If you did not realize by now that I have been using Photobucket as my photo hosting site, what have you been doing all these time? I have used Photobucket to host my images since March! And to tell you the truth, I am quite impressed with the speed. Again, I would like to stress that I am not paid by Photobucket to say nice things about them, nor did they offer me free premium photo hosting services if I kiss their ass more often. Nothing of that sort. I am using their free service already. Basically they have 2 level of service, one is the basic free service while the other is the Pro, which is a premium service. Well, the Pro account gives you a bigger storage space, more bandwidth and ability to use FTP to upload or download your images. And the cost is US$39.95 per year, which I think is quite reasonable.

When I first started this blog, I actually wanted to host the pictures and photos on my own webhost. Then I realize that images do use up a lot of bandwidth and this will eat into my allocation for the month. So in order to save on bandwidth, I decided to use another third party hosting for the images. And I found Photobucket. I was rather impressed at the speed they provide. I am sure that their servers are always overfilled with images and photos, but yet for most time of the day, I do get some fairly decent speeds. Of course, I am not saying that the speed is blazing fast, but acceptable to me and I am sure acceptable to most webmasters out there. I mean for god’s sake, it’s free.

I am now very tempted to get the Pro account. But I think for the time being, I don’t really need it. I doubt that the number of visitors to my blog will go so high as to finish all the bandwidth allocated to my free account. So, I am sure that I will find better use for my money. However, that doesn’t mean that you can’t go ahead and apply for their Pro account.

Yup, the one I purchased from eBay and sent all the way from the US! It has finally arrived! Considering that I had purchased this pack just on 12th August and it arrived today 20th August, I am quite impressed. It took just 8 days for the pack to ship from the US to Singapore. Not bad, I am thinking that I could be buying more stuff from the Internet, especially if the stuff from my local homebrew store is too damn expensive (well just like yeast).

And with the arrival of the yeast means that I am on track to make the Apfelwein this weekend. I will be using two packs of this Cote Des Blancs yeast to make what will hopefully be some very fine Apple Wine. I read that using Cote Des Blancs yeast will produce a very smooth wine which I am very keen to try. But I have also heard some bad things like there will be sort of like a buttery aftertaste and that it takes very long to ferment finish. Well, for that reason, I will be adding yeast nutrients to the must as well using 2 packets of yeast. That should give the yeast a good boost and hopefully, it will not produce that buttery flavour in the wine. Who likes wine that taste like oily butter anyways? Definitely not me.

Well, I have added some pictures of the yeast.

That’s 10 packets of Cote des Blancs yeast! Should last me quite a while. Of course, it will mainly depend on whether the result of the wine is decent enough to continue making Apfelwein.

Red Star Cote de Blancs in all it’s glory. It is an active dry wine yeast and Levure Oenologique Seche et Active, whatever that means. Oh, it is also Kosher, so it should be alright for Jews to use this yeast. And oh, the manufacturer is Red Star. I believe that they are related to the former Soviet Union. The 5 gram pack should be enough for 23 litres of wine, but we have 10 packs and it’s cheap, so why not use 2 packs to ensure we get the best results.

The back of the yeast packet with instructions. Basically, they are telling you to rehydrate the yeast, which I think I will be doing. It is always good to rehydrate your yeast in order for your yeast to gain enough water to rebuild their cells before you pitch it and shock the hell out of it in the sugar rich must. Sort of like getting it more prepared for work. Well guys, this is the stuff that will be making all those precious alcohol we all love so much. So let’s give them all the respect they deserve.

Well guys, this has been 2 years in the making. I have complied a list of restaurants in Singapore. They include Chinese, Indian, Japanese, Thai, Fusion and other types of cuisines and I hope that the list will be useful for you when it is time for you to choose a restaurant. Yes, it’s not complete. Heck, I think it is not even half complete but at least it will give you several choices to choose from. It is always good to have different choices when it comes to filling our stomach right? I don’t want to keep on going to the same restaurant time and again. Yes, we do have our favourite restaurants and we will frequent it often, but after some time, we will bound to get bored with the food and look for other alternatives. Hey, that’s good. If we stick to the same old food day and night, we will be bored to death in no time.

