I’m a big fan of Blacknight for hosting and domains (not so much for mail in the last while, but they’ve making big changes to make it more reliable – it’s also free with the shared hosting packages). I’m also a big fan of the TWiT network and TWiG (This Week in Google) in particular. So, having held off for a while on starting to use Gina Trapani‘s rather brilliant looking ThinkUp App (which lets you aggregate your social activity in a database that you control) I was pleased to see it hit version 1.0 on Thursday.  Having head about it on three shows, I took the plunge (actually, I tried to install it on my Mac first, but gave up after realising that would be difficult and silly). I’ve used my Minimus hosting package to host the application on Blacknight, which is a damn cheap way to do it. So, here’s the actual process in short form. If you need more help with more specific steps, just give me a shout (I really wish I’d recorded the install process now). It takes only the tiniest bit of know-how, so you should be fine really.

The steps are:

• Create a new domain/ subdomain
• Set up FTP and a database
• Transfer the files
• Set up the ThinkUp app

Before you begin, a disclaimer: I am not liable for anything breaking in this process. I did this twice using Blacknight and it worked fine both times. Back up the data on your web servers before you do this – don’t regret it later if something goes wrong. Please, if you see a mistake let me know in the comments below.

With a Blacknight hosting package, log in to the control panel.

1. You need to use a web space, so either use a new domain or a subdomain (I went for a subdomain). Let’s pretend you’re creating thinkupapp.janesblog.com – Hit ‘Add New Subdomain’ from the ‘Sites & Domains’ part of ‘Web Hosting’. Enter your subdomain (thinkupapp), then select your domain (janesblog.com). From ‘Hosting’, select ‘Website (Apache)’. When the page does a quick refresh, check that the subscription is correct, then click ‘Next’ (you don’t need mail hosting). Change the radio button to select ‘Create a new webspace’, unless you have a spare webspace, in which case be very, very careful that you don’t over-write what’s already there! Click ‘Next’. Check that you’ve selected the correct subscription and click ‘Next’. On the next page, select ‘Run as an Apache module’ under ‘PHP5 support’ then click ‘Next’, then ‘Next’, then ‘Finish’. Your domain/ subdomain will now wirr away syncing for a little bit, once it’s finished move on to the next step.
2. On the left-hand side on the ‘Web Hosting’ page, click ‘Web Space’, then click ‘Webspaces in the sub-menu that appears. Find your domain/ subdomain, then click ‘Select’. On the left-hand menu, click ‘FTP Access’. Enter a new FTP login name and either generate a new password, or use an existing one, then click next. Click on ‘FTP Access’ on the left-hand side again and you’ll see the details for your FTP access appear. Note the FTP server and document root, as well as keeping your login name and password.
3. Look back on the left-hand side of the panel and click ‘Databases’. Click ‘Add New Database’ and make sure ‘MySQL (MySQL5 Database)’ is selected, then click ‘Next’. Type in a database name (leave the ‘External Hosts’ button unticked) then type in a username and password. Note all of this information, including the d******_ and u*******_ parts of the username and database name, then press ‘Next’ then ‘Finish’.
4. That’s the hard parts done (more or less). Download the latest version of the ThinkUp app and unzip it. Now, open up your favourite FTP client (I use Filezilla). In ‘Host’, use the ‘FTP Server’ you noted earlier and port 21, selecting ‘Normal’ authentication and using the FTP login name and password that you created earlier. Click in to ‘webspace’, then ‘httpdocs’. If you’re using Filezilla, find the directory you extracted the ‘thinkup’ folder in to, then drag it over to the web space, so that the ‘thinkup’ directory is transferred. Go grab a beer, or something, then come back when it’s done.
5. Now, use your favourite browser to go to your subdomain.TLD/thinkup, e.g.: http://thinkupapp.janesblog.com/thinkup If you’re process went like mien, here you’ll get an error about incorrect folder permissions. There are instructions on that page that describe what to do, but in case you can’t tell, what I did was open up Terminal on my Mac and type FTP (there’s probably a way of doing this via FileZilla, but it hasn’t worked great for me before with changing folder permissions). At the FTP prompt, type open then your FTP server, then type in your FTP username, press return and enter your password. Type ls to list the files and folders in your directory, then type cd webspace and press return, then cd httpdocs and return, then cd thinkup and return, then cd _lib (there’s a space between ‘cd’ and the underscore) and return, then finally cd view. Now, type in chmod 777 compiled_view and press return. This sets permissions for this directory (folder). Now, go back to your browser and refresh the page. This should bring you to a page with a link to install ThinkUp – click that link.
6. Now, enter a name, username and password for the ThinkUp app and choose your time zone. Enter your ‘Database Host’, which for Blacknight is your database’s ‘Internal hostname’ – probably something.cp.blacknight.com and the database name, username and password that you created earlier. Again, you’ll probably get an error here saying ‘ThinkUp couldn’t write the config.inc.php file.’. So, take the chunk of text in the box and paste it into TextEdit. Save this file as a plan text file on your desktop as ‘config.inc.php’. Open FireZilla again, connect to your FTP access for ThinkUp and click on ‘webspace’, then ‘httpdocs’, then ‘thinkup’. Transfer the file you just created to this directory, then go back to your web browser and press ‘Next Step’. Boom – you’re done! Check for your activation email, click the link in there and sign in. You gave ThinkUp running! That’s the hard work done.

The rest of the process (of setting up the Twitter, Google+ and Facebook APIs) is very well-documented, so I won’t bother going in to that.

So, there we go – the ThinkUp app on Blacknight, in no time at all. Feel free to spread this information around and re-write it, so long as you clearly attribute it to me by name and with a link to this blog post.

You’ll find me on Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and LinkedIn. I’ll be posting more stuff in future, more tech stuff hopefully, like that map of free Wifi hotspots in Dublin from two years ago that really needs to be updated.