I have been hosting on the VPS2 plan with Site 5 for just under a month. For the past several years I have bounced around from dedicated hosting companies, running my own server because I like the infinite control I have over the application environment I can build. The last few years have been good to me, I was able to open my own webmaster consulting type firm, and take on several clients from various parts of the world. Providing this service to others had started to take away from my server management time, which any good server admin will tell you, is vital to the success of any web based service.

As much as I love spending time in the command line, I figured the amount of time I do that for clients was enough for me to get my fill. I started looking for a host that brought a little more to the table than just ‘being a host’.

I needed a hosting company that could understand my lingo (which is really theirs too), and at the same time would provide me any information I needed to get my job done.

In my perspective, Site 5 hosting has created a niche market for designers and programmers that every other host should be keeping their eye on. Yes, they provide hosting like every other web host available, but there are a few fundamental differences that Site 5 brings to the table :

1. They take of the small stuff that others expect you to do on your own. This can be a real time saver for newbies and veterans alike. Example? They will change your DNS settings for you, free of charge. This may sound trivial, but take the boom of Google Apps users on the web today, and the time it takes for new webmasters to understand how DNS works. By the time a new webmaster figures out that these settings can be made themselves in their control panels (Cpanel, Plesk, Webmin etc..), Site 5 can have the changes made for you, freeing up valuable time to take care of more pressing issues.
2. Their tech support is the real deal. They have structured their support much like any other support service, breaking down their tasks into what I like to call ‘Server Tiers.’ Level one techs have their own set of support requests they can handle, level two – their own, and so on. Site 5 does not employ hundreds of offshore techs, so you are bound to run into some of the same ones over and over again. This is nice for a couple of reasons, but the most important me is that these technicians really do know their capabilities, and are not afraid to pass off requests that are not their specialty. This is a time saver, and it also shows that they really are out to retain me as a client.
3. They understand that my clients are their clients too. In the reseller world, this is vital because many times you do not have the time to respond to your clients with an appropriate answer to their questions. My business model is not reselling hosting, I provide webmaster services for those that have no clue how a website works – whether by choice or inability to understand. This is my bottom line, not hosting, and when I do decide to host a client or two, I need to know that someone cares about their sites, as much as I do. With Site5, so far, the grass is definitely greener.

In the last month, I have submitted 14 support tickets, for various different needs. All but one of these tickets were replied to almost immediately. The only reason the one ticket was not replied to instantly was because it was an upgrade request that had to be routed to the proper system administrator to perform the upgrade. In 3 months I will revisit this post, and keep you informed of how everything is working out, so you can make an informed decision of your own about Site 5 web hosting. Until then – keep on keeping on!

Here is a nice bash script that I ran across some time ago, that allows you to import ip ranges into your iptables. To better understand what is happening here, the full script is below, and follows with a break down of what the iptables script is actually doing. (The provider of the country ip ranges is Blogama – be sure and give them a visit.) For your convenience here is a list of the Country Codes to use in this script.

#!/bin/bash
###PUT HERE COMA SEPARATED LIST OF COUNTRY CODE###
COUNTRIES="AK,AR"
WORKDIR="/root"
#######################################
cd $WORKDIR
wget -c --output-document=iptables-blocklist.txt http://blogama.org/country_query.php?country=$COUNTRIES
if [ -f iptables-blocklist.txt ]; then
  iptables -F
  BLOCKDB="iptables-blocklist.txt"
  IPS=$(grep -Ev "^#" $BLOCKDB)
  for i in $IPS
  do
    iptables -A INPUT -s $i -j DROP
    iptables -A OUTPUT -d $i -j DROP
  done
fi
rm $WORKDIR/iptables-blocklist.txt

1st Step of the Bash Script

In this step, you are invoking the bash shell. The ‘COUNTRIES’ variable is a list of country codes that you wish to add to your iptables to block. The full list of countries is available here. Obviously /root is your working directory that the script will do all of it’s work in. You can change this to your common working directory if you have one that you regularly use.

