Back when I upgraded my web server I also implemented logrotate to save off the logs each day so they don't grow too large. At the time it seemed like a good idea to just save the logs for a year since I had the disk space. In retrospect that was a mistake. Why? Read the rest »
PHP-CURL Library Added to Apache
I was receiving the error "Call to undefined function curl_init()" when I tried to use the Twitter Tools plugin with the newly required OAuth authentication. The solution required a new PHP module but was easy to set up. Read the rest »
The OS Quest Trail Log #40: April 2009 Edition
Ok, it’s actually the first of May so the title is wrong, but this post is all about the last month. I had 14 posts this month. I have to go back to July 2008 to find a month with an equal number of posts and March 2008 to find a month with more posts. My April obsession was optimizing WordPress on Apache and that obsession didn’t take hold until the last half of the month. Things started off simply enough, I just wanted to see if there was a [...] Read the rest »
Caching WordPress Pages with mod_expires
The final step in my WordPress/Apache optimization was to look at mod_expires. The Apache mode_expires module is used to tell a browser how long it can cache the page. With expiration enabled a browser will refresh a page from it’s local cache rather than the server, at least until the page expires. On my site the pages a relatively static, they may change when a comment is added but that’s about it. The pictures and graphics will almost never change. So I’ll give regular pages a fairly short cache time [...] Read the rest »
Apache mod_deflate with WordPress
To continue along with my Apache experimentation I decided to enable Apache mod_deflate on my server. All I run is WordPress and I probably won’t gain much of an increase over enabling compression in WP Super Cache. But at least this way I won’t be limited to the plugin and WordPress. I’m running Apache 2 on Ubuntu 8.10 Server and the configuration was a breeze. Why use compression"? To save bandwidth for myself and visitors, and with less download time it means faster performance. The /etc/apache2/mods-enabled/deflate.conf file contains the line: [...] Read the rest »
The OS Quest Trail Log #39: Long Lingering Mistake Edition
Today wasn’t a good day for site uptime stats. After about 2 months of continuous server uptime there were a couple planned and one unplanned outages. I decided to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to Ubuntu 8.10. Yea, I know 9.04 was just released but I don’t want to be that bleeding edge on my server and 8.10 had some features that would make my life a bit easier. Besides, the path to 9.04 goes through 8.10 anyway. The upgrade itself was relatively painless and the downtime was limited to about [...] Read the rest »
Apache Modules Needed For A WordPress Site
Continuing along my recent WordPress theme but veering into Apache Server territory I took a look at the Apache modules that are required for my WordPress site. I’m running WordPress 2.7.1 on Apache 2. It’s pretty basic, just WordPress and some plugins, not heavy on file downloads or streaming. I’m hoping to save some memory on my server so I’ll disable the Apache modules that I don’t need. This only applies if you control your own server, if not you can save some pain and move along now. Modules Needed [...] Read the rest »
Ubuntu Server Project #9: SFTP, Fake DNS, and Apache SSL
Things are moving along with the Ubuntu Server Project but there’s a bunch of small tasks and configuration changes that will make life easier going forward. This article will cover installing vsftpd, setting up a self-signed SSL certificate in Apache, and configuring my local Mac to access the Ubuntu server virtual machine by name. Even though the server is a VM sitting on my Mac and not accessible from the Internet I’ll still be treating it as if it was on the Internet and needs to be secure. vsftpd The [...] Read the rest »
Ubuntu Server Project #8: Apache Configuration
The previous article in my Ubuntu Server Project series covered the installation of Apache. Now it’s time for some configuration. I’ll start off by looking around the Apache installation ten make some minor configuration changes. The Apache config folder is /etc/apache2 which contains the following files & folders: The names in blue are folders. The sites-available folder has what it says, the sites that are available. But just because they’re available doesn’t mean they’re enabled. There’s one site in the sites-available folder, the default site. To check which sites are [...] Read the rest »
Ubuntu Server Project #7: Apache & PHP Installation
Now that MySQL is installed the only remaining server software is Apache, PHP and WordPress. This time around I’ll install Apache & PHP. The installation is quick & easy. I’ll use aptitude to install both of them. As a refresher, if you haven’t read the previous articles, I’m building a WordPress test environment on a Ubuntu Server server that’s running in a VMware Fusion virtual machine. I connect to the server using a SSH connection and mount the CD-ROM image with the command mount /cdrom/ so that the Apache and [...] Read the rest »
