Setting up the Dompdf (a pdf generation package in php) in XAMPP in windows environment can sometimes be an issue.
After we have set up the package in the htdocs and go for testing the examples in the packages , error is encountered which is as follows-

A PHP Error was encountered
Severity: Warning
Message: domdocument::domdocument() expects at least 1 parameter, 0 given
Filename: include/dompdf.cls.php
Line Number: 165
Fatal error: Call to undefined method domdocument::loadHTML() in C:\xampp\htdocs\bambooinvoice\bamboo_system_files\plugins\dompdf\include\dompdf.cls.php on line 284


The error message is caused due to a conflict between DomDocument and DomXML extentions , so the first thing we did was to disable the domdocument extention in php.ini.
extension = php_domxml.dll

After restarting the apache and then again running the examples again blank pages were being rendered. The problem was due to the fact that dompdf uses PDFLib by default if it is available in the system and PDFLib is a commercial package which is not available by default in the system but its extention is enabled in php.ini by default in the system.

So what we did was to comment out the PDFLib extension extension=php_pdf.dll in the php.ini file. After the modifications we restarted the apache and then the examples could be run on the XAMPP environment.

Posted by amitabh under PHP/MySQL
3 Comments

Hide Apache Information

To hide the information, add/change the following two apache directives in Apache configuration file /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

ServerTokens ProductOnly
ServerSignature Off

Now you need to restart your web server using the following command

# service httpd restart

Now the output for apache header looks like below

Server: Apache

Hide PHP Version in Apache from remote user’s requests

In your php.ini (the typical path is /etc/php.ini) locate the line containing “expose_php = On” and set it to Off:

expose_php = Off

Now you need to restart your web server using the following command

# service httpd restart

After making this change PHP will no longer add its signature to the web server header. Though, this step in itself will not make your server more secure, it will prevent remote hosts to easily see that you have PHP installed on the system and what version of Apache you are running on your web server.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by ankur under Linux, Web Hosting
0 Comments

Web hosting like any other commoditised service available on the Internet today, is tagged as a low cost option to enabling your presence on the web. Although, there are a plethora of low cost web hosting companies online today offering you GBs of space for pennies they simply cannot provide prompt and effective support to their clients due to such ‘hit and run’ selling methods.

At Diadem, we have worked hard to build a strong foundation for our web hosting service based on an untiring and a long term commitment to enable our clients to avail the most efficient hosting services which they have come to appreciate and trust from us.

In keeping with this continued focus to providing our clients with innovative web hosting services, we are pleased to offer our FREE web hosting service to clients booking a .IN domain with us. Our FREE web hosting plan is a win-win  proposition by enabling our clients to evaluating our hosting services and upgrading to a paid solution, after they find our services to meet their needs.

.IN domains are gaining in popularity and if you already have a .com or any other extension booked for your organisation, you should definitely consider a .IN version of that domain as well. This offer is also relevant for companies located outside India who wish to have a presence in the Indian market and a .IN domain is a great way to begin promoting their foray into Indian markets. More details and signup options are available on our Free Web Hosting page but as this is a limited period offer, I urge you to book your domain early to prevent any disappointments.

Free Web Hosting worth Rs. 999 with every .in Domain Registration.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by hriday under News & Updates, Web Hosting
0 Comments

If you had spent this Diwali in loading up on all the high calorie delicacies which you could lay your hands and went on a merry making overdrive, here are some quick tips which you can use to beat the Diwali blues and get back into action:

  • Get adequate sleep – go back to your usual sleeping pattern.
  • Get back to the gym – start with light weights and cardio workouts.
  • Eat home cooked food – keep it light and oil free.
  • Interface with your clients and coworkers – they are all in the same boat as you are.
  • Take it easy for the next few days – slide yourself in slowly and avoid going head on with your work.
  • Archive the memories – photos, video, cards. Share them or put them away in your closet.
  • Writeup a small list of things Todo to make your next Diwali brighter.

