Backup

Restoring Passwords and Bookmarks to Firefox After Reformatting

January 15, 2011 By Fat Tony69 1 Comment

You have already partitioned and reformatted your computer, created a new partition and set up your reformatted computer, and quickly restored programs without ruining your computer.

Now, that you have your programs up, you need to replenish them. In this case, I am using Firefox for today’s example. Most of this can be done on any other browser, but since I really don’t use the others and I love Firefox’s plugins, I am using it!

Getting your Bookmarks Back!

Hopefully before you reformatted, you backed up your computer. I know I did not mention this, but to me it is is second nature to back everything up. It is the reason I have multiple external hard drives with the exact same thing on it. I don’t take that many bookmarks, but when I do, I did it through Firefox. Looking back, I lost a lot of bookmarks because I backed up my computer wrong (for firefox).

If you went to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Backup (for firefox), you did it correctly! Congrats, you are smarter than me.

If you went to the bookmark folder under your profile and copied the folder, you are just as dumb as me. (if you use firefox as your main browser)

Either way, I will show you how to restore both.

If you backed up your bookmarks correctly (for firefox), go to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Restore and just restore the file.

Now, if you did it my method, I’ve learned this is bad for firefox and any third party browser (Opera, Firefox, Safari, Rockmelt, etc…).

For Firefox, just got to Bookmarks > Organize Bookmarks > Import HTML and choose the Internet Explorer option instead. Basically, the same for all other browsers, except internet explorer which if you use that, you didn’t lose a single bookmark.

Getting Your Passwords Back

This method only works with Firefox as this is a Firefox plugin.

Like I said for the bookmarks, this is helpful if you backed everything up. If you are like me, you need to keep hundreds of passwords and to be quite honest, I don’t want to buy a program to manage this. I rely on Firefox. Although, I wasn’t sure what I was going to do when I was reformatting my computer, until I found this Password Exporter Plugin.

Install that plugin.

Immediate back up the file to your external (like I did.)

After reformatting, reinstall the plugin.

Go to the plugin, hit restore and you should be good to go!

If you Received an Error Restoring Your Password

When I reformatted, reinstalled this plugin, and hit restore passwords, it wouldn’t let me. I was scared because when I went to import, I received this error:

Now, I wasn’t about to give up and you shouldn’t either.

Find that file and open it in Firefox. What happens is that, when it opens up, it will show the error! Look at the error I received:

As you can tell, Firefox pointed out the issue for me. As you can tell, there is an extra quotation mark.

Simply, go to Notepad, Notepad++, or Notepad2 or any other Notepad (DEFINITELY NOT WORDPAD) and fix the issue by deleting the extra quotation mark or whatever issue you have.

Go back to the passwords importer and reimport.

Everything should be perfectly fine now!

[Read more...]

I won’t lie, but my computer is quickly dying. I don’t know what happen as lately, I’ve barely been on it. It started having problems just as my Kaspersky Anti Virus expired and now it is too bad for me to use. Luckily, I just received a Windows 7 Ultimate disk and I can do a nice, clean reformat of my computer. It’s be long overdue since I’ve done this. Hopefully I can do this tomorrow! Just need to backup a few files first!

My New Years Resolutions

January 8, 2011 By Fat Tony69 1 Comment

Lately, I’ve been thinking over what I should resolve this year of 2011. Every year, I do this and never really follow through with any of it. I realize that most people do this as well, but this time, I am going to follow through on everything.

How?

Easy Goals.

Step by step, I will make goals that are reachable, but will still need to work at it all.

Step by step, my goals will progressively grow.

Goal 1:

Make money on my websites/investments. I used to do this, but I don’t know what happened. Start small and work my way up.

$500 a month
$1,000 a month
$5,000 a month
$10,000 a month
Stop being frivolous with my money. I am terrible at this, but I will work hard at doing this. I need to respect the value of a dollar.
Make good investments such as I bought a DJ thing. I want to get better and use it to make money. This also includes stock market and other things.
Earn money to be even more self-sufficient

Goal 2:

Work harder. (I’ve already started this with the opening of The Image Igloo, Taking Charge of my Websites, and Opening Bundiez Network finally.

Do well in my classes.
Re-Open all my sites
Increase traffic on all my sites
Set up my advertising system.
Have all my blogs up and running (updated)
Continue with my 365 blog post promise
Have my viral site open and ready soon!
Keep up with updates
Get new clients
Start my new blog idea

Goal 3:

Get healthier. I think everyone has this, but it is true. My weight stays around the same, but varies a bit by season. Over the years, I know my health has increased quite a bit. In 2009, I cut out all caffeine besides chocolate. In 2010, I was at the gym the majority of the year. (I regret stopping)

Start going back to the gym. Need to find a partner, but I should start up soon.
Stop with the noshing. I am the king of it. I hate junk food like candy and sweets, but I love crackers and pretzels which a lot is still bad.
Start eating in proportion (no more eating until I am beyond full).
Stop being able to fit in my old jeans. (I fit in them now, I want to go smaller)
Get ready for the summer
Be able to cycle for 100 miles no issue by July.
Better cardio. I lift, no issue BUT I hate cardio, so I need to fix that.

