. This way the user doesn't need to try an remember an extra username and also some programs (particularly Windows) try and log in with the Windows user name before asking which name it should use. Keeping them the same will ease integration. Full Name: The user's full name. Often, the login name is an abbreviation or short name for the user like john, gary. Here you need to enter the full name so that it is easy to tell which login name belongs to which person. Password: Their password (with confirmation). The colon ':' character isn't allowed in the password. Primary Group: The group to which they belong, for example sales. There are four mandatory fields: To finish, you need to click Add and apply the changes. You now have a user added to your FreeNAS server. Let's look at what effect adding a user has on the rest of the FreeNAS server. Using CIFS with Local Users To use the users you have defined with Windows networking, you need to go to the Services: CIFS/SMB page and change the Authentication field to Local User. Then click Save and Restart to apply your changes. What this means is that only authenticated users can now access the FreeNAS shares via CIFS. In version 0.6, this user authentication is for all the shares, the user has access to everything or nothing. This should change with 0.7. When trying to connect now from a Windows Vista machine, a window pops up asking for a user name and password. Once authenticated, the user has access to all the user shares on the FreeNAS server. FTP and User Login On the Services: FTP, there are two fields that control how users log in to the FreeNAS server: Anonymous login: This allows you to enable anonymous login. This means the user connects with the user name anonymous and any password. Local User: This enables a local user login. Users log in using the user name and passwords defined in the Access: Users and Groups page. The two can be used together; however, they do negate one another in terms of security. It is best to run the FTP with either anonymous logins enabled and local user logins disabled or vice versa. If you run with both enabled, then people can still log in using the anonymous method even if they don't have a user account and so, it diminishes the benefits of having the user accounts enabled. Other than the security benefits, another advantage of local user login with FTP is that you can define a home directory for the user and when the user logs in, they will be taken to that directory and only they have access to that directory and those below it. This effectively offers each user their own space on the server and other users cannot interfere with their files. To get this working, you need to create a directory on your shared disk. You can do this with any of the access protocols CIFS, NFS, FTP, and AFS. You need to connect to the shared disk and create a new folder. Then, in Access: Users, either create a new user or edit an existing one (by clicking on the 'e' in a circle). In the Homedirectory, you need to enter the directory for that user. For example for the user john, you might create a directory cunningly named john. Assuming the disk is named store (as per the quick start guide) then the path for the home directory would be: /mnt/store/john. Click Save and apply the changes. Now when John logs in using the user name john he will be taken directly to the john directory. He doesn't have access to other files or folders on the store disk, only those in john and any sub folder. chroot() Everyone, but Root In the advanced settings section of the Services: FTP page, there is a field called chroot() everyone, but root. What this means is that when a user logs in via FTP, the root directory (top or start directory) for them will be the directory set in the Home directory field. Without this set, the user will log in to the server at the physical / and will see the server in its entirety including the FreeNAS and FreeBSD system files. It is much safer to have this box checked. The exception to this is the user root (which in FreeBSD terms is the system administer account). If Permit root login is enabled, then the user root can log in and they will be taken to the root of the actual server. This can be useful if you ever need to alter any of the system files on the FreeNAS, but this isn't recommend unless you absolutely know what you are doing!

  Inkscape 0.48 Essentials for Web Designers Use the fascinating Inkscape graphics editor to create attractive layout designs, images, and icons for your website The first book on the newly released Inkscape version 0.48, with an exclusive focus on web design Comprehensive coverage of all aspects of Inkscape required for web design Incorporate eye-catching designs, patterns, and other visual elements to spice up your web pages Learn how to create your own Inkscape templates in addition to using the built-in ones Written in a simple illustrative manner, which will appeal to web designers and experienced Inkscape users alike Architecting a web site Although as a web designer you will usually be regarded as the "look and feel" person for a web site, you are also a key partner in determining the site architecture. As you design, you often define how the site will be navigated. Is this web site one page or will an end-user "click around" the site to other areas or sub-pages and explore? Where will each page inter-link or link out to other websites? What is the main navigational element: a navigation bar? Where will it reside on all the pages? Is this site content or search driven? All these questions (and many more) require the entire team's involvement (and a client's opinion) to make the appropriate decisions. As the web designer, it is your job to work with all of these elements at a visual level—navigation bars, search fields, buttons, title bars, footers, and more—and fit them into the overall web site design. Web layout—principles and basics Designing for the web and for print are similar in that they have the same principles and goals for an end-viewer: appealing content that works together in the space. Although the principles are basic, they represent guidelines that improve any web page design. Here are the techniques: Proximity or grouping similar information together on a web page. You can get creative in how you group this information by using alignment, icons, and even just white space, but regardless, the technique and principles are the same. Information that belongs together should be together. Alignment is the simple idea of making sure all of the elements line up on the screen. If you have everything left aligned, keep it that way on the page. Use natural alignments within an entire web space when you use more than one graphical element such as photos, graphics, and/or text. Repetition can help unify a web page. Repeating elements such as buttons, shapes (graphical or just placement), or colors can really make an impact and keep the design simple and clean, thus, easier for a viewer to navigate. Contrast can have a huge and favorable impact in web design, as long as it is used effectively. Contrast is achieved with size, colors, direction, shapes, and fonts (mixing modern with old style). Even font weight can help create contrast. Just make sure that all of these elements still work well with the content on the web page itself—not for the sake of contrast. The basic design Before designing the layout in Inkscape, it can help to plan the placement of the main areas of a web page—in essence to help with the design's overall alignment of items and proximity of similar items. For our purposes, we'll create a simple main web page for a small business. This main page will have these areas: Header Footer Sidebar Content Navigation Each web page project is different and you may have to add more page elements to this list or delete some so that the final list of elements fits the needs of the overall design. For the purposes of getting agreement from a team working on this project, a good practice is to create a basic layout showing where each of the areas will be placed on the screen—and is often referred to as the web page wireframe. Typically, wireframes are completed before any graphics are created. The following screenshot illustrates a basic layout or wireframe: This high-level approach is a great start to actually building the page design. It gives us general placements of each area of the design and then we can set up grids and guidelines. Starting a new design project When you open Inkscape, it opens to a new document. However, we want to ensure that we have a page size that is the right size for our web page, so we create a new document based on predefined desktop sizes, which are common web page sizes, as follows: From the main menu select File and then New. A pop-up menu appears showing a number of default page sizes to choose from. Choose a template size based on the browser standards or specifications. Most of the templates in this menu are based on web designs. If you want to view the print media template sizes, go to the main menu and select File and Document Properties and view the Format section. We'll choose desktop_800x600. However, the dimensions should be specified by how your target viewer will view the site, whether it is via a computer, or via a mobile device. Also, sometimes your client or company will specify a specific size your web pages need to be. A new document opens in Inkscape and you are ready to begin. Let's set a few more preferences and then save the file with your project name before we start designing. Using grids and guidelines When designing any space on the web keep the page clean and—as stated in the design principles and techniques—aligned. So let's make the canvas grid viewable on the screen and set up some guidelines based on our wireframes. Viewing the grid With your new document still open on your computer, on the Inkscape main menu select View and then Grid. You'll see that a blue grid will appear across the entire canvas area. We'll