Anyways, what do you think of the standard of restaurants in Singapore nowadays? In my opinion, I think a lot of restaurants’ standard have dropped recently. True, a few good ones have kept on providing a very high level of service and food quality, but generally, I think it has dropped. Probably due to the high cost of food in Singapore, even restaurants have started to cut down on the quality of foodstuff to “cut cost”. I guess this is a fact of life in Singapore. One of my friend who owns a small restaurant told me that he is now spending nearly all his time sourcing for food, instead of cooking. He hires someone to cook and travels around the region looking for cheaper meats. The best excuse he gave me was “No Choice”. I am sure that this is not what he expected to be doing when he started his restaurant.Nearly every restaurant and even small cafes are doing that now. Probably why the food in Singapore is getting from bad to worse. It is no wonder that a lot of Singaporeans are going to Johor Baru to enjoy the food there. The food in Singapore is either getting worse or just too damn expensive. If we don’t do something to control the ridiculous price increases in Singapore, soon Singapore won’t be the food paradise that everyone is raving about.

Well before you lose all hope, please take a look at the list of Singapore resturants I have created.

Well guys, I am looking for wine bottles. Yes, it must be glass and yes, it should be good looking. Since my local homebrew store doesn’t carry them butI was told that it can be easily found in the backlanes of restaurants and cafes. However the problem is that I don’t have a car and it’s going to be a hassle for me to go around these places to look for bottles. Not to mention how to transport those wine bottles back home. Hey, it’s glass and taking the bus with glass bottles in your bag is going to attract a lot of attention and even some breakage. Don’t you just hate the sound of glass “clanking” together?

I was thinking of asking those recycling companies whether they will deliver those bottles. I have browsed through the ENA website and there are quite a number of companies dealing with recycled bottles. Again, the problem I foresee is that the amount of bottles I want is just too little for them to even bother. And what about the price of those recycled bottles? They would probably make way way more profit selling the bottles to bigger customers than delivering them to me.

Ahhh…too bad. It’s surprising that the “bottleneck” in me making some Apple Wine is the lack of wine bottles. Never did I expect the problem to be the bottles which is supposed to be something very common. But I guess if life is that easy, we would all be walking around with silly big smiles in our faces. And it makes life interesting.

*21-8-2008 Update: Looks my homebrew store owner have several used wine bottles for sale. I am getting them from him. Using some cleanser and sanitizer, it should be as good as new. Hopefully.

Ahhh…..PunBB. One of the better open source forum scripts out there. It feels a bit like PhpBB but PunBB is definitely more lightweight and responsive than PhpBB. I am a definite fan of it as I am always keen on scripts that are lightweight. No point having a script that comes with tons of features which nobody uses and is very slow and sluggish. It would be better to create a script that is fast and responsive and if you need additional functionality, add on or modify the script yourself. Don’t forget to thank the developers of PunBB for making such a nice script.

Anyway, installing PunBB onto your server is a very easy thing to do. This tutorial (with pictures!) will show you the steps to get it right the first time. You will need PHP support and MySQL. I believe that PunBB supports PostgreSQL and SQLite, but in this tutorial, we will not cover them. Anyway, most webhost should support MySQL, so unless you have a preference for which database to use, then MySQL should be more than sufficient for our needs. No need to complicate things, right?

Okay, we will begin the tutorial now.

Your very first step is to download the compressed file from PunBB’s website.I have downloaded the zip version as this is the most popular achieving format for Windows.In fact, Windows XP itself can handle and extract files from zip files without any problems.  So download the file and save it somewhere you can remember. The latest version at the time of writing is version 1.2.19.

I am using IZArc to extract the files from the PunBB zipped file. You can of course use any third party software to do that. Or you can simply use Window’s own utility to extract the files. It comes with a Wizard to guide you on how to extract your files too.