#!/bin/bash
###PUT HERE COMA SEPARATED LIST OF COUNTRY CODE###
COUNTRIES="AK,AR"
WORKDIR="/root"
#######################################

2nd Step

Here we are simply changing the current working directory to match the directory variable that we listed above. The next step fetches (via wget) an external url, which is actually a script that will generate a formatted list of the ip ranges for the countries you requested.

cd $WORKDIR
wget -c --output-document=iptables-blocklist.txt http://blogama.org/country_query.php?country=$COUNTRIES

3rd Step – Meat and Potatoes of the iptables flush

These two lines below check to see if a file already exists from a prior run of the bash script itself. If the file does exist, then it flushes your iptables.

if [ -f iptables-blocklist.txt ]; then
  iptables -F

4th Step – Finishing the iptables insert

The last step of this iptable bash script opens the file we created with the ip ranges in it, and for each occurence of a new ip range, it creates a rule in your iptables to drop traffic from those ip ranges. When the script is done, it removes the created text file.

  BLOCKDB="iptables-blocklist.txt"
  IPS=$(grep -Ev "^#" $BLOCKDB)
  for i in $IPS
  do
    iptables -A INPUT -s $i -j DROP
    iptables -A OUTPUT -d $i -j DROP
  done
fi
rm $WORKDIR/iptables-blocklist.txt

To run the script on your server, simply type bash scriptnamehere.sh, replacing scriptnamehere.sh with whatever it is you choose to call and save the script as. The original file for this script can viewed at HowToForge.

An HTML Editor That Harnesses Simplicity

The market of HTML editors seems to be flooded with text editors and WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editors that aim to provide an intuitive interface, yet fail miserably. I have been building websites since around 1997 and have used my share of them. First I used Microsoft Front Page 1997, followed shortly by Homesite (owned by Allaire back then), and Arachnophilia. I just couldn’t find a comfortable fit for me. Then I stumbled upon Coffee Cup Software. I figured for a free 30 day trial, and price tag of $49 (compared to the hefty price tag of the aforementioned) I had nothing to lose. Boy was I genuinely surprised at what I got for that price.

Underneath the Hood

When I first opened the CoffeeCup Editor, I was greeted by a warm little ditty from a song by Tom T Hall called “I Love”. Specifically it plays the portion where he is singing -” I love..coffee in a cup”. I knew right away that this editor was not your every day run of the mill, and I knew I found my fit, even if my volume level was all the way up and it scared the wits out of me. At first glance – this is what you will see in the 2010 Edition of their HTML Editor :

HTML Editor Load Page

Looks Pretty – How’s the HTML Editing?

This HTML editor has quite a few extra handy tools that most don’t and we’ll talk about that in a moment. The actual HTML editor portion of the software supports both WYSIWYG and standard text/html editing mode. I always use the text editing mode, but I have played around with the WYSIWYG editing portion on occasion just because it’s actually fun when you code everything by hand all the time. HTML5? Yes. CSS3? Check.

The editor fully supports syntax highlighting of all the major scripting languages that most websites use these days : PHP, CSS, XHTML, Perl, and much more. I find it to be accurate in it’s highlighting, and it offers the ability to change the way your code is shown via the Document Display Properties option that comes with it. The built in code cleaner function gives you minute control over how you want your code cleaned up, which is really handy for people like me that make a lot of inline coding annotations. Look at the before and after picture below to get an idea of just how well the HTML editor cleans and beautifies your code :

HTML Editor Code Before Cleaning

HTML Editor Code After Cleaning

It may not look like much has happened, but what the code cleaner does is align your code, clean out any open tags, nest your syntax properly, and word wraps your code according to your input. It also has the ability to clean up comments, properly close comments, and much more.

What else can it do? Can it make me breakfast?

Short of whipping you up some eggs, the software comes with hundreds of code snippets, and pre-made templates for you to freely use in your projects. What I find to be one of the most valuable tools that comes as part of the editor is the website color scheme chooser. This handy little tool allows you to pick a color, and will match colors that fit well with it, as well as let you compare color schemes without having to do it on a live site :

HTML Editor Website Color Schemer

What’s The Catch?