use these grids to create basic areas of our layout and then create guides to begin creating our actual layout elements. Making guides Guides are lines on the screen that you will use for aligning i.e. guiding objects. These lines are only seen while you are working in Inkscape and we can set objects to "snap to" them when we are designing. Both of these simple tools (guides and the Snap to feature) will give you automatic alignment for the basic areas of your web page layout—which in turn will help your web page have the best design. To create a guide in any open document, make sure the Select tool is selected and drag from the left side or top of the screen towards your page as shown in the following screenshot. A red line represents the guide until you 'let go' of the guide and place it on the page. Then the line turns blue. You can move the guides after placing them on the page, by using the select tool and clicking and dragging the circle node on the guide. Now let's discuss how to use wireframes and create guides based on those web page layout elements. Creating a new layer When you create documents within Inskcape, you can have layers of objects. This gives great flexibility when creating web layouts. You can move groups of objects on a layer, separate objects by layer, and 'stack', re-ordered, or hide layers. Settings can be set by layer, so you can save drafts or different versions of mockups and keep all of this in one file. The layer you are currently using is called the drawing layer. It is selected in the Layer Dialog and is shown in a darker color. In your open document with viewable grids let's make the layers viewable and create a layer called Basic Layout. To make the Layers Dockable Dialog viewable, from the main menu select Layer and then Layers. On the right side of your screen the Layers Dialog is displayed. You can also press Shift + Ctrl + L on your keyboard to display the Layers Dialogue. In the Layers Dialog, press the + button to create a new layer. In the Layer Name field type the name: Basic Layout and click Add. You will notice the new layer is added above the existing one in the Layers Dialog. Creating basic design areas in Inkscape Here's where we begin to transfer our wireframes into Inkscape so we can start the design process. To start: Use the Rectangle Tool to draw rectangles for each of your layout areas in your basic design. For now, use different shades of gray for each area so you can easily distinguish between them at a glance. To change the fill color of a particular rectangle, left click the rectangle and choose a gray shade for the rectangle. Or drag the gray shade from the color palette onto the rectangle. Use sharp edged (not rounded) rectangles. If you need to change to sharp, click the Make Corners Sharp button in the Tool Controls Bar. Make sure your rectangle shapes do not have an outline or stroke. Use the Shift + Left click keypad shortcut to open the Stroke dialog and choose No Color (the icon with an X) to delete the stroke. Position the rectangles so there are no white spaces in between them. From the main menu choose Object and then Align and Distribute. In the Remove Overlaps section, click the icon. This makes sure that the bounding boxes around each object don't overlap each other and place the objects tangent to each other. Use the Tool Controls Bar W(width): number field to apply a setting of 800.0 px. The X:0.0 and Y:0.0 fields reference the bottom left corner of your page border. Here's roughly what your canvas should look like: Converting shapes to guides Once all of your areas are blocked out on the canvas, we'll need to convert the current rectangles into guides so we can use the guides when creating our web page layout graphics. We can easily keep the Basic Layout Export layer intact; we need to copy all of the rectangles in this layer. On the main menu, select Edit and then Select All (or use the keyboard shortcut keys Ctrl + A). Then select Edit and Duplicate (or use the keyboard shortcut Ctrl + D) to duplicate all of the elements in this layer. Now you are ready to convert these current shapes into guides. First, select all the rectangles in the top (duplicate) layout. Do this by clicking a rectangle and then hold the Shift key on your keypad. Then click/select the next rectangle. When you have all five rectangles selected, from the main menu select Object and then Object to Guide. Your duplicate rectangles will be removed from the canvas and replaced with blue guides. To better see the guides, turn off the grid (from the main menu choose View and Grid). You'll also notice your originally created basic layout areas defined on the screen. We'll use these shapes later on to help export our design into workable graphics for the HTML programmers. Now it is time to save this new document before you start the details of the design. From the main menu select File and then Save As. Choose an appropriate file name for your project and save it. Make sure you save this document in the native Inkscape format of SVG to retain its editable features and layers. Project file management To keep all files for this project in an easy-to-find location, it might make sense to create a project folder on your computer and save this design file within that folder. As you export designs for use within web pages and HTML, you will need a number of files. Using a directory or folder to house all project files makes them easier to find. Summary In this article we took a look at architecting a web site. We discussed design techniques that can make web pages move from good to great. In the next article, Creating a Layout Example in Inkscape, we will see an example to create a web page layout. Further resources on this subject: Creating a Layout Example in Inkscape [Article] Logos in Inkscape [Article] Web Design Principles in Inkscape [Article] Creating Web Templates in Inkscape [Article]

Windows OS for Windows Mobile is available in various versions, but for this article we will be using Windows Mobile 6. Windows Mobile 6 uses .NET Compact Framework v2 SP2, and has 3 different versions: Windows Mobile 6 Standard (phones without Touch Screen) Windows Mobile 6 Professional (with Phone functionality) Windows Mobile 6 Classic (without Phone functionality) Windows Mobile 6.1 and Windows Mobile 6.5 are other 2 higher versions available with some additional features as compared to Windows Mobile 6. Windows Mobile 7 expected to be released in 2010 and is said to have major updates. This article concentrates on development on Windows Mobile 6 Professional. Software Prerequisite This article will introduce you to the development for Windows Mobile 6 Professional, using Visual C#. Windows Mobile 6 has .NET Compact Framework v2 SP2 preinstalled. .NET Compact Framework is a Compact Edition of .NET Framework, and does not have all the features of the complete .NET Framework. Following are the software required for development: Microsoft Visual Studio 2008 Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK Refresh (SDK contains emulator, used for testing, debugging. To download click here) ActiveSync (Used for Data Synchronizing between development machine and Windows Mobile, To download click here) Without making any exception, we will follow the golden rule of learning by writing “Hello World” application. Hello World We will assume that you have installed all the prerequisite software mentioned above. Launch Visual Studio 2008 and select Visual C# (if prompted). Create a new Project (File -> New) as shown below: While creating a new Project, Visual Studio 2008 IDE provides an option to select an installed template, which will create Project with all the basic requirements/structure for development. For Windows Mobile, we will select option Smart Device and template Smart Device Project as shown below.  You can also provide: Name: Name for Project. We will call it as MyFirstApp. Location: Location where this project will be created. Browse and set the desired location. We will use default location for now. Solution Name: Name for referring the Solution. Usually we keep it same as Project Name. Since Windows Mobile 6 has .NET Compact Framework v2, it will select the .NET Framework 2.0 from the dropdown on the top right. Click OK. Next step is to select the Target platform, .NET Compact Framework Version and Template. For our application we will select: Target platform: Windows Mobile 6 Professional SDK .NET Compact Framework Version: .NET Compact Framework Version 2.0. Template: Device Application Project MyFirstApp is successfully created and IDE will open a Form as shown. Let me introduce you to the various sections on screen. This is the main section called development section. All the coding and designing of the Form is done here. This section is called Toolbox and lists all the available components. If this section is not visible click View->Toolbox. This section is called Solution Explorer and shows all the forms, resources and properties. If this section is not visible click View->Solution Explorer. This section is Properties and displays all the properties for the component selected. If this section is not visible click View->Properties Window. By default Form is named as Form1. Let us first change the Name of the form. To do so select the form and the properties related to form will be listed in properties window. The entire properties list is in the form of Key Value pair. For changing Name of form, change value of property Name. For this example we will change it to HelloWorldForm. Now this form will be referred as HelloWorldForm throughout the application. Changing form name doesn’t change form caption (title) it is still showing Form1. To change caption change the value of property name Text. For this example we will change the Text to Hello World. Also the file representing this form in Solution Explorer will still be referred as Form1.cs, again you can either keep the name of the file as it is or can rename it. We will rename it to HelloWorld.cs.

