Gruffys Free Domain Parking Script

Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script is a simple and FREE script I created for domain names I have purchased with the intention of selling at a later date. Rather than have the name lying dormant, you can put it to work for you by making it advertise itself, as well as by displaying Google Ads which can make you money. This script can also be easily modified to suit regular parked domains.

Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script is made available here FREE of charge, I offer no warranties, support, and accept no responsibility for consequences of its use (unless you make heaps of money and want to give some of it to me). By downloading and using Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script you are confirming that you understand these conditions and acknowledge you are using it AT YOUR OWN RISK!

Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script
Gruffy’s Domain Parking Script

Detailed usage instructions can be found HERE.

SCREENSHOT:

Parking-Capture

Easiest and Best way to copy and run a live published WordPress blog web site on your local MAC computer for testing and development

Wordpress-logo

super-detailed

**NOTE** – THIS ARTICLE VERSION IS WRITTEN FOR MAC USERS – WINDOWS VERSION COMING SOON

PART 1 – Setting up MAMP (Experts Shortcut – Install MAMP and proceed to step 2)

If you have a WordPress Blog or Web Site, it can be VERY handy sometimes to be able to take your live published site and copy onto your local computer. This enables you to play with, set up and assess plugins, try out new themes and layouts, and generally mess with your site without affecting your real live site.

To get started you need to create an environment that will allow your site to function on your computer. The two main ingredients to a WordPress installation are PHP (web language) and SQL (Database). To get these two engines running on your computer you need to download some free software that installs them as part of a server. MAMP (Macintosh + Apache + MySQL + PHP) is excellant for this. It is available free from MAMP.info HERE. The free version and the paid version are bundled together, but for our purpose here, the free version will be fine, so lets go ahead and install that. Once you have downloaded MAMP, Unzip the zip file and run the installer package.

MAMP-INSTALL-1

Click continue.

MAMP-INSTALL-2Click Continue.

MAMP-INSTALL-3If you agree, click continue.

MAMP-INSTALL-4Confirm you Agree……click continue……And once you arrive at the screen below, we will tell the installer not to worry about MAMP PRO, and to just install MAMP Free. (If you want to try MAMP PRO free for 14 days, skip the following 2 steps).

MAMP-INSTALL-5a

Click the “Customize” button in the left.

MAMP-INSTALL-6Uncheck the “MAMP PRO” option.

MAMP-INSTALL-7Type your password to allow the installer to run.

MAMP-INSTALL-8Once the installer has finished, click “Close” in the lower right hand corner. You can now open a new finder window, and in your Applications folder you will see a new folder called “MAMP”.

MAMP-INSTALL-9Double click the “MAMP” application to start it up.

MAMP-INSTALL-10a

Now click the “Start Servers” button.

Mamp-11Once you have green lights, click “Open Start Page’. this will open your browser to a page that will tell you if all your services (IE PHP and SQL) are up and running on your machine.

MAMP-RUNNING

WOOHOO! We’re ready to start copying our web site!

PART 2 – COPYING LIVE SITE

Its now time to copy over the files from the site we want to clone. To get started, log into that site, For this tutorial, I am going to use my Photography and Design site Gruffpuppy as an example. Once logged in, click “Plugins” and select “Add New”

1In the search field type “Duplicator”.

2Once Duplicator is found, Install and then Activate the plugin.

3When activated a new item will appear in the Column Menu on the left side called “Duplicator”. Click it, and you will be brought to the main screen of the plugin. To begin downloading a copy of your live site, the Duplicator asks you to name the back up package. You can change the default name, but in my experience the default auto generated name that is already in there seems to work without error. If you are happy with the name, click the “Create” button, the first in the top right row.

4

You will now be asked to confirm, and Duplicator will start compressing your entire site into a zip file, ready for download. This can take a while, so now is a good time to stretch your legs and get a drink. Once it has finished compressing, the screen will update automatically with your available downloads.

5

You will need to download both files (Installer and Package) to your desktop. If you have a large site, the package file can take some time to download. Once your files are downloaded, there’s one more small task.

permalinks-2Select “Settings” from the column menu on the left and then “Permalinks”.

permalinks-1Although no action need be taken, It is important to take note of the setting. As you can see, mine is set to “Day and Name”, but yours could be different. We need to know this setting when we recreate and activate the copy/clone of our site later. Once you have written down or memorized your permalinks setting, you can log out of your site.

PART 3 – SETTING UP A DATABASE FOR YOUR CLONE

The next step is to set up a blank SQL database on your computer. With MAMP running, click the “Open Start Page” button again, and click “phpMyAdmin” from the top menu of the page that opens.

php1Now, click “Databases”.

php2In the create databases field, type a name for the new database. It can be whatever you want, but it is important that you write it down, as we will need to use the name later. Im calling mine “gruffpuppy”, one word, all in lower case. Then click the “Create”. Once this is done, close out of the web browser window. There is no need to create “Users” for the database as we will use the root/default user account, which is automatically created for every database.

PART 4 – CREATE THE COPY/CLONE OF YOUR SITE

With MAMP still running, and your server active (Green Lights) , its time to move the files “Duplicator” created to your local server directory.

duplicate-wordpress-website-3

Open a new finder window, and go to “Applications”, open the “MAMP” folder, and then open “htdocs”.

duplicate-wordpress-website-4Drop the zip folder and the “installer.php” file Duplicator created in and close the finder window.

duplicate-wordpress-website-6Open up your favorite web browser (For this tutorial I will be using Firefox, as there’s a little bug I want to show you, that doesn’t seem to appear in Safari) and in the address bar type “localhost:8888” and you will see a directory listing of your “htdocs” folder.

duplicate-wordpress-website-7Double click the “installer.php” file and the Duplicator installer will open. YAY! This means your server is all working great, and you are viewing your first web page on your local server. Now it’s time to set up the database connection. In the MySQL Server area, leave “Host” set to localhost. in “User” type “root”, as we will be connecting using the automatically created user profile I mentioned earlier. In “Password” type the word “root” again, and for “Database Name” you need to type the name you specified earlier in phpMyAdmin. I used “gruffpuppy” so that’s what I am typing here. When your done, press “Test Connection”.

duplicate-wordpress-website-8

As you can see, my connection is good and I am ready to move on to the next step. If you receive an error here, you need to go back and check your credentials. It’s usually a typo of your credentials or database name. Once you have a successful connection click the “Close” button.

duplicate-wordpress-website-9Check the warning box and click “Run Deployment”.

duplicate-wordpress-website-10Another warning will pop up, which is irrelevant to this project, so go ahead and click “OK”.

duplicate-wordpress-website-11Duplicator will now start building the copy of your WordPress Web Site. This can take a while so be patient.

duplicate-wordpress-website-12Once installation has finished, you are given an opportunity to change some parameters. Unless you have some special circumstances outside of the scope of this tutorial, your fine to accept the default settings. Click “Update Tables”

duplicate-wordpress-website-13The next screen means the duplication of your site is now complete, and there’s just a little bit of house keeping to be done before you can use your site.

STEP 5 – FINISHING UP THE INSTALL

At this point, I recommend closing all open windows of your web browser and opening one new window with your default homepage showing, and then clear your browser history, cache and cookies etc. More often than not in Firefox the next step will yield an error in the process and you will not be able to continue. It looks to me like something that is kept in your browsers memory blocks the CSS (cascading Style Sheets) from loading and your site looks like this:

duplicate-wordpress-website-15a

If you are using Firefox, Select “Tools” from the menu bar and then “Clear Recent History” gets you going, and in Safari, Click “Safari” and then “Reset Safari” to bring up the browser cleaning options. Once you are all cleaned up, type “localhost:8888/wp-admin” in your web browsers address bar and VOILA!

duplicate-wordpress-website-14Log in to your site with your regular username and password.

duplicate-wordpress-website-16From the menu column on the left select “Settings” and then “Permalinks”.

duplicate-wordpress-website-17

Referring back to the note we made in step 2, make sure the appropriate setting is selected (mine was Day and Name) and press “Save Changes”. Even if your setting is already selected, it is still important to press the “Save Changes” buttons so the option is written to the database.

duplicate-wordpress-website-18Your site is now completely cloned/copied to your local machine and you can mess with it until the cows come home without affecting your live site in any way.

STEP 6 – HOUSEKEEPING

The last step is to delete your install files from your “htdocs” folder.

duplicate-wordpress-website-15Locate the “installer-data.sql”, “installer-log.txt” and “installer.php” files, move them to the trash and give yourself a pat on the back! YOU DID IT!

 

The Easiest way to download Youtube Videos

youtube-logo-smlI have just discovered the EASIEST way yet to download, save and keep videos from Youtube! Its SO easy that it is scary.

downloader

To use Flash Video Downloader you need to be using the Cool, Free, and really awesome Mozilla Firefox web browser. In Firefox, open the “Tools” option from the menu bar, then open “Add Ons”. Do a search for “Flash Video Downloader”, then click install once the plug in is found. Once it is installed, restart Firefox and you will now have a new “Download” button.

download button

 All you need to do when you find something you want to keep, is to click the download button, select the format you want, choose where you want to save the file, and download away!

HOW COOL!

How to listen to 80’s Hairband’s Music and other Internet Radio Stations 24 Hours a day – Part One – On The Go

I just love the internet radio station 181FM 80’s Hairbands. I love all of those glam rock bands like Poison, Motley Crue and Bon Jovi. I find myself listening to it daily, and in a variety of places. It occured to me that not everybody is aware of internet radio, and the plethora of cool music that is available to you, so I thought I would put together a tutorial on how you can listen to any of the thousands of internet radio stations anywhere, 24 hours a day, and we’ll use 80’s Hairbands as an example.

Part 1 – If you want to listen in your car, or through your head phones on the go, your phone is the best bet. Navigate to the App store for your phone (I’m using iPhone for this tutorial, but Tune In has a Free app for Android, Palm, Blackberry and Windows phones as well – see HERE) and search for the FREE Tune In Radio App.

Once you have downloaded and installed the app, open it and press “Browse” down the bottom.

In the search bar that appears at the top, type “80’s Hairband”

181FM 80’s Hairband Station should be the first one, so click it, and it should start playing. With in seconds of pressing it for this tutorial, I was listening to Malmsteen….SWEET HUH!

At this point it is important to make the station a favorite, so each time you want to listen, you dont have to go through the whole searching routine. To make it a Favorite, press the “Heart” in the top right corner, and then press “Add 181fm 80’s Hairbands to Favorites”.

Another station I also recommend is the Hard Drivin Radio NetworksBig 80’s Metal

 

How to listen to 80′s Hairband’s Music and other Internet Radio Stations 24 Hours a day – Part Two – At Work

In PART 1, we looked at how to listen to internet radio (specifically 181FM 80’s Hairband Station) on the go. In this part, we will look at two ways to listen at the office on your computer with a web browser, assuming your computer has sound capabilities. The quickest and easiest way to listen is to simply navigate to www.181.fm.

Once there, you will find a list of ALL of their cool stations down the left hand side. There’s SO much good music to listen to there. But if its Glam your looking for,  Just navigate down to “80’s Hairband”, and click it. A new window will open with a player in it, and it should start playing immediately.

Another way to listen to internet radio through your web browser is to go to Tunein.com, and in this case, again, we will search for “80’s Hairband” in the search bar at the top.

Once 181FM 80’s Hairbands appears, click it to open a new window which contains a player, and even the album art for the songs it is playing.

How to listen to 80′s Hairband’s Music and other Internet Radio Stations 24 Hours a day – Part Three – At Home

In Part 2, we looked at how to play Internet Radio on a web browser, but at home you are more likely to have iTunes installed, which is a better way to listen in my opinion.

With iTunes open, look down the left hand side, and find the word “Radio”.

Bet you didn’t even know that was there did you! Give it a click, and behold the staggering amount of music you have access to that you didn’t even know was there!

Towards the bottom of the list you will find 80’s Flashback. Expand this category by clicking the triangle to the left, and way down the bottom you will find 181FM 80’s Hairband.

Give it a click, and it will start playing.

To avoid having to do the search each time, just grab the listing for “181FM 80’s Hairband” and drag it to the playlist area and drop it.

It will create a link to the station, so next time you want to listen, all you need to do is click the playlist, and it will start playing immediately. Cool Huh!