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So, I just installed MyBanco

26. Jan, 2009

Right, so you have a new installation of MyBanco, what should you do now? Well, here are a few ideas just to get the ball rolling:

  • Create a new skin of MyBanco. Skins are very easy to make, you do it by just copying an existing skin to a new directory (skins are in C:\xampp\htdocs\Skins). For example, to make a skin called ‘wicked’, here are the steps.
    1. Copy the folder ‘Simple’ and paste it in the same directory.
    2. Rename ‘Copy of Simple’ to ‘wicked’
    3. Enter the folder ‘wicked’ and rename ‘Simple.php’ to ‘wicked.php’
    4. Goto ‘C:\xampp\htdocs’ and edit ‘config.php’.
    5. Change the line starting with “$CONFIG['skin']” changing it to this:
      $CONFIG['skin'] = 'wicked';
    6. Start editing the new skin, making it look how you want :)
  • Install xbank. Do this by going to the admin, and specifying ‘Enable xbank’ in the config. If you have made the config file read only (not a bad idea!) you will have to edit config.php manually.
    When XBank is enabled, a new config item will appear, where you can add banks that allow communication with. To do this, you will have to know what the partner bank’s XBank I.D. is, and create a new Communication Key with them. You must share then with the manager of the partner bank’s system your communication key, and they will give you their communication key. If both keys are not traded, communication between the banks will be impossible, as the communication key builds up the security between the two banks.
  • Enable Currency XChange. (CXC).
    CXC is a system that allows different currencies to be traded in a fair way. The way that CXC works is that a new currency is created by a ‘Host Bank’. This host bank then specifies the four character CXID, or ‘Currency Xchange ID’, which other banks will use to specify the currency.

    For example, the “Test Bank of Testland” floats their new curreny, who’s CXID is “TEST”. “Test Bank of Testland” tells the CXC server that they are willing to put t10,000 into a CXC account. This new currency can now be floated at a rate specified by the “Test Bank of Testland” against *ONE* other currency already in the CXC.

    When another bank, for example the “First bank of Demonasia” has a customer that wants to put t2,000 into the account, the money will then be traded with the specified amount.

    This requires both banks to have communication set up not only between the CXC, but also with each other.

    The First Bank of Demonasia can then tell the Test bank of Testland that it has 2,000 to put into the foreign bank, and the money will appear in the account.

    Unlike other systems availible at the moment, this system does not magically ‘create’ currency, rather, it is only traded, so always the exact amount that was put in the system is actually there.

    Really cool things can then be done, for example, the Test bank of Testland can remove all the money that it has from circulation (which are not held in other banks)

  • Offer Phone Banking
    If you have an install of Asterisk laying around, you can actually create online banking for customers of your bank. For example, with voip.ms, a new number in America only costs around $3 a month, and you can accept two incoming calls at a time (and pay nothing to accept those calls). All you need to do to make this work well is have a good TTS (text To Speech engine installed, like Cepstral) and a Linux install of Asterisk, which is allowed to access the MyInfo location (the backend of MyBanco).
  • Allow SMS Banking
    If you have credits with Clickatell, you can actually do SMS banking. This costs a bit of money to actually set up, but getting it working once you pay the $30 a month is very simple. Customers can then see from anywhere how much money is available in their account.

Well, that should at least get the ball rolling.

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Written By Tim Groeneveld. \\ tags: ,
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Installing MyBanco with XAMPP on Windows

26. Jan, 2009
  1. Download xampp-win32-1.7.0.exe from the Apache Friends website
  2. Run xampp-win32-1.7.0.exe, and set the ‘Extract Path’ to C:\
    ( It’s OK, all the files will go inside a directory called ‘xampp’ )
  3. When the extracting has finished, go into C:\xampp\, and rename htdocs to htdocs.old
  4. Create a new directory called ‘htdocs’
  5. Copy all of the extracted files from ‘mybanco-x.yy’ into C:\xampp\htdocs
  6. In ‘C:\xampp’, run the file ‘xampp-control.exe’.
  7. On the window that comes up, ensure that the ‘Apache’ (web server) and ‘MySQL’ (database) ‘Svc’ checkboxes are ticked.
  8. Open C:\xampp\apache\bin\php.ini with your favorite text editor
  9. Make sure the “;” character is removed from the following lines:
    • ;extension=php_curl.dll
    • ;extension=php_bz2.dll
    • ;extension=eaccelerator.dll
      This is only needed if the performance of MyBanco is not as desired. This can boost
      the speed of the application by almost three times. It is a real speed boost.
  10. Ensure that all the “magic_” lines are set to off (for example, magic_gpg….)
  11. Save the file and click Start on both of the above mentioned boxes (Apache and MySQL).
  12. If Apache fails to start, try commenting out all of the eAccelerator lines again with “;”‘s, I say this because the xampp version I had came with a eAccelerator version not for the build of PHP included with xampp.
  13. Now that xampp has started Apache and MySQL, goto http://127.0.0.1/phpmyadmin and click on the ‘Privilleges’ tab on the right top hand side of phpMyAdmin
  14. Click on ‘Add a new User’ and enter the following information:
    • Username: myinfo
    • Host: (choose Local’ from the drop down box)
    • Password: myinfo123
  15. On the ‘Database for user’ group, press ‘Create database with same name and grant all privileges’
  16. Now goto ‘http://127.0.0.1/install/
  17. Click next, press ‘I accept’ on the AGPL license (note: this means that you must share all code changes with anyone who can access the website, so if you change some code in MyBanco or any code that connects directly to MyBanco (ie, a MyBanco plugin) you must share that code with all people who can access the site. Even if all they see is the login page. This is so all people can benefit from other peoples changes to what is the most comprehensive open source bank operations software.
  18. Fix any errors that may occure on the next screen. Please note that this may mean more changes to the php.ini file.
  19. For the first three fields that you see on the next page, fill in the username and password that you created in phpMyAdmin. For the MyInfo backend location, enter ‘http://127.0.0.1/backend/’. Please note that this location should be changed for more secure environments. I say this, however, but no operations can be performed through the backend without first logging in.
  20. The install should go without any glitches. If it all goes OK, the bank software is installed!
  21. Now you can goto http://127.0.0.1 and see MyBanco working.
    A default account has been created called ‘tim’. Login with it, as ‘tim’ as the username, and ‘login’ as the password.