IVR engine overview Unlike many applications within FreeSWITCH which are built as modules, IVR is considered the core functionality of FreeSWITCH. It is used anytime a prompt is played and digits are collected. Even if you are not using the IVR application itself from your Dialplan, you will see IVR-related functions being utilized from various other applications. As an example, the voicemail application makes heavy use of IVR functionality when playing messages, while awaiting digits to control deleting, saving, and otherwise managing voicemails. In this section, we will only be reviewing the IVR functionality that is exposed from within the ivr Dialplan application. This functionality is typically used to build an auto-attendant menu, although other functions are possible as well. IVR XML configuration file FreeSWITCH ships with a sample IVR menu are typically invoked by dialing 5000 from the sample Dialplan. When you dial 500, you will hear a greeting welcoming you to FreeSWITCH, and presenting your menu options. The menu options consist of calling the FreeSWITCH conference, calling the echo extension, hearing music on hold, going to a sub menu, or listening to screaming monkeys. We will start off reviewing the XML that powers this example. Open conf/autoload_configs/ivr.xml which contains the following XML: <configuration name="ivr.conf" description="IVR menus"> <menus> <!-- demo IVR, Main Menu --> <menu name="demo_ivr" greet-long="phrase:demo_ivr_main_menu" greet-short="phrase:demo_ivr_main_menu_short" invalid-sound="ivr/ivr-that_was_an_invalid_entry.wav" exit-sound="voicemail/vm-goodbye.wav" timeout="10000" inter-digit-timeout="2000" max-failures="3" max-timeouts="3" digit-len="4"> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="1" param="bridge sofia/$${domain}/888@conference.freeswitch.org"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="2" param="transfer 9196 XML default"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="3" param="transfer 9664 XML default"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="4" param="transfer 9191 XML default"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="5" param="transfer 1234*256 enum"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="/^(10[01][0-9])$/" param="transfer $1 XML features"/> <entry action="menu-sub" digits="6" param="demo_ivr_submenu"/> <entry action="menu-top" digits="9"/> </menu> <!-- Demo IVR, Sub Menu --> <menu name="demo_ivr_submenu" greet-long="phrase:demo_ivr_sub_menu" greet-short="phrase:demo_ivr_sub_menu_short" invalid-sound="ivr/ivr-that_was_an_invalid_entry.wav" exit-sound="voicemail/vm-goodbye.wav" timeout="15000" max-failures="3" max-timeouts="3"> <entry action="menu-top" digits="*"/> </menu> </menus> </configuration> In the preceding example, there are two IVR menus defined. Let's break apart the first one and examine it, starting with the IVR menu definition itself. IVR menu definitions The following XML defines an IVR menu named "demo_ivr". <menu name="demo_ivr" greet-long="phrase:demo_ivr_main_menu" greet-short="phrase:demo_ivr_main_menu_short" invalid-sound="ivr/ivr-that_was_an_invalid_entry.wav" exit-sound="voicemail/vm-goodbye.wav" timeout="10000" inter-digit-timeout="2000" max-failures="3" max-timeouts="3" digit-len="4"> We'll use this menu's name later when we route calls to the IVR from the Dialplan. Following the name, various XML attributes specify how the IVR will behave. The following options are available when defining an IVR's options: greet-long The greet-long attribute specifies the initial greeting that is played when a caller reaches the IVR. This is different from the greet-short sound file which allows for introductions to be played, such as "Thank you for calling XYZ Company". In the sample IVR, the greet-long attribute is a Phrase Macro that plays an introductory message to the caller ("Welcome to FreeSWITCH...") followed by the menu options the caller may choose from. Argument syntax: Sound file name (or path + name), TTS, or Phrase Macro Examples: greet-long="my_greeting" greet-long="phrase:my_greeting_phrase" greet-long="say:Welcome to our company. Press 1 for sales, 2 for support." greet-short The greet-short attribute specifies the greeting that is re-played if the caller enters invalid information, or no information at all. This is typically the same sound file as greet-long without the introduction. In the sample IVR, the greet-short attribute is a Phrase Macro that simply plays the menu options to the caller, and does not play the lengthy introduction found in greet-long. Argument syntax: Sound file name (or path + name), TTS, or Phrase Macro Examples: greet-short="my_greeting_retry" greet-long="phrase:my_greeting_retry_phrase" greet-long="say:Press 1 for sales, 2 for support." invalid-sound The invalid-sound attribute specifies the sound that is played when a caller makes an invalid entry. Argument syntax: Sound file name (or path + name), TTS, or Phrase Macro Examples invalid-sound="invalid_entry.wav" invalid-sound="phrase:my_invalid_entry_phrase" invalid-sound="say:That was not a valid entry" exit-sound The exit-sound attribute specifies the sound, which is played when a caller makes too many invalid entries or too many timeouts occur. This file is played before disconnecting the caller. Argument syntax: Any number, in milliseconds Examples: exit-sound="too_many_bad_entries.wav" exit-sound="phrase:my_too_many_bad_entries_phrase" exit-sound="say:Hasta la vista, baby." timeout The timeout attribute specifies the maximum amount of time to wait for the user to begin entering digits after the greeting has played. If this time limit is exceeded, the menu is repeated until the value in the max-timeouts attribute has been reached. Argument syntax: Any number, in milliseconds Examples: timeout="10000" timeout="20000" inter-digit-timeout The inter-digit-timeout attribute specifies the maximum amount of time to wait in-between each digit the caller presses. This is different from the overall timeout.It is useful to allow enough time to enter as many digits as necessary, without frustrating the caller by pausing too long after they are done making their entry. For example, if both 1000 and 1 are valid IVR entries, the system will continue waiting for the inter-digit-timeout length of time after 1 is entered, before determining that it is the final entry. Argument syntax: Any number, in milliseconds Examples: inter-digit-timeout="2000" max-failures The max-failures attribute specifies how many failures, due to invalid entries, to tolerate before disconnecting. Argument syntax: Any number Examples: xx-xx="too_many_bad_entries.wav" xx-xx="phrase:my_too_many_bad_entries_phrase" max-timeouts The max-timeouts attribute specifes how many timeouts to tolerate before disconnecting. Argument syntax: Any number Examples: max-timeouts="3" digit-len The digit-len attribute specifes the maximum number of digits that the user can enter before determining the entry is complete. Argument syntax: Any number greater than 1. Examples: digit-len="4" tts-voice The tts-voice attribute specifes the specifc text-to-speech voice that should be used. Argument syntax: Any valid text-to-speech engine. Examples: tts-voice="Mary" tts-engine The tts-engine attribute specifies the specific text-to-speech engine that should be used. Argument syntax: Any valid text-to-speech engine. Examples: tts-engine="flite" confirm-key The confirm-key attribute specifes the key which the user can press to signify that they are done entering information. Argument syntax: Any valid DTMF digit. Examples: confirm-key="#" These attributes dictate the general behavior of the IVR. IVR menu destinations After defining the global attributes of the IVR, you need to specify what specific destinations (or options) are available for the caller to press. You do this with <entry > XML elements. Let's review the first five XML options used by this IVR: <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="1" param="bridge sofia/$${domain}/888@conference.freeswitch.org"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="2" param="transfer 9196 XML default"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="3" param="transfer 9664 XML default"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="4" param="transfer 9191 XML default"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="5" param="transfer 1234*256 enum"/> <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="/^(10[01][0-9])$/" param="transfer $1 XML features"/> Each preceding entry defines three parameters—an action to be taken, the digits the caller must press to activate that action, and the parameters that are passed to the action. In most cases you will probably use the menu-exec-app action, which simply allows you to specify an action and parameters to call just as you would from the regular Dialplan (bridge, transfer, hangup, and so on.). These options are all pretty simple—they define a single digit which, when pressed, either bridges a call or transfers the call to an extension. There is one entry that is a bit different from the rest, which is the fnal IVR entry. It deserves a closer look.   <entry action="menu-exec-app" digits="/^(10[01][0-9])$/" param="transfer $1 XML features"/> This entry definition specifes a regular expression for the digits feld. This regular expression feld is identical to the expressions you would use in the Dialplan. In this example, the IVR is looking for any four-digit extension number from 1000 through 1019 (which is the default extension number range for the predefined users in the directory). As the regular expression is wrapped in parenthesis, the result of the entry will be passed to the transfer application as the $1 channel variable. This effectively allows the IVR to accept 1000-1019 as entries, and transfer the caller directly to those extensions when they are entered into the IVR. The remaining IVR entry actions are a bit different. They introduce menu-sub as an action, which transfers the caller to an IVR sub-menu, and menu-top, which restarts the current IVR and replays the menu. <entry action="menu-sub" digits="6" param="demo_ivr_submenu"/> <entry action="menu-top" digits="9"/> Several other actions exist that can be used within an IVR. The complete list of actions you can use from within the IVR include the following: menu-exec-app The menu-exec-app action, combined with a param field, executes the specified application and passes the parameterslisted to that application. This is equivalent to using <action application="app" data="data"> in your Dialplan. The most common use of menu-exec-app is to transfer a caller to another extension in the Dialplan. Argument syntax: application <params> Examples: <entry digits="1" action="menu-exec-app" param="application param1 param2 param3 ..."> <entry digits="2" action="menu-exec-app" param="transfer 9664 XML default"> menu-exec-api The menu-exec-api action, combined with a param feld, executes the specifed API command and passes the parameters listed to that command. This is equivalent to entering API commands at the CLI or from the event socket. Argument syntax: api_command <params> Examples: <entry digits="1" action="menu-exec-api" param="eval Caller Pressed 1!"> menu-play-sound The menu-play-sound action, combined with a param field, plays a specified sound file. Argument syntax: valid sound file <entry digits="1" action="menu-play-sound" param="screaming_monkeys.wav"> menu-back The menu-back action returns to the previous IVR menu, if any. Argument syntax: none Examples: <entry digits="1" action="menu-back"> menu-top The menu-top action restarts this IVR's menu. Argument syntax: None. Examples: <entry digits="1" action="menu-top"> Take a look at the XML for the sample sub-menu IVR and see if you can fgure out what it does. Also note how it is called above, when clicking 6 from the main menu. <menu name="demo_ivr_submenu" greet-long="phrase:demo_ivr_sub_menu" greet-short="phrase:demo_ivr_sub_menu_short" invalid-sound="ivr/ivr-that_was_an_invalid_entry.wav" exit-sound="voicemail/vm-goodbye.wav" timeout="15000" max-failures="3" max-timeouts="3"> <entry action="menu-top" digits="*"/> </menu>

Content persistence We have seen so far how metadata is persisted but it is not obvious how content is persisted and associated with its metadata. All sysobjects (objects of type dm_sysobject and its subtypes) other than folders (objects of type dm_folder and its subtypes) can have associated content. We saw that a document can have content in the form of renditions as well as in primary format. How are these content files associated with a sysobject? In other words, how does Content Server know what metadata is associated with a content fi le? How does it know that one content fi le is a rendition of another one? Content Server manages content files using content objects, which (indirectly) point to the physical locations of content files and associate them with sysobjects. Locating content files Recall that Documentum repositories can store content in various types of storage systems including a file system, a Relational Database Management System (RDBMS), a content-addressed storage (CAS), or external storage devices. Content Server decides to store each file in a location based on the configuration and the presence of products like Content Storage Services. In general, users are not concerned about where the file is stored since Content Server is able to retrieve the file from the location where it was stored. We will discuss the physical location of a content file without worrying about why Content Server chose to use that location. Content object Every content file in the repository has an associated content object, which stores information about the location of the fi le and identifi es the sysobjects associated with it. These sysobjects are referred to as the parent objects of the content object. A content object is an object of type dmr_content, whose key attributes are listed as follows: Attribute Description parent_count Number of parent objects parent_id List of object IDs of the parent objects storage_id Object ID of the store object representing the storage area holding the content. data_ticket A value used internally to retrieve the content. The value and its usage depend upon the type of storage used. i_contents When the content is stored in turbo storage, this property contains the actual content. If the content is larger than the size of this property (2000 characters for databases other than Sybase, 255 for Sybase), the content is stored in a dmi_subcontent object and this property is unused. If the content is stored in content addressed storage, it contains the content address. If the content is stored in external storage, it contains the token used to retrieve the content. rendition Identifies if it's a rendition and its related behavior 0 means original content 1 means rendition generated by server 2 means rendition generated by client 3 means rendition not to be removed when its primary content is updated or removed format Object ID of the format object representing the format of the content full_content_size Content file size in bytes, except when the content is stored in external storage Object-content relationship Content Server manages content objects while performing content-related operations. Content associated with a sysobject is categorized as primary content or a rendition. A rendition is a content fi le associated with a sysobject that is not its primary content. Content in the first content file added to a sysobject is called its primary content and its format is referred to as the primary format for the parent object. Any other content added to the parent object in the same format is also called primary content, though it is rarely done by users manually. This ability to add multiple primary content files is typically utilized programmatically by applications for their internal use. While a sysobject can have multiple primary content files it is also possible for one content object to have multiple parent objects. This just means that a content file can be shared by multiple objects. Putting it together The details about content persistence can become confusing due to the number of objects involved and the relationships among various attributes. It becomes even more complicated when the full Content Server capabilities (such as multiple content files for one sysobject) are manifested. We will look at a simple scenario to visually grasp how content persistence works in common situations. Documentum provides multiple options for locating the content file. DFC provides the getPath() method and DQL provides get_file_url administration method for this purpose. This section has been included to satisfy the reader's curiosity about content persistence and works through the information manually. This discussion can be treated as supplementary to technical fundamentals.. The sysobject is named paystub.jpg. The primary content file is in jpg format and the rendition is in pdf format, as shown in the following figure: The following figure shows the objects involved in the content persistence