So you need an inexpensive backup camera for your car? Are you sick of not being able to see what is behind you when you back up? Perhaps you are afraid hitting a child, bicycle, or sign post?

I found this Popular Mechanics, Saturday Mechanic install video on YouTube which looks like it will get the inexpensive backup camera job done:

But here is the other information you will want to know, that were gleaned out of the video comments. FYI, these are my affiliate links below, which I don’t care if you use or not.

What Inexpensive Backup Camera Model is Ben installing In The Video?

He is installing a Peak PKC0RG Small Rearview Mirror with 3.5-Inch Backup Camera. The cost of the unit is about $105. I recommend you read all the customer reviews before ordering.

While researching I have seen systems that range from $30 to $500.

Make Sure The Camera Works BEFORE Installing It

Make sure the camera works before installing it in your car. There is nothing worse that getting all the way to the finish line only to find out the unit is broken. It will only take a few minutes to do a preliminary check by just hooking it up to your battery, before you rip everything apart, and put it in. Also it will be a lot easier to package up and return if you just don’t like the looks of it.

Install Concern: What If There Are Side Air Bags?

Ben States: “In cars equipped with side airbags that live in the structure, it’s probably a good idea to consult a service manual (or the internet) to see if opening the a-pillar up will cause any problems. Most of the time it will not.”

Car Dashboard Accident Recorders

Car DashBoard Video Camera Vehicle Video Accident Recorder DVR – 1080P Full HD Resolution Video, 2.0″ LCD Display
Car DashBoard Video Camera Vehicle Video Accident Recorder DVR – 1080P Full HD Resolution Video, 2.0″ LCD Display. The cost is about $60.

I recommend you read all the customer reviews before ordering.

There are actually even collision avoidance system available like this one for $730: MobileEye C2-270 Collision-Warning System

Summary: XML Validation Tips discusses errors in WordPress often come from confusing XML and HTML tagging structures, HTML tag nesting, flaws in Widget code and Plugin code, and trying to use a HTML4 Validator with HMTL5 code.

One of the most common sources of XML validation errors we come across are widget add-ons available from 3rd parties, for example old Amazon.com widgets.
Reference: http://blog.twighlightzone.com/index.php?entry=entry080220-195229

While many of these errors can be corrected in the code, it doesn’t do you any good if you constantly update your plugins, if the Author hasn’t bothered to correct their code from revision to revision!

This is an ongoing updated document, because … the topic is a moving target.

XML Validation Tips: Fast Secure Contact Form

If you have been scratch your cranium on this error thrown by the Fast Secure Contact Form, here is the solution Per Mike Challis: “This is because input type email isn’t in HTML4 specification. It’s a specification from HTML5, but the validator work’s on HTML4 standard and will show the error when validating forms with input type email.”

XML Validation Tips Error type="email"

Click here for a discussion about the Fast Secure Contact Form validation error.

XML Validation Tips: Keep Blue Sea Web Consulting caffeinated!

Hey! I hope these XML Validation Tips helped you out!

Summary: Here are a couple of procedures you can use to check website links. Broken links can reduce your Page Rank, annoy visitors, and reduce your SERP.

Here are two suggested procedures for finding broken links:

Method 1 To Check Website Links

http://www.2bone.com/links/linkchecker.shtml
This website link checking utility is nice because the error list it generates shows you what errors the links threw if there were problems with it.

Here are a few examples of common HTTP Status codes you will see:
200: Link is OK.
301: Link has been moved or forwarded permanently.
403: Found but the server has forbidden your request.
404: Not Found, but you are welcome to try again.
500: Internal Server Error.
509: Bandwidth Limit Exceeded.

For a complete list of HTTP Status Codes you can Click here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_HTTP_status_codes

Method 2 to Check Website Links

You must use the Firefox Browser to use this procedure and be able to check website links.
It is recommended you upgrade to Firefox 6 first before trying this procedure. Here is a link to the Mozilla Firefox upgrade web page: http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/update/

Now that Firefox is upgraded, go to the Add-On Directory located here:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

In the Search box – Upper Right, type in: linkchecker (all one word).

Find LinkChecker by Kevin Freitas.

Add / Install to Fire Fox.

Restart Firefox.

On the website you want to check, right click on the page. On the menu, below the 2nd separator, you will find a menu item that says “Check Page Links”

After you click it, a little Blue Dot will appear in the lower right of the Browser frame showing you the total count of the links are being checked. Make a mental note of it.

Check Website Links Color Code

A Green Highlighted link means the link is good, and Red means the link is bad or broken.

A Yellow Highlighted link means the link is either Forwarded or a Forbidden Link.

Got a better way to check website links? Leave a comment.

Summary: This is a list of favorite utilities for an online business and website development programs.