You would think for all the features that this HTML editor gives you, a price tag of $49 would indicate that something is just not right. There has to be a catch..right? The bottom line is – CoffeeCup Software has such a large, loyal user base – that they don’t need to inflate their price to make the software look reasonable. Thousands of users continually rave about how well and how functional this little piece of heaven is. I’m just jumping in with them and telling you – if you don’t have it – get the 2010 CoffeCup HTML Editor Trial Edition, it will be the best $49 you ever spent, and you will never need another HTML Editor again.

Other Software by CoffeeCup

FireStarter – A great little flash animation maker for the non Flash types out there.
PassWordWizard – Tool used to make custom password protected areas of your website. Good for WordPress, Joolma!, you name it.

As a full time webmaster and designer, I use royalty free photography on a daily basis. As noted, iStockPhoto is my royalty free image source of choice, but there are some good sources of free photography and vector images available to you. I have collected what I consider to be the top 10 free stock photography sites for use in a commercial setting, many with no attribution requirements. If you know of any other completely free photography resources, feel free to comment.

Top Ten Royalty Free Stock Photography Resources

Punk Lady - Courtesy of Photoree.com

Photoree – I love this site and so will you. You can search stock photography by license which is a real time and effort saver. Many of the images are of the same quality and workmanship you would find on sites that charge a pretty penny. Yes – the image to the right was found on Photoree!

FreeRangeStock – This is not a large photography site, but I love the fact that they share ad revenue with their photographers. Many of their images are clean, hi resolution, and great for side projects such as scrap-booking.

StockVault – These guys have some very clear images, and offer other resources in a similar, smooth layout – such as images specifically for web designers and niche fields.

FreePixels – Another free stock photography website with superb quality, commercial grade images. As of this post they have just over 4,000 images, which while not a lot – you are completely free to use them in your commercial projects.

Fresh Fruit! - Courtesy of Freepixels.com

ImageAfter – While ImageAfter does not have the highest quality free stock photography, they do have a cool tool. Their color picker tool allows you to pick HTML hexadecimals (N.B. codes) and find images that match your color choice.

RGB Stock – I enjoy this stock photo site due to it’s clutter free layout, and the great implementation of category structure. Their images of buildings stand out more than other sites, but that may just be an opinion. They do require that you register to download full size photos, but it takes less than 1 minute, and it is a simple email validation process. The building below is from RGBStock!

Austrain Architecture at it's finest! Courtesy of RGBStock.com

photl – Photl allows you to download a set limit each day, currently up to 35 Mb. They have a unique cropping tool that allows you download parts of images. I found this to be handy when I found an image of a coffee cup, but I didn’t want the beans that were with it. This image cropping tool can be a real time saver.

Woophy – If you need regional photography – this place has it nailed. Being from Oregon, I clicked on their map in the general area I am from and found some amazing photography. I added this one to my bookmarks right away. N.B. – This site is for non-commercial use only but it’s map overlay was too cool for me to leave them out.

AllOurStock – This is a smaller and newer site, but there are some photography gems to be found. All the images on AllOurStock are public domain, so you can use freely as you need.

GeekPhilosopher – Yet another smaller site, but the images are free. There are many abstracts that can be used in your web projects.

I also wanted to note that a quick way to get up to 52 high quality stock photos each year, is to visit iStock Photo on a weekly basis. They give away one free photograph each week, and you can download it in the highest resolution they offer which makes this a win-win for you!

Many methods used in these older articles and tutorials were out-dated, and are not in the spirit of where I want this site to be headed. So, for some time, you may get some 404 errors – but be assured that new and fresh content will be taking the place of the deleted archives. I have some great plans lined up for some tutorials and Open Source code for your to use in your projects.

