Linux is authoritative and accessible as it is dependable, reliable, and resilient. It has a vast community which takes ownership of Linux distributions and helps develop services and applications and remedy bugs.

Linux Enterprise Distributions

Cent OS (Communication Enterprise Operating System)

https://wiki.centos.org/Download

It’s free and open to use under the terms of the GPL license.

Red Hat, Debian, SUSE Enterprise

Home or Enthusiast-oriented Distributions

Fedora, Open SUSE

BENEFITS

• The administrators modify the GRUB menu to make it more secure, furthermore use the command line to debug and repair boot issues.
• Linux files and directories are just different file types. The BTRFS (Better FS) enterprise file system is blown away with power and ease compared to early traditional file system designs like LVM.
• Administrators can download packages for distribution with no requirement for their installation.
• Easy to manage processes and control services.
• Managing users require less time.
• Naginx – a performance-centric web server, is rapidly taking share market from Apache and has already surpassed IIS.
• PAM (Pluggable Authentication Module) helps to manage when and how users connect.
• Administrators can harden the Linux system to gain the best.

Double pipe || between two commands – if the first command fails, then second will execute.

<command-1> || <command-2>

Double && between two commands – the second command would run only when first succeeds.

<command-1> && <command-2>

Example:

cd joininternet || mkdir joininternet && cd joininternet

The above command changes directory to join-internet, and suppose if does directory does not exists, then the command would fail, but as we have provided another after ||, then the second would execute and create the directory join-internet. After that, as change directory command is also given after &&, it would also get completed. Finally, we reach to directory join-internet.

Command History – If we press up arrow keyboard key, the lastest command executed in the history gets displayed.

Last command argument with !$

mkdir join-internet

cd !$  Here, i$ = join-internet

cd join-internet || mkdir !$ && cd !$

!v would look in the history for a command which starts with letter ‘v’. Similarly, if we provide !?75, it would look for 75, anywhere as an argument or its part.

date –date “75 days ago”

‘vi‘ written in 1976, become the part of BSD UNIX in 1978. According to the Linux Journal survey, even without GUI, it is the most popular editor, and GUI GNOME editor comes second. The reason behind its popularity is its permissiveness, convenience, performance, and speed.

Vim (vi Improved) released in 1991 by Bram Moolenaar, targeting Amiga systems. It is distributed as a vim-enhanced package with GUI frontend. The most notable improvement over ‘vi’ is its syntax highlighting feature for languages such as PHP, PERL, and PYTHON.

$ alias | grep vi alias vi=’vim’

Vim needs ‘vim-XII’ package for the graphical interface. You can install it with the following command:

$yum install vim-XII

EDIT FILE USING VI OR VIM

$vi <file-name>

$gvim <file-name>

$vimx -g <file-name> (without -g option it starts normal vim program)

CONTROL FUNCTIONALITIES & CUSTOMIZE APPEARANCE

/etc/vimrc  for all users i.e., system-wide settings

~/.vimrc for each user

By Default Values in /etc/vimrc

if v:lang =~ “utf8$” || v:lang =~ “UTF-8$”

   set fileencodings=ucs-bom,utf-8,latin1

endif

set nocompatible        ” Use Vim defaults (much better!)

set bs=indent,eol,start         ” allow backspacing over everything in insert mode

“set ai                 ” always set autoindenting on

“set backup             ” keep a backup file

set viminfo=’20,\”50    ” read/write a .viminfo file, don’t store more

                        ” than 50 lines of registers

set history=50          ” keep 50 lines of command line history

set ruler               ” show the cursor position all the time

” Only do this part when compiled with support for autocommands

if has(“autocmd”)

  augroup redhat

  autocmd!

