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...
No Budget Developer Wishlist

- I need no software, I lack for nothing when it comes to software. winners don't do warez
- Well obviously if I could have anything I would want access to NSA computing power, googles server farms as a backup, and the worlds most expensive computer monitor the size of my wall with virtual screens as big as I want and touch screen and 3d and holograms.
- I would want the best office chair made for comfort.
- Developer Wishlist …
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.
OpenSearch description document
Google: Let’s Make the Web Faster
FastCGI on DreamHost
Using FastCGI on DreamHost and .htaccess
Hacking VLAN switched networks
There isn't much vlan info on the net in terms of specifics and I had to learn all about it because I needed to log in to a switch that was on a different vlan. With the help of the Ettercap developers NaGA and ALoR I figured it out.
Originally Posted: 3/30/2004
THE Ultimate Htaccess
.htaccess is a very ancient configuration file for web servers, and is one of the most powerful configuration files most webmasters will ever come across. This htaccess guide shows off the very best of the best htaccess tricks and code snippets from hackers and server administrators.
You've come to the right place if you are looking to acquire mad skills for using .htaccess files!
Best CSS .Classes for CSS Toolbox
CSS is one of the most useful tools I have in my toolbox as a Web Developer. Having a CSS Toolbox containing good CSS Classes that you repeatedly use is quite helpful for us XHTML / web-standards / best-practices developers. Check out 10 of my favorite CSS classes.
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Debugging Tools for Windows
I am almost ready to publish the final tutorial on using ssh tunnels from a truecrypt partition on a Windows machine. Of course I choose to go way overboard in my research and the tutorial is full of some pretty awesome windows tricks.. I will come back to this post soon and post all the other advanced tools I use for debugging windows, for now though you MUST know how to debug the kernel and use these basic debugging tools.
Tips on Writing WordPress Plugins
Thought I'd give you all the tips and tricks that I've learned and use when developing WordPress plugins.. which can be quite fun!
Serving WebP images for PNG and JPG files
One of the biggest speed bottlenecks of sites today are images, specifically unoptimized images or large scaled images. With Apaches Rewrite module we can convert all existing jpegs and png files (and most gifs) to webp, then transparently rewrite them so that a request for img.png from a browser that supports webp will receive img.webp.
Htaccess File Sample
Comprehensive .htaccess example file with advanced examples in 1 htaccess sample skeleton .htaccess file with the very best apache htaccess examples... Updated frequently based on detailed info from the Apache htaccess tutorial.
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!
SEO Secrets of AskApache.com
Learn how in a year, with no previous blogging experience this blog was able to rank so high in search engines and achieve 15,000 unique visitors every day. Uses combination of tricks and tips from throughout AskApache.com for Search Engine Optimization.
Google SEO Boost with WordPress 404 Plugin
Turns every 404 Not Found error into a SEO traffic generating event! Help your site visitors find what they were looking for automatically by leveraging both Google and WordPress. It's one of about 6 plugins I use on every WP site I run. Highly recommend you try it for a few months.
«Take My 404 for a Test-Drive
Random Bits, the podcast that gives you an insiders view
I was over at Alex King's blog today checking out his mobile web plugin for wordpress and I noticed some fresh podcasts from some of the industry's finest. The feeds are .mp3 and are easy to find and browse on the search-this.com site. They have some pretty nice articles over there as well..
Fix Linux Users Home Permissions with a Cron Job
As a security nut myself, and also a Linux admin, one of my biggest pet peeves is when I've taken the time and care to segment all the users on a server into separate home directories, and then some developer comes along, logs in as root, and changes the ownership of files. Other things can cause this, like Apache, PHP, Mutt, etc.. So I've always used a cron job that executes daily (and on demand) which automatically fixes all the permissions back to what they should be.
What I think about DreamHost Web Hosting
NOTE: This is a very old post, I do NOT recommend DreamHost for anyone other than spammers. They are not a long-term solution.
Instruct Search Engines to come back to site after you finish working on it
Nifty SEO tip to get Search Engine Bots to check your site every hour until you finish working on it and tell them you are finished.
Programming Fonts for the Web
The idea is to use CSS to have the browser display programming and code similar to the high-quality look of a developers machine, like this older screenshot of my VIM.