I also took a real hard look at why I would want to keep the older articles, and honestly, the main reason for me was financial purposes. (Ad revenue) That’s when I knew it had to be deleted, I just couldn’t possibly sit on old content and expect that to carry the new site theme in the right direction. I did keep some older, relevant Photoshop tutorials, as I want to revisit them sometime in the near future as I feel some of the techniques can be carried a lot farther, and having the old posts to refer to will be handy.

Also, if you would like to contribute to CodeCrunch, please read our general outline of articles and content that we accept.

Firstly, let me state that I have no vested interest in either party. Yes – it seems that a partial GPL has been adopted. Yes, I just dumped Joomla and years of content down the tubes because I wanted to start fresh, and went with WordPress as the new framework for the site. But let me just put aside WordPress and Thesis, to look at a much simpler issue at hand – the GPL, what it means to us, and why I feel Chris Pearson is going to change minds.

Synopsis – Chris: Chris Pearson is the owner and founder of DIY Themes, a service that offers an extended framework and themes for the basic WordPress software. He believes that his code, which is separate and independent of WordPress, should not have to follow the GPL guidelines that were set into motion with the creation of WordPress.N.B. – Thesis has adopted a partial GPL , and this article outlines the overall outcome.

Synopsis – Matt: As the founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg and the other developers of Worpdress released their software under the GPL, which in short states that any software released as a derivative or conditionally built to function with their software as the core, needs to be released under the GPL.

My Take on the Argument

Let me start by pointing out that Matt and Chris both appeared in an impromptu discussion about this issue on Mixergy. I have listened to the whole conversation, and I have certainly thought about what both of them had to say. However, as a developer myself, long before either of them – I must say clearly that Matt understands the spirit of the GPL as it was intended. Let me tell you why :

Chris Pearson had to start somewhere with his software. If WordPress did not exist, and was not GPL in the first place, he never would have created Thesis. In undertaking the Thesis project, the rules of the GPL were already set into motion. This simply means that at some point during developmental planning, Chris had to take a look at the GPL and decide to adopt it or not. Since he concedes that he does not believe that the GPL is fair, one can reasonably assume that he should have not proceeded, because he did not agreed to it’s terms, which were clearly set out before he started his project.

To be fair in my analysis, Matt probably could have better explained the overall flow of the GPL to Chris better. I understand Chris to be very intelligent, and a highly likable guy, and I think with a better understanding of what it is that Matt and the Open Source GPL community at large were asking of him, then he would have be willing to meet in the middle much sooner. I find myself thinking of the numerous times that I have purchased Open Source GPL software simply because I wanted the freedom to do what I wanted with the software. In the context that Chris is delivering his message, he is simply stating that he feels he “Should be able to do what he wants…” I simply couldn’t agree more, and that’s what Chris needs to hear.

No statement is more profound or matching of the overall message of the GPL. Give us software in the spirit that the software was given to you. There is no argument that can refute the basis of this statement, simply because the flow of the software creation process is always dictated by the person that created the original software. Chris wants creative control over his software, and is afraid that if he releases it GPL, others will take the Thesis framework, and undercut his sales. History will prove that is indeed true, coders are always taking pieces of others code, porting it, tweaking it and calling it their own. The one thing that Chris needs to understand, is that with people like you and I behind his solid framework, he need not worry about good coders, and ethically sound supporters stealing his work. We’re (meaning supporters) always going to want the real deal, in this case – Thesis with WordPress. Not Thesis X2, Not Thesis Nuke, Not Thesis Post Nuke. (Oh yes I did……)

Let me ask you something. Is there a spin off of WordPress that I am unaware of that just blows away the framework with some newer MVC methods or outside frame that distinguishes itself enough to be a completely different project? If so, is it GPL? Do you think that making a framework on top of anothers work constitutes a derivative work?

I think Chris did an outstanding job of sticking to his beliefs, but I feel that Matt – overall, embodies the spirit of the GPL. What’s this spirit I keep referring to? It’s called integrity, and the belief that no matter how good you think you are – you can always be better with the help of others. At least that’s how I see it.