Remember where you extract the files to as you will need to upload those files to the server as well as modify some of the files for PunBB to work. Again, I would like to stress that it is very easy to do, so dont worry.

After you have extracted the files, you will need to upload the files to your webserver. Please note that in the newly created PunBB folder which you have extracted the files to, there are two additional folders, one of them is called “upload“. The files IN that folder is what you will need to upload to the server. Do no upload the punBB folder and its contents as this will create 2 subdirectories and your URL will change (to punbb-1.2.19\upload)! This is very important!

I am using Filezilla as my FTP Client. If you have some other FTP client which you would like to use, please by all means use it. The main reason why I am using Filezilla is because it is stable. I never had any problems with my FTP file transfers after I switch to Filezilla. Plus it is free. So if you are using Filezilla, browse to the folder which you have extracted and upload the files IN the upload folder. Ensure that you upload ALL the files in that folder.

Of course to do all these, you will need to get your FTP hostname, username and password from your webhost.

Hooray, all the files have been uploaded successfully. Depending on the speed of your Internet connection and your webhost, it should take about 10 minutes or so to complete uploading all the files.

After you have uploaded all the files, your next step is to use your Internet Explorer or any other web browser (eg Firefox) browse to the URL you have just uploaded the files to. For example, your domain name is happy.com and you have uploaded your files to a directory called “forums”, you should browse to http://www/happy.com/forums/install.php. Note the “install.php” at the end. You will be directed to the PunBB installer which will guide you the rest of the way.

First of all, it will ask you for your database name, database username, database password and the database table prefix. If you have no idea how to create a MySQL database, please read my tutorial on how to create MySQL databases on Cpanel and MySQL databases on DirectAdmin. After you have created the necessary database for your PunBB script, you will have the database server hostname (usually localhost), database name, database username and password. Remember to choose the correct type of database. For the prefix, you can add anything. In my example, I have used “punbb_”. The prefix is meant for databases which have been shared by different applications and thus a unique prefix is needed to avoid duplicate tables in the database.

Next, scroll down and key in your administrator name, password and email address.For the Base URL of your PunBB installation box, key in the correct URL of your site. It is the same URL you have browsed to in order to access the page without the “install.php” at the end. You will need to remember the administrator username and password as you will need these information to access your PunBB administrative control panel. Without those information, you are doomed! Click on Start install to continue.

Hmm….looks like there are some more steps to go.  First of all, we need to create a file called “config.php” and copy some information to it then upload it to the server. The next thing we need to do is to modify some permissions on certain folders on your web server.

Anyway, you will need to copy the contents. So select all the text in the textbox and copy them. Your settings will be different from what I have, don’t worry, PunBB will provide you with the correct settings. All you have to do is to copy them.

Now, lets go back to the folder where you have extracted the files from the punbb file to. In the upload folder, you can see the file called “install.php”. What you need to do is to open the file with a text editor in order to modify it. In my example, I am using PSPad as my text editor. You can use any text editor, the steps below should be the same. Again, don’t worry, if you can do copying, you can do this!

Okay, now select all the text and choose paste. You will need to overwrite all the text in the file.

There, all done.

Your next step is to save the file. But you will need to choose “save as” because the filename will need to be changed to “config.php”.

There, change the name to “config.php”. This is the file which you will need to upload to your web server again.

So, go back to your FTP Client and upload the “config.php” file to your server. Remember to upload that file to the same default (original) directory and not any other subdirectory. It should be in the same directory as the “install.php” file.

There you do. Nearly complete. We just have several more things to go.

Your next step is to change permissions for the cache folder. So right click on the cache folder in your webserver and then choose File attributes. If you are using some other third party FTP Client, then refer to their documentation on how to change file permission. Another word for this is called “Chmod”.

You should chmod 777 on the folder. Or just allow all permissions.

The next thing you need to do is to modify permissions for the avatars folder. It is located inside the IMG folder. You will have to chmod 777 on that folder as well. So after you have found the avatars folder, right click and choose File attributes.