for this document. The central object is of type dm_document. The figure also includes two content objects and one format object. Let's try to understand the relationships by asking specific questions. How many content files, primary or renditions, are there for the document paystub.jpg? This question can be answered by looking for the corresponding content objects. We look for dmr_content objects that have the document's object ID in one of their parent_id values. This figure shows that there are two such content objects. Which of these content objects represents the primary content and which one is a rendition? This can be determined by looking at the rendition attribute. The content object on the left shows rendition=0, which indicates primary content. The content object on the right shows rendition=2, which indicates rendition generated by client (recall that we manually imported this rendition). What is the primary format for this document? This is easy to answer by looking at the a_content_type attribute on the document itself. If we need to know the format for a content object we can look for the dm_format object which has the same object ID as the value present in the format property of the content object. In the fi gure above, the format object for the primary content object is shown which represents a JPEG image. Thus, the format determined for the primary content of the object is expected to match the value of a_content_type property of the object. The format object for the rendition is not shown but it would be PDF. What is the exact physical location of the primary content file? As mentioned in the beginning of this section, there are DFC and DQL methods which can provide this information. For understanding content persistence, we will deduce this manually for a file store, which represents storage on a file system. For other types of storage, an exact location might not be evident since we need to rely on the storage interface to access the content file. Deducing the exact file path requires the ability to convert a decimal number to a hexadecimal (hex) number; this can be done with pen and paper or using one of the free tools available on the Web. Also remember that negative numbers are represented with what is known as a 2's-complement notation and many of these tools either don't handle 2's complement or don't support enough digits for our purposes. There are two parts of the file path—the root path for the file store and the path of the file relative to this root path. In order to fi gure out the root path, we identify the fi le store first. Find the dm_filestore object whose object ID is the same as the value in storage_id property of the content object. Then find the dm_location object whose object name is the same as the root property on the file store object. The file_ system_path property on this location object has the root path for the fi le store, which is C:Documentumdatalocaldevcontent_storage_01 in the figure above. In order to find the relative path of the content fi le, we look at data_ticket (data type integer) on the content object. Find the 8-digit hex representation for this number. Treat the hex number as a string and split the string with path separators (slashes, / or depending on the operating system) after every two characters. Suffi x the right-most two characters with the file extension (.jpg), which can be inferred from the format associated with the content object. Prefix the path with an 8-digit hex representation of the repository ID. This gives us the relative path of the content file, which is 000000108009be.jpg in the figure above. Prefix this path with the file store root path identified earlier to get the full path of the content file. Content persistence in Documentum appears to be complicated at first sight. There are a number of separate objects involved here and that is somewhat similar to having several tables in a relational database when we normalize the schema. At a high level, this complexity in the content persistence model serves to provide scalability, flexibility by supporting multiple kinds of content stores, and ease of managing changes in such an environment. Lightweight and shareable object types So far we have primarily dealt with standard types. Lightweight and shareable object types work together to provide performance improvements, which are significant when a large number of lightweight objects share information. The key performance benefits are in terms of savings in storage and in the time it takes to import a large number of documents that share metadata. These types are suitable for use in transactional and archival applications but are not recommended for traditional content management. The term transactional content (as in business transactions) was coined by Forrester Research to describe content typically originating from external parties, such as customers and partners, and driving transactional back-office business processes. Transactional Content Management (TCM) unifi es process, content, and compliance to support solutions involving transactional content. Our example scenario of mortgage loan approval process management is a perfect example of TCM. It involves numerous types of documents, several external parties, and sub-processes implementing parts of the overall process. Lightweight and shareable types play a central role in the High Volume Server, which enhances the performance of Content Server for TCM. A lightweight object type (also known as LwSO for Lightweight SysObject ) is a subtype of a shareable type. When a lightweight object is created, it references an object of its shareable supertype called the parent object of the lightweight object. Conversely, the lightweight object is called the child object of the shareable object. Additional lightweight objects of the same type can share the same parent object. These lightweight objects share the information present in the common parent object rather than each carrying a copy of that information. In order to make the best use of lightweight objects we need to address a couple of questions. When should we use lightweight objects? Lightweight objects are useful when there are a large number of attribute values that are identical for a group of objects. This redundant information can be pushed into one parent object and shared by the lightweight objects. What kind of information is suitable for sharing in the parent object? System-managed metadata, such as policies for security, retention, storage, and so on, are usually applied to a group of objects based on certain criteria. For example, all the documents in one loan application packet could use a single ACL and retention information, which could be placed into the shareable parent object. The specific information about each document would reside in a separate lightweight object. Lightweight object persistence Persistence for lightweight objects works much the same way it works for objects of standard types, with one exception. A lightweight object is a subtype of a shareable type and these types have their separate tables as usual. For a standard type, each object has separate records in all of these tables, with each record identified by the object ID of the object. However, when multiple lightweight objects share one parent object there is only one object ID (of the parent object) in the tables of the shareable type. The lightweight objects need to refer to the object ID of the parent object, which is different from the object ID of any of the lightweight objects, in order to access the shared properties. This reference is made via an attribute named i_sharing_parent, as shown in the last figure.