From all of us at Diadem, we wish you all a Happy Diwali and a sparkling New Year ahead!

Posted by hriday under News & Updates
0 Comments

Diagram of Various Tiers of security in datacenter network and at server level

security

At Diadem Technologies we take extreme precaution and safeguard of our mailing services to ensure continuous and reliable availability of our mailing services to our clients. We have all our servers located in the world’s leading datacenter which has a very secure environment with various levels of physical and hardware based protection to keep your data safe from different attacks and vulnerabilities. The servers have multi core Xeon processers and have RAID10 array of HDDs for complete data redundancy so that a hard disk crash would not affect the server operations and would not result in any loss of data on the server.

The servers are restricted to be accessed via the Public network so that no unauthorized access to the servers can be made. We use a secure encrypted VPN (virtual private network) connection that connects to the private backend network and hence the servers are only accessible to the legitimate admin users at our end.

For network level protection we have in place perimeter hardware firewalls by CISCO systems to block external threats along with CISCO GUARD DDOS (Distributed Denial of service) and CISCO Tipping point IPS (Intrusion prevention system). CISCO GUARD DDOS protects from requests that make a computer resource unavailable to its intended users and brings down the server to halt. CISCO Tipping point IPS is an advanced Intrusion prevention system that is used extensively in critical networks to monitor network and/or system activities for malicious or unwanted behavior and can react, in real-time, to block or prevent those activities. Network-based IPS, for example, will operate in-line to monitor all network traffic for malicious code or attacks. When an attack is detected, it can drop the offending packets while still allowing all other traffic to pass.

After passing through the various levels of security mentioned above we have more additional security features on the physical server for protecting the server /server applications and the inbound and outbound mails.

  • At the server we have robust software based firewalls that have been customized to add another level of security in the server.
  • We have SMTP connection tracking system to check all the connections that are being made to the server for sending or receiving mails. At this level various parameters of a mail are checked like if the IP of the sender is blacklisted in any third party Anti SPAM website, if the sender has a valid mail server, if the reverse DNS of the sender email server is valid.
  • We have enabled greylisting on the server to cut down on SPAM mails before they can enter the server. We have advanced content filtering along with anti spam software, antivirus, malware and anti root kit signatures that are updated regularly to block emerging threats immediately.
  • Once the mail is scanned with the above filters, we implement a new and unique technique to authorize defined servers only to server your emails through the use of SPF records. Any other servers would not be able to send or receive any mail on behalf of your domain. This will cut down spoofing of your emails.
  • At the last stage we have SMTP authentication enabled that allows mails to be relayed through our servers only for those who are intended to send mails hence reducing the unwanted relaying of mails.

The above illustration highlights our commitment to ensure that we provide our clients with the best of breed technologies to ensure spam free, virus free, efficient and continuous availability of our mailing services for their operations.

If you are interested in knowing more about our web hosting services and plan details, you can look us up at www.diadem.co.in.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by anirban under Linux, Web Hosting
0 Comments

Information Overload: The Power Of Knowledge Can Be Too Powerful To Handle At Times!

“Where is the Life we have lost in living? Where is the wisdom we have lost in knowledge? Where is the knowledge we have lost in information?”

- T.S.Elliot
(American born Playwright, Poet and Critic)

What is Information Overload?

Imagine the level of information your brain holds for you. Consider everything that you know. Starting from the primary levels of education in your beginning school to your highest degree or certification, the amount of information your brain holds for you can sometimes match some of the ultra powerful databases. But this is only formal education that we have considered!

Now look at the other side. Constantly, your brain has imbibed information since the day you were born. Experts suggest that this information is never erased from your brain. If you can learn the art of mind control efficiently, then you can recall each and every event in your life, every line or sentence that you have read, and even remember the smell of the food that you tasted for the first time in your life.

And we are still cramming information into our brain each day. This is natural, with the phone numbers, the website URLs, the text messages, your favorite songs or the TV series, the notes from your college or university, social media sites over the internet, RSS feeds, and much more, coming your way almost every minute.