Do the same just like for the cache folder.

Now, for security reasons, you should delete off the “install.php” file. So go back to your default directory in your FTP Client and look for the “install.php file”. Right click on choose Delete to delete it from your server.If you are using some other FTP Client, there should be some way to delete off the file as well.

Now, let’s go back to our browser and choose “Go to forum index” located right below the webpage.

There all done! You have just installed your very first PunBB based forum! Congratulations, you deserve a drink! However, I would suggest you to go and play around with some of the administrative settings first before you get too drank and trash your computer.

I hope that you find this tutorial useful. If you have any suggestions, please leave some comments. Thank you. And if you can afford it, please donate a few bucks so that I can continue to write more of such articles.

I have been thinking about making wines for a while now. I have always wanted to make wines since my younger days when I travelled to Asutralia and New Zealand and saw how they make wines there. Of course, I will not be using wine presses and all those, but most likely, it will be using Wine Kits or just fresh juice. Heard that it takes a lot of patience to make a decent wine. Most wines needs to be racked and racked again for about 1 year or so before they are drinkable. Yes, there are “6-weeks” wine kits available out there too, so I should be trying them out too.

Anyways, I will be making most of the wines for my friends. I think if you use a wine bottle, it will look very presentable as gifts. In fact, you can easily make it look like from a commercial wine from some winery in Australia with just a wine bottle capsule and some very nice labelling. And from what I see from the stores, the price for the cheapest wine you can find is about S$20 or so. I think I can make about 34 bottles of such wines with about S$180. Well, that doesn’t include the equipment and accessories like wine corker and so on. Still, that’s a lot of savings!

What do you guys think? It is now legal to make wine in Singapore and this should be a very cool hobby. Who would have thought that you could be making your own wine in Singapore and giving them away as presents. Furthermore, you yourself could be enjoying a cup of wine now and then. And enjoying fine wines doesn’t need to be in the domain of the rich anymore.

I guess one of the most misunderstood ingredients in beer brewing is dextrose or sugars. Many brewers think that using dextrose or any form of sugar is bad and should never be used in brewing in the first place. Experienced brewers are especially very much against using sugars in their beers. I have seen brewers saying that if a beer has sugar in it, it is not actually a beer. I once believed that to be true as well (probably being influenced too much by these advanced brewers), so the beers I had made were all-malts. However, I soon realize even if the beer I made was all-malt, it doesn’t necessary mean that it is better.

Well, in my opinion, using sugars in beer brewing is all about styles and personal preference. I have nothing against using sugars, especially if the style requires it, by all means use it. It lightens the body of the beer and if you are doing a light lager, it is just fine. Of course, you don’t have to carry it too far and add like 5 pounds of dextrose to your wort. As I said, it is all about the style and how much is required. I had once done a Pilsener without any sugars and I was told that although it tasted great, it is not as “refreshing” as the ones bought from the stores. Yes, if you are doing something “light”, sugars will get the job done and at a much lower cost as well. So Belgian beers also require the use of inverted sugars for brewing. Basic sugars (like dextrose) ferment completely and thus only serves to boost the alcoholic content without adding any flavour or taste to the beer.

In Singapore, we are so used to drinking Tiger beer that a lot of Singaporeans automatically assumes that all beer taste like Tiger. The truth is Tiger beer taste very bland without much flavours and one of the reasons is because they have a lot of adjuncts in the beer. One of the cheapest adjunct is sugar. As you know, the companies making commerical beers tend to find ways and means to lower the cost of production and what better way than to use sugar instead of malt? And since Singaporeans are so used to drinking light lagers like what is being offered by Tiger, then it is very difficult to ween Singaporeans out of it. So most of your friends will be only drinking light lagers and if you offer them something very malty, most likely they won’t like it. I know that for a fact. A lot of my friends can’t or won’t drink malty beers with too much body or flavours, which may be sad but that’s a fact of life. If some people are so used to a certain type of beer, they won’t like something else even if it should taste better.

