Author: Michael Yung

Michael possessed over 30 years of experience in Information Technology with focuses on complex application development, database technologies and IT strategy. He also spent the last 20 years in Internet technology, eCommerce development / operations, web usability, computer security and Public Key Infrastructure technologies.

Site Revamp with Amazon aStore

Really tied of keep updating my other site, 80days.com, with travel content. So I decided to change it to a shopping site with all sorts of travel related goods. Surprisingly, it just took me an hour for a four-pages, three-categories eShopping site. What can I say ? Amazon.com is still king of eCommerce sites with a good business model.

We Are Sailing, Home Again Cross the Sea

We gather only once every one or two years, but really have not much to say every time. I reckon it’s like what George Ebers quoted …

Friendship is genuine when two friends can enjoy each others company without speaking a word to one another.

Indeed, instead of speaking, I played a few CDs that evening … “When I Dream”, “What a Wonderful World”, “If You Don’t Know Me By Now”, and of course “Sailing”.

To Plan or Not To Plan

Let’s say you have a great idea, you have read all the Entrepreneurial Proverbs … and you’re ready to jump. Then what next ?

Some one will probably tell you that it is a time for a business plan. And of course, you have no idea on how to start, to prepare and to pitch a good business plan. You can obviously buy a lot of reference books, download dozens of templates from the net etc. … but after many nights of drafting and you then reckon – you do not enjoy writing a business plan at all.

“Help !!”

So, how about an excellent piece of advice from the start-up Guy Kawasaki, one of the few Macintosh Evangelists 2x years ago ? Enter the Zen of Business Plans.

Then you will learn why, from the end of the article – The plan, after all, should not take on a life of its own. Enjoy.

How To – Upgrade Lifetype

Many of you may need to upgrade your Lifetype time to time, therefore I think it may be useful if there is a simple guideline (from a user point of view) to go thru those steps … on top of the detailed wiki article in Lifetype (don’t forget to read it, it is a must). Here is the guideline:

  • First, backup your data using MySQL export tool, e.g. phpMyAdmin. Save this export dump to your local PC.
  • Then, you have to backup the changes you have done to your Lifetype engine before. In most cases they are changes in your template, plugin, javascripts, resources etc. Therefore, create a directory in your local PC, and ftp the following possible changes from the server and save in this local PC directory as backup :
    • The files / directories under /gallery/ – these are your resources files
    • Any files / directories of your current template under /templates/
    • The files / directories of the plugins your installed under /plugins/
    • The javascripts like prototype.js, scriptaculous.js etc.
    • The .htaccess file – that may include some Apache changes
    • The config.properties.php in /config/ – that is your current Lifetype settings
    • The files you changed in /locale/, in case you have set up your own language files or changed any text strings.
  • Then, rename your current Lifetype directory to something else – e.g. lifetype_old, blog_old etc. You can remove this directory later if your upgrade is successful.
  • Third, download the latest version of Lifetype, upload to your server.
  • Fourth, unzip the new Lifetype, and rename the new Lifetype to your original directory name – e.g. lifetype, blog etc. And also rename the config.properties.php as something like “config.properties.php.original”.
  • Now, copy all the changes you backed up to the new Lifetype installation – gallery, plugins, config.properties.php, javascripts etc. in the right places.
  • Lastly, run the wizard.php … and the rest is done by the script.
  • That’s it !!

Hope it helps.