Tips for debugging .htaccess rewrite rules
This is a repost of one of my articles on StackOverflow. Many posters have problems debugging their RewriteRule and RewriteCond statements within their .htaccess files. Most of these are using…
A quick point about timing
I've just deployed my V3 blog engine to live. In doing so, the time per query jumped from <10 mSec per query to ~2.5s — which meant that the typical page…
More fun with the Webfusion configuration
This is a follow-up to my article on building a Webfusion test VM. My aim is to create a test environment which reflects my Webfusion environment at a file system…
Creating a test VM to mirror the Webfusion Shared Service
In previous articles I have discussed how difficult it is for users of a shared web hosting service such as Webfusion's to develop and to debug applications on a service…
Oh, the embarrassment!
I’ve just discovered a bug in my blog: any comment posts get thrown into the bit-bucket and are never passed to me for acceptance / publishing if the user making…
More on using Rewrite rules in .htaccess files
This article is a further discussion how to use rewrite rules on a shared hosting service (SHS) such as the one supplied by Webfusion and that I use. It develops…
The Anatomy and Timing of a Web Request – Part II
In Part I of this analysis, I looked at the overall timeline of viewing a webpage, and my main recommendations were: The correct webserver configuration is essential to ensure that…
The Anatomy and Timing of a Web Request – Part I
My academic background was mathematics, specialising in operations research and statistics. I put this to good use when I first started my career in an IT consultancy, in working one…
phpBB Performance – Reducing the script load overhead
This is the third in a series of phpBB performance articles and in this one I want to investigate how feasible it would be to use code globbing to reduce…
phpBB Performance – Reducing the data cache overhead
As I described in a previous article, you can use Linux utility strace to instrument a web request simulation and suPHP model. sudo -u www-data strace -tt -o /tmp/strace.log php…
phpBB Performance – A 3x challenge
The trigger for this article was a conversation with Mark Fisher, someone that I mentored through his early career, and who has remained a close friend over the years, though…
More on optimising PHP applications in a Webfusion shared service
This article is a follow-up to Performance in a Webfusion shared service and guidelines for optimising PHP applications. I decided to have a look at general postings on PHP performance…
Running remote commands on a Webfusion shared service
The general advice here is don’t – especially if you are not familiar with the bash command shell and Linux environments in general. However, there are still certain cases when…
Access and Permissions on a Webfusion shared service
The ownership and permission system on the shared Webfusion LAMP services are somewhat odd and merit being documented. Here is a listing of an appropriate subset of the access and…
Another Apache configuration funny on a Webfusion shared service
Last week I had some fun when I moved my blog rewrite from my home development system to the Webfusion service. This was a quick copy of a PHP script…
FTP access to Webfusion shared accounts
This is a little journey of fun that I wanted to record. If you happen to own a Webfusion shared account and you navigate to the Webfusion Support Site, selecting…
Performance in a Webfusion shared service and guidelines for optimising PHP applications
I manage a few websites on a hobby / pro-bono basic, with this personal site being the smallest and the OpenOffice.org user forums being the largest (nicknamed usOOo after initials…
Using .htaccess files on a Webfusion shared service
This is a subsidiary article to Using PHP applications on a Webfusion hosted service (Linux), and in this want to discuss how to use .htaccess files on a Webfusion Linux…
Using PHP applications on a Webfusion hosted service (Linux)
I discussed the common types of ISP hosting services in a previous article, Use cases for phpBB, and I use one of these hosting services myself — a shared web…