Articles

Welcome

Scott — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 19:56:48 -0700

Every inquiry is important. You may have found this website by word-of-mouth and are looking for a Small Business IT Solution. Here are some example scenarios and why you might need to outsource IT services:

Your company has grown and you would like to use official email addresses representing your company
You need a backup system
You would like to get Blackberry's or other mobile devices for people in your company to receive email on
You want to upgrade or update your current website
You want to sell your products online
You would like to outsource an IT project or website
Your company needs a content management system so staff can regularly update the website
You need a wireless network setup and secured
Your office computers are slow and someone needs to look at them, or you need a new server
You don't know WHAT you need

The goal is setting up and maintaining computers for your business. Plan your IT strategy early to maximize upgradability and performance. Get the best tools and build on them. Don't re-invent the wheel. Call SCOTT eSolutions or click contact to send a note or ask a question. We can discuss possibilities, costs, and timeframes; at least to get an idea. You've seen the technologies available on TV, in the stores, and in the elevator. Make them work for you; get critical email on your cell phone - set up your home office, and get expert technical support.

24/7 Phone Support on Yearly Service Agreements
24/7 Email Support with guaranteed response
Comprehensive Phone and Email Technical Support
Virus and Spyware Removal
Remote Support and Assistance
Computer Questions
Internet Connection Setup and Repair
Yearly and Monthly Service Agreements

Connecting your home entertainment center, home office, or small business computers lets you share hard drives, printers, and a single Internet connection. A Network makes sharing the Internet easy. If you need help setting up the internet, or fixing something on your computer you don't have to put it off any longer. I can help diagnose the problem. More and other solutions provided and maintained:

Small Business Websites
SSL Certificates
e-Commerce Shopping Carts
Domain Names
Website Hosting
Content Management
Sharepoint
Specific Supplementary eSolutions:
- install a new server (example: email, messaging, firewall, SQL or file server)
- automate your payroll or other tasks using software
- install a virtual server for old server programs you need to keep

24/7 On-site Technical Support $95.00/hr (minimum 1 hour and travelling) Desktop Support

45 day warranty for all work performed
Network Setup
Server Setup
Internet Setup
Printers
Computer Upgrades
Home Entertainment Setup
Performance Computing

Laptop Support

30 day warranty for all work performed
Wireless Security
Device Configuration and Training
Webcams
Digital Cameras
Mobile Phones and Email

Scott eSolutions - is going to do it with Drupal!

Scott — Thu, 30 Oct 2008 19:11:16 -0600

My favorite podcast website, Lullabot, is hosting a 3-day seminar in New Orleans in December focused on the configuration, architecture, and processes behind building successful Drupal websites and communities. Similar to when I attended the Lullabot workshop in Minneapolis in May, this conference will be graced with not only individuals from big businesses who use Drupal, but inventors and programmers who have contributed to Drupal. I will learn from some of this powerful free software's top developers, hear from community-building experts, examine successful Drupal sites, and meet other web professionals, developers, designers, and decision makers interested in expanding their Drupal knowledge.

Dries Buytart, 30, original creator and project lead of Drupal will be speaking at the conference, amoung others. He is also co-founder and chief technology officer of Acquia, a venture-backed software company that offers products and services for Drupal. Dries is also working on Mollom, a service that helps you identify content quality and stops website spam. He was recently interviewed by Jeff Robbins from Lullabot and talked about Acquia and its applications, and its product and service offerings.

Drupal is an open-source website framework used by Scott eSolutions and other web developers for creating feature rich websites in very little time. It's like a program, except you don't install it on your computer you install it on your webserver. It gives you a powerful starting point to begin a website project, by reducing time on the menial and repetitive tasks required for every website. By minimizing time spent on these common tasks, programmers can concentrate on the meat of their project. The out-of-the-box website interface is very friendly and if you can use Facebook you can certainly login and start manageing your own Drupal site.

The Zen-Cart Review

Scott — Sun, 20 Apr 2008 14:36:02 -0600

I've recently had the pleasure of overhauling an eCommerce website using an open source content management system called the Zen Cart. This handy package is an entire website solution with product management and control any webmaster or store owner could ask for. Upgrades, plug-ins and modules are available for extra and special functionality. There is a team behind the Zen Cart and an open source community growing in size. This ensures you will always be able to find a pro to maintain, upgrade or make major changes to your Zen-Cart website. Even if you don't find someone familiar with the Zen-Cart specifically - but who is a PHP developer, reviewing and creating code in Zen Cart is structured and based on a clever override system. The developer can seperate all of his work from the Zen-Cart core, for easy management and testing and using on other Zen-Cart websites.

