Tag Archive for 'World Wide Web'

Goodbye, Apache; hello, lighttpd!

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by
Pedro Timóteo
1 year, 3 months ago
in Systems administration, Unix / Linux / *BSD software and World Wide Web
. 4 Comments

Fed up with how Apache memory usage grows (and grows, and grows), I’ve changed all of my sites on my external server (where, for instance, this very blog is hosted) to lighttpd, a.k.a. Lighty.

I began by changing the most problematic site to Lighty (listening on port 81), and using Apache’s proxy module to redirect it there. After the results were promising, I went and changed each site at a time, dealing with the particular problems of each (I use lots of redirects, and the syntax is a bit different, and, furthermore, Lighty doesn’t support .htaccess files.

WordPress was relatively easy (just one line). MyBB would have been even easier (nothing to do), if not for the fact that I use an SEO mod which uses an .htaccess file for nicer URLs. But everything was easier than I expected.

After each site had been “moved”, it was just a matter of stopping Apache and moving Lighty to port 80.

Memory usage is way down, and so is swap file usage (basically, it’s not being used, and it was, before — a lot). Barring any future problems, I’m quite happy with this set-up, and would advise this change to anyone who’s never tried anything other than Apache on an Unix system. I’ll probably try doing the same thing on my home server, too.

For the Portuguese-speaking paranoids out there…

Published
by
Pedro Timóteo
1 year, 3 months ago
in Fun stuff, Geeky stuff and World Wide Web
. 2 Comments

… go read this post of mine (including the comments).

You’ll never look at a blog that hasn’t had any new posts for a while the same way again. :)

Twitter

Published
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Pedro Timóteo
1 year, 8 months ago
in Fun stuff, Miscellaneous stuff and World Wide Web
. 0 Comments

I know, I know, Twitter is last week’s news, so I’m late. Sue me. :)

Twitter is a system where you can tell, easily and quickly (for instance, by instant messaging, or cell phone), what you’re doing. You can also “follow” other users.

Anyway, I just joined. My username is “Dehumanizer”; feel free to add me (I like to convince myself that people are actually interested :)).

Twitter, at first glance, looks a little fun (it’s a new thing, after all), but completely useless, and even a bit self-masturbatory. However, looking at how other people use it, I’ve found that it’s not just for telling the world about useless stuff like “I’m going to the toilet”. People are using it as a mini-blog of sorts - with quick 1-2 line posts. Unlike a “normal” blog post, a Twitter post is so short that you can simply write something you’ve just thought or done, without interrupting your normal flow.

It’s also a way to, in a way, keep in touch with people, even if you don’t usually talk to each other, such as former co-workers.

Anyway, we’ll see if I keep using it or not. I probably will, but not “religiously”. :)

Blog moved

Published
by
Pedro Timóteo
1 year, 10 months ago
in Blogging, Search engine optimization (SEO), Unix / Linux / *BSD software and World Wide Web
. 2 Comments

I finally had some time today to move Way of the Mind (note the new URL) to my Slicehost virtual server. The new WotM Forum is also up, using MyBB, instead of phpBB like my other two. So far, I’m liking it (MyBB) a lot, though it’s a bit weird to have the entire theme inside the MySQL database instead of normal .php or .css files. :)

Moving the WordPress blog was simply a question of following these instructions. Basically, you go to the WP options in the old blog, change the 2 URL fields to the new address, dump the database, do a search & replace to change any images and other URLs in the database to the new address, import the database to the new server, copy the files, and that’s the proverbial “it”.

As for redirection, there came the eternal dilemma: if you redirect everything, then people will be lazy and keep using the old address (thus wasting your bandwidth); if you don’t, it’s inconvenient, and you lose everything you had in terms of incoming links and SEO.

What I did was to redirect (301, to signify a permanent move) every URL except the front page, which shows a message telling people about the change, and redirects after 5 seconds. I believe that this is the best of both worlds. Any link to an individual post will be redirected transparently, but whoever arrives at the front page will told about the change of address, encouraging them to update their bookmarks.

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Portugal
Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 Portugal