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.) In APEX 4.0, Oracle introduced the plug-in feature. A plug-in is an extension to the existing functionality of APEX. The idea behind plug-ins is to make life easier for developers. Plug-ins are reusable, and can be exported and imported. In this way it is possible to create a functionality which is available to all APEX developers. And installing and using them without the need of having a knowledge of what's inside the plug-in. APEX translates settings from the APEX builder to HTML and JavaScript. For example, if you created a text item in the APEX builder, APEX converts this to the following code (simplified): <input type="text" id="P12_NAME" name="P12_NAME" value="your name"> When you create an item type plug-in, you actually take over this conversion task of APEX, and you generate the HTML and JavaScript code yourself by using PL/SQL procedures. That offers a lot of flexibility because now you can make this code generic, so that it can be used for more items. The same goes for region type plug-ins. A region is a container for forms, reports, and so on. The region can be a div or an HTML table. By creating a region type plug-in, you create a region yourself with the possibility to add more functionality to the region. Plug-ins are very useful because they are reusable in every application. To make a plug-in available, go to Shared Components | Plug-ins , and click on the Export Plug-in link on the right-hand side of the page. Select the desired plug-in and file format and click on the Export Plug-in button. The plug-in can then be imported into another application. Following are the six types of plug-in: Item type plug-ins Region type plug-ins Dynamic action plug-ins Process type plug-ins Authorization scheme type plug-ins Authentication scheme type plug-ins In this Aricle we will discuss the first five types of plug-ins. Creating an item type plug-in In an item type plug-in you create an item with the possibility to extend its functionality. To demonstrate this, we will make a text field with a tooltip. This functionality is already available in APEX 4.0 by adding the following code to the HTML form element attributes text field in the Element section of the text field: onmouseover="toolTip_enable(event,this,'A tooltip')" But you have to do this for every item that should contain a tooltip. This can be made more easily by creating an item type plug-in with a built-in tooltip. And if you create an item of type plug-in, you will be asked to enter some text for the tooltip. Getting ready For this recipe you can use an existing page, with a region in which you can put some text items. How to do it... Follow these steps: Go to Shared Components | User Interface | Plug-ins . Click on the Create button. In the Name section, enter a name in the Name text field. In this case we enter tooltip. In the Internal Name text field, enter an internal name. It is advised to use the company's domain address reversed to ensure the name is unique when you decide to share this plug-in. So for example you can use com.packtpub.apex.tooltip. In the Source section, enter the following code in the PL/SQL Code text area: function render_simple_tooltip ( p_item in apex_plugin.t_page_item , p_plugin in apex_plugin.t_plugin , p_value in varchar2 , p_is_readonly in boolean , p_is_printer_friendly in boolean ) return apex_plugin.t_page_item_render_result is l_result apex_plugin.t_page_item_render_result; begin if apex_application.g_debug then apex_plugin_util.debug_page_item ( p_plugin => p_plugin , p_page_item => p_item , p_value => p_value , p_is_readonly => p_is_readonly , p_is_printer_friendly => p_is_printer_friendly); end if; -- sys.htp.p('<input type="text" id="'||p_item.name||'" name="'||p_item.name||'" class="text_field" onmouseover="toolTip_enable(event,this,'||''''||p_item.attribute_01||''''||')">');--return l_result;end render_simple_tooltip; This function uses the sys.htp.p function to put a text item (<input type="text") on the screen. On the text item, the onmouseover event calls the function toolTip_enable(). This function is an APEX function, and can be used to put a tooltip on an item. The arguments of the function are mandatory. The function starts with the option to show debug information. This can be very useful when you create a plug-in and it doesn't work. After the debug information, the htp.p function puts the text item on the screen, including the call to tooltip_enable. You can also see that the call to tooltip_enable uses p_item.attribute_01. This is a parameter that you can use to pass a value to the plug-in. That is, the following steps in this recipe. The function ends with the return of l_result. This variable is of the type apex_plugin.t_page_item_render_result. For the other types of plug-in there are dedicated return types also, for example t_region_render_result. Click on the Create Plug-in button The next step is to define the parameter (attribute) for this plug-in. In the Custom Attributes section, click on the Add Attribute button. In the Name section, enter a name in the Label text field, for example tooltip. Ensure that the Attribute text field contains the value 1 . In the Settings section, set the Type field to Text . Click on the Create button. In the Callbacks section, enter render_simple_tooltip into the Render Function Name text field. In the Standard Attributes section, check the Is Visible Widget checkbox. Click on the Apply Changes button. The plug-in is now ready. The next step is to create an item of type tooltip plug-in. Go to a page with a region where you want to use an item with a tooltip. In the Items section, click on the add icon to create a new item. Select Plug-ins . Now you will get a list of the available plug-ins. Select the one we just created, that is tooltip . Click on Next . In the Item Name text field, enter a name for the item, for example, tt_item. In the Region drop-down list, select the region you want to put the item in. Click on Next . In the next step you will get a new option. It's the attribute you created with the plug-in. Enter here the tooltip text, for example, This is tooltip text. Click on Next . In the last step, leave everything as it is and click on the Create Item button. You are now ready. Run the page. When you move your mouse pointer over the new item, you will see the tooltip. How it works... As stated before, this plug-in actually uses the function htp.p to put an item on the screen. Together with the call to the JavaScript function, toolTip_enable on the onmouseover event makes this a text item with a tooltip, replacing the normal text item. There's more... The tooltips shown in this recipe are rather simple. You could make them look better, for example, by using the Beautytips tooltips. Beautytips is an extension to jQuery and can show configurable help balloons. Visit http://plugins.jquery.com to download Beautytips. We downloaded Version 0.9.5-rc1 to use in this recipe. Go to Shared Components and click on the Plug-ins link. Click on the tooltip plug-in you just created. In the Source section, replace the code with the following code: function render_simple_tooltip ( p_item in apex_plugin.t_page_item, p_plugin in apex_plugin.t_plugin, p_value in varchar2, p_is_readonly in boolean, p_is_printer_friendly in boolean ) return apex_plugin.t_page_item_render_result is l_result apex_plugin.t_page_item_render_result; begin if apex_application.g_debug then apex_plugin_util.debug_page_item ( p_plugin => p_plugin , p_page_item => p_item , p_value => p_value , p_is_readonly => p_is_readonly , p_is_printer_friendly => p_is_printer_friendly); end if; The function also starts with the debug option to see what happens when something goes wrong. --Register the JavaScript and CSS library the plug-inuses. apex_javascript.add_library ( p_name => 'jquery.bgiframe.min', p_directory => p_plugin.file_prefix, p_version => null ); apex_javascript.add_library ( p_name => 'jquery.bt.min', p_directory => p_plugin.file_prefix, p_version => null ); apex_javascript.add_library ( p_name => 'jquery.easing.1.3', p_directory => p_plugin.file_prefix, p_version => null ); apex_javascript.add_library ( p_name => 'jquery.hoverintent.minified', p_directory => p_plugin.file_prefix, p_version => null ); apex_javascript.add_library ( p_name => 'excanvas', p_directory => p_plugin.file_prefix, p_version => null ); After that you see a number of calls to the function apex_javascript.add_library. These libraries are necessary to enable these nice tooltips. Using apex_javascript.add_library ensures that a JavaScript library is included in the final HTML of a page only once, regardless of how many plug-in items appear on that page. sys.htp.p('<input type="text" id="'||p_item.name||'"class="text_field" title="'||p_item.attribute_01||'">');-- apex_javascript.add_onload_code (p_code =>'$("#'||p_item.name||'").bt({ padding: 20 , width: 100 , spikeLength: 40 , spikeGirth: 40 , cornerRadius: 50 , fill: '||''''||'rgba(200, 50, 50, .8)'||''''||' , strokeWidth: 4 , strokeStyle: '||''''||'#E30'||''''||' , cssStyles: {color: '||''''||'#FFF'||''''||',fontWeight: '||''''||'bold'||''''||'} });'); -- return l_result; end render_tooltip; Another difference with the first code is the call to the Beautytips library. In this call you can customize the text balloon with colors and other options. The onmouseover event is not necessary anymore as the call to $().bt in the wwv_flow_javascript.add_onload_code