Project management software is big money.  For you to have something custom developed, it would run well into the thousands of dollars.  If you decide to go the hosted route, expect to pay about $50 a month for decent stuff.

In this how-to podcast, we’re going to show you how to build your very own project management suite.  Your clients can log in.  Your people can log in.  Everyone can keep tabs on what’s going on, upload files, send emails, and all sorts of other fun stuff.

Here the podcast notes:

• We’re going to be using Collabtive
  • Install instructions:
    • Unpack the Collabtive archive in a directory of your choice.
    • Next, upload all the files to your webserver.
    • Make the following files/folders writable:   /files    /templates_c    config.php
    • Then open the installer in your browser.
    • Point your browser to http://yourdomain.com/collabtive_dir/install.php to do that.
• Commercial offerings and other services
  • Basecamp
  • GoalsOnTrack
  • GoPlan
  • ActiveCollab
  • Jira

All set!  Let me know what you think!

Most generally, the money you make with your website is from advertisers.  The most recent trend, aside from text link ads, is 125 x 125 pixel banners.

Today, I am going to show you how to install and deploy your own private ad server using OpenX.  That means you can sell your own ad and keep 100% of the profit!  This ad server is going be capable of running any size banner ad or text link you need to serve.

nH005 - How To Build Your Own Ad Server shownotes:

• Intoduction to OpenX
• Other ad servers and ad networks I mentioned
  • Buy Sell Ads
  • Text Link Ads
  • Wordpress Ad Server Plugin
• The install process
• OpenX tutorials

Enjoy!

RSS readers are a dime a dozen.  My personal favorite is Google Reader.  It’s got great integration and support which makes keeping up on news all the more easy.  But to me, that’s a whole lot of data that I could use more efficiently if it was on my own server!

Today, we’re going to show you how to set up your very own server-side RSS reader.  It’s going to poll the feed list every 30 minutes and display the new items in a nice, ajax style list so you can get through them quickly and efficiently.  It will also have a search function so if you forget a piece of news, you can search for it.

The open source software that we’re going to use is Rnews.  Its a feed aggregator that works really, really well.  There is a Firefox plugin available at Sourceforge so you can post any blog or RSS feed directly to your server.

The concept is relatively simple through the web installation wizard…  Here’s the install instructions:

Personally, issues I have are that the good services charge and all your information is sitting on someone else’s server!

Today, I am going to walk you through setting up your own social bookmarking application that you can open up to the world, or you can close off to yourself.  Either way, all you data is going to be safe and secure, and you’ll have your databases for backup!

For this tutorial - we are going to be using Scuttle - the open source bookmarking app.

1. First and foremost - download Scuttle
2. Extract it to your desktop
3. Upload it to your webserver, whichever folder you want it to live in.
4. Create a database and import the .SQL file found in the scuttle folder to create the necessary tables.
5. Edit Scuttle’s config.inc.php.example file to your own parameters
6. Set the permissions on the /cache/ directory to 0777
7. Go to the url!

Here’s a video tour:

Now, with Scuttle, there aren’t any admin screens or any way to protect against spam.  There are Scuttle versions such as SemanticScuttle which provide a capcha like question for a user to answer before they sign up.  It should work and I am testing it as we speak..

If there are any questions or thoughts, please let me know!  There are two other server side bookmarking apps that I’ll be covering in the next couple posts, but if you know of any - please feel free to jump in!

Jason

But I bookmark them, nevertheless.

There are all sorts of tools out there that help people like me.  There’s:

• The Read It Later Firefox Plugin

  This Firefox plugin is great.  I see that now it’ll sync to a server so that you can manage your bookmarks from any browser.  When it was first launched, it would just save to a special folder in your bookmarks.My problem was that you couldn’t add notes…

• Readbag

  Readbag was another goodie I found.  And I used the hell out of it.  There is probably 500 or so bookmarks in there - most of which I have read and want to save.  But now, they’re requiring a fee to save anything more.

  Not that I mind paying - but there is still the ownership issue.  In fact, the system resides on Google’s servers, so you are still at their mercy.  After all, one corporation can only be SO powerful and have SO much data, right?I have gotten very accustomed to the mindset of doing things like this - just ‘cuz I can!

So I ventured off to build my own bookmarking service.  Something that I can use for me.  If other people want to use it as well, that’s cool - but that wasn’t the intent.

Over these next couple posts, I am going to show you how to deploy a completely free bookmarking app on your own server.  It can be the same one that your blog resides on.  And if you’re real ambitious, you can even build your own server out of old components and go from there!

Here’s is my bookmarking site: markbots.com

And if you want a firefox extension for it: Go here

EDIT:  I went ahead and did the tutorial on a different post - but it occurred to me that it should be here too - so below, you’ll find the video!

This video podcast will show you how to set up Ubuntu Server as a virtual operating system. That way you can build applications or websites without taking the time to continually upload and download files from a web server!

Things you’ll need to get your web server  up and running:

• VirtualBox
• Ubuntu Server

Once that’s set up, head over to this post to see how to install EHCP.

30 different how-to articles will tell you 30 different ways of setting up a web server environment. My personal preference is using EHCP.

EHCP is a quick and easy framework for quickly installing all your PHP, Apache and email goodness. It’s self automated and will grab all the libraries you need to host your own websites in a matter of minutes.

After you have a working version of Ubuntu or any other Linux operating system, install putty and ehcp. Here’s where you’ll need to grab:

• Putty
• EHCP

And the video will show the rest.

Web servers don’t need tons of resources.  An old box with 40GB of disk space and 512 mb will do in a server pretty nicely.  Especially if you’re just using it for development!

This video shows you how to set up the Ubuntu Server operating system.  Once you get it installed, check out the post on how to set up EHCP which will install PHP, Apache, MySQL quickly and easily…

What you’ll need:

• An computer - new or old
• Ubuntu Server
• How To Set Up Your Web Hosting Control Panel

We’re going to set up a studio/set here at my new house, so these things are going to be taped weekly…  With this edition, I think we finally figured out how we want to edit them!

Download the torrent: .mp4/.mov or  .wmv

Podcasting is something we have been excited about ever since we started NetHackz.  But being in front of a camera - now that’s a whole different story!

Check it out and let us know what you think!  We covered a bunch of NH stories, gave props to some sponsors, and talked about the Apple/Microsoft scuffle that has been going on.  There was a lot of conversation about the Iphone and the G1 as well.

We are interested to hear what you think.  Do you like it?  What would you do differently?  We have to get up to speed on sound and video editing, but other than that I really had a lot of fun doing it!

PS. Add us at iTunes! Or download the torrent!

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…