This may be old hat to many, but I always have to go searching for reminders of how to do stuff like this. When I set up a new Joomla site I find it useful to put it behind a password while it is still a “work in progress”. Today while Googling “apache .htaccess” I found alot of very confusing guides and password generators - but at the end of the day it was the elated.com article How-To: Password protecting your pages with htaccess that saved me.
The elated.com instructions worked well for me because I have command line (SSH) access to my server - most people will be looking for a control panel feature for password protection. Usually on the Kabissa server I would use the Plesk control panel for this. The SSH instructions at elated.com took me about 15 seconds:
- navigate to httpdocs dir (or whatever dir will be password protected)
- htpasswd -c .htpasswd admin (then type in password when prompted, and repeat)
- copy htaccess contents from elate.com article to clip board:
AuthUserFile /full/path/to/.htpasswd
AuthType Basic
AuthName “My Secret Folder”
Require valid-user
- create .htaccess file and paste in contents (correcting AuthUserFile location)
- Test in browser.
The Plesk control panel is more user friendly but even with a good Internet connection it takes at least several minutes to log in via a web interface, browse to the domain, click on the “directory” icon and type in the username and password to create the password protection.
I love free and open source software, and I love Firefox!
Today I got one of those classic, compelling emails purportedly from PayPal Security: “We are contacting you to remind you that: on 25 February 2007 our Account Review Team identified some unusual activity in your account, one or more attempts to log in to your PayPal account from a foreign IP address.”
So of course I clicked. I was intrigued about the supposed logins to my PayPal account from Polish and Romanian IP addresses, and of course felt very safe and comfortable on my Mac OSX computer. For the first time that I’ve experienced, Firefox opened up and displayed the warning below.
Can’t a guy live dangerously anymore?
I just signed a petition to ask Congress to demand President Bush seek congressional authorization before considering military action in Iran. He seems out of control, and we have to stop the war in Iraq from escalating into a regional crisis. Congress can do this, but they need to hear from us.
Can you sign?
http://pol.moveon.org/noescalationiniran/
Thanks!
The New York Times covered the Last King of Scotland Movie Premiere in Uganda on Sunday, February 21, 2007. Watching the online video is a giddy, emotional affair. I am so glad this film was made, and am very much looking forward to watching it myself.
I’m a big fan of Muti. The About Muti page describes it like this: “Muti is a social bookmarking site inspired by reddit and Digg but dedicated to content of interest to Africans or those interested in Africa.”
I’m also a big fan of WordPress, the blogging tool used to create this blog, and the social networking facilitated by WordPress Plugins like Gregarious. I will be sharing more about my reasons for creating this blog as this experiment unfolds. In the meantime I wanted to point out a trick I learned that is probably obvious to many but might be helpful to folks wanting to power up their blogs with Muti and other social bookmarking sites.
See the “Share this” link below? That’s the Gregarious Plugin at work. Click on the link and you will see a popup with options for bookmarking this article at various social bookmarking sites. Muti is not on this list by default - but you can add it, and you can also add the nifty Muti bookmarking icon. Here’s one way to do it.
Continue reading ‘Turning on the social networking using wordpress, muti and gregarious’
Yesterday I was invited to give a talk about Kabissa to the Rotary Club of Bainbridge Island. It was a pleasure to participate in one of their weekly meetings and to learn more about how the Club functions and contributes to the community.
Much to my surprise, the Bainbridge Island Rotary Club is very engaged in charitable work in Africa, in particular in a district of northern Uganda where they are carrying out an ambitious well digging program called the Uganda Clean Water Project.
I continue to be struck by the number of connections there are between folks living on this island and the African continent.
On February 3rd, 2007, Judy Brown and Tobias Eigen hosted a well attended “Africa Potluck” on Bainbridge Island. In this photo, Liz Trautman, Kabissa Member Relations Manager, tells stories about the important work of Kabissa members and their use of Kabissa services and programs towards their mission.
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