It had been so long since setting it up originally, that I had forgotten what I did to get it working in the first place. With a little trial and error and looking back through some old notes I found, I was able to successfully add the new domain.

So I figured there may be others out there that could use some tips in getting things up and running. Hopefully these tips save you some time and energy.

1. Follow the directions for setting up the MSM on the ExpressionEngine website.

2. Once that is done, you will need to shut off open_basedir and php safe_mode.

3. Log in via SSH to your server as the root user. With Media Temple, there is a setting in your hosting control panel that you must set in order to have root access.

4. Once you have root access, you need to switch to the conf directory of your primary domain:
cd /var/www/vhosts/yourprimarydomain.com/conf/

5. Next, create & edit the vhost.conf file in that directory:
vi vhost.conf

6. In the editor, press i on your keyboard & type in the following:

7. When you’re done, press esc and then at the prompt (:) enter wq and then press return.

8. You will now need to configure the server to read the new vhost.conf file:
/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/httpdmng—reconfigure-domain yourprimarydomain.com

9. Then restart the server:
/etc/init.d/httpd restart

Your primary domain should now be working & accessible.

Now you need to repeat these steps for all of your other domains, but the path to their vhost.conf files are going to be slightly different.

For each subdomain, use the following:

Switch to the subdomain’s conf directory:
cd /var/www/vhosts/subdomain.com/conf/

Create & edit the vhost.conf file in that directory:
vi vhost.conf

Add the following in vhost.conf:

The configure and restart the server per steps 8 & 9 above.

That should do the trick! Happy MSM-ing!

We thought about creating a PDF manual, but in the end settled on screencasts. We felt that the videos would illustrate the processes a little better and be more memorable than reading a document. Plus, we could post them to YouTube and Vimeo for others to see and hopefully get some use out of.

This was our first attempt at creating screencasts, and it proved to be a good learning experience. It really helped us fine tune our training skills and also left us with some great material for our clients.

First, we had to research which tools we would need to create the screencasts. We knew we’d need some sort of screen recording software and a decent mic. We researched a few of the popular screen recording apps out there and ended up choosing Screenflow. It seemed to be easy to use, had a full feature set and a nice interface and got great reviews.

Next we had to choose a mic to get better quality audio than a built in computer mic would provide. We ended up going with the MXL USB.006. MXL makes great mics at affordable prices and we’ve had good experiences with their products in the past so it was an easy choice.

So now that we had the tools, we had to figure out how to use them. Learning how to use Screenflow was a snap and setting up the mic was super easy, so we were up and running very quickly. In our first few attempts, we tried recording the audio & video at the same time using Screenflow and did not use a script. Improvising proved to be an exercise in futility, and after several failures, we decided it was time to try it another way as frustration had set in. More skilled speakers or someone seasoned at training might have better luck doing it this way, but we kept getting tongue tied and kept having to start over. Otherwise, there would have been way too much tedious editing to do.

So we wrote a script and tried recording the audio by itself. Although this gave the voiceover a slightly less natural feel and ended up sounding like it was read from a script, we felt it was better in the long run and would get more natural with practice. We could also easily edit out any flubs and prep our audio before recording the video. And since we could focus on just the audio, there were far fewer mistakes. We used Adobe Soundbooth to make our edits and clean up the audio. After a little compression, noise reduction and volume correction, we were all set.

Next, it was on to Screenflow. We just played the audio and listened along as we recorded the action on screen. We usually got the video done in one take, so recording the video was pretty quick. This process was definitely proving to be the way to go!

Once the video was done in Screenflow, we imported the audio file we created earlier, matched up the timing of the audio to the video, added our intro and outro (which was all created in Screenflow) and we were done. And we loved the fact that Screenflow lets you upload your videos directly to YouTube and Vimeo. It creates the video and uploads them in one shot, so it’s very fast & convenient. You can even fill in the title, description and tags right in Screenflow.

We ended up creating 4 screencasts covering some of the basics of ExpressionEngine. The first video covers publishing content to your site. The second video goes over editing existing content, while the third video discusses the new and improved file manager. The last video touches on a few of the features in the user account area.

So check out our ExpressionEngine Screencast Series | The Basics, and we’d love to get your input on them. You can check them out on our YouTube channel as well.

We plan to do more screencasts and hopefully each one will get better and better as we get our process down.

We also discovered an issue with viewing the email using Gmail where the background image did not display causing the email to be a little hard to read. We apologize for that and have corrected the issue for future mailings.

You can view the newsletter in our archive here.

Again, if you have not subscribed to the Core Newsletter, you can do so using the form that you can find in the footer on any page of this site.

Happy Holidays!

We hope that the new site shows a bit more of our personality and is not as ambiguous as our last site. And with our social media channels and the addition of the What’s Fresh section, we feel we will be in closer contact with our clients and fans, and can keep you all in the loop about the haps here at The Design Core.

Along with the completion of the new site, this year has been a great year for us with lots of return clients and some new ones mixed in there as well. We also made a big move from Dallas to Austin and are really enjoying the new scenery. Hey, it’s Austin. What more do I need to say?

This year also brought some big changes to our business model, which is why we felt the need for a new website. There was (and still is) the whole Flash thing sparked by Apple’s decision to not allow Flash on the iPhone/iPad. The topic has been beaten to death and all sorts of misinformation is floating around out there. Needless to say, it caused a great deal of confusion for our clients. While I’m not going to get into the debate at the moment, we felt that it was important for us to make the switch to HTML for our new site. We will continue to do Flash work, but it is no longer our focus, but we are super pumped about all of the HTML/CSS work we have been doing this year.

We’ve also been doing a ton of work with ExpressionEngine, our favorite content management system. Most of the sites we have done this year, Flash & HTML, have been driven by this excellent CMS. We love it and our clients love it. What more could you ask for?

So I hope you will take the time to check out the new site and let us know how you are liking the change.

Thanks for your continued support and we look forward to a great 2012!