What does all this result in?

“Information Overload!”

But How does Information Overload Affect Us?

There are many ways in which information overload can turn out to become a problem for us. Look at some the most commonly observed results by behavioral experts:

- Psychological Effects on your Mind that Slow you Down:

Mental tiredness, loss of memory, inability to recall recent events, lack of concentration, lack of focus, irritability, and a host of other psychological problems can result from information overload.

- Professional Arena:

Information overload affects your professional life as well. You display lower productivity and inefficiency at work, make silly mistakes with your job, get tired and frustrated easily, and prove to be a burden on your colleagues at times.

- Incorrect Use of Information:

It is often a very common thing to see people making the mistake of using the wrong information at the wrong places. This is another result of information overload and can often lead to serious problems.

- Addiction to the Internet:

With the internet acting as a universal knowledge-base, people have become highly addicted to it. This has resulted in the internet becoming a highly desirable tool for marketing. At the same time, there are a huge number of self proclaimed gurus online, who often turn out to be absolute con men!

- Staying Ahead of Your Peers on the Social Media Sites:

With every one of your friends on social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Blogger, etc, it becomes a challenge to be on each of those sites yourself, and connect with the maximum number of friends. The more friends you have on your blog and the more RSS feeds you subscribe to, the more popular you are. Consider gadgets like Blackberry and the other smart phones that let you stay online 24×7! These too leads to information overload.

- Loss in Revenue for Businesses:

Often companies and organizations lose hundreds of dollars because of information overload when they are not able to manage the information efficiently. Striving towards getting more information often causes misuse of data, and the money spent in gathering the data in turn is seen to be a complete waste.

The year 2008 alone saw around 1 billion dollars of productivity loss in the US due to information overload!

- (BASEX 2008)

The Chief Causes of Information Overload?

Information overload is an issue that has is seen due to a number of reasons. Let us look at the most common reasons that have resulted in it being a major issue for us today.

1. TV Channels

2. Offline free publications in your mailboxes

3. Mobility of services – like mobile internet

4. Mobile phone services like Texting

5. Websites, blogs, forums and community sites

6. RSS subscriptions

7. Marketing media

8. Education and training

9. Technology leading to globalization

10. Business Competition

All these reasons have greatly affected the present day world, resulting in our brains often getting crammed up with unimportant information, reducing productivity and efficiency for us, and hampering our health to a great extent.

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.”

- William Pollard

There are a Number of Ways to Curb this Issue with Information Overload

1. Learn to Recognize

One of the most important points to consider with information overload is to understand the authenticity of information that comes your way. For example, when you are online you will come across the self proclaimed gurus who would want to provide you with readily available free information that might be totally unimportant.

It is very important for you to be able to determine the authenticity of the people you come across online. Pay heed to only authentic information instead of believing each and every person that comes your way. This can prevent a lot of unwanted and incorrect information from causing burden for your brain.

2. Learn to Filter

Use effective measures for filtering unwanted information out to prevent Information overload. Unsubscribe from unwanted newsletters, blogs and community sites. Don’t give out your personal information easily or let businesses and sites add you on their mailing lists. Try to be very choosy about the sites and the people you are dealing with online and over the phone.

3. Discipline and Proper Scheduling

This is an important point to consider as well. You must discipline yourself with the information that you access through each day to prevent information overload on your brain. Try to avoid watching too much television for a start. Whenever you feel like there is some information coming your way that you may do without, avoid it. You have to discipline yourself with regards to the amount of information that you expose yourself to.

It is a good idea to maintain a schedule every month as to what your targets are and follow up on it efficiently. This will restrict you from trying to get too much done and venture into too many things. This needs a fair bit of discipline on your part to enjoy the full advantage of this.

4. Proper Planning

Even when you are looking at staying ahead of your competition in the market, you have to be very clear with how you are going to go for it. If you try to stay ahead of each and every trend in your business, you might end up being unable to achieve anything of significant value. Hence try to set your goals, and plan accordingly.