Goal 4:

Focus on my websites. This goes with goals 1 and 2, but still needs to be said.

Gain the traffic I lost back and more
Have everything running and updated.
Backup, backup, backup.
Maintain, maintain, maintain.

Goal 5:

Keep my relationships alive and well. 2010 was up and down with relationships (friends, family, females). I want to fix all of this.

Stay away from drama. This has always been my motto. I want to keep it. It seems as if I am involved with it including some New Years issues. I am going to avoid it all.
Mend any bad bridges. I never intend for this, but somehow I always get involved without doing anything.
Stay close to my family. This is a huge one. I love my family, but I feel I don’t see them enough. I need to re-prioritize my plans to fix this and I will.
Stay close with my friends.
Make more friends. I love friends. They say the average person can only have up to 150 friends at a time. I say that is bullshit. I feel like I can have more because I enjoy the company.
Visit everyone!
I am not huge into relationships, but I would like to have a girlfriend. See how that goes.

Goal 6:

Follow through with everything. This goes with working harder, but still.

Actually release my viral website.
Actually do TBFE v3 which is long overdue
Follow through with this list.
Use my camera more. I have an awesome camera. I love photography. I want to use it more.
Use my DJ thing. I might need some lessons, but I will work harder to do it.

———

Overall, I think these are great new years resolutions and I believe none of them are too ridiculous as long as I work hard at it. What are yours? Share them!

http://fattony69.com/taking-charge-image-igloo/

Future of My Forums

December 11, 2010 By Fat Tony69 1 Comment

History of my Forums

Lately, I have been thinking more and more about my websites. The reason for this as when I first got into websites, I thought about them as a hobby and nothing more. Then again, when I first got into designing websites, I was very young and money wasn’t an issue. Out of this came a lot of insight into the internet. I learned a lot very quickly and used that knowledge to the best of my abilities. My first site (technically) was one made out of Microsoft Frontpage. This was long before I realized how much work it was a website. Although, after some issues, I left the computer and tried other things in my life – mainly sports.

As I got older, I appreciated the computer again and became active on the internet because of gaming. The reason behind this as I wanted to enhance my gaming. I wanted to get better at Halo 2 at the time and was also looking for steady people to play with. With this, I found a new niche I’ve never experienced before, forums. I first went on Geezer Gamers and due to the age difference and how our interests changed over time, I moved on to Gamingvidz.

The popular communities helped mold my decision that I wanted to create my own community. The reason behind this is the fact I became close the community and saw areas to improve. Naturally, I attempted to do work on these sites, but the administrators became very difficult to work with (Ironically, I became the same way, but if someone gave me ideas – I’d listen). Although, with much work – I became staff. With that, I started a name for myself using photoshop as my guide. I branched out onto many different forums gaining access to their staff. What I didn’t realize until one discussion, I didn’t really have any power as staff which was the opposite of my intentions. At one point, I thought I had an opportunity to go good as I became head staff and eventually an administrator, but as I quickly learned: Nothing is good unless you own the site.

What I Learned

I learned a lot over those few years as you can tell. You need to have your own forums to actually make progress with them (as well as a lot of other traits). It takes a lot to own forums and such and I will go into detail through out this blog and such…

About My Forums Now.

So I currently own The Best Forum Ever. I’ve had it for two and a half years as of the 15th of December. It doesn’t feel like such a long time, but it has been. Lately, I haven’t focused much on my forum as I thought it was fine by itself. I was incorrect. Despite the fact that my forum is two and half years old, has 24,704 threads, 386,786 posts,and 5,340 members, a dedicated staff, the total traffic went down 30% compared to last year. Also, I haven’t made any money since I updated the skin which was quite a while ago. All that said, I am making a change. I am starting to become more and more into my websites as it is what I enjoy. I love making websites and doing for others. I love my community and wouldn’t change it for the world. I have even been asked many times to sell out. I always refuse despite the amount of money they offer. Call me stupid, but I am dedicated to my board.

