Random and Opinionated Thoughts
Well, it is that time in the design cycle to archive my current web site, and move to a new design. I will be working on it this weekend to hopefully finish it up. Once I have it completed, I will be moving this web site to a new url, I will keep a redirect up for a bit. Posts will be skimpy until then… Read more
What a morning. Surprise surprise…I decided to install Mac OS X Server on my PowerBook to play around with the Apache conf (since I legally own two copies that just sit in my drawer). Ever since Mac OS X Server 1.0 came out I was excited to use Mac OS X Server. I loved AppleShare IP, and was ready to learn something new. Yeah, you are right, how many times can I tell this story? To the point: you have web sites that need to be hosted in a Mac environment…what do you do? Two options (not including Darwin): Mac... Read More » Read more
If you have mission critical servers, you know that a backup is essential. I do not want my mission critical web server to go down. Along comes rsync. How to set up rsync to synch my boot drive (and make it bootable) as well as synch my data files (html/php files): First, you will to set up passwordless ssh between your servers. This is a good tutorial, except make sure step #5 is actually: /var/root/.ssh/cat id_rsa.pub >> authorized_keys2 . Now you are ready to send data from your main server to the backup(s). Data I have a daily cron job... Read More » Read more
Let’s face it, no one wants to make several changes to the same portion of a web page when you have static information/pages. Enter php include(). If you have a common header, footer, block of information that needs to be on multiple pages and the thought of only editting something once instead of on multiple pages, php include is for you! (assuming you have php installed on your server) Example: To include a common header: (you would place this statement in your code wherver you would like your header to be located) Once you make a change to header.html, all... Read More » Read more
I finally took the next step with CSS and created/modified my digitalclutter layout so I now have more time to focus on my content! I will be adding/adjusting some little things, but I think I am finally happy with the layout. Read more
It is that time where I am customizing the look and feel of this web site so stay tuned for some future enhancement and changes. Eventually I will fully customize the template that I am currently using, but small steps first. I still need to adjust the right side of the page, but it is getting closer. Fun with CSS layout! Read more
I was recently asked to defend my decision to run OS X Client on my Xserve and I thought others might like to know why as well. Changing the IP. I have written about this before. I have a mission critical web server. I want to upgrade the OS or the hardware, so for maximum up time, I configure my new server with a temporary IP, then when everything is ready and tested, I shutdown the mission critical server, change the IP on the new server, and everything and everyone is happy. Less than a minute of downtime. I am... Read More » Read more
I am installing more and more plugins to further customize my blog. Today: wp-photo by Alex King. Read more
So you have a web server and one/some domain names. You want to have all requests to domain.com to go to www.domain.com. most companies have this redirect in place (Apple is an example). I was stumped when I first set out to do this…so here is what I learned from our friends on the Apache mailing list. ServerName www.domain.com ServerAlias domain.com Redirect permanent / http://www.domain.com/ ServerName www.domain.com ServerAdmin [email protected] DocumentRoot /Volumes/www/domain.com/documents This set up in Apache will then redirect all domain.com requests to www.domain.com. You cannot beat mailing lists’ support! [tags]apache, vhosts, redirect[/tags] Read more
It is time to build another web server, and this time I will write about what is on it. I have built this configuration on the original iMac all the way up to the latest Xserve with success, so it is possible to make a cheap web server out of an older computer. To further save money, you could use all the apps with a different OS like FreeBSD, Darwin, NetBSD, OpenBSD, etc (I like the BSDs) which are free. OS: Mac OS X Web Server: Apache Web Server Benchmarking: Siege Web Authentication Apache Module: mod_auth_mysql Database: MySQL Database Management... Read More » Read more