Tork’s Blog

The YACG Mass Installer is a system for managing multiple YACG sites from a central control panel. You can get it from yacgmassinstaller site.  If you’re not familiar with YACG (Yet Another Content Generator) itself,  you can find out more at GetYACG.com.

I’m going to make this a big 2-part (or maybe 3?) extravapolooza, and do a blow-by-blow description of my experience. A sort of YACGMI For Cretins, if you will… So here’s Part 1 - “Grab it and stick it in”.

Installation
I installed it on a local Linux box, following the instructions in the user manual (but I don’T think you can actually get there until you’ve bought the software). I might move it to a hosted server later, but I think this should work for the moment.

1. Unzip the files into the directory where it’s going to run
2. Set up the MySQL database and set permissions on it
3.  Access that directory via browser (http://mydomain/mydir)
4.  ERROR: “Site error: the file  /xxx/htdocs/yacgmi/index.php requires the  ionCube PHP Loader ioncube_loader_lin_5.2.so to be installed by the site  administrator.”

So, it isn’t mentioned in the prerequisites, but IonCube is a prerequisite. YACGMI ain’t gonna work without it.  Not the end of the world, though -  I needed to go to the IonCube site and download and install their PHP encoder crap.

I don’t really like using encoded scripts where I can’t hack at the code myself (or check on what the makers might be doing behind the scenes with the info I input), but I understand they need to protect their code somehow and that’s probably their only practical option. At least the code for YACG itself is freely available. The IonCube installation was no big deal, though it might be an obstacle if you’re not used to *nix command line stuff.

From there the rest of the Mass Installer installation was quick and easy. Total install time was somewhere around 30 minutes, slowed down somewhat by the IonCube thang and the fact that I was listening to a pretty funny comedy podcast while working.

So far, so good. Now I’m going to spend a bit of time perusing the  member forums (tons of info there) and maybe look at their videos while formulating a plan for setting up a few sites. Or maybe I’ll just throw some random sites up and see what happens.

Stay tuned for Part 2 - “Mass Installed World Domination Begins”

I’ve recently been looking for a new hosting company for this blog and another site I have. There are so many out there it’s not even practical t look into them all. I7ve checked out a few based on recommendations, and at the moment HostGator is looking pretty good. They have cheap plans at $9.95 a month for unlimited domains on one account. You can check out their hosting deals here.

I’ll post about this again when I come to a decision and actually make the move.

Any web publishers looking for alternative revenue sources? A friend recently introduced me to this company:

FinditQuick.

They seem to go to a fair amount of effort to ensure the quality of the sites they place ads on. I’ll update on my results after I’ve tried them out for a while.

Been hacking away at the online dictionary of dream symbols. Made a few minor design changes and added a much needed intro text on the top page (room for improvement still, but way better than nuttin’). I notice it’s inched up about 10,000 places or so in Alexa over the last week - could it be related??

I have a few ideas for articles, maybe a comparison of Freud’s and Jung’s theories on the meanings of dreams - I think I can make it a tad more nteresting than some of the other boilerplate I keep coming accross. Also want to add a lot of symbol entries and improve some of the current ones.