Yes, it is yet another guide to install something. I must have done like 7 or 8 of these “pictorials” in the past 2 to 3 weeks and maybe I should take a rest. Na, I will continue doing them. I am pretty sure that this can be very useful to beginners. I remembered that when I first wanted to setup a forum, I had no idea how to begin and where to go for help. Most of the guides were usually text and can be pretty confusing, especially if you have no experience. Anyways, I have done this guide for setting up the SMF forum script. One of the more popular open source forum scripts out there. Maybe not as common as PhpBB, but in my opinion it is still a pretty solid script. My first forum was based on the SMF forum script as well. It worked very well for me then and even though I have stopped being a forum webmaster, I am certain that it is still very capable as I have seen a lot of forums using SMF. Kudos to the developers!

As usual, these scripts require PHP and MySQL support from your webhost. Yes, most webhost supports these. The version of SMF I am using is 1.1.5 as will be shown below. According to SMF’s site, your webhost must have PHP version 4.1.0 and MySQL 3.23.28 for the script to work. Don’t worry, most webhosts should have at least that or else they should have gone bust long long time ago.

Goto SMF’s website and download the latest version. At the time of writing, the latest version is 1.1.5, so I downloaded that. I have chosen the zip file instead of the rest because I am using Windows. If you are using Linux or others, you can try using the tarball versions. For Windows, even if you don’t have any third party unzipping software, you can still extract out the files as WinXP is capable of handling zip files without any problems. Make sure you remember where you download the files to on your PC.

I am using Winrar to extract out the files. You can of course use any achieving software to extract the files. Their methods should be pretty easy as well. Just remember where you save the extracted files to. You will need the files to upload to your web server.

I am using Filezilla as my FTP Client to transfer files onto my webserver. Again, you can use any FTP Client to do that. Since all FTP clients support uploading and downloading of files, you should have no problems transfering files to your webserver. However, you will need your FTP username, password and the hostname of your FTP server. Please get those information from your web host.

What you need to do is to upload all the files and folders from the extracted zipped file to your webhost. Remember to only upload the files (and folders) and not the extracted folder itself. If you do that you are actually created a subdirectory called “smf_1-1-5_install” on your site. So for example, if your website’s URL is “www.goodboy.com”, your forum’s ULR will then be at www.goodboy.com/smf_1-1-5_install/. I am sure that is not you want.

It will take a while, so go and have a beer or something. After 15 to 20 minutes, come back and all is done.

After that, you will need to start your browser and point it to your site’s URL. The SMF forum script will detect that the script is not properly configured and will automatically run the installation script for you. You will be directed to a page like above. You can key in the FTP details and let the script setup the permissions for you. Or you can be clever and do it yourself. Please take note of the names of the folders and files you will need to give SMF access to.

If you are looking to set the permissions yourself, you will need to return to the FTP Client. If you are using Filezilla, right click on the folder or file and choose File attributes. If you are using another FTP Client, there should be some option for you to set your privileges. Please refer to your software documentation. Again, I would like to say, it is not difficult to do.

Chmod “777″ (all permissions) on the folder or file. And then click Ok. You will need to do this for all the folders and files listed above. Enjoy.

After you have completed setting up the correct privileges for the folders and files, go back to your browser and click on “Click here to test of these files are writable again”. If all is okay, you will be directed to another page. If not, it will return to this page and you will need to recheck which file or folder is not properly set.

The next step you need to do is for you to do some basic setting changes. Please key in your forum name. You usually don’t need to change your forum URL as it will be automatically configured for you. You can also modify some of the other settings like whether you want to use Gzip Output (compression), database sessions, UTF-8 character set and allow Simple Machines to collect your site’s stats.

Below that, you will be prompted to provide information about your database. Yes, you will first need to create a MySQL database in order for it to work with SMF. If you have no idea on how to create those databases, please refer to these two guides on how to setup MySQL databases. The first tutorial is for Cpanel and the other is for DirectAdmin control panel. If you are using some other control panel, you will get your web host to help you create the database. What you need is the hostname, the database name, the username and the password (of the user) for that database.

