SSI in Htaccess for ErrorDocuments, DirectoryIndexing, SEO
3-Part article covering practical implementation of 3 advanced .htaccess features. Discover an easy way to boost your SEO the AskApache way (focus on visitors), a tip you might keep and use for life. Get some cool security tricks to use against spammers, crackers, and other nefarious sorts. Take your site's error handling to the next level, enhanced ErrorDocuments that go beyond 404's.
Optimize a Website for Speed, Security, and Easy Management
Learn how to setup, configure, secure, optimize, and create a low-maintenance website the AskApache way. I'm piecing together all the hacks, tricks, methods, and ideas discussed throughout this blog and all across Netdom and glueing them all together to show you how to have the most optimized, crazy fastest, and best website setup I can think of.
COMPUTER SECURITY TOOLBOX
List of mainly obscure security software geared more for the master pentester. These are mostly for unix, bsd, and mac and many are difficult to install and setup (require custom servers, inside access points, obscure libraries). Only programs that output data are included, so no actual exploits or anything. Most of these output extremely useful albeit extremely technical information.Setting charset in htaccess
Learning about charset's and file types maybe pretty boring, but using .htaccess it can be fun! Here's a quicklist htaccess cheatsheet for adding the correct Charset to a web document.
Custom PHP.ini tips and tricks
- When php run as Apache Module (mod_php)
- When php run as CGI
- When cgi?d php is run with wrapper (for FastCGI)
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SEO with Robots.txt
Very nice tutorial dealing with the robots.txt file. Shows examples for google and other search engines. Wordpress robots.txt and phpBB robots.txt sample files.Caching Tutorial for Webmasters
If you examine the preferences dialog of any modern Web browser (like Internet Explorer, Safari or Mozilla), you'll probably notice a 'cache' setting. This lets you set aside a section of your computer's hard disk to store representations that you've seen, just for you. The browser cache works according to fairly simple rules. It will check to make sure that the representations are fresh, usually once a session (that is, the once in the current invocation of the browser).
FastCGI on DreamHost
Using FastCGI on DreamHost and .htaccess
An AskApache Plugin Upgrade to Rule them All
So my blog as been rather quiet for almost a year now, and very few updates if any have been released for my Password Protection PLugin, my Google 404 Plugin, and definately not for my AskApache CrazyCache plugin, which I will be releasing last... So for all of you who've helped me out by sending me suggestions and notifying me of errors and sticking with it... Just wanted to say sorry about that, and thanks for all the great ideas.. Well, I've been sticking with it as well believe it our not. I manage to get free days once in a while, and then its time to jam.
Wget Trick to Download from Restrictive Sites
Before
After trick
I am often logged in to my servers via SSH, and I need to download a file like a WordPress plugin. I've noticed many sites now employ a means of blocking robots like wget from accessing their files. Most of the time they use .htaccess to do this. So a permanent workaround has wget mimick a normal browser.
Getting flash to show up in front of content
I used to have a problem of controlling flash elements on my sites.. On one site we have 6 different flash flv movies that are all the same size and are in the same position on the page. But only 1 is displayed at a time based on what the user wants to watch. So the selected flash movie needs to have the highest stacking order/zIndex.
.htaccess – Wikipedia
Freshen your Anti-virus, Anti-Rootkits, and Anti-Spyware
I've tried 100's of Anti-virus, Anti-Rootkit, and Anti-Spyware tools over the last 10 years, but it's always good to re-examine your system's security every couple of months.
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Htaccess Mod_Rewrite – Crazy Advanced Master Class
htaccess rewrite Master Class! If you understand the basics of mod_rewrite, or if you literally write the mod_rewite.c code, this article will transform your thinking. The transformation is profound. Deeply effective. Culmination of the best of the best mod_rewrite tricks for understanding and learning exactly what rewrite is doing.
Firefox Add-ons for Web Developers
Advanced Web Development by AskApache is a Firefox Collection I created since I'm always trying new Addons out and using multiple computers and I wanted a quick and easy way to install my favorite's and keep a running list. Firebug, YSlow, LastPass, and Web Developer are the only ones I always use regularly.
I like the idea of the last.fm but it's not as powerful as the site, which is awesome. Lately listening to Kings of Leon Radio...
CSS Cross-Browser Compatibility Tip
What I used to do when I was still learning CSS was to check the web page in each of the various problematic browsers to make sure the display stayed the same. I have several actual machines and several vmware virtual machines running various browers but I decided to skip all that extra time and effort and just use an online tool to do it for me. The tool views my page in all the various browsers and generates a screenshot image from each browser so that I can see if there are issues with my CSS.
Mod_Rewrite Variables Cheatsheet
We've figured out what mod_rewrite variables look like, a cheatsheet of the actual value.
