Having set up several Debian and Ubuntu web servers in the past I thought it would be a good idea to share my process. The following is a relatively comprehensive guide to installing and configuring an Apache based web server with some optimizations and basic resource monitoring. I primarily work with Ubuntu servers, but most of the commands here should work exactly the same in Debian or Ubuntu. I’ve tried to note where differences may occur.
I work in Linux primarily but run a Windows 7 virtual machine in VirtualBox so I can use Photoshop and do some necessary testing. Today my VM ran out of space. Silly me thought 20GB would be enough, but after installing service pack 1, dozens of Windows updates and a few programs I had less than 1GB of space left. After a little searching I found an easy way to increase the size of a virtual disk.
When installing Windows 7 it’s very picky about which installation disc you use (Full vs. Upgrade) and if improperly matched with your key can prevent you from activating your copy of Windows usually returning an “Invalid Product Key” error message. You may also see the same or similar error when you do a full, clean installation with an upgrade disc. This can be very annoying, especially when you have a legitimate key and disc but just didn’t install it the way Microsoft thinks you should. In the event that you are having trouble activating your Windows 7 installation with a legitimate key, try the following registry hack:
Too many people today don’t backup their files. And of those that do, many don’t do it well. An easy way to remember a “safe” way to backup your data is with the “3-2-1 Backup Rule” which goes like this:
With the 3-2-1 rule you can be relatively confident that you’ll always be able to access your critical data, even after a catastrophic failure.
I was just in a bit of a pickle and needed to join two .avi files together while in Ubuntu. There are a number of solutions out there, but the most simple solution I could find was via avimerge. Here’s how I did it.
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install transcode-utils
avimerge -i input_file1.avi input_file2.avi -o output_file.avi
It’s as simple as that. I did this in Ubuntu 10.10, but this should work for older versions as well.
My brother is currently attending the DigiPen School of Technology working on a degree in video game programming / design. He’s an avid gamer but has missed some of (IMO) the best games of all time, specifically, the Half-Life saga. Naturally, I email him recommending these games in the hope of inspiring him or, at the very least, giving him a better understanding of some of the good games he’s missed out on and where the industry came from. I even offered to buy the games for him if he didn’t want to pay for them himself. Well, he acquired the first Half-Life game and started playing it. This was his response:
Search engine ranking and your web sites traffic are directly influenced by four main areas:
Content: The more unique, well-versed content a site has, the better it will rank. Content primarily consists of the text on your site, but also includes images, videos and anything else the users come to the site for.
Links: Mainly concerning inbound links, but also includes outbound links and internal links. The more, quality, inbound links a site has, the better it will rank.
Popularity: The more people that know about your site the better it will rank and the more traffic you will receive. Popularity is often measured by the number of inbound links to a site.
Reputation: Popularity alone is worthless without a good reputation. If a site is known by many to be of poor quality or of little to no use to the users it will not rank well.
The following is a quick list of optimizations that, in my years of web development, I have observed will help increase your sites search engine ranking. While none of these processes are guaranteed to make your site #1 in Google overnight, I can promise that by implementing all (or even some) of these items, in time your site’s rank will rise.
The following items are clean, honest ways to optimize your site. I do not condone, nor solicit, any form of “black hat” search engine optimization and frown upon it greatly. If that’s what you’re aiming to implement, I sincerely hope that Google blacklists your site tomorrow. Please don’t send me any emails asking how to get your sight listed as #1 tomorrow.
Now, onto the list.
NOTE: The latest version of this script can always be found here: https://github.com/PHX2600/FirstFriday
With this update I have drastically reduced and simpified the code to produce the same results. I did some rigorous testing of my own to make sure this script will calculate the correct date, but that doesn’t mean it’s bullet-proof. If you find a bug, please email me so I can fix it.
Somewhere along the lines of moving my blog from one site/platform to
another I lost this sample of code. See link above for the latest
version of this script.
I went to the Verizon store at 10am the day of release and they said they had sold out ~2 hours before I got there. I was able to order one and they were nice enough to write off the rebate right away and overnight me a Storm directly from the factory. By noon the following day I had my Storm and the following are photos of the unboxing. I know this is rather late, but like they say, better late than never.