Once you have the information, you will need to key them on this page. For the MySQL table prefix, you can use anything unique. If you don’t have any other installations on the same database, then you don’t even need to have a prefix. Click on Proceed once you are done.

The next step is for you to create an Administrator account. Key in your desired username and password as well as your email address. Oh, you will need to supply the database password again for security reasons. Click on Finish after you are done.

There, everything is done. Well, not quite. Please click on”your newly installed forum” and check whether there are any problems with your forum installation.

Well, we have a major security risk! We have not removed install.php. Bad, bad boy. This will allow hackers to access our installation and modify settings. This is something which we all would not like. So you will need to remove that pesky “install.php”.

So go back to your FTP Client and look for install.php on the remote site and then delete it.

Now let’s all go back to the browser and check whether the warning still remains? Well, it is not there anymore. Looks like we are pretty safe from hackers and evil-doers. In fact, one of SMF’s main features is that it is a very secure script.

So here ends the tutorial. You have just installed one of the best open sourced forum scripts out there and it took about 20-30 minutes in total. That should include the uploading of the files to your webserver. And it was pretty easy right? Nowadays, scripts are getting much easier to setup than before, so don’t worry, you should get your forum up and running in no time!

Well guys, my attempt to make an Apfelwein has hit a snag - where to get the Red Star Cote de Blanc Yeast! It is not available at my local homebrewing store. In fact, most wine supplies are not available there. As some of you might know, it is only recently that the Singapore government has allowed us mere mortals to make wine legally, so we are all beginners here and thus, there simply isn’t much of an interest in wine making. I must admit that even if our local home brewing store brings in wine ingredients and supplies, I doubt that business will be as good as those for beer brewing supplies. I also need to mention that in Singapore, not many Singaporeans appreciate fine wine. Even my friends who had worked for years in European countries do not have a taste for wine. At most they drink a cup or two during dinners.

Ah-ha! I have found a brilliant solution, get from eBay! There are several stores there selling Beer and Wine making supplies and I have found one which provides very reasonable shipping charges to Singapore. It’s The Bruhaus. No, no, they didn’t pay me to advertise for them. Nor am I getting any freebies from them. But for one thing, I am their customer. I have purchased the Red Star Cote de Blanc Yeast from them. It’s a 10 x 5g yeast pack and for just US$5.95 + US$3.15 for shipping. In total, the cost is just S$14-15 for 10 packs! Pretty cheap, considering that it cost about S$6.5 per pack in Singapore. I am all for supporting our local homebrewing store and all that, but sometimes we need some competition to get things going. The price difference is quite significant and it does not look good for the wine making community (if there is any) in Singapore if the prices remain so high. However, I am quite sure that if there are people interested in wine making, those people will certainly be in the higher income bracket, so a few dollars here and there won’t make much a difference to them anyway.That would leave poor guys like me in the shithole, as usual.

Anyways, it should arrive in one or two weeks’ time. I am really looking forward to making some Apfelwein! I am keeping my fingers cross that it would come out great tasting like those people in the wine making forums say it would. Hmm…it’s making me thirsty just thinking about it! And I read that the Cote de Blanc yeast ferments very slowly. That shouldn’t be any problem as seeing that I am always keeping my beers in the (primary) fermenter for about a month anyways. And I will be aging this for several months before drinking as well.

This is yet another one of the guides I have been doing these few days. This time it is for sNews blog/CMS script. Well, actually it is more for news and stuff but you can definitely use it for  blogs and others. sNews is a very lightweight script and it contains only a few files, making it extremely flexible and easy to configure. There is only one file for you to configure your settings and another template file (with it’s CSS files for styling). Yup, it’s that lightweight.

All sNew script requires is PHP and MySQL which most webhost support. If you are using all of the modern webhost, you should be able to run sNews without any problems.In fact, for all the webhost I have tried, sNews works without any problems.  The version I am using is v1.6 and it is the latest stable version at the time of writing. I would encourage any user to always use the latest version of their script to prevent bugs or holes from affecting your site. I would also recommend users to use only the stable version for their production site.