takes over this task. The $().bt function is a jQuery JavaScript function which references the generated HTML of the plug-in item by ID, and converts it dynamically to show a tooltip using the Beautytips plug-in. You can of course always create extra plug-in item type parameters to support different colors and so on per item. To add the other libraries, do the following: In the Files section, click on the Upload new file button. Enter the path and the name of the library. You can use the file button to locate the libraries on your filesystem. Once you have selected the file, click on the Upload button. The files and their locations can be found in the following table: Libra ry Location jquery.bgiframe.min.js bt-0.9.5-rc1other_libsbgiframe_2.1.1 jquery.bt.min.js bt-0.9.5-rc1 jquery.easing.1.3.js bt-0.9.5-rc1other_libs jquery.hoverintent.minified.js bt-0.9.5-rc1other_libs Excanvas.js bt-0.9.5-rc1other_libsexcanvas_r3     If all libraries have been uploaded, the plug-in is ready. The tooltip now looks quite different, as shown in the following screenshot: In the plug-in settings, you can enable some item-specific settings. For example, if you want to put a label in front of the text item, check the Is Visible Widget checkbox in the Standard Attributes section. For more information on this tooltip, go to http://plugins.jquery.com/project/bt. Creating a region type plug-in As you may know, a region is actually a div. With the region type plug-in you can customize this div. And because it is a plug-in, you can reuse it in other pages. You also have the possibility to make the div look better by using JavaScript libraries. In this recipe we will make a carousel with switching panels. The panels can contain images but they can also contain data from a table. We will make use of another jQuery extension, Step Carousel. Getting ready You can download stepcarousel.js from http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/stepcarousel.htm. However, in order to get this recipe work in APEX, we needed to make a slight modification in it. So, stepcarousel.js, arrowl.gif, and arrow.gif are included in this book. How to do it... Follow the given steps, to create the plug-in: Go to Shared Components and click on the Plug-ins link. Click on the Create button. In the Name section, enter a name for the plug-in in the Name field. We will use Carousel. In the Internal Name text field, enter a unique internal name. It is advised to use your domain reversed, for example com.packtpub.carousel. In the Type listbox, select Region . In the Source section, enter the following code in the PL/SQL Code text area: function render_stepcarousel ( p_region in apex_plugin.t_region, p_plugin in apex_plugin.t_plugin, p_is_printer_friendly in boolean ) return apex_plugin.t_region_render_result is cursor c_crl is select id , panel_title , panel_text , panel_text_date from app_carousel order by id; -- l_code varchar2(32767); begin The function starts with a number of arguments. These arguments are mandatory, but have a default value. In the declare section there is a cursor with a query on the table APP_CAROUSEL. This table contains several data to appear in the panels in the carousel. -- add the libraries and stylesheets -- apex_javascript.add_library ( p_name => 'stepcarousel', p_directory => p_plugin.file_prefix, p_version => null ); -- --Output the placeholder for the region which is used by--the Javascript code The actual code starts with the declaration of stepcarousel.js. There is a function, APEX_JAVASCRIPT.ADD_LIBRARY to load this library. This declaration is necessary, but this file needs also to be uploaded in the next step. You don't have to use the extension .js here in the code. -- sys.htp.p('<style type="text/css">'); -- sys.htp.p('.stepcarousel{'); sys.htp.p('position: relative;'); sys.htp.p('border: 10px solid black;'); sys.htp.p('overflow: scroll;'); sys.htp.p('width: '||p_region.attribute_01||'px;'); sys.htp.p('height: '||p_region.attribute_02||'px;'); sys.htp.p('}'); -- sys.htp.p('.stepcarousel .belt{'); sys.htp.p('position: absolute;'); sys.htp.p('left: 0;'); sys.htp.p('top: 0;'); sys.htp.p('}'); sys.htp.p('.stepcarousel .panel{'); sys.htp.p('float: left;'); sys.htp.p('overflow: hidden;'); sys.htp.p('margin: 10px;'); sys.htp.p('width: 250px;'); sys.htp.p('}'); -- sys.htp.p('</style>'); After the loading of the JavaScript library, some style elements are put on the screen. The style elements could have been put in a Cascaded Style Sheet (CSS ), but since we want to be able to adjust the size of the carousel, we use two parameters to set the height and width. And the height and the width are part of the style elements. -- sys.htp.p('<div id="mygallery" class="stepcarousel"style="overflow:hidden"><div class="belt">'); -- for r_crl in c_crl loop sys.htp.p('<div class="panel">'); sys.htp.p('<b>'||to_char(r_crl.panel_text_date,'DD-MON-YYYY')||'</b>'); sys.htp.p('<br>'); sys.htp.p('<b>'||r_crl.panel_title||'</b>'); sys.htp.p('<hr>'); sys.htp.p(r_crl.panel_text); sys.htp.p('</div>'); end loop; -- sys.htp.p('</div></div>'); The next command in the script is the actual creation of a div. Important here is the name of the div and the class. The Step Carousel searches for these identifiers and replaces the div with the stepcarousel. The next step in the function is the fetching of the rows from the query in the cursor. For every line found, the formatted text is placed between the div tags. This is done so that Step Carousel recognizes that the text should be placed on the panels. --Add the onload code to show the carousel -- l_code := 'stepcarousel.setup({ galleryid: "mygallery" ,beltclass: "belt" ,panelclass: "panel" ,autostep: {enable:true, moveby:1, pause:3000} ,panelbehavior: {speed:500, wraparound:true,persist:true} ,defaultbuttons: {enable: true, moveby: 1,leftnav:["'||p_plugin.file_prefix||'arrowl.gif", -5,80], rightnav:["'||p_plugin.file_prefix||'arrowr.gif", -20,80]} ,statusvars: ["statusA", "statusB", "statusC"] ,contenttype: ["inline"]})'; -- apex_javascript.add_onload_code (p_code => l_code); -- return null; end render_stepcarousel; The function ends with the call to apex_javascript.add_onload_code. Here starts the actual code for the stepcarousel and you can customize the carousel, like the size, rotation speed and so on. In the Callbacks section, enter the name of the function in the Return Function Name text field. In this case it is render_stepcarousel. Click on the Create Plug-in button. In the Files section, upload the stepcarousel.js, arrowl.gif, and arrowr.gif files. For this purpose, the file stepcarousel.js has a little modification in it. In the last section (setup:function), document.write is used to add some style to the div tag. Unfortunately, this will not work in APEX, as document.write somehow destroys the rest of the output. So, after the call, APEX has nothing left to show, resulting in an empty page. Document.write needs to be removed, and the following style elements need to be added in the code of the plug-in: sys.htp.p('</p><div id="mygallery" class="stepcarousel" style="overflow: hidden;"><div class="belt">'); In this line of code you see style='overflow:hidden'. That is the line that actually had to be included in stepcarousel.js. This command hides the scrollbars. After you have uploaded the files, click on the Apply Changes button. The plug-in is ready and can now be used in a page. Go to the page where you want this stepcarousel to be shown. In the Regions section, click on the add icon. In the next step, select Plug-ins . Select Carousel . Click on Next . Enter a title for this region, for example Newscarousel. Click on Next . In the next step, enter the height and the width of the carousel. To show a carousel with three panels, enter 800 in the Width text field. Enter 100 in the Height text field. Click on Next . Click on the Create Region button. The plug-in is ready. Run the page to see the result. How it works... The stepcarousel is actually a div. The region type plug-in uses the function sys.htp.p to put this div on the screen. In this example, a div is used for the region, but a HTML table can be used also. An APEX region can contain any HTML output, but for the positioning, mostly a HTML table or a div is used, especially when layout is important within the region. The apex_javascript.add_onload_code starts the animation of the carousel. The carousel switches panels every 3 seconds. This can be adjusted (Pause : 3000). See also For more information on this jQuery extension, go to http://www.dynamicdrive.com/dynamicindex4/stepcarousel.htm.