Voice Search and Voice Browsing Favorite Utilities

Voice Search For Google (Must have the Chrome Browser Installed)
Google Voice Search For The Chrome Browser

Voice Mail Transcribed To Text and Converted To A .wav File, Then Sent To Your Email

Google Voice Mail

Favorite Utilities For The Mozilla Firefox Browser

Colorzilla: Mouse the cross hairs over any color and get the pixel HTML color code.
Look for the Eyedropper in the Lower Left of your Firefox browser window.
Colorzilla

Linkchecker: Right Click on any website and Linkchecker will check for broken links.
LinkChecker

270+ Tools For Running A Business Online, A Collection Of Favorite Utilities

270+ Online Business Tools, Brought To You By Mashable

The Last Password You Will Ever Need: LastPass

Check back for updates. We will be upgrading this page frequently.

Thanks to these favorite utilities, life is easy.

I need help making my own video. Well you are in the right place to start. So you want to make you own videos? Cool. Here are some free resources on the internet to help you with that effort.

Free Video Tools for Making My Own Video

Note: Videos uploaded to YouTube (YT) are major traffic generating vehicles.

Article Link: 16 Free Screen Capturing Programs

1. Here is a Link to the free Camstudio Download

Link to Camstudio Tutorials for making my own video

Camstudio Video Tutorial: Parameter Setup:

2. Jing – Another Video creation program
Link to Jing – The Free Version Download

General YouTube Video Production Information

Editing Videos For YouTube

how Do You get featured on YouTube?

Video Lighting Tutorial

Video Storyboarding

Storytelling in Business Skills for Business – Doug Stevenson
A long video, but it contains critical content.

Video Story Boarding Tips:

Paid Video Tools For Video Creation

Making A Video For YouTube Using Windows Movie Maker

More information on “Making My Own Video” will be added as this Blog matures over time.

Summary: This article on vTiger CRM Tips provides tips on how to install vTiger CRM on a Virtual Private Server (VPS). Much of the information has been aggregated through the sifting of the vTiger Community Forum, and then modified as needed for installation on a VPS.

vTiger CRM Tips: How To Install vTiger CRM in cPanel on your VPS

Bolt Hosting wrote this article on the basic install process:
How to Install vTiger CRM in cPanel, by Bolt Hosting

vTiger CRM Tips: How To Speed Up vTiger CRM and Increase Its Performance

Here are 4 Ways to speed up the day to day use of your vTiger CRM:

1. Increase Memory Allocated to PHP

How:

• Login to your Servers Web Host Manager (WHM) > Service Configuration> then click on PHP Configuration Editor on the left menu.
• That will load the “Basic Mod” interface.
• About the fourth option down, there is an option called “memory_limit”. It controls how much memory PHP is allowed to use. By default it’s set to 32M. Try increasing it to 128M, or in multiples of 32M. Your VPS may have limits on available RAM for your set up. To be safe submit a Support Ticket to your service provider with the request.
  Note: If you don’t put an M on the end of the memory, your VPS will crap a kitten, (So 64M, 128M etc…) lol.
• Click Save.

2. Other vTiger CRM Tips – Reduce Logging To Bare Essentials:

Try to reduce the logs in log4php.properties from debug to warn or fatal. Reference: Log4php information Here

How:
Edit the raw php file:
Navigate to cPanel > Files > File Manager
File Manager Opens
Public HTML > vTiger > log4php >
Edit LoggerProperties.php file in vtiger folder and change: log4php.rootLogger=WARN,A1 (may already be set to FATAL, or DEBUG)
Note: Log files are located at vTiger Folder > Logs. You may want to make yourself a reminder to delete these every couple of months so that you do not bloat your server with dead log files.

3. Setup A Compression System Such As “mod_deflate”.

This compresses data before it’s sent out and sometimes results in faster performance. mod_deflate tells your server to GZIP everything before it sends it out. It tends to make web pages load faster.

Personally I didn’t fuss with it, but more information can be found Here:
mod_deflate

4. eAccelerator Is One Of Several Ways You Can Try To Speed Up PHP.

It’s one of the supported modules in EasyApache (Apache/PHP compiler for WHM).

Reference eAccelerator information: Here for more configuration. Note: Recommended configuration.

It is probably best to just submit a Ticket request to your host provider, as they are most familiar with the guts of your server.

vTiger CRM Tips: How To Do A vTiger CRM DataBase Backup

vTiger CRM Community Information on Creating Backups, Restoring Backups and Cron Jobs:
More Info on Module_Backup_Server Here

A note about vTiger FTP 503 Errors

When I tried ftp.myserver.net the system coughed up a 503 error. This was resolved by:

Going into the cPanel of your account > Files > FTP Accounts
Create a new FTP account.
Use your Servers IP address. Note: Use numbers NOT ftp.blah.blah.
Put in your FTP account Name and Password.

Configuring And Setting Up vTiger eMail

Configuring The vTiger CRM Outgoing Server

The first thing you need to know about vTiger is that you can configure one, and only one outgoing email address. Or so I am to understand. So pick a name that is generic. If you are running multiple Geo locations, then hire a code developer to fix the problem for you. ZOHO is a white label user of vTiger, and I assume they figured a work around.

Another idea is to just pay for a 1 license vTiger site and pick their brains on how to fix certain issues you run into.

Warning. Please note that the following procedure might not work for you, but it is what worked for us.
If all else fails, try submitting a support ticket to your Host provider.