Your first step is to go to the new sNews website and download the latest version. You just need to click on the file under the Stable Versions and save the file somewhere you can remember as you will need to extract the files out. The file you download will be in the zip format which should be no problem for anyone using Windows to extract.

I am using IZArc to extract the files. You can use any unzipping software to do that.

You will need to remember where you extract the files to as you will have to upload the files to your webserver. The file named “snews.php” is extremely important as it contains all the settings and configurations you need to setup your CMS.

The next few steps will require you to setup your MySQL database. If you do not know how to setup a blank MySQL database, you can refer to the two guides I have done for the Cpanel control panel (for MySQL Databases) and for the DirectAdmin control panel(for MySQL Databases). So, you need the password and username to access your control panel. Please get the information from your webhost. You will also need to access PhpMyAdmin from your control panel to add in content into your newly created database. So, the first thing you need to do is to create a MySQL Database, a user and a password for that user. After you have done that (refer to the links above), you have to populate your database with some information. I shall begin by accessing PhpMyAdmin. PhpMyAdmin is a user interface for accessing and manipulating MySQL Database.

Under Database option, choose your newly created database.

You will see that the database is empty with no tables. What you need to do is to populate the database with some information in order for the sNews script to work properly. Don’t worry, it is not difficult. Just a few clicks here and there and some copying.

The next step is for you to click on the SQL tab. You will be redirected to another page with allows you to run MySQL commands.

You will need to copy the following information:

CREATE TABLE articles (
	id int(11) primary key auto_increment,
	title varchar(100) default NULL,
	seftitle varchar(100) default NULL,
  	`text` longtext,
  	`date` datetime default NULL,
  	category int(8) NOT NULL default '0',
  	position int(6) default NULL,
  	displaytitle char(3) NOT NULL default 'YES',
  	displayinfo char(3) NOT NULL default 'YES',
  	commentable varchar(5) NOT NULL default '',
  	published int(3) NOT NULL default '1',
  	description_meta varchar(255) default NULL,
  	keywords_meta varchar(255) default NULL
);
CREATE TABLE categories (
  	id int(8) primary key auto_increment,
 	name varchar(100) NOT NULL,
 	seftitle varchar(100) NOT NULL,
 	description varchar(255) NOT NULL,
 	published varchar(4) NOT NULL default 'YES',
 	catorder smallint(6) NOT NULL default '0'
);
CREATE TABLE comments (
 	id int(11) primary key auto_increment,
 	articleid int(11) default '0',
 	name varchar(50),
 	url varchar(100) NOT NULL,
 	comment text,
 	time datetime NOT NULL default '0000-00-00 00:00:00',
 	approved varchar(5) NOT NULL default 'True'
);
CREATE TABLE settings (
 	id int(8) primary key auto_increment,
 	name varchar(20) NOT NULL,
 	`value` varchar(60) NOT NULL
);
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (1, 'website_title', 'sNews 1.6');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (2, 'home_sef', 'home');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (3, 'website_description', 'sNews CMS');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (4, 'website_keywords', 'new, site, snews');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (5, 'website_email', 'info@mydomain.com');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (6, 'contact_subject', 'Contact Form');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (7, 'language', 'EN');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (8, 'charset', 'UTF-8');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (9, 'date_format', 'd.m.Y. H:i');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (10, 'article_limit', '3');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (11, 'rss_limit', '5');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (12, 'display_page', '');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (13, 'display_new_on_home', '');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (14, 'display_pagination', '');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (15, 'num_categories', 'on');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (16, 'approve_comments', '');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (17, 'comments_order', 'ASC');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (18, 'comment_limit', '30');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (19, 'word_filter_enable', '');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (20, 'word_filter_file', '');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (21, 'word_filter_change', '');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (22, 'username', '098f6bcd4621d373cade4e832627b4f6');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (23, 'password', '098f6bcd4621d373cade4e832627b4f6');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (24, 'system_email', 'admin@mydomain.com');
	INSERT INTO settings VALUES (25, 'system_name', 'Site Admin');

Aand then paste it on the Run SQL query/queries textbox provided as shown below. Please ensure that you have copied all the necessary information. Double check. You will need to get this right for your database to work properly.The information above can be found from the sNews website itself. In fact, it would be much better and safer to copy directly from their site. Please click here to access their official installing guide. I have added the information above for convenience sake.

