The (almost) free web site – and learn Git too!

This is not a Drupal post. But I do have to share this anyway. I needed a site for the consulting side of my business but I don’t want to shell out much cash. OK, no cash at all.

So, i went digging and found that Github allows you to post a small site for free. No strings, no garbage. No database either so you can’t have a Drupal site. This isn’t the only site that will let you do that but it is one of the only ones that will also let you have your own domain name too. So, I spent two hot US quarters (50 cents) and bought as domain name for a year. I then used that name to establish my new site Lande Tech.

The only piece of the puzzle missing is DNS. Enter freedns.afraid.org, a free service that will allow your domain’s dns needs to be hosted for free.

You won’t get your new domain’s email out of this (although afraid.org will host your mx record) but you will get your own site and domain name for SUPER cheap!

Plus, you have the added benefit of using Git for the transfer of your data to Github Pages. Git was developed by Linus himself and is more or less the standard VCS (Version Control System) for Open Source development. I talked about Pantheon earlier – They use Git for their platform. If you do Open Source, you need to be familiar with Git.

How to find out what font you are looking at.

Chrome has a great extension for that allows you to click on any web page’s text and see details about the font that is being used. very cool. similar to the tool that allows you to see what color you are looking at. very nice. free from the extensions in the Chrome store.

WhatFont 2.0.2

The easiest way to identify fonts on web pages.

Find a hex color value with your mouse on anything!

This is a cool piece of software and of course it is FREE.

http://instant-eyedropper.com/

This nifty little utility will allow you to find the color value of any pixel on your screen by holding down the left mouse button while the utility is running. VERY nice. 

PHPMyAdmin – MySQL administration page

The main admin page for mysql is phpmyadmin. it is secured through a local firewall of sorts in the form of the phpmyadmin.conf file. there are explicit “allow” and “deny” statements for IPs here. I was a firewall guy for many years and this is actually a great security method. Nice and simple. KISS!

Anyway, because of some limitations in Drupal regarding aggregated news items, I need to have access to the sql db itself. I could do this via sql statements from the command line, but for what I need to do I need to see the tables and prefer a nice GUI. And PHPMyAdmin is a pretty nice GUI. Since I have my Drupal servers, (S, Q and Prod) secured via SSL, there is no issue with changing the security from deny to allow for any host other than localhost.

<Directory /usr/share/phpMyAdmin/>
<IfModule mod_authz_core.c>
# Apache 2.4
<RequireAny>
Require ip 127.0.0.1
Require ip ::1
</RequireAny>
</IfModule>
<IfModule !mod_authz_core.c>
# Apache 2.2
Order Deny,Allow
# Deny from All
Allow from All
Allow from 127.0.0.1
Allow from ::1
</IfModule>
</Directory>

this reflects the change that I made. Look at the # in front of the deny statement and the addition of the allow all statement. that’s all you need. BUT, make sure to have ssl enabled to protect your mysql password.

PECL Upoadprogress

You may have seen this missing in your status report. I have finally gotten around to installing this. there are a few things that I had to do.

http://web3us.com/drupal6/Drupal%206%20-%20How%20to%20Guides/upload-progress-pecl-uploadprogress-library

this is a great link. read it. there is a lot of confusion because drupal tells you you need it but doesn’t really tell you how to enable it. that’s because it is really a function of the os. but the link will tell you what to do.

http://freestylesystems.co.uk/blog/installing-pecl-uploadprogress-extension-drupal-filefield-30-module

this is another good link on PECL.

Drush Command Line Utility

Today I am installing the Drush command line utility. This utility is described as a sort of “swiss army knife” on Drupal.org and is one of those utilities that I probably should have installed a while ago. I will also install the Colorbox image gallery today and will need Drush in the course of that install. More on Colorbox later.

The easiest way to install (if you’re on a unix/linux system) is to use the commands listed here. You should read all of this anyway if you want to get info on Drush.

pear channel-discover pear.drush.org
pear install drush/drush

From the linux command line (Centos6) as root. I ran these commands and bam. Drush was installed. There are also instructions on how to do this on Windows too.

On my Sand/Quality environments, I had to install Pear too. Prod had it – Prod was built by my hosting company, Blackmesh.com. Here is the easy way I did it:

#yum install php-pear

Then, I was able to use the commands above.

**One note, there is a “module” listed for Drush even though it really isn’t a mod. And when I tried to install it I got an error about the .info file. **