  ” In text files, always limit the width of text to 78 characters

  ” autocmd BufRead *.txt set tw=78

  ” When editing a file, always jump to the last cursor position

  autocmd BufReadPost *

  \ if line(“‘\””) > 0 && line (“‘\””) <= line(“$”) |

  \   exe “normal! g’\”” |

  \ endif

  ” don’t write swapfile on most commonly used directories for NFS mounts or USB sticks

  autocmd BufNewFile,BufReadPre /media/*,/run/media/*,/mnt/* set directory=~/tmp,/var/tmp,/tmp

  ” start with spec file template

  autocmd BufNewFile *.spec 0r /usr/share/vim/vimfiles/template.spec

  augroup END

endif

if has(“cscope”) && filereadable(“/usr/bin/cscope”)

   set csprg=/usr/bin/cscope

   set csto=0

   set cst

   set nocsverb

   ” add any database in current directory

   if filereadable(“cscope.out”)

      cs add $PWD/cscope.out

   ” else add database pointed to by environment

   elseif $CSCOPE_DB != “”

      cs add $CSCOPE_DB

   endif

   set csverb

endif

” Switch syntax highlighting on, when the terminal has colors

” Also switch on highlighting the last used search pattern.

if &t_Co > 2 || has(“gui_running”)

  syntax on

  set hlsearch

endif

filetype plugin on

if &term==”xterm”

     set t_Co=8

     set t_Sb=^[[4%dm

     set t_Sf=^[[3%dm

endif

” Don’t wake up system with blinking cursor:

” http://www.linuxpowertop.org/known.php

let &guicursor = &guicursor . “,a:blinkon0”

Turn Line Numbering ON/OFF

To enable line numbering add the following command in a file:

vi ~/.vimrc

set number

and to set line numbering off

set nonumber

Turn Off Argument Highlighting

You can provide search arguments to vi, and it will take directly to the first appearance of the word in the file or on a particular line number.

vi +55 index.php

vi +/copyright index.php

The word searched is highlighted in color, if not desirable, can be turned off by adding:

set nohlsearch

Toggle Line Numbering ON/OFF

Navigate to particular line number by typing:

<line-number> G

or

<line-number> gg

Like 3G or 3gg to navigate to line number 3. If we don’t wish to provide ‘G’ and with to reach directly to a line by providing line number, followed by ‘Enter’ key, then type the following line in ~/.vimrc file.

nmap <CR> G

We provide a command

vi +235 index.php

to reach that 235 line number. Press Shift g to reach the end of file and gg to the first line of the file.

‘sed’ for Search & Replace in Single or Multiple Files

sed stream editor – A Powerful Text Stream Editor

sed ‘search-text’/replace-text’

$ sed -i ‘s/AnanovaSitegeek/g’ /home/ananova/index.php

This command would open index.php and line-by-line would replace all the occurrences of Ananova with Sitegeek.

Search & Replace in Vim

‘-i‘ in-pace edit, i.e., no need to redirect the output from sed to new file

‘g‘ global replacement to replace all occurrences once per line

Replacing nth occurrence

Use the ‘/1’, ‘/2’ instead of ‘/g’ flags to replace the first or second occurrence of the pattern in a line.

‘s,‘ to specify the range, when the scale is determined ‘g’ option omitted

$ sed ‘1,3 s/AnanovaSitegeek/g’ /home/ananova/index.php

The sed command replaces the lines with a range from 1 to 3.

‘%‘ for the entire document

‘$’ indicates last line in the file

$ sed ‘2,$ s/AnanovaSitegeek/g’ /home/ananova/index.php

The sed command replaces the text from the second line to the last line in the file.

Esc Press Shitft : and provide the following command to provide one tab before line

:s/^/\t/

Parenthesize first character of each provide provided as on output of echo command through the pipe:

echo “Web Hosting Industry Demystified” | sed ‘s/\(\b[A-Z]\)/\(\1\)/g’

(W)eb (H)osting (I)ndustry (D)emystified

To replace the string on a specific line number

$ sed ‘3 s/AnanovaSitegeek/g’ /home/ananova/index.php

The above sed command replaces the string only on the third line.

Deleting Lines from File

Delete the last line

$ sed ‘$d’ index.php

Delete a particular line say n 

$ sed ‘nd’ index.php

$ sed ‘3d’ filename.txt

Delete line from range x to y

$ sed ‘x,yd’ index.php

$ sed ‘12,15d’ index.php

Delete from nth to the last line

$ sed ‘nth,$d’ index.php

$ sed ’10,$d’ filename.txt

Delete pattern matching line

$ sed ‘/pattern/d’ index.php

$ sed ‘/flowentry/d’ index.php

Joomla for Developing Interactive Business Website

Joomla is one of the finest content management systems for those who wish to create effective business or personal websites. Business companies can hire expert Joomla Developers who can provide them with uniquely designed and developed websites or blogs exactly according to their preference. Joomla website development provides great flexibility to websites. It makes it easier for website owners to manage their pictures, content and other elements related to multimedia with ease.