Advanced .htaccess Tricks for Securing Sites
This is all new, experimental, and very very cool. It literally uses .htaccess techniques to create several virtual "locked gates" that require a specific key to unlock, in a specific order that cannot be bypassed. It uses whitelisting .htaccess tricks to specify exactly what is allowed, instead of trying to specify everything that isn't allowed. Also, by setting specific cookies/tokens after successfully passing through a gate, we can then require the exact cookie/token from the previous gate, which stops an attacker from skipping or bypassing gates.
Advanced HTTP Request and Response Header Viewer
Troubleshooting Apache .htaccess Authentication
Apache Web Server users have problems getting Apache Authentication/password-protection in htaccess working, this is a troubleshooting guide to get Password Protection working!
Optimized Vimrc with 256 Colorscheme
This is not your everyday vimrc. This is my personalized vimrc.. works especially great on remote servers, in tmux, screen, etc.
This doesn't require a git checkout, a vim update, a bash update, an OS update, a plugin. No. 1 vimrc, 1 colorscheme, just use curl to download and it's on. I use this on Arch Linux, NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Debian, Ubuntu, Cent OS, Red Hat, and that's mostly it so far.
If you aren't already using vim as your primary editor in a powerful way, you are gonna owe me for this.
Best-practice Web Design Process
RewriteCond Cheatsheet
Request to https://www.askapache.com/cg/rewrite-test/?catch=caught&this=that
RewriteCond %{THE_REQUEST} = GET /cgi-bin/php/pro/rewrite-test/?catch=caught&this=that HTTP/1.1
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} = /cg/rewrite-test/?catch=caught&this=that
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} = catch=caught&this=that
RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} = www.askapache.com
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} = Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/18.0
RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} = 8.8.8.8
Optimizing Servers and Processes for Speed with ionice, nice, ulimit
To prepare for several upcoming articles on AskApache that are focused on optimizing Servers and Sites from a server admin level, here is an article to introduce the main tools that we will be using. These tools are used to optimize CPU time for each process using nice and renice, and other tools like ionice are used to optimize the Disk IO, or Disk speed / Disk traffic for each process. Then you can make sure your mysqld and httpd processes are always fast and prioritized.
Chmod, Umask, Stat, Fileperms, and File Permissions
Unix file permissions are one of the more difficult subjects to grasp.. Well, ok maybe "grasp" isn't the word.. Master is the right word.. Unix file permissions is a hard topic to fully master, mainly I think because there aren't many instances when a computer user encounters them seriously, and bitwise is oldschool. This contains a listing of all possible permission masks and bits from a linux, php, and web hosting view.... cuz you guys AskApache Regs Rock!
PHP Sessions/Cookies On The Fly
This article shows how to save and modify php session data, cookies, do anything really... without using ajax or iframes or forcing the user make a request.
mod_rewrite Fix for Caching Updated Files
Web Developers sometimes use file.ext?v=004 as a version control system to force visitors to use updated files. This is terrible. Instead link to apache-003.css and set it to be cached forever. When you change the file you just change the links to apache-004.css. That eliminates millions of bandwidth and resource robbing If-Modified-Since requests. You only need Apache with mod_rewrite, and 1-10 minutes!
PDF.js
pdf.js is an HTML5 technology experiment that explores building a faithful and efficient Portable Document Format (PDF) renderer without native code assistance.
Speed Up Google Analytics with urchin.js
30x Faster Cache and Site Speed with TMPFS
NOT a typo.. 30x is measurable, well-documented, and easily tested. This is what open-source is about. I haven’t had time to post much the past year, I'm always working! So I wanted to make up for that by publishing an article on a topic that would blow your mind and be something that you could actually start using and really get some benefit out of it. This is one of those articles that the majority of web hosting companies would love to see in paperback, so they could burn it.
Downloading Multiple Files with Curl Simultaneously
Wouldn't it be great if you could use php and curl to download multiple files simultaneously using built-in curl functions? You can!
Google Web Fonts for Programming and Code
Ok, so on a site like this one, there is a tremendous amount of 'code' styled with CSS fonts in a pre, code, var, tt, samp, or kbd html tag. When using an programming tool like VIM to write code it is shown beautifully using your OS fonts. So then, how can we get that same font beauty to be there on the web? And, of course the solution must use best-practices (and preferably only use CSS and (X)HTML).
Also, text effects! --> View Solution
Disqus 2012 Default Sort Order Fix
If you are using Disqus on your site, you will see that annoyingly the default sort order for listing comments is 'best'.
I have implemented disqus on many sites and the number 1 request I get is to change the default sort order to newest.
There is no documentation or hints anywhere to solve this. So I solved it.
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Speed Up Google Analytics, use local ga.js
Host Google Analytics ga.js file locally for increased speed! Makes web pages load faster.
Regular Expressions in Dreamweaver
Find and Replace tool in Adobe DreamWeaver is useful of course, but you aren't using a fraction of the power until you use REGEX.