Open Source

This is were I will blog about Open Source technology.

Book Review: The 3CX IP PBX Tutorial

by

I was recently contacted by Packt Publishing and asked if I would review a book about 3CX. I was more than happy to as we use 3CX and I am a supporter of the 3CX product (See my past blog on setting up 3CX).

The 3CX IP PBX Tutorial Cover

The book is titled the 3CX IP PBX Tutorial authored by Matthew M. Landis and Robert Lloyd.

What is this book about? This book is titled “The 3CX IP PBX Tutorial” therefore it is a tutorial and a hands on guide to 3CX for beginners and administrators of software PBX solutions. The book is meant to guide you through setting up 3CX for business or home office use. It brings you from start to finish in a short amount of time.

What I liked:

In this book the authors aim to give a real world approach to setting up 3CX. They did a good job at organizing the steps and order of implementing a 3CX system. This will help someone that has never worked with 3CX or any PBX solution. I like how the authors went into the history of 3CX and background on VOIP/PBX as well.

There are many components that make up 3CX besides the core such as: the soft phone, the 3CX assistant, and reporting tool. In the beginning of the book they covered these components so you would get a good understanding of what 3CX is made of and what it can do.

The section titled “What 3CX is not” is valuable real world knowledge. This would help someone easily identify if 3CX meets their needs or not before getting too involved.

Chapters 1 through 4 covered the basics such as working with extensions, call groups, digital prompts, and install. Most of this was review for me but good information for a beginner.

Read more

How to find PHP.ini location

by

One day I was working on a new Drupal site for client. This was on a new server and I had no clue where anything was. I needed to find out what PHP version was running. I could not find this in Plesk for some reason. On Geeklog they had an article with a cool way to track down your PHP version and other information about PHP on a server.

 

Read more

Automatically backup MySQL database

by

I needed to backup a couple of MySQL databaes automatically. Here is what I did to accomplish this. I created a folder called mysqlbackup. I then created a script called “mysqldbbackup.sh” and put this script file in the mysqlbackup folder. It contains “rm /mysqlbackup/DBNAME_backup.sql mysqldump -u USERNAME -pPASSWORD DBNAME > /mysqlbackup/DBNAME_backup.sql” I used the “rm” command to … Read more

Integrate SugarCRM with Active Directory

by

Here is a quick how to guide on configuring SugarCRM to integrate with your Active Directory.

First thing you need to do is log into your SugarCRM and click on the admin link in the upper right hand corner.

Scroll down to System Settings and click on this link.

Now scroll down to LDAP Authentication Support and enable it. This will expand out and you will need to configure these settings.

Read more

Setup 3CX IP PBX/VOIP for Windows

by

3CX Phone System for Windows is a software-based IP PBX. This is what we decided to use. We thought about setting up a trixbox server but decided to give 3CX a try.

What you will need:

  • 3CX software
  • Purchased VOIP number
  • Win XP computer (you can use Vista we talk about XP in this article)
  • IIS 6 on your XP OS
  • A router that can do port forwarding or port mapping
  • The 3CX soft phone (you can use X-Lite but we like the TS feature in 3CX soft phone)
  • A static IP, FQDN (routable on the internet), or a dynamic IP
  • Time to install, configure and test

Pre Configuration:

  • On your firewall and or router open Ports 5480, 5482, 5483, 5485,
  • Setup a static map or forward of ports: 5060-5100 (TCP and UDP), 9000-9015 (TCP and UDP) and 3400-3499 (TCP and UDP) to your PBX server.

NOTE: forwarding ports 5060-5100 covers Port 5090 (TCP) for the 3CX Tunnel. The 3CX Tunnel is so that users can connect to the PBX server remotely to get an extension.

Read more

Setup a catch all domain

by 
I needed to setup a catch all for one of my clients domains. This is what I needed to happen:

If user typed in an incorrect sub domain for mydomain.com that did not exist I needed it
to redirect them to www.mydomain.com. 

For example: if they type in notreal.mydomain.com it will send the user
to www.mydomain.com.

Here is what I did to accomplish this: 


Read more

Setup VNC Server on CentOS

by

I recently had the task of setting up VNC Server on CentOS for a client of mine. VNC is very much like remote desktop in windows. You can even use VNC on Windows servers. I found VNC to be a little bit slower then remote desktop and it kept kicking me out every once in a while. Here are the steps I took to set it up:

First I opened the necessary ports.

Path to access the firewall:

Read more

Backup your SugarCRM

by

The backup tool in SugarCRM does not work at all when in a shared server environment.

I have a better way to backup your SugarCRM that works. To restore your SugarCRM you need to restore the database first and then restore your SugarCRM files. Here is how it works:

First you need to export your full database. (I use MySQL) You do this from PhpMyAdmin. In order to reach it you have to log in your Cpanel, go to MySql databases and click on the link to PhpMyAdmin.

Read more