Did a little maintenance on the blog, some updates, some broken links updated. Still not in 100% condition, but who is, right?
Going to try to keep up this blog more often, it’s been here so long, it would be a shame to let it rot.
Feb 162021
Feb 282016
The WordPress plugin Broken Links Detector reported over 900 links on my blog that have some sort of problem. Meaning an URL can’t be reached or even the linked server doesn’t exist anymore. I started blogging about 12 years ago. Websites come and go, domain names change, blogs are moved to different locations. The internet changes constantly.
Feb 262016
My server was dead. Not even a little blink from one of the many LEDs in the system or some other sign of life when putting the power on it. So I figured that replacing parts would be like a puzzle. Is it the power supply? The motherboard? The CPU? Or a combination of any of the parts? Replacing one of them would easily cost me about 100 euro. So I did some math, and figured that hosting was not only a relatively cheap solution, it also has many advantages (that all of you IT people can list better than me).
I went with DirectNIC, since I have been using their services for over 15 years now.
And as you can see, it just works. I had to do some work to restore the WordPress database, since the last backup I had on my NAS disks was from the end of 2015. But with some diskswapping, file copying, MySql-dumping+importing and WP-CONFIG changing it now works.
I’m happy!
Jan 022015
Just installed Windows Live Writer, to make blogging easier. It imports the current theme properly, so what I’m typing now looks like what will be published, including the dark background etc. Let’s see how this works the coming days.
This is basically a test post.
Jul 242013
This blog is starting to get old 🙂 Next February this weblog will be 10! I think it started with pMachine, then b2Evolution, and after that several versions of WordPress. I know I used some ASP.NET software at first, when the server was still a Windows machine, but “.Text” was not stable enough (reboots made the weblog unavailable), so that’s when I started with PHP-based weblog software and finally ended up with the best one!
Recently I installed a broken-link checker plugin, and that resulted in quite a number of dead links. Some that were links to my own weblog. I “unlinked” most of the external links (so the link is removed), and I am trying to sort out my own links. I restored some pictures already, but disk crashes in the past resulted in some media referred to by the links to be gone. Should have made better backups. Mind the word “should”.
Feb 022013
Just changed the server’s Apache model from Prefork to Worker. Should be easier on the memory and the CPU, but after downloading/installing it (via aptitude) nothing worked anymore. PHP works different under the Worker model, so directories need an extra handler and options. No biggie, read this thread.
Jan 162013
I saw that images in old posts weren’t showing, so for what it’s worth I restored the images as far as I could find them. That’s the problem with harddisk crashes, not everything can be restored. If you’re missing anything, tell me.
Jul 192012
To have some directories on my server protected by more than a simple username and password, I wanted to use SSL and client certificates. I could easily restrict the directories to my local network IP-addresses, but when I’m “outside” that would present a problem. Hence the solution with client certificates.
As I blogged earlier, I requested a real server certificate from the people at Xolphin. Nice people, low prices, fast service. But…..you cannot create/sign client certificates with such a certificate. You need the real certificate installed on the server, and you need to create a certificate that has been created/signed by you as a fake Certificate Authority. The Fake CA has to be known to Apache and to your browser. Next the client certificate (created/signed by the Fake CA) must be imported into your browser, and of course the directories you want to protect need to be in the SSL-configuration of Apache.
Now that I know how it works, it is simple, but most guides on the internet either follow the Fake CA principle (so you don’t need to buy a real certificate) or they only use a real certificate. Spending money to have your SSL-certificate-supplier do the job for you is another thing. But this works. And for € 10 (excluding VAT) per year I now have a real server certificate, and I can further protect my server with my own certificates.
Jul 192012
The SSL certificate is installed, and seems to work properly, seeing the green lock in front of the URL. Yeah!
Jul 182012
Just received my SSL certificate in the mail. Fast service from Xolphin, thanks! I will install them later.