2011 1

Protect static files on Apache with OpenID

I moved from static HTML pages to web applications and back to static HTML files. There’s a lot to be said for the simplicity and portability of a bunch of files. Static site generators like Jekyll are increasingly popular; I’ve built a simple publisher that I use extensively. Web apps give you something else, though, that are still useful on a static site. Access control. I’ve been resorting to htpasswd to protect static files, and it’s far from optimal. I don’t want to know or manage users’ passwords. I don’t want them to remember a new ID. I just want to allow specific people to log in via their Google Accounts. (OpenID is too confusing, and most people use Google anyway.) ...

2010 1

Install XAMPP

I’ve been going around setting up open source software a fair bit recently. To minimise the pain of explaining it, I’m putting together a short videos that explain the process. Here’s the first, on XAMPP, which is a starting point for most open source applications. It bundles Apache (web server), MySQL (database), Perl and PHP. To install it, search and download “XAMPP for Windows”, and press enter for every question. Then install your application under C:\xampp\htdocs. That’s it. ...

2008 1

Caching pages on Apache

I don’t use any blogging software for my site. I just hand-wired it some years ago. When doing this, one of the biggest problems was caching. Consider each blog entry page. Each page has the same template, but different content. Both the template and content could be changed. So ideally, blog pages should be served dynamically. That is, every time someone requests the page, I should look up the content, look up the template, and put them together. ...

2007 1

Handling missing pages

If something goes wrong with my site, I like to know of it. My top three problems are: The site is down A page is missing Javascript isn’t working This article covers the second topic. One thing I’m curious about is hits to non-existent pages (404s) on my site. I usually get 404s because: I renamed the page Someone typed a wrong URL Someone followed a wrong link Find the 404 ...

2005 1

Droogle

Droogle. Drink recipes. Comments Jetru 24 Mar 2005 5:04 pm: Doesnt look like the XML feed is working… Deshi 24 Mar 2005 6:17 pm: This is one lousy blog! Genmys 25 Mar 2005 1:49 am: Lassi features as South Indian drink. Obscure results for Butter Milk ritzkini 25 Mar 2005 8:13 am: Bandwidth Limit Exceeded.The server is temporarily unable to service your request due to the site owner reaching his/her bandwidth limit. Please try again later.Apache/1.3.33 Server at www.droogle.ca Port 80(25/03/2005-at 1:45 PM IST) Shamit 26 Mar 2005 4:41 am: It is getting a bit cluttered … S Anand 28 Mar 2005 3:20 am: Yes, it is, rather. Will see what I can do about that. S Anand 30 Mar 2005 7:23 am: Fixed the XML feed.

2001 1

No access log

I can’t seem to locate the access log (which used to be on unix2 at /usr/local/apache/logs/access_log). So, sorry – can’t give any more statistics on the hits.