Even when you are looking at acquiring new skills and information on better systems for your business, you must go about doing it step by step. Don’t try to achieve too many things too quickly. This will make it too tough to manage and you will not be able to concentrate on anything properly. This generally causes undue stress and tension for you, lowering your productivity.

5. Sleep, Rest and Meditate

One of the strongest medicines for getting rid of information overload is through proper rest and meditation. This always calms down your mind, and helps it to be able to organize and manage information more efficiently. Enough sleep and rest can reduce the anxiety and irritability that is often a very pronounced result of information overload.

The Final Word with Information Overload

As we have seen, information overload has proved to be a major issue in a number of cases. Most of us suffer from this at some point of time or the other, and blame technology and internet for being the chief cause for this. However, it becomes important for us to consider the fact that while technology can be a major reason for information overload, it is on us whether we want to be a victim of this problem or not.

Technology and the internet have a huge scope of options for us. Consider walking into a huge supermarket. There is going to be hundreds of products, offers and items for you to look at, and you can spend hours just looking at the products on display without really purchasing anything. When you finally walk out, you might not have purchased even a single item. So you have spent time to return you nothing.

The internet is nothing but a supermarket. There are millions of sites on it offering you with a never-ending database of information. There are offers, knowledgebase articles, games, movies, videos, music, news articles, and everything else that you might want to learn about. And companies want you to look at their sites to get more site traffic.

Advertisers and promotional agencies make the internet even more compelling and addictive for its target audience, making it harder for you to get off it. So, the onus is on you as to how you are going to discipline yourself and recognize what is it that is important enough for you time on the internet. Use the internet to your advantage – don’t let the agencies over the internet take the advantage of you!

We are currently living in a world where information can travel across the globe in seconds and disseminated for free. It is for you to decide how much of it is useful for you and whether it makes adds value to whatever you are involved in. “Necessity is the mother of invention”, which means technology was designed to help us. Try to focus on the information that you require instead of going for whatever you can get hold of, just because its available.

“Books like friends should be few and well chosen” and the same holds true for all the social networking websites, portals and the offline media which are overwhelming us with information but might not be adding any significant value to our overall growth and well being.

“Knowing a great deal is not the same as being smart; intelligence is not information alone but also judgment, the manner in which information is collected and used”


- Dr. Carl Sagan
(American Astronomer and Scientist)

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by admin under Marketing Tips & Advice
0 Comments

Nowadays, quite a few ISPs block port# 25 which is the default SMTP port for relaying email for security purposes, so you need to configure an alternative port for SMTP connection.

Use instructions below to configure an additional alternate SMTP port in a Plesk Server running in Redhat Enterprise Linux Version 4/5 or CentOS version 5 in Qmail Server.

Choose any unused port and add it to the /etc/services file, for example:

smtp_alt        8425/tcp        mail            # Alternate SMTP Port
smtp_alt        8425/udp        mail            # Alternate SMTP Port (optional)

Make a copy of /etc/xinetd.d/smtp_psa to /etc/xinetd.d/smtp_psa_alt and correct service line within new file:

service smtp_alt

Below is a sample of smtp_psa_alt file.

service smtp_alt
{
socket_type     = stream
protocol        = tcp
wait            = no
disable         = no
user            = root
instances       = UNLIMITED
server          = /var/qmail/bin/tcp-env
server_args     = -Rt0 /var/qmail/bin/relaylock /var/qmail/bin/qmail-smtpd /var/qmail/bin/smtp_auth /var/qmail/bin/true /var
/qmail/bin/cmd5checkpw /var/qmail/bin/true
}

Restart xinetd and Qmail

service xinetd restart
service qmail restart

SMTP connections will be accepted on the both standard and 8025 ports. You may also need to reconfigure Horde IMP (webmail) settings so it uses the alternative SMTP port too. This can be done editing the following file in Horde webmail:

/etc/psa-horde/imp/servers.php file under smtpport parameter for both IMAP and POP3 servers.

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by ankur under Linux, Plesk Control Panel
0 Comments

This post on SEO tips is meant for small business owners and individuals who have an online presence for their organisation but are unable to generate consistent and relevant traffic from the search engines (namely Google, Yahoo and Bing) to further their online presence and get a measurable return on their investment.

Without a doubt getting ranked on the leading search engines for keywords which are relevant to your products or services is the most effective way to boost your online revenues. However, it is surprising how little thought and effort is being spent by most web developers and website owners in improving their rankings on the search engines. The following SEO tips should improve your search engine rankings and help you generate relevant search engine traffic from Google and others on a consistent basis.

SEO Tip #1: Check if your relevant web pages are listed on Google

The first step would be to check if Google has already indexed the pages which you are hoping would be listed on its search database. To do this you should go to Google and type in the text info: followed by the url which you want to check on the Google’s index, e.g. info:www.diadem.co.in/web-hosting/web-hosting.html. If your webpage has been indexed by Google, it would show up on the search results, otherwise, you will get a ‘Sorry, no information is available for the URL:’, which means that the Googlebot and possibly the other search engine spiders has not yet been able to index your page on their search database.

SEO Tip #2: Check for relevant keywords using the Google Keyword Tool

The next step would be to check which are the relevant keywords which people are searching for on the search engines. There are many paid tools such as Wordtracker and Keyword Discovery but I would recommend using the Google Keyword Tool if you are starting off with keyword analysis. The Google Keyword tool allows you to enter your key phrases and come up with an estimate of the Global and Local search volume for that keyword alongwith the competition index if you wish to use Adwords to get listed on the sponsored listings section for that keyword.

SEO Tip #3: Create separate ‘landing pages’ for each keyword or a group of closely linked keywords

The next important step would be to create a landing page dedicated for that keyword or a cluster of closely grouped keywords which are related to each other. In SEO parlance, such pages are known as ‘landing pages’ as they bring users from the search engines to a URL within your website which has relevant content to the users search needs and not directly to the homepage.

SEO Tip #4: Your webpage URL should contain the relevant keyword which you wish to optimise

If you are optimising your landing page for ‘tour agents in india’, your webpage url should ideally have these keywords within its url, e.g. www.yourdomain.com/tour-agents-in-india.html. If your website is based on a CMS like Joomla, use .htaccess and mod_rewrite apache modules to create SEF (search engine friendly) URLs for your webpages.

SEO Tip #5: Update every page of your website with relevant and unique metatags

Though the importance of meta description and keyword tags don’t seem to play a big role in enhancing your search engine rankings, each page of your website should have a unique meta description and meta keyword tag to ensure that search engines identify each of your pages as unique use display the meta description text below the search engine listings text.

SEO Tip #6: Images used within your landing pages should have the same name as the keyword which you intend to optimise

As the search engines cannot decipher the visually stunning graphics on your website, you need to ensure the following:

  • The image name contains the keyword which you are optimising for your landing page, e.g. chennai-hotels.jpg.
  • The alt text tag for the image name should also contain the desired keyword, e.g. alt=”hotels in chennai”.

SEO Tip #7: Write original SEO content which is easy to read and relevant to your target audience

Search engines are looking for original, unique content which is well written and grammatically correct so you should avoid stuffing your landing pages with keywords or having text which is poorly written.

SEO Tip #8: Limit the number of times your keyword is repeated on the body content of your page

As a thumb rule, do not repeat the keywords more then 3-4 times on the body of your page as the search engines might penalise your webpage if they consider that your page is being stuffed with the same text beyond a reasonable no. of times.

SEO Tip #9: Generate a sitemap for your website to enable search engines to index your content

Creating a sitemap and submitting it to Google using the Webmaster Tools allows Google to index your site much faster (sometimes within a few days) in comparison with waiting and hoping for the Googlebot to come over and re-index the content of your website. You can create a Google compatible XML sitemap for your website at XML-sitemaps.com, which is free and efficient.

SEO Tip #10: Check if your landing pages are indexed on Google and listed for those keywords

Once you have submitted your site through the Webmaster Tools, check back every few days if Google has indexed your landing page (use the Tip #1, stated above). After your webpage has been indexed by Google, you can check the search rankings for your page using the Free Keyword Position Checker Tool by SEOCentro. This tools allows you to enter your desired keyword, your website URL and lists the ranking of your website on the Google, MSN and Yahoo.

So there you have it, the 10 tips on SEO which is a surefire way to get your site listed and ranked on the search engines. You can repeat this process all over again for the next set of keywords which you wish to optimise for your website. There are other advanced methods to improve your rankings on the search engines and hopefully we will touch upon them in our future posts. However, the above guidelines are proven to boost SEO rankings and are used by leading SEO consultants worlwide, so you should be in good company!

Happy Rankings and feel free to post your comments to this post.
1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (1 votes, average: 5.00 out of 5)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by hriday under Marketing Tips & Advice, SEO
1 Comment

Your website is a key tool to enable your business to reach out to many thousands of potential prospects over the world wide web and it needs to be updated and improved upon on a continuous basis to ensure that you have your best foot forward and your prospects choose your services over the competition.

Here are my Top 11 reasons, which I feel should move you to rework your online presence, if one or more of these reasons apply to your website:

1. My website is outdated, looks unprofessional and doesn’t have the upmarket feel which I need to project of my company!

2. The products/services which we sell are not updated online and leads to confusion when we meet our clients.

3. My website is not built on W3C web standards.

4. My site is not search engine optimized and doesn’t rank well on the search engines.

5. I need to manage/update my website content on my own through a backend CMS platform.

6. My website is not built using open source tools and applications.

7. My website developer is unable to work on my website and I need to work with another developer.

8. My website is done using Flash and takes ages to load online.

9. My website doesn’t render properly across the current browsers due to issues with the JS/PHP code.

10. My website is not ready to handle online transactions

11. My website code is insecure and vulnerable to XSS issues and SQL injection vulnerabilities.

If you can come up with additional reasons to redo your web presence, please share them by posting your comment to this post! :)

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by hriday under Marketing Tips & Advice
0 Comments

We are delighted to announce the successful completion of the acquisition of Catchcal.net web hosting and domain registration services and bring all its existing clients and services within our fold. Catchcal is a 10 year old web hosting and domain services company operating out of Kolkata and I have known its owner, Mr. Amit Keshan since its inception and we have had very cordial relations till date. We have also been providing Catchcal with our hosting platform on Linux and Windows servers and he had successfully grown his web hosting services to nearly 150 hosted domains and over 100 clients during this period.

As Amit’s core focus had shifted in outsourced web development services, he wanted his clients to be taken care of by someone he could trust and depend on and that’s where we came into the picture. Our decade long expertise in managing managing servers, websites and underlying systems enables us to provide our clients with reliable and secure web hosting services. This capability will come in handy to ensure that all Catchcal clients continue to get the reliable hosting services and also get access to the latest web hosting tools and technologies which we have been providing to our clients.

This being our third webhost acquisition over a span of 5 years,  it would enable us to further consolidate our position as a leading webhost from this region and stay focused on providing enhanced levels of support on a personal basis at a significantly lower cost than other comparable web hosts in India.

To celebrate this event, we are offering a flat 20% discount on all our domain and hosting services which is purchased online through our website, www.diadem.co.in. Simply use the promocode 20OFF and get a 15% discount on your next website hosting or domain name purchase. Please note that this offer is only valid till the end of this month, i.e. 31 Aug 09, so make the most of it while this offer is available.

Stay tuned for more service offerings and promos from Diadem Technologies over the next few weeks!

1 Star2 Stars3 Stars4 Stars5 Stars (No Ratings Yet)
 Loading ... Loading ...

Posted by hriday under News & Updates
5 Comments