These days Joomla developers are proving to be the very successful and best solution. Today the Joomla tool has turned out to be a reasonably valuable tool helping in placing the content and maintaining it correctly on a website. Perhaps the consequence of Joomla and the requirement of proper usage of intelligence like Joomla experts can just not be ignored.

Features

• Open Source Freely available Content Management System (CMS)
• No Technical skill or knowledge is required to manage content which includes text, images, and videos.
• Grow your business blog to an e-commerce solution to sell products, add a support system to follow-up queries, add contact forms, a membership system and forums.
• Remote Blogging: Using blogging software like Windows Live Writer, MarsEdit or similar, you can publish the finished post without logging in to the Joomla Administrator.

Use

You can build business websites and website applications examples include: Corporate websites and portals, E-commerce websites, online magazines, newspapers, publications and journals, Government applications, school website

Further Reading: Securing Joomla Website

Hiring Joomla Developers

If we talk regarding its advantages, then the best part of hiring these developers is you get to work with experts who dedicatedly give more time to your project. The source code is well protected as Joomla provides the highest level of security. Apart from all these, some of the other advantages associated with hiring experienced developers are:

• Technical skill – A developer’s technical skill on Joomla, reflect in the sort of development you get. Your test and mistake process waits for your website and makes it appear unprofessional at a similar time.
• Higher ranking on search engines – Designing and developing a website is not enough to secure larger gains on the internet. It is also essential to optimize it precisely to obtain a higher ranking on search engines. The Joomla Developers help in the effective optimization of websites so that they can secure higher rankings on search engines.
  Best cost savings may range from 60% to 70% compared to a product developed from scratch, depending on the complexity of customization
• Aesthetic Sense – Professional Joomla developers possess vast knowledge in the field of website design and development. Such experts have a high aesthetic sense in creating websites and blogs and can, therefore, supply their clients with completely proficient services.
• Upgraded internet sites – These developers always make use of powerful and latest technological norms with which it is possible to keep websites always upgraded. Developers can upgrade online sites from time to time with the use of the latest technology norms.

Installation

1. Download copy from https://www.joomla.org/ Install in public_html folder of your website server
2. Install using script installer in cPanel

Joomla website comprises of Frontend and Backend which are file based frameworks, and every bit of content, parameters, and respective values stored in MySQL database tables. Any change committed in Backend gets reflected in Frontend.
Frontend: publically visible
Backend: Comes with Administrator Panel to create content and design website and accessible by:

<domain-name>/administrator

Joomla Backend organized as:

1. Article Manager
2. Category Manager
3. Media Manager
4. User Manager
5. Menus and
6. Extensions

Administering Joomla website

Joomla control panel often called as Engine Room, or Administrator End is used to configure website

Global Configuration

The left side of Administrator landing page under SYSTEM, Global Configuration Tab is available. It is grouped into tabbed menu items: Site (selected by default), System, Server, Permission, Text, Filters.

Site
Site Setting: Allows you to change the Site Name or put site offline
Metadata Settings: To optimize site for search engines

Server
To view the database configuration, do not change anything here, if you are not certain, as it could bring the entire site stop working.

Creating Content

To create, manage and display ‘Content Manager’ is available which includes: Article Manager, Category Manager, Featured Articles Manager and Media Manager.

The Joomla Content Editor (JCE) is an award winning, highly configurable WYSIWYG editor based on Moxiecode’s TinyMCE. It includes advanced Image/Media, File and Link handling plug-in support and an Administration interface for editor configuration. It supports Profiles to have a different setting and editor for various user groups.

JCE Plugins

• Media Manager: To upload, insert and manage video files
• Image Manager Extended: For more advanced image manipulation and editing
• Captions: To easily add captions to images
• File Manager: To upload and insert document files
• Iframe: To add IFrame to articles

Article Manager

Available under ‘Content’ option in Backend to create, manage and feature particular articles under different categories.

Article Title: Name of the article, it improves SEO
Article Content: Fill the required content.

Featured Article Manager

It controls the display and order of Articles on Front Page or Home Page. From the right side of the article page, configure Featured and select Yes.