Paste on the Run SQL query/queries textbox.

There, all copied. Click on Go to execute the commands.

Yes, your query has been executed successfully and we can all sleep peacefully tonight.

Do note thatthe tables created have no prefix. If you would like to have prefixes, then you will need to add the prefix to the commands. For example, if you would like a prefix called “happy_”, then under the “CREATE TABLE” command, you should add the prefix in. So, it will read “CREATE TABLE happy_articles”. You will need to do it for all four tables that are created.

Now that your database has been created and all populated with the necessary information to setup your script, you will need to edit some settings on your script. The most important thing to change is the database settings. You will need to tell sNews where your database is located, what’s the name and the user plus the password. So now you should fire up your text editor software.

I am using PSPad editor. Well, the main reason why I use PSPad Editor is because it just works so very well. If you are doing HTML or CSS coding, they make it all much easier with formatting. Furthermore, it’s free. If you are using some other text editor, the steps should be approximately the same. Fire up your text editor and open the”snews.php” file located inside your snews folder. You remember where you extracted the files don’t you?

Once you have opened the “snews.php” file, scroll down slightly till you see the “DATABASE VARIABLES”. You need to do the changes there. Change the website to your website’s URL. In my example, it is called “http://www.autho-rity.info/”. Then you will need to change the database name, database user and the password. If you have added prefixes to your database tables, then you will need to edit the information in the prefix row as well.

Save the file. If you don’t save it, then it is useless. The next step is to upload all the files to your web server. For this, you will need the FTP username and password as well as the URL for your FTP Server. Get those information from your webhost.

I am using Filezilla as my FTP Client. If you are using another FTP Client, the steps should be around the same. Most FTP software works about the same, as the concept is basically uploading or downloading (transfering of files). Don’t worry, it’s really not that difficult to do. If you are using Filezilla, choose the files you want to upload, right click and choose Upload and you are on your way. Please note that you should upload the files inside the sNews folder (extracted) and not the folder itself. If you do that, you are basically creating a subdirectory and your URL will change. The files you will need to upload to your webserver is “.htaccess”, “index.php”, “snews.php” and “style.css”. The rest you can ignore. *Thanks to Keyrocks*

There, all the needed files have been uploaded. Basically it is just 4 files. Which script can do that with just 4 files? And yes, we are almost done!

Your next step would be to browse to your website. If your domain name is “www.happy.com” and your files are located at root (not in any subdirectory) then you should browse to “http://www.happy.com” . You will be greeted by the big words “sNews 1.6″. This means that everything is setup properly and you can start reaching for that can of cheap beer. But before you do that, you should change your username and password as the default password and username is rather well-known. So click on “Login”.

Login with the default username and password which is “test” and “test” respectively. Of course, you will need to do that anti-spam thingy. Basically it is just maths like “1+1=2″. Do you see why I am telling you to change the username and password? If you don’t change your username and password, you will bound to get into trouble soon enough.

Under Site, choose Settings.

You will be able to see the “Change Username and Password” submenu, click on the submenu to expand it.

Yes, change your username and password to something difficult so that your site will not be easily hacked. Not sure why sNews limits the password to a maximum of 8 characters only. Kind of ridiculous if you ask me. I think passwords should be long, as long as 16 characters. But who am I to question coders with years and years of experience. Click on Save after you are done.

There, operation completed successfully!

So there you have it, your first brand new sNews blog/news and whatever site. Cool isn’t it? If this tutorial has been helpful to you, please leave some comments and let me know. I would really like to hear from you.