My plans with the board is to completely upgrade it. I’ve noticed lately that the forum has been acting a bit sluggish and I know for a fact it isn’t my host or my internet connection. I have realized that this is because of three reasons:

My board isn’t optimized any more (this is the sense that I’ve done all that I can based on what I’ve learned from a lot of tutorials and personal help)
My vBulletin is quite outdated. I am running the 3.8 series. The current vBulletin is 4.1. I would update, but the current vBulletin is very bloated, flawed, and full of problems. Also, the look of it isn’t quite what I expected and in my eyes quite ugly. Even if I were update, I would need a whole new skin and my current person refuses to work with it because of how problematic it can be as with each new update, the skin breaks.
My plugins have become too much. At one point or another, they were all useful and great. They improved my forum tremendously, but like anything, my forum evolved and grew. The average member age has increased a bit. With that, the once useful plugins aren’t so useful anymore.

I also have to figure out how to bring back traffic. I’ve never kept secret my method of traffic because of the sheer fact it is common sense. I do understand there are many ways to get your name out there, but I don’t partake in those methods. It is funny because when I first started getting big, I would have at least ten instant messages a day asking how I did it and how I can help them. To each of those people, I said the same thing: My only way of advertisement is WORD OF MOUTH. This is really the only way I have ever actually received traffic. Now, when I say word of mouth, there is a little more to just going to your friends in school and telling them, but once again, that is for another post and if you keep reading my blog, you will learn that.

What I Am Going to Change

Traffic

As I stated before, traffic is down a whole 30% from last year. I can not stand for that which is why I am doing all of this change. I hate the fact my forum isn’t as popular. I must admit, the only upside about it is the whole community is like a family. While this is great and all, a family only stays together for so long. I want to stay for a long time and to do that, I need more active members. So, what I plan to do is a few things.

I don’t have much money, yet, but a few member contests is always good. Even if it isn’t for monetary value, a VIP membership always works or a title and/or trophy.
Get the community together in a few projects such as an all day post-a-thon where they rack up spam posts in order to gain a title.
Email all the members. I do have over 5,000 members and many of them did enjoy the site at one point or another. Why not remind them that The Best Forum Ever is still around and being updated.
Ask some of my Administrator friends and other friends to help announce my re-opening (I don’t know what to call it).

As for Plugins

I am getting rid of almost all the plugins. Over the last few years, I learned that while plugins may be nice and all, most people don’t really use them for the most part unless they are fully integrated. Once again, I will write more about this as I can go on and on about these subjects. Basically what I am going to do is remove almost all plugins from my website. At one point, I was running everything including a whole point system, arcade with a ton of games, and a ton of other shit. For the updated version, I am going to use a few template edits to make everything look good such as drop-downs and anything else I feel that is needed. SEO plugins will definitely be added. I got to keep my Search Engine Optimization to the max. Finally, I will add any anti-spam plugins that I feel that is needed. It is such a huge issue. Anything else will be based on a case-by-case basis. I want to keep it as close to the original script as possible.

The Script and Skin

This is the main part of my issue. First off, I want to say that the script and the skin come hand in hand as they relate immensely. Anyways, I thought long and hard about this and how everything would work out. Lately, I’ve watched Internet Brands go down the tubes (not go out of business) with their latest version of vBulletin. Now, I am not saying it is terrible because how can a company release complete shit after they raised their price and all…right. Many would disagree with that statement, but that is neither here nor there. Either way, I learned about a new forum script (which at the time when I learned about it, it was unreleased) that was made by ex-lead developer, Kier Darby and ex-vbulletin developer, Mike Sullivan to create XenForo along with the help of ex-Jelsoft business manager, Ashley Busby as their business manager. For those who live under a rock or don’t know much about forum software, vBulletin (well technically Internet Brands) is suing XenForo over allegedly did the following:

“The suit is simple, the post from vBulletin reads. “We claim that Kier, Mike, and Ashley have infringed and violated contracts they signed with us to gain unfair business advantage. As such, Xenforo’s software unfairly stands on the shoulders of more than a decade of development by Jelsoft. Internet Brands owns this intellectual property.”

I do not believe a word of this, but I don’t know all the facts besides what I’ve read and I felt it was a bit odd as the lawsuit came a day before XenForo released their software for beta. Fishy if you ask me, but I am not one to pre-judge.

Lawsuit from vBulletin’s point of view

Lawsuit from XenForo’s point of view

Information/Discussion found on Google about XenForo vs. vBulletin

Information/Discussion found on Google about vBulletin vs XenForo

Either way, lawsuit or not, I bought XenForo. Originally, I bought it for a totally new project that I’ve had in the works, but as I played with XenForo more and more, I started to love it. I first fell in love with it on their official site where it was the only place to use it since it was an unreleased beta, but after having it in my hands, I knew it was correct for me. It was a culmination of the realization that I really don’t need any modifications anymore along with finding out the modifications I truly rely on are being made or already made. I would also need a custom skin as I do not settle for any less, but as for now, I can always customize a free script to make it my own. That is how The Best Forum Ever actually started. Then, I got a free one from my friend Vince for helping him out. Unknowingly to me, that was ripped and is found on vBulletin warez sites if you want it.