Built in is a product management system complete with inventory counts and highly configurable product options. Over the years, developers have submitted to the Zen Cart team what would be useful to define and describe products and their categories. The Zen-Cart team has developed these ideas and more into the package. Like the "Attribute Controller". A feature of the Zen-Cart that allows the granular management of options. Each product can have unlimited options and these options can be priced individually. For example if you are selling a suitcase, some options might be color, material, and zipper selection. Some options, like the gold zipper might cost more than the silver zipper and can be priced accordingly. The powerful intuitive interface puts these options at your fingertips.

I say powerful for a reason. On the Zen-Cart website there are hundreds of documents for everyone from developers to regular non-programmers. There are documents on adding products and options, setting up shipping, changing the home page and custom pages, customizing newsletters and tons more. Much of the entire setup is self-explanatory enough using an internet browser, but it's always good to have a reference. On the Zen Cart reference there are hundreds of documents; you can print them off - or a developer could for you - and revise them specifically to your situation.

That means the majority of the management of your website can be done with a regular internet browser like Internet Explorer 7 and doesn't require the programmer, just the Zen-Cart framework. Choose to have the programmer get you started - and help you and your staff along the way. Managing the back-end once your website is live can be up to you. Leave it up to yourself, your staff, Scott eSolutions, or Scott eSolutions staff! The management is mostly the Zen-Cart admin webpage and no programming, so you may choose to forget about it and simply reap the benefits of some or more online sales!

By default, the Zen-Cart install of version 1.3.8 includes the following features. Being so many, some can usually be disabled by the programmer when tailoring a site to the clients needs. There are even more features available by downloading additional modules from Zen-Cart.com.

Features included with Zen-Cart by default

configure your image sizes and customer details
choose layout settings to use for the spotlight listings
pick which details to show on your product details page
discount coupons
customer group discounts
quantity discounts
one-time charges
minimum and maximum purchases per product
edit your policies pages with HTML
create and manage your product attributes
manage product reviews, featured products, specials and sales
order status emails and records of the customer account

gift certificates
referral tools
downloadable virtual products
price and taxation control
banner advertising controls
newsletter creation and sending
content management tool EZ-Pages
multiple language support
multiple tax support
multiple shipping methods
multiple currency support
multiple payment methods

The next major release is version 1.4 and is schedule for release January 2009. This will include some of the popular modules built-in to core and will not require the programmer to individually install them. Modules are components of the website that contain functionality. Extra modules let you really customize your Zen Cart specific to your situation. It's always a good idea to keep your software up to date too and updates will be necessary over time. It is a simple process but best managed by a PHP or Zen Cart expert.

Should you run into problems or need help with your Zen-Cart website? There are hundreds of people online at any one time on Zen-Cart.com. What struck me was the participation of the main Zen Cart developers in the support forums helping people. I was personally assisted by the lead developer, the grand-daddy of them all! Except she is a woman and her name is Linda McGrath. Friendly and helpful to say the least.

I can't leave out one feature I appreciate a lot. EZ-Pages. These can be used by non-programmers with a little learning curve. They allow you to build webpages using a Rich-Text editor, that stay within the confines of your existing site. Useful for staff updating and creating pages on their own website. The EZ-pages interface even allows you to add your page to a menu, create new menu items, open in a new window, or just put content up on your own schedule.

Being open source, freely downloadable and modifiable for your purpose you can download and install this on your website and sell your products online sooner than you may think. Put a PHP developer in charge and he may be able to install extra modules, also freely downloadable at Zen-Cart.com. This might be something like a Fedex module to provide shipping quotes via Fedex servers at transaction time, or something to allow users to share photos. If you have something very specific you would like to integrate, this can be focused on and perfected since the Zen-Cart framework is built on a solid foundation already. If a PHP developer builds a specific module for you, you may agree to submit it to Zen-Cart to be available for use by others. Like any open-source project, the good submissions get integrated into the core for the next release. After 4+ years, the Zen-Cart has become an all encompassing website solution to sell and manage products online. Ask if Zen-Cart is the right CMS for you!

I give the Zen-Cart a 10/10 and recommend it for use by small business business owners based on easy setup, a wide-range of administration capabilities and available documentation. Include the support forums, working payment and shipping modules installed by default, the EZ-Pages feature, and every other reason in the table above. I look forward to recommending it to more people!

