16Jan/120

Change Mysql root password – The Right Way

Sometime MySQL root password is lost, because of last admin did not leave you any notes on the server or you are given your client server to fix some database or script related errors where MySQL root password is required.

I always knew one way of resetting it, but recently came up with another which is The Right Way.

Filed under: linux, tricks, web Continue reading
4Jan/121

How to run PHP cron tasks without cron available

In most cases hosting panels has CRON jobs available, so using cron is not an issue. Just sometimes you do not want to bother with it because of many reasons like no cpanel password, makes your script installation process complicated, or even cron is simply not available at all.

In this case I found interesting technique how to overcome this.

Filed under: dev, php Continue reading
6Dec/110

Find the latitude and longitude of address using Geocoding API example

In my recent project I faced the task of doing translation of property address in form we usually use it into global coordinates, that can be plotted on the map. Using Google API services this task is quite easy. You can check example and source code below

29Nov/111

Nginx and Mercurial setup

Some weeks ago I switched to Nginx and quit Apache and was quite happy with it. I was so happy that completely forgot about my Mercurial repositories hosted on same server. This happen when I was in hurry and needed to push and pull some changes,  damn.

At first I quickly restored Apache, did all needed changes and switched back to Nginx. For sure, I did not like this way and explored how I can connect Mercurial directly to Nginx. I was quite surprised how easy it is and how flexible.

Continue reading...

Filed under: linux, web Continue reading
16Nov/110

I quit Apache and moved to Nginx


Now this blog is riding on Nginx+php-fpm setup. You may have heard about quickly growing in popularity Russian made web-server. Several years earlier Nginx had a really narrow appliance on high loaded sites as balancer, front end, static content, etc.. Something too complex to be setup for simple site or blog.

Time changed things, community has grown, all sharp corners were smoothed. The PHP itself starting from version 5.3 has out-of-the-box support of FPM (FastCGI Process Manager) to communicate to Nginx in a very efficient manner. Ubuntu PPA repositories has all things already compiled and tons of docs are available on the Internet.

At first I though of this more like experiment, but after I tested it for a while and made some performance tests, I was surprised how well it performed on my tiny virtual server. It eats less memory and does more job.

I really like Apache web server, I've spend 10 years with it and still consider it the best one for many appliances. But from now on I have one more option to use for my projects.

Welcome to continue reading...

Filed under: linux, web Continue reading
7Oct/113

How to merge/mix/combine RSS feeds

One problem I faced on my multi-language blog setup - it has different feeds for each language. Multi-language plugin WPML which I use does not have feature to mix feeds into one. I like my subscribers to see one common feed which is merged for all languages and leave possibility to subscribe to one language also. I setup simple solution using pure PHP.

Filed under: dev, php Continue reading
6Oct/110

Introduction to HTML5 History API

HTML5 slowly releases all its beauty. Before HTML5 one thing which was almost completly out of our control was  the browser history manipulation without full page reload (location.hash hacks are not counted here). With appearence of HTML5 History API all things changed, now it is possible to add elements to the history, add navigation handlers and more.  This time I am going to dive into HTML5 History API.

Filed under: php, web Continue reading
1Oct/110

Recompile linux kernel on vacation

Sweetheart, just because you can recompile the server's Linux kernel from here doesn't mean you should :)

Filed under: fun, linux Continue reading
19Sep/110

Browser popularity – my own chart

Quite often I see some reviewes of browser popularity on the Internet. I am not a big fun of Anti-MS trust but I watch closely success of open players like Firefox and new players like Chrome. So I did my own analysis of browser popularity using my blog.

Filed under: web Continue reading
28Jun/112

What is the cloud – how to use

The word "cloud" became a buzz-word quite a while and Google search results for the word cloud is far away from real clouds in the sky. Although, many people and even web developers are quite away from understanding of what cloud is, how it works and how to take an advantage by using it. So clouds are really "cloudy".

Being a web developer this topic is in area of my interests for some time, but I always thought that clouds are for really big players. By big I assume million of clients, billions of page loads, terabytes of data, etc.. My mistake!

Recently I came across with Rackspace cloud and understood how wrong I was. It changed my understanding  into more practical way and I gave up my VPS and moved to the cloud.

Filed under: cloud, linux Continue reading