(For more resources related to this topic, see here.) So, you're already familiar with WordPress and know how to use plugins, widgets, and themes? Your next step is to expand your existing WordPress website or blog with an online store? In that case you've come to the right place! WooCommerce is a versatile plugin for WordPress, that gives the possibility for everyone with a little WordPress knowledge to start their own online store. In case you are not familiar with WordPress at all, this book is not the first one you should read. No worries though, WordPress isn't that hard to learn and there are tons of online possibilities to learn about the WordPress solution very quickly. Or just turn to one of the many printed books on WordPress that are available. These are the topics we'll be covering in this article: Installing and activating WooCommerce Learn everything about setting up WooCommerce correctly Preparing for takeoff Before we start, remember that it's only possible to install your own plugins if you're working in your own WordPress installation. This means that users running a website on WordPress.com will not be able to follow along. It's simply impossible in that environment to install plugins yourself. Although installing WooCommerce on top of WordPress isn't difficult, we highly recommend that you set up a test environment first. Without going too much into depth, this is what you need to do: Create a backup copy of your complete WordPress environment using FTP. Alternatively use a plugin to store a copy into your Dropbox folder automatically. There are tons of solutions available, just pick your own favorite. UpDraftPlus is one of the possibilities and delivers a complete backup solution: http://wordpress.org/plugins/updraftplus/. Don't forget to backup your WordPress database as well. You may do this using a tool like phpMyAdmin and create an export from there. But also in this case, there are plugins that make life easier. The UpDraftPlus plugin mentioned previously can perform this task as well. Once your backups are complete, install XAMPP on a local (Windows) machine that can be downloaded from http://www.apachefriends.org. Although XAMPP is available for Mac users, MAMP is a widely used alternative for this group. MAMP can be downloaded from http://www.mamp.info/en/index.html. Restore your WordPress backup on your test server and start following the remaining part of this book in your new test environment. Alternatively, install a copy of your WordPress website as a temporary subdomain at your hosting provider. For instance, if my website is http://www.example.com, I could easily create a copy of my site in http://test.example.com. Possibilities may vary, depending on the package you have with your hosting provider. If in your situation it isn't needed to add WooCommerce to an existing WordPress site, of course you may also start from scratch. Just install WordPress on a local test server or install it at your hosting provider. To keep our instructions in this book as clear as possible we did just that. We created a fresh installation of WordPress Version 3.6. Next, you see a screenshot of our fresh WordPress installation: Are these short instructions just too much for you at this moment? Do you need a more detailed step-by-step guide to create a test environment for your WordPress website? Look at the following tutorials: For Max OSX users: http://wpmu.org/local-wordpresstest-environment-mamp-osx/ For Windows users: http://www.thegeekscope.com/howto-copy-a-live-wordpress-website-to-local-indowsenvironment/ More tutorials will also be available on our website: http://www.joomblocks.com Don't forget to sign up for the free Newsletter, that will bring you even more news and tutorials on WordPress, WooCommerce, and other open source software solutions! Once ready, we'll be able to take the next step and install the WooCommerce plugin. Let's take a look at our WordPress backend. In our situation we can open this by browsing to http://localhost/wp36/wp-admin. Depending on the choices you made previously for your test environment, your URL could be different. Well, this should all be pretty familiar for you already. Again, your situation might look different, depending on your theme or the number of plugins already active for your website. Installing WooCommerce Installing a plugin is a fairly simple task: Click on Plugins in the menu on the left and click on Add New. Next, simply enter woocommerce in the Search field and click on Search Plugins. Verify if the correct plugin is shown on top and click on Install Now. Confirm the warning message that appears by clicking on OK. Click on Activate Plugin. Note that in the following screenshot, we're installing Version 2.0.13 of WooCommerce. New versions will follow rather quickly, so you might already see a higher version number. WooCommerce needs to have a number of specific WordPress pages, that it automatically will setup for you. Just click on the Install WooCommerce Pages button and make sure not to forget this step! In our example project, we're installing the English version of WooCommerce. But you might need a different language. By default, WooCommerce is already delivered in a number of languages. This means the installation will automatically follow the language of your WordPress installation. If you need something else, just browse through the plugin directory on WordPress.org to find any additional translations. Once we have created the necessary pages, the WooCommerce welcome screen will appear and you will see a new menu item has been added to the main menu on the left. Meanwhile the plugin created the necessary pages, that you can access by clicking on Pages in the menu on the left. Note that if you open a page that was automatically created by WooCommerce, you'll only see a shortcode, which is used to call the needed functionality. Do not delete the shortcodes, or WooCommerce might stop working. However, it's still possible to add your own content before or after the shortcode on these pages. WooCommerce also added some widgets to your WordPress dashboard, giving an overview of the latest product and sales statistics. At this moment this is all still empty of course. Summary In this article, we learned about the basics of WooCommerce and installing the same. We also learned that WooCommerce is a free but versatile plugin for WordPress, that you may use to easily set up your own online store. Resources for Article: Further resources on this subject: Django 1.2 E-commerce: Generating PDF Reports from Python using ReportLab [Article] Increasing sales with Brainshark slideshows/documents [Article] Implementing OpenCart Modules [Article]