Quite a quick and easy install. Should take only around 25-30 minutes to complete. (Hell, it only took me twenty-thirty minutes to write!)

- Tim

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Written By Tim Groeneveld. \\ tags: ,
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Even more patches for MyBanco

27. Dec, 2008

Yesterday I talked about the mybanco-0.05-better-curl-support patch, and now I have a few more to share.

==> mybanco-0.05-check-for-mysql.patch
This patch makes the backend spit out a nice error if there is no MySQL extension loaded on the server. This is much better then things just appearing t do nothing

==> mybanco-0.05-better-errors-when-they-happen.patch
This patch adds more backend errors when other required extensions are not loaded.

==> mybanco-0.05-frontend-myinfo-enhancements.patch
This patch fixes up the way that requests are forged and sent to the MyInfo server. Requests are now faster and use less RAM. This is good!

==> mybanco-0.05-to-0.05.1.patch
This patch updates MyBanco’s version from 0.05 to 0.05.1, on it’s way to 0.06.

[TXT] mybanco-0.05-check-for-mysql.patch 26-Dec-2008 09:15 patch
[   ] mybanco-0.05-check-for-mysql.patch.md5 26-Dec-2008 09:15 md5 checksum
[TXT] mybanco-0.05-check-for-mysql.patch.txt 26-Dec-2008 09:15 diffstat
[TXT] mybanco-0.05-frontend-myinfo-enhancements.patch 26-Dec-2008 20:01 patch
[   ] mybanco-0.05-to-0.05.1.patch 26-Dec-2008 20:11 patch
[TXT] mybanco-0.05-better-errors-when-they-happen.patch 26-Dec-2008 20:11 patch
[   ] mybanco-0.05-better-errors-when-they-happen.patch.md5 26-Dec-2008 20:21 md5 checksum
[TXT] mybanco-0.05-better-errors-when-they-happen.patch.txt 26-Dec-2008 20:21 diffstat
[   ] mybanco-0.05-frontend-myinfo-enhancements.patch.md5 26-Dec-2008 20:21 md5 checksum
[TXT] mybanco-0.05-frontend-myinfo-enhancements.patch.txt 26-Dec-2008 20:21 patch
[   ] mybanco-0.05-to-0.05.1.patch.md5 26-Dec-2008 20:21 md5 checksum
[TXT] mybanco-0.05-to-0.05.1.patch.txt 26-Dec-2008 20:21 diffstat
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Written By Tim Groeneveld. \\ tags: ,
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New patch for MyBanco!

26. Dec, 2008

Hello everyone!

About time I updated this blog!

Today I am writing to give you all a new patch (with another one comming in about one hour or three.)

This first patch, which I am going to offer up today is to improve a small issue with installations that do not have cURL enabled. If/when this is the case, a nice error will show up, rather then comming up with “Call to undefined function curl_init() in [...]“.

Although only a small patch, it’s just a nice patch up for MyBanco 0.06; which is due out in the next few days, and will offer all new features, such as user registration (at long last!) and some other things which I will not discuss now. The next patch will improve the way that the communication to the backend is done, and will allow a huge improvement to the speed of the frontend. MyBanco 0.06 will also offer up a new method of usage which will not require the backend or the cURL extension in PHP.

[   ] mybanco-0.05-better-curl-support.patch 26-Dec-2008 08:39 patch
[   ] mybanco-0.05-better-curl-support.patch.md5 26-Dec-2008 08:50 md5 checksum
[TXT] mybanco-0.05-better-curl-support.patch.txt 26-Dec-2008 08:51 diffstat
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Written By Tim Groeneveld. \\ tags: , , , ,