Why I think Chris Will Change Minds

I’m not saying that I feel any ill feelings towards Chris, but it really seems to me that Generation Y thinks they own the internet sometimes. Because they are much younger, and really do fuel new technologies, I feel this sometimes empowers them to make their own rules when they can’t fit into existing ones. Chris is business savvy, a smooth talker, and you can tell he firmly believes he is right with regards towards this issue by simply listening to him. I think his actions from here forward will drive the way that software is created, and I think with him behind the GPL , rather than against it – it could possibly spark a newer movement in the right direction, especially from within his generation.

Any thoughts?

Thesis Adopts a Partial GPL

I’m really overwhelmed with a sense of relief that Chris decided to partially GPL his code. This is definitely a step in the right direction. In doing so – Chris can get back to work on Thesis, Matt can move on with his projects, and we can all learn from the experience. I hope that Thesis continues to thrive, and that Matt continues to be in the forefront for Open Source and GPL licensed software.

Apparently last week ASCAP sent letters out to all of their ‘members’, with a call for fundraising to combat ‘opponents’ such as the Creative Commons. It’s not the first time that ASCAP has tried to bully smaller, yet perfectly viable licensing schemes out of the picture.

As a guitar player of 20 years, and having written numerous songs, I understand the need for a streamlined process whereby music is protected for the author. What’s not really transparent from ASCAP is their reasoning, but let me go out on limb and say it always has to do with the almighty dollar. As noted on the Creative Commons website, musicians such as NIN have purposely selected their own licensing scheme as a means of controlling their own destiny for their music.

I’ve been doing alot of reading on this topic, mostly posts in response to articles written about a musicians rights, and their ability to interpret a license. Let me just say this – I may be an exception, but I certainly don’t think a larger more corporate approach to license interpretation is where the answer is. Certainly we can all benefit from collectively bargaining as a group, but the group has to agree on everything – and with ASCAP that just will not happen, it will always be biased. What is their main interest in shutting down the Creative Commons? I’d be interested in hearing your opinions.

The president of ASCAP continually barks out stuff like this , as if to speak for all musicians, but I can assure you that I don’t agree with this sentiment at all:

I am well aware of those “copyleft” mouthpieces who take a highly critical view of ASCAP’s efforts to protect our members’ rights… What I find most fascinating is that those who purport to support a climate of free culture work so hard to silence opposing points of view. They will not silence me….Paul Williams ASCAP President

I find it rather funny that ASCAP continues to wage war on the very “mouthpieces” that allows it to stay in business – the people that buy the music. You see, Mr. Williams wants a paycheck for being a musician, which I fully understand and support. However, what Mr. Williams is saying is that all music should be this way, and that the Creative Commons is taking away musicians rights, and that’s just not the case. The bottom line is that musicians are choosing for themselves what they want, giving less control and credibility to third party companies in our digital age. Nobody wants Paul Williams silenced, we just want him to be a leader in this digital age, to stop ranting, and start getting some meaningful relationships built vice tearing down walls.

You can read the full article and keep up on the news here.

This is actually good news in a way, as I made myself find time to clean up the site, and convert from a Joomla install to a WordPress installation. The change was made because I simply don’t need anything more than WordPress right now to write articles and share my content. Looking forward to another great year!

I also would like to extend an open hand to the same, continual users who find it ‘fun’ to post comment spam and continually probe the server for vulnerabilities. It’s actually users like you who the community would benefit from the most as many of you have the right intentions, but are approaching sites like ours in the wrong spirit.

So, in short – I call on you (you know who you are) to join in my efforts to make things a little more fluid. If you want to be part of a community that embraces your abilities, then please – join me in helping others. However, if you continue to walk the path less traveled, that of a script kiddie, then you will not be welcome at all. Consider this our one and only invitation to cease and desist.

You can get some handwriting fonts here that you can use to follow along with and create your own samples. Just remember that you’ll want to choose one that isn’t too choppy or blocky for a better end result.

I’ve included a jpeg as an attachement on the last page of this tutorial. If you simply can’t wait to see what the output will be – it should look something like the photograph included with this tutorial.

1. Start with a good handwