Nazly [Web Log] » LAMP

Basics of maintaing a WordPress site

Nazly — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 17:36:45 +0000

WordPress is simple, yet powerful. Those are the key ingredients why it is popular among the Bloggers and Web Developers alike. WordPress will always be the first choice as a blogging platform. In the recent times it has moved far from being just a blogging engine. Most Web developers choose WordPress as their primary CMS of choice ahead of other popular Content Management Systems. Regardless of you being a Blogger or a Web Developer, the manner you maintain your WordPress files and database will play an important role in running a successful website.

Maintaining and monitoring your WordPress site requires performing certain tasks on a regular basis. The term regular will depend on how often your Website gets updated. Depending on the frequency you will need to plan this out. If you run a Website that gets updated daily (eg: news), then taking daily backups is a high priority. Performing these tasks manually can become a tedious process. There are plenty of tools and techniques available to automate them.

Monitoring a Website

You might want to use a Website Monitoring Service to check whether your website is up and running. There are plenty of services over the Internet if you Google for it. These services offer monitoring your Web Server (HTTP), FTP, Mail Server (POP & SMTP), SSL, DNS and custom TCP ports on regular intervals. If any of these don’t respond, the service will alert you via Email or SMS. Most of them offer limited options for free while you need to pay based on the additional services you require. This type of monitoring is not WordPress specific and can apply to any Wesbite.

If you are a developer you can code your own monitoring system which will be cost efficient and can be expandable according to your monitoring requirements. Using socket functions and tools like curl can assist in doing that.

In any of the case above, you will need to specify the port of the service you wish to monitor. In certain cases, the port can occasionally differ from the default port that particular service would run depending on how it is configured on your Server. So you need to specify the correct one.

There is one instance that most of the Bloggers/Web Developers fail to address. While your Web Server/Apache might run smoothly, there is a possibility that your database might not respond. This can happen when your DB gets corrupted, privileges get messed up or your MySQL Server crashes for some reason. In this case WordPress will send you this ugly message on a plain white page.

It’s not suitable to show an error message of this nature to your visitors. Most importantly the HTTP status code for this response is 200, which means Search Engines will pick it up as your content for the site. If this message hangs on for long, you will get indexed on Google with this Error Message.

Here is how you can display a custom error message with your design template and get notified at the same time when your DB doesn’t respond.

Create a file called db-error.php and store that file under the wp-contents folder.
The contents of the file should be..

header("HTTP/1.0 500 Internal Server Error");
mail("webmaster@mydomain.com", "DB fail", "Down at : ".date("Y-m-d H:i:s"));
echo "Your customer error message with yout HTML template";

It’s that simple..!

WordPress will execute the above script when the DB doesn’t respond. The first line will send the HTTP response code 500 (Internal Server Error) so that Search Engines won’t index it. The next line will send an email to you, notifying the time the DB went down. Third line will output the HTML of your template where you can include a custom error message. You can extend this piece of code to fit into your needs. Instead of Email, you could use SMS/Twitter to get instantly notified.

Backup

Taking regular backups of your WordPress installation and most importantly the database regularly will help to restore your Website within minutes if any data loss occurs. A hard disk crash, server failure or even a hacker wiping out all your data can be some of the reasons how a data loss could occur. While your hosting provider might do the backup for you, its always good to have your own. If you take regular backups, you are never a loser.

One of the important folders to backup is the wp-contents folder, but I would advise you to backup the whole WordPress installation directory. You will also need to backup the MySQL database. A simple MySQL dump would do. If you are the average blogger, then there are quite a lot of WordPress plugins for backup which would do the job for you. If you have shell access, I would advice you to write a shell script that would backup the files and database. Add a cron job to execute the script based on how frequent you wish to take backups. If you don’t have shell access, you can try using the options in your Web Hosting Control Panel.

Security

When it comes to security, applying the correct patches and upgrading to the newest version of the core and plugins of WordPress will prevent the hackers from trying to exploit the vulnerabilities in your Website. While this can be automated, it is advisable you do this process manually to reduce complications that may arise after an upgrade. It will depend on the plugins you use and the purpose you use it for. Golden rule before upgrade is to backup your WordPress files and DB so that you can restore it if something goes wrong.