Linux Debugging using a Bootloader with Kernel Parameters
As an example, here is the boot line that I am using at the moment on an older Dell Desktop, just to illustrate module parameters and environment vars.
title Arch Linux X-256 linux /vmlinuz-linux root=UUID rw rootfstype=ext4 elevator=noop selinux=0 plymouth.enable=0 raid=noautodetect ipv6.disable=1 video=DP1:d rcutree.rcu_idle_gp_delay=1 i915.panel_ignore_lid=-1 i915.modeset=1 TERM=rxvt-256color
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.
.htaccess – Wikipedia
Convert Image Base64 Encoder
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).
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.HOWTO: Uninstall CPANEL over SSH
The following is just a quick but detailed reference of some of the commands I used to successfully uninstall cpanel permanently. This is for advanced users of the shell. If you run a single one of these commands without fully understanding it, you will probably kill your server, lose everything on it permanently, not have a website or email for weeks.. So backup everything. FIRST. You should also contact your hosting provider support - but be prepared for some MAJOR negativity.. cpanel makes things very easy for web-hosting companies, and you are less than a drop in their bucket.
Auto-Login to Google Analytics to impress Clients
Google Analytics for your clients sites is a no-brainer, it ROCKS! I have 100+ client sites running Analytics and all of them have trouble-free (no password or username to remember) access to their site reports. Thanks to the method in this post, my clients couldn't be happier..
Advanced WordPress wp-config.php Tweaks
The bottom line for this article is that I want to make WordPress as fast, secure, and easy to install, run, and manage because I am using it more and more for client production sites, I will work for days in order to solve an issue so that I never have to spend time on that issue again. Time is money in this industry and that is ultimately (time) what there is to gain by tweaking WordPress.
Note: I spent no time on readability, this is primarily a read the code and figure it out article.. This is for advanced users looking for a reference or discussion and for those of you looking to advance. Feedback would be great if you make it that far..
Speed Up Sites with htaccess Caching
2 awesome ways to implement caching on your website using Apache .htaccess or httpd.conf. Both methods are extremely simple to set up and will dramatically speed up your site!Basic WordPress Theme Guide
This is a brief explanation of what is needed for an awesome theme, well awesome from my perspective. This is good stuff, memorize it.
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
Boosting Googles PageSpeed Module with TMPFS
Google's mod_pagespeed speeds up your site and reduces page load time. This open-source Apache HTTP server module automatically applies web performance best practices to pages, and associated assets (CSS, JavaScript, images), all transparently like a Squid Proxy.
With TMPFS you can dramatically improve the speed of mod_pagespeed and the webpages served by it. TMPFS will store/serve the optimized PageSpeed output directly from RAM!
MySQL Performance Tuning Scripts and Know-How
Unless you are a total linux-freak-guru like myself, and even if you are, it can be enormously challenging and somewhat overwhelming to locate and eliminate MySQL bottlenecks. While many DBAs focus on improving the performance of the queries themselves, this post will focus on the highest-impact items: MySQL Server Performance and OS Performance for MySQL. Specifically showing 4 awesome tools to auto-tune your MySQL and a few more tools just for monitoring!
Update: Best Free Online Banking
WaMu Reincarnation!
Man I was bummed about WaMu folding, they had the best banking site I've seen, and I've worked on a few myself. And of course the biggest reason to love WaMu was that they actually paid YOU to borrow your money to lend to other people. Can you even imagine that level of decency existing in the world? It's been taken to such a low level by Chase I almost forget how to spell it.
So I picked up my October issue of Wired to try and forget about such tragedies, and on the first page I flipped to was a 1/3 page advertisement for a bank that didn't beat around the bush at all. No fine print of any kind, just loud and clear message that they will pay you to be their banking customer. I wasted no time and quickly checked out the site, and within 5 minutes of landing on their homepage I was a customer, and a very happy one. Even the name of this bank makes it clear they are not in the Microsoft Family Business with Chase and the other corporate pirates.
Custom Boot Menu in Windows XP
One of the first things that I do upon receiving a new Windows computer is immediately create a poweruser-style customized boot menu. Then every time I boot I can choose Safe Mode, Recovery Console, Debug, whatever I want! It's quick and easy to set-up and everyone should have one, soo sweet!