As for the script itself, it is still in beta. At first, I was absolutely reluctant to even think about converting The Best Forum Ever to a beta script especially one that had bugs (which was expected…it is beta). Now, XenForo is in Beta 5 and I am considering about making The Best Forum Ever a XenForo forum by new years. Now, before you say to yourself that it is still a beta, what are you doing? I realize that and how close it is before RC version and Gold version appear, but the time it took to go from Beta 4 to Beta 5 was about a week…give or take a day since I am not on top of it. That is a HUGE difference compared to the other betas. This means that there are hardly any bugs and nothing I really have to worry about. If I do, it will be fixed and I don’t have to do much modifying to make it all work. If they want their blogs back or want a blog or I want a homepage CMS/blog, I can always install WordPress MU and it would link to XenForo since there is a modification for it.

Speed is an issue as I’ve mentioned before, this is all the proof I need that XenForo is much better than vBulletin: Server Load VB > XF & Joomla – Proof Is Everything. I know that everything will be much better on XenForo speed and loading wise seeing the huge differences.

Plus, I recently read this comment on my forums:

“If I could like that I would. We need an effing like button on here.”

I realized after playing with XenForo, you would know there isn’t a traditional reputation system, but a like system similar to Facebook. My staff knew this as I opened a beta version of XenForo to them. By the way, my staff was ecstatic about it and absolutely LOVED it with the exception of one member. Having all of this go through my head, I knew it was time to move my forums.

What Now?

As you may realize, there is 20 days left in the year. In these 20 days, I plan to move The Best forum Ever over to XenForo with a skin ready and everything setup. Since I don’t have the plugins to really worry about, I have everything going pretty easy. I’ve found a lovely skin that I plan on customizing. Here is the essential breakdown on what I have to do.

Download XenForo
Download the Skin
Edit the Skin to make it look nice
Fix the forum setup on vBulletin now to make it all ready for XenForo
Install XenForo plugins that only deal with SEO/Anti-Spam
Set up all the settings and stuff beforehand
Clean out the server from all the junk and useless shit
Back up the database
Immediately after turn off the forum
Upload the files
Transfer over the database
Clean everything up
Open

I may be missing a few steps (including the get traffic parts), but that is the gist of everything. My goal…before or RIGHT after New Years. I let my forum down with TBFE v3 and this is to make up for it. This time around, I don’t plan to hype it up. The staff know I am working on it, but no details…that is until they read this blog post/twitter message I posted. We shall see!

After this…Bundiez Network and Steal the Internet!

PS. Hope you like the new theme. I refused to blog until I had a new one because I was stubborn/bored/loved this skin too much.

PPS. Here is a picture of The Best Forum Ever currently so I don’t forget to take one so I am able to do a comparison. Also is a picture of The Best Forum Ever when I first opened. Notice how I had no idea to take a proper screenshot back then.

Old – > New ->

Laptops are a Pain in my Arse

May 17, 2010 By Fat Tony69 Leave a Comment

First off, I’d like to say that I tried to get this in on Sunday, but I wasn’t home until less than an hour ago and such. So, sorry about that. Like I said, I will try to get to get one post per day. Anyway, recently my laptop died and I wanted to talk about these events. Last Christmas, I received a wonderful HP HDX 18. Since that Christmas, I have used it nonstop. Well, I guess that it couldn’t handle me what-so-ever because just a year and half later, it died like I said. At first, I thought (more like hoping for…) my battery was bad because I was always notified that my battery sucked, which it did. My charger was also a bit frayed. With that said, I purchased a new battery and charger. Unfortunately, after waiting and running home to replace it, I found myself upset as it was not the cause. What I truly think it is, which I was totally not hoping for, is my motherboard fried from poor cooling. Now, I sent it into HP where they say they are fixing it.

I must say that not having my laptop has been quite hard on me. I never realized how much of a role it plays on my life until recently. I basically live off my computer. Everything I do is through the computer. What I want to accomplish, a successful monetized website, is on the computer. Its a very difficult process considering according to many others, I am constantly doing it wrong. Although, this is not the point I am trying to make with this blog post. Anyway, I spend way too much time on the computer, but to be completely honest, I love it. I truly enjoy spending my time learning, testing, and trying to accomplish new things.

My issue, which I want to tell everyone is to backup and do it frequently. I was afraid I lost almost everything on my hard drive. Luckily, it was only my motherboard, not my hard drive. Unfortunately, I am lazy and don’t trust myself with deconstructing a computer, so I payed Geek Squad to do it for me. They were able to thankfully save everything. I am very fortunate for this and I now will learn from my mistake. From now on, I shall back up frequently and hopefully never have this problem again. You should too. I also should learn how to make my blog posts more exciting and boring because even I am bored with these posts!