Before choosing the right plugin to use, make sure to check the compatibility of the plugin with the version of WordPress you are running. Also make sure to check the ratings of the plugin. All these information is available on the plugin’s page.

Good luck..!!

Getting LAMP to work in Ubuntu Hardy

Nazly — Mon, 21 Jul 2008 05:44:05 +0000

Few of my friends who switched to Ubuntu lately, asked me how to get LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) working in their desktops. Most of them have installed Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) so I planned to write a small guide on how to setup a LAMP development environment. This will require to have an Internet Connection since the installation will download the necessary packages from the repositories. I will also explain how to add Virtual Hosts so that we can setup different environments to each website we create. I will also explain on how to enable Apache modules such as Userdir and Rewrite. I would normally enable Userdir module on development environments because it allows me to quickly test my code in my home directory. Rewrite module will enable features like having Search Engine Friendly URLs if we can write few Rewrite rules in the .htacess file.

Getting LAMP installed is quite easy in Ubuntu 8.04. I will be using the command-line in this small guide.

Open command-line terminal by going to Applications -> Accessories -> Terminal

First Update the repositories

sudo apt-get update

Install Apache2 – PHP5 – MySQL5 in one go

sudo apt-get install apache2 php5 mysql-server-5.0

Installation will take a while depending on your Internet Connection speed to download the necessary packages. You will be prompted to enter the MySQL Server root password. Enter the password and that's it. Apache2, PHP5 and MySQL5 will now be installed in your computer.

Now open a Browser Window, most probably Firefox and in the address bar type http://localhost. You will get a message like It Works! in the browser which means Apache is successfully installed. The default webroot directory will be /var/www/ where you can place a phpinfo page to check whether PHP is installed successfully as well. But this directory is not writable by the user. So we might need to sudo and write to this directory. Later in this guide I will explain how to test files that resides in my home directory.

Create PHP info page to check whether the PHP installation was successful

sudo gedit /var/www/info.php

Copy the blow code in the editor.

1
2
3


phpinfo();
?>

Save the file and close the editor.

Now goto http://localhost/info.php. If you see the PHP Info page then PHP is also successfully installed.

Now we need to check whether MySQL is installed successfully as well. In the terminal type

mysql -h localhost -u root -p

Enter the root password you entered during the installation process. If you are able to successfully login and see the welcome massage and the MySQL command prompt, MySQL is also installed successfully.

I would then install PHPMyAdmin, a web based GUI to handle MySQL Databases.

Install PHPMyAdmin

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

You will be prompted to select the server type, select apache2.

We will then restart Apache to make the changes in effect

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now goto http://localhost/phpmyadmin/. If you see the PHPMyAdmin login page then it is also installed successfully.

Though we now have everything in place, saving files into /var/www/ can be an issue during the development coz the user doesn't have permissions to write to this directory. We can overcome this by setting permissions to the user to write to this directory. But I always prefer having Userdir module enabled. If I assume my username is spider, I can save my files in a folder called 'public_html' under my home directory (/home/spider/public_html) and call it from the browser using the following address in my browser http://localhost/~spider/. But for this to work UserDir module should be enabled in Apache.

Enable UserDir module in Apache

sudo a2enmod userdir

Restart Apache to make the changes in effect

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Userdir module is now installed and working, so now we can save files in the public_html folder which you need to create in your home directory. But this method is good for testing small scripts. Its always advisable to create a Virtual Host for each project so that we can use a hostname for a website and have a directory apart from the default webroot associated with it. We can change certain behaviours while setting up a Virtual Host which allows us a better testing environment.

Setting up a Virtual Host

First we need to create a hostname associated with our local IP address. To do that we need to edit the hosts file

sudo gedit /etc/hosts

Add the following in a new line after the entry for localhost

127.0.0.1 myweb.local

Save the file and close the editor window.

myweb.local is our hostname where it can be any name except localhost

Now we need to setup a Virtual Host in Apache for myweb.local

We need to add a new file for the sites available for Apache

cd /etc/apache2/sites-available
sudo touch myweb
sudo gedit myweb

In the editor add the following lines.

<virtualHost *>
    ServerName myweb.local
    ServerAdmin webmaster@localhost
    DocumentRoot /home/spider/public_html/myweb/
 
    <directory /home/spider/public_html/myweb/>
        Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
        AllowOverride All
        Order allow,deny
        allow from all
    directory>
virtualHost>

Save the file and close the editor window.

Make sure you have created this directory /home/spider/public_html/myweb/

Now we need to enable this site which is available in Apache. To enable the site simply run this command

sudo a2ensite myweb

Restart Apache to make the changes in effect

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Thats it. We have our new website running. In your browser goto http://myweb.local. You will see the new website which is located in the directory we assigned to this Virtual Host.

If you need more websites such as this, you can repeat this process.

If you didn't notice, in the Directory settings I set 'AllowOverride All' because I need mod_rewrite to work in this site. But we need to enable Rewrite module for this to work. If you don't need to override these settings set it to 'AllowOverride None'

Enable Rewrite module in Apache

sudo a2enmod rewrite

Restart Apache to make the changes in effect

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

We now have mod_rewrite working as well. A .htaccess file with rewrite rules has to be placed in the root directory of this site to have Search Engine Friendly URLs working.

I hope this guide will help you to setup a LAMP development environment in Ubuntu 8.04. If you come across any issues please feel free to write to me using the comment box.

Happy Coding…

100+ Resources for Web Developers

Nazly — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 01:31:17 +0000

This is a fantastic list for Web Developers.

100+ Resources for Web Developers

From the Blogpost :

There is some amazing stuff out there on the Web-resources, tools, tricks, and tips. Problem is, as a Web developer, you spend so much of your time just keeping up with new technologies – learning, playing – and this doesn't leave much time to go hunting for the latest and greatest tool, or for a better way of doing things.

So we've put together a list of over 100 resources to help make your life as a developer easier; where to find snippets of code, sites that automate processes, cheat sheets, lessons, useful tools and a couple of silly videos to give your brain a break if you make it through to the end. Please enjoy!

Hands on FOSS

Nazly — Wed, 15 Feb 2006 11:25:57 +0000

The last day of Foss-ed was a day for Hands on Workshops. The day started off with Chamindra and Arunan doing a great presentation on running windows applications on GNU/Linux using QEMU, Wine and CrossOver Office etc… Most prefer using a dual-boot system or running FOSS apps on Windows platform. Due to few of our favourite Windows applications we still gotta stick with Windows. Chamindra made it a point that the best practise is to run windows applications on the GNU/Linux rather than the other methods coz the other methods have a tendancy to drag us back again to the Windows platform after while. This has happened to me all the time. I'm trying to plan things out to follow this method coz I'm still stuck at running FOSS Apps on Windows OS due to few favourite Windows based Apps and hardware compatibilty issues. The time has come I guess.

Suchetha and Dr.Shahani Weerawarana did a tutorial session on OpenOffice while Wasantha did an excellent tutorial on Blender. Its great to know what these FOSS apps could do. Blender which is less than 7MB that could do almost all what we used to model/animate using 3DStudioMax. Even Reactor animations. I was stunned.

Dr.Nandalal Gunaratne and Rajkumar made a presentation on 'FOSS Content Management Systems and WIKIs', one of my favourite subjects. Dr. Nandalal demonstarted about the CMS using Plone built on Zope which has a high rating at CMS Watch for OpenSource CMS.

All and all the last three days has been very informative and have been FOSSed up. Thanks to all the organizers of this great event and expecting more in the future.

I didn't take a cam this time so couldn't take pics though Buddhika was very kind enough to share the photos he took. More photos here

Ligting up the Virtual Oil Lamp

Fullhouse at FOSS-ed

Digging real deep

Nazly — Tue, 14 Feb 2006 11:21:20 +0000

The day two of the FOSS-ed kicked off with Dr.Nimal Rathnayake of Peradeniya University giving us some piece of history of how FOSS was used on the server-side since 1990. He also covered on how operations have been automated within the universities in Sri Lanka using FOSS.

Suranga de Silva did a great presentation on FOSS Security and Tools and he spoke mainly about SE Linux, a security kernel module which was developed by the NSA.

There was also a session on Sahana, an OpenSource Disaster Management System.

Then it came to a very interesting session by Buddhika AKA Bud on FOSS Gadgematics. There is a wrong impression that FOSS doesn't support well with all the tiny fancy hardware thats available. Well he broke that for sure. He was actually running a FOSS application on a Sony PSP(huh??) to listen to an audio stream which was broadcasted by Icecast via WiFi.

The keynote by Brian Behlendorf was the highlight of the day as he spoke on 'The global adoption of FOSS'. It really helped me a great deal about getting the whole idea behind OpenSource. When he brought this rumour about Oracle is planning to buy Zend I was like and when the question came from the audience asking on how this will effect the OpenSource communiy and the answer was very obvious at the end and that is what OpenSource is all about. Its about Freedom. We always have the freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software.

I missed the panel discussion though I gained a lot through out the course of the two day conference. Tomorrow there are few workshops and I will keep you posted on those.

Free beer?

Nazly — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 10:48:09 +0000

It has been a very informative day learning loads of stuff in the OpenSource World at FOSS-ed today. Today was the first day of the three day conference and workshops. There was also a Panel Discussion on addressing challenges to adopting FOSS in Sri Lankan institutions. Topics covered today were more on what FOSS is really about and how we can adopt to it in our day to day lives. I was really impressed with all the sessions today as it definielty would have cleared all minds which totally had a different idea about FOSS and why it should be choosen over Commercial or pirated software.

Almost on all sessions one important fact really stood up. A fact that most people have got all mixed up. The word "Free" has mislead a lot of people. Some even ask if its Free and Open Source Software Conference why they charge for it? Are they talking about free beer?

"Free software" is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of "free" as in "free speech," not as in "free beer."

Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:

- The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).

- The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

- The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).

- The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.

Eagerly waiting for get there tomorrow as few interesting topics lined up including the keynote on 'The global adoption of FOSS' by Brian Behlendorf.

FOSS-ed

Nazly — Thu, 02 Feb 2006 22:42:54 +0000

Free & Open Source Software Educational Programs, a three day Conference will be held on the 13,14,15th of February 2006. This will be a great event after FOSSSL which was held last year where top names in OpenSource made that event a great success.

Its a great opportunity to dig deep into OpenSource Software.

FOSSSL 05 photos

Nazly — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 17:33:49 +0000

Here are the photos from the FOSSSL 05 Conference and Tutorial sessions. Sorry for the delay guys.

Click Here to view.

WAMP -> LAMP

Nazly — Wed, 28 Sep 2005 09:50:11 +0000

I have been quiet in my blog in the past week as I have been seriously involved in putting up a Web Server at office. I easily got the approval when I wanted to put up LAMP (Linux – Apache – MySQL – PHP) on that. It has been a good experience as it was sorta a Linux comeback for me. Learnt few stuff as I had to configure this behind the router with a dynamic IP. I setup a domain to it using the free dynamic DNS service provided by ZoneEdit.com. Got a good picture of port forwarding and NAT. So now I have a LAMP development environment at office.

I have been using WAMP (Windows – Apache – MySQL – PHP) in my developement environment till now though the place I host the Web sites and Web Applications are powered by LAMP. The reason I couldn't switch to Linux is simply unforgivable. At home I have this stupid Broadband Modem that doesn't have a Linux Driver. So I cannot get online with Linux and that kept me away from using Linux though I have a dual boot system with Linux installed. Also the laziness to backup the data and the busy schedules avoided the swith over. But this comeback has made some effect. I have already started looking for a router and planning for a complete switch over to Linux in the near future. Counting the days for it…

Rasmus @ FOSSSL 05

Nazly — Sat, 10 Sep 2005 10:33:02 +0000

Here are the links to Rasmus's presentation @ FOSSSL 05

PHP 5 Tutorial – Rasmus Lerdorf (7th of Sep 2005)

"PHP – Scripting the Web" – Rasmus Lerdorf (9th of Sep 2005 – At the Conference)