Before configuring your outgoing server, you will need to set up a new email address in your cPanel with a password.
Make a note of the email and email password before proceeding.

The program may tell you that the email configuration did not take effect, but in fact it has. The software not reporting that the updating of the email outgoing email configuration is working, is another software glitch.

In vTiger CRM navigate to: Settings > Outgoing Server

Type in these settings:
Server Name: mail.yourdomain.com
Username: yourbusinessname+yourdomain.com (it is important that you use the “+” instead of “@” here.)
Password: (whatever you set it to in cPanel when you made the email address)
Requires Authentication? TRUE.

More vTiger CRM Tips for Outgoing Mail Server Settings Here

The below is a quote on how to setup Gmail for Vtiger CRM 5.0.4 from the vTiger Forum Community:

Following are the configuration details with GMAIL :
Settings > Outgoing Server
Server Name : ssl://smtp.gmail.com:465
Username : your_account@gmail.com
Password : your_account_password
Requires Authentication : Enabled

NOTE :
To use Gmail SMTP, you need to enable SSL Support for PHP
To enable openssl On Windows, uncomment the following line in php.ini
extension=php_openssl.dll
Add the following in httpd.conf:
PhpInIDir – point to php folder
Copy libeay32.dll and ssleay32.dll from php folder to apache/bin folder if you have installed through source.

If you are using vtiger bundled installation without SSL support kindly see this :

vTiger CRM Tips on Viruses, and Spam Control

You will need to put in place a Spam and Virus protection solution.

My VPS came with SpamAssassin and ClamAV email virus software available, but not enabled.

For SpamAssassin Nav: To enable SpamAssassin, nav to Tweak Settings under Server Configuration in WHM. Go to Mail Tab > Check the box next to SpamAssassin to enable it. Uncheck the box to disable.

You can disable spamd, the SpamAssassin server, using the Service Manager under Service Configuration. If you disable spamd, you should also disable SpamAssassin in Tweak Settings above.

Here are some setup recommendations: Spamassassin Setup Recommendations

Here’s how to install Clam AV via WHM: WHM -> cPanel -> Manage Plugins It will list ClamAV as one of a few modules that it can install for you. It takes about 5 minutes to install.

More info on ClamAV here: http://corpocrat.com/2008/01/17/install-clamav-in-centos-with-cpanel/

Is It Possible NOT To Show My email ID In vTiger CRM Emails When I Send Mail?

When you are sending mail from vtiger the Outgoing mail server address will show in the from email and your email id will show in the reply To. If you want to remove your email from there then you have to remove reply to. please do the changes as mentioned to remove reply to in the mail

Go to modules/Emails/mail.php and comment out the following line

$mail->AddReplyTo($replyToEmail); (at line no 67)
and
$mail->AddReplyTo($from_email); (at line no 202)

vTiger Newletter Journal – A Good Source of vTiger CRM Tips

CRM-Now

vTiger CRM Tips: vTiger CRM Extentions, Add-ons, and Mods

You can find extentions and add-ons here: vTiger CRM Marketplace

vTiger CRM Manual (in .pdf format)

vTiger CRM Manual

How To Do vTiger Email Marketing Campaign Images

“Its pretty easy, all you have to do is store the image in a directory on your server or you can use a free image service like photobucket to host the image file. One the image is hosted then you can use html to embed the image. However, you must make sure and reconfigure your fckeditor so that is supports html. I believe that those options are disabled in the default vtiger package.” ~ vTiger Forum post by rBennet

Also try doing a search on vtiger for fckeditor configuration.

Also Reference:
Notes on fckeditor

Other VPS setup Tips

Tips on Optimizing cPanel and WHM Here.

Click here for a broad range of Code Modifications for vTiger.

Update Sept 22 2011:

More vTiger CRM Tips : Procedure For Optimizing vTiger CRM Database

Follow this procedure to check and repair the vTiger database:
cPanel > Databases > MySQL Databases (not MySQL Database Wizard).
Find Modify Databases. Check it and Repair it if necessary.
By “Check DB”: select the vTiger Database, then click “Check DB” button.
When complete, Scan the listings. If there were errors then select the database at “Repair DB” and click on the “Repair DB” button.

vTiger CRM Tips on How to Optimize the vTiger Database

Go to cPanel > Databases > click on phpMyAdmin
phpMyAdmin will load. It may take a while, especially if you do not click on the browser “Allow” button.
On the Left Hand Nav Bar, Click on the _vTiger database.

First Thing, Be sure to make a backup of the existing database BEFORE you work with it:
Export Tab > choose the Quick radio button > click on Go.

Optimize the Database
On the Structure Tab, scroll down to the bottom
Click Check All to select all database tables.

Near the bottom there will also be a drop down menu “With selected:”
Select “Optimize Table”

You may enjoy this article: How To Check Website Links

Finish up by making another backup. You will probably notice a file size difference.

Thanks for visiting Blue Sea Web Consulting, and Best of luck on your vTiger CRM information hunt. There are lots more vTiger CRM Tips in the vTiger Forum.