Category Manager

Available under ‘Content’ option in Backend to create, edit, browse and delete categories. It groups articles, which are readily available by menu item, module or linked to.

Category Manger Buttons: New, Edit, Publish, Unpublish, Archive, Check In, Trash, Batch, Rebuild, Help, and Options

Check in: When more than one administrators are working on the backend, it allows blocking of an element on which editing is going on.

Archive: Maintains the extensive database of articles sorted by date.

Batch: Performs similar tasks (repetitive) tasks with multiple objects, thus saves time and effort.

Media Manager

Tool for uploading or deleting files in the /images directory of the web server.

User Manager

The option is available under Users menu in a backend. Options available to Managing registered users, view registration details, last login data, access level and IDs.

Other options available are ‘Groups’ and ‘Access Levels,’ to secure website from unauthorized usage. Use Access Levels Permission tabs to assign proper access rights to particular group of users. Thus restricting certain categories, articles, menus and modules viewed by non-members.

All users are arranged in groups and have access to certain parts of a website as per permission.
Default User Groups: Administrator, Author, Editor, Publisher, Guest

Menus

Menu Manager manages the website navigation. The menu items created from the components installed.

Menu Item Type: Tells the kind of item the menu should point to.
Status: Set the Menu item to Published, Unpublished or Thrashed.
Parent Item: Choose the Menu Item as Parent Item (Standalone) or sub-menu.

Components, Modules and Plug-in

Built-in extended functionlity with 3-rd party options.

Module

Display content as small blocks in a specific position around the page designed in page layout.

Add to Menu: It is an administrator module to add menu item link to the pages where component template file is available. Locate component template file in:

/administrator/modules/mod_addtomenu/addtomenu/components

Preview Module Position in Template

Extensions -> Template Manager -> Set parameter Preview Module position to Enabled

In the URL or web address append

?tp=1

Templates: The template is the face of a blog, and users enjoy reading from a properly designed template.

Extension Manager

Based on functionality extensions are divided into certain categories, find them at:

https://extensions.joomla.org/

Install Extensions
Extensions -> Extension Manager -> Select the Download Package -> Upload & Install

eXtplorer: File Management tool for Joomla to upload, download and edit files and directories on server via FTP or direct access. It makes heavy use of ExtJS and could also be used as a standalone app. The interface is like Desktop application with drag & drop, grid, and directory tree.

Extensions for Blogging

• K2
• EasyBlog
• WordPress for Joomla
• Zoo
• CB Blogs
• RS Blogs
• Users

Steps to Secure Joomla Website

• Administrator Access
  Rename the Administrator’s username from admin to something else.
  Password must be a combination of other characters.
  Keep your login information secure.
• Update Joomla
  Keep Joomla Core files updated as per the latest version.
• Backup
  Take backups periodically
• Good Hosting
  Choose Host which provides Anti-malware, anti-spyware, anti-virus, DDoS protection, Firewall and Anti-hacking shied.
• Delete old unused and badly coded 3rd party extensions

The template is the face of a blog, and users enjoy reading from a properly designed template. Graphical representation of website determined by layout, colours, typefaces, graphics and other aspects that make site unique. With a bit of knowledge of CSS and HTML, and by adjusting parameter settings through the control panel environment, you can make your template unique. You can change colours, template width and the number of columns.

Features of Good Template

• Responsive: Web site adapts to different iPad, iPhone or Android Phone screen sizes.
• Proper Documentation: Developer provides the detailed documentation for replicating the demo site look.
• SEO-Friendly: A light and efficient template gets indexed well by search engines
• Output clean HTML and CSS: Efficient code and layout structure impact the efficiency of the website.
• Flexible Module System
• CCK Styling: With built-in K2, you get styling for the component that matches the template style from the start.
• Standard Compliance: Compatible with most of the browsers.

To View templates

Extensions -> Template Manager

There are 2 types of templates:

1. Site Template (Front-end Presentation): To change the public look-n-feel of a website.
2. Administrator Template (Back-end Presentation): To change administrator interface looks.

Template Resources

Already available Joomla Templates to enhance the website design.

• Free Templates: Provided by Joomla Community
• Commercial Templates: For premium templates, visit the table below for Joomla providers.