Drupal Conference - Minneapolis, MN

Scott — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 20:08:55 -0600

May 8th and 9th I will be attending a conference about a specific CMS called Drupal. It is the biggest and baddest CMS and can do the most stuff. Being as large of a package as Drupal is, topics at the conference are the core and how things were put together. Focus will be on module development, and they'll probably cover the popular modules and new ones. Modules are like programs you install on a computer, except you install them on a Drupal website. Upon my return I will be a CMS Gladiator and declare the worlds businesses content databases - my opponent.

I can make your content management system the way you want. I can give it many or few features depending on your cost, your time, your intended level of administration (how much you see yourself managing the website; for example, updating products), or setting up staff users who you trust.

Attending will introduce me to other developers using Drupal to share ideas about its uses and features. Boring details about the nerd conference can be found by clicking below:

http://www.lullabot.com/workshop/minneapolis-module-development-and-apis/minneapolis-minnesota-2008

Installing Linux on Windows - Common Linux Display Problems On Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2

Scott — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 23:42:16 -0600

I have recently setup a few LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) servers to support my website habit. Due to a lack of physical computers I decided to use Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 to get things taken care of. That way I have a portable server and can move it to any other (albeit Windows) computer that has Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 installed. When I upgrade, I won't have to spend time reconfiguring a new server. Since the virtual hardware is completely seperate from the physical hardware managing this is simple and easy and done by copying one file.

Some things to keep in mind when creating virtual guest machines in Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2:

RAM is important. Always have at least the same amount, plus an extra 30% in the host computer for all of the memory you allocate to each of your virtual machines
RAID helps. If you have more than one virtual machine on the host computer, make sure it has a good backup plan. If this host computer has only 1 or 2 hard drives you're data may not have the protection you need. I strongly suggest RAID to run virtual servers because keeping the virtual server file intact is essential to preventing problems. If you're going to be doing a whole lot of development on a virtual machine (like I do) - then a physical hard drive goes down, so do all your virtual machines and so does all your work!
In your Windows host computer, mount an ISO file as a CD or DVD in Daemon Tools or your favorite CD/DVD program (MagicISO, Nero, etc.) This makes installation of the virtual machine operating system fast. Installing from a hard drive is a lot faster than DVD, CD, or network. You just have to get the file on the hard drive.
Torrents are available for ISO's of most Linux distributions which makes downloading them easy
Use the default network settings. Ideally you will have a router or device that you can manage the internal network with. Settings provided by the Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 administration service automatically allocate you network hardware. Maximum use of default settings is encouraged.

There are a number of HOW-TO articles setting up operating systems. Here are some references I had to dig for when I got started. When you are trying to get Fedora or other Red Hat based Linux running, on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2:

Problem #1 No Mouse in Fedora or CentOS Linux when running in Microsoft Virtual Machine
An obscure boot option that will need to be inserted into your /etc/grub.conf file to make the mouse work properly, and to enable the scroll-wheel:

i8042.noloop psmous.2=imps

Via console or SSH navigate to /etc/ and use your text editor to edit grub.conf and add this bit on the kernel line. These are your boot options in Linux; the first is to get a ps/2 mouse to work in Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 (i8042.noloop), and second is to get the mouse wheel to work (psmous.2=imps). Insert the boot options in grub.conf on the kernel line after "rhgb".

Problem #2 X Windows Display Resolution Problem
Windows Virtual Machines don't support the default color settings used by Linux. When X Windows starts with incorrect settings for the first time, all kinds of things can go wonky. If you're using a Red Hat based Linux distribution and the X Window environment open your /etc/X11/xorg.conf file and find the DefaultDepth setting under Section "Screen". Change it from "24" to "16" or "32". Do not change anything else in the file.

My virtual guests are running on an Intel 945 platform dual core system, with 2.5 GB of RAM and lots of storage. A pretty basic system utilized by up to three virtual machines running at one time. The host operating system is Windows Vista Ultimate. If this computer is upgraded all three virtual servers will be automatically upgraded too. If I move the virtual servers to another host computer (also running MS Virtual Server 2005 R2) it will not affect the virtual hardware. Within the virtual server environments, the hardware remains the same. Besides a virtual Microsoft Windows 2003 Standard server - I needed a LAMP to run hosted dns, web and email development services.

Choosing a domain name

Scott — Sat, 15 Mar 2008 22:38:14 -0600

It can be difficult to think of good domain name. As no two parties may ever hold the same Domain Name at the same time, it is a truly unique identifier of you or your company. It is how your customers will remember you and find you among the millions of other Web sites on the Internet.

What is the influence of a domain name on your traffic and sales? How do you deal with multiple domains and should you have multiple domains? Here are a few things to keep in mind when choosing your domain name:

Keep it short. Long domain names are not easy to remember. Keep in mind that most visitors will not just type in your domain name, they will find it through Google, Yahoo or other websites. For example, only 16% of the visitors come to this website by typing in the domain name. 25% come to this website through search engines and 59% come here by clicking on a link on another website. An easier name to remember will translate to a higher probability of repeat vistiors.
Use a name that suits your goal. What do you want to do with your website? Try to translate that "mission" into a domain. This can be difficult, as you want to keep your domain short. Search engines heavily judge your website based on a few items:
1. What others have to say about your website.
2. What words can be found in the actual domain name.
3. What words can be found on the home page.
4. What words can be found in the title and meta tags of your webpages.
Promote only one domain. Search engines tend to discover how important a website is by counting the links to your website. If you have several domains in use, link them all to the site you want to promote the most. Search engines like Google will consider the importance of your website over the other domains. Focus on one domain, redirect everything to that single domain.
Have links to all your domains. If you have more than one domain, link to them from your main domain. In my case, I refer to domains in articles like these. My main domain (now) is scottesolutions.com but I have ninthcircleradio.com, donhume.com, farrowcanada.com and saltwaterenterprises.com all linking to it.

Owning multiple domains can be good for your internet presence. Running multiple websites though is high maintenance and can be redundant if you're selling the same products. Branded and managed properly, one website should be able to sell anything for you. If all of your strategically named domain names redirect to a main domain, you will be better able to monitor the traffic and search phrases all under the one domain name.

There are a few other reasons why you could want to have multiple domains:

Catching typos. Like domain names that contain then or than
Preventing "copycat" sites. You'd be surprised how fast a copycat site can go up if you have a good idea!
Preventing phishers and others from using what seems to be your domain. Consider a few; www.cocacola.com, www.coca-cola.com, and country specific domains
Buying domains to hopefully sell them later. I do not think this is good, but maybe you do.

Tell a Friend

Scott — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 07:11:35 -0600

Know somebody who is looking to upgrade their computers? Or maybe they need a new computer. Residential or commercial - Scott eSolutions can help. Share the link on your Facebook profile and let your friends know the best place to get IT Consulting. Scott eSolutions!

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On Virtual Servers

Scott — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 07:20:20 -0700

One brand-spanking new technology in IT is Virtualization. This is the concept of creating virtual computers within a program on a host computer. These virtual computers can run operating systems independently of the host computer. This is useful to host multple servers that normally utilize only some of the physical processing power. For example, if you have 2 physical servers utilizing their hardware at only 15-50% most of the time, move to a virtual environment and one server can be fully utilized - the other turned off to save power. You can also:

Install Windows 2000 Advanced Server to support legacy software - run the old reliable software for as long as you like without worrying about the hardware it's on anymore
Seperate servers that run intricate software such as Microsoft Exchange and Blackberry Enterprise Server. These programs run ideally without the other installed - so accomplish this with two virtual servers on one physical host
Experience painless upgrades when upgrading hardware. When you need to upgrade your physical server, you won't need to reinstall and re-configure all your applications servers again. Because a virtual machine is contained within one file, this file can be moved to any computer running the virutalization software. This makes upgrades and moving servers a much simpler task.
Have a backup copy of your server and its installed applications within one virtual machine file - it can be turned on and contain everything you need to get working again, in case of a crash. Backup strategies even include keeping a copy of the virtual machine in a different location that could be readied and turned on in case of an emergency
Easily backup and restore your data

Virtualizing your IT environment gives your infrastructure reliability and portability. In most cases, a virtual machine is saved as one file on the host computer. Therefore, when you want to backup an instance of the server you only need to shut down the virtual machine, and copy the few files associated with it. They will be large, but will contain the entire machine, operating system, installed applications and data. Server moves are easier because the virtual machines can be moved seperate of the move of the physical servers. These files can also be moved off-site or to a data-center for backup, setting up network load-balancing, or redundancy purposes.

Virtual computer hardware is static, and emulated by the host computer running the virtualization software. Like a regular computer if you want to change the hardware; such as add more RAM or replace the CD-ROM you need to turn it off. If you need to install an operating system give your DVD drive to the virtual machine, and put in the DVD. You can even use a full-screen mode and emulate operating systems environment for the user; install Windows on Linux and vice versa.