Blog Archives

Choosing a VPS Web Hosting Provider

You would think that many of your worries are reduced when you move from shared web hosting to a virtual private server (VPS) but as my experiences testify, there is are some pretty frightening stories out there. I have dealt

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Posted in Servers, Tech Blog, VPS, Web

Decommissioning of VPS_LON01

Following downtime (since yesterday morning) and a complete lack of support from the hosting provider, I have completed migrating all accounts from the VPS_LON01 server. All VPS hosting has been migrated to a new provider (who answer their support lines!).

Posted in News

Tina MVC: 0.3 release

Tina MVC 0.3 will be available for download from the WordPress plugin repository. This release includes numerous changes and enhancements: Complete reorganisation of core files Rewrite of core page controllers and views the form helper is not autoloaded any more.

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Posted in News

PHP mail() with Ubuntu Desktop and Gmail

Recently I was adapting a newsletter plugin for WordPress and needed the PHP mail() function for testing. However an Ubuntu desktop install is missing Sendmail – the MTA that PHP expects to find on a Linux PC. I use a

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Posted in Development, Tech Blog

PHP: The include() include_once() performance debate

Updated with more tests on 2010-05-16. Click here to jump to the 2010-05-16 update… The conventional wisdom always said that PHP’s include()/require() was quicker than include_once()/require_once(), but recently I came across an interesting post by Arin Sarkissian which suggests otherwise.

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Posted in Servers, Tech Blog, Web

Beware: ISP’s as Hosting Companies – watch your DNS

The symptom You cease your contract with your hosting company, cancel your contract and move your web site. People start to complain that they cannot reach your web site. Nothing seems out of order. The problem: You were hosting with

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Posted in DNS, Servers, Tech Blog, Web Sites

Using Runas to Add/Remove Programs/Hardware in Windows XP

Very useful if you run as a ‘restricted user’ (i.e. not a ‘power user’ or ‘administrator’): Step 1: Get a CMD shell (‘DOS box’) as Administrator: [cc lang=’dos’ line_numbers=’false’]runas /user:administrator cmd[/cc]

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Posted in Command Line Tricks, Servers, Tech Blog

PHP Parse error: syntax error, unexpected T_STRING in /whatever/my-php-class.php.html on line 1 with PhpDocumentor files on CentOS

Symptom: An XML file saved as something.php.html Apache was trying to parse it as PHP and throwing an error because Short_open_tag was ‘on’ Fix: Add the following to an .htaccess file in the folder (or a parent folder): [cc lang=’apache’

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Posted in Servers, Tech Blog, Web

Unlimited Google Adwords for a Fixed Fee – Not!

A client was approached the other day with an offer that sounds too good to be true. Well guess what, it is! For more information, Webphoria (a UK web development company) has the story of the AdWords scam, and James

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Posted in Tech Blog, Web Sites

Using Apache mod_rewrite to redirect old URLs

There are lots of examples and tutorials covering Apache and mod_rewrite, but generally they address the problem where you want to map a ‘nice’ url to your script. For example: http://example.com/products/kitchen/cutlery to http://example.com/products.php?category=kitchen&sub-category=cutlery is easily achieved with the following .htaccess

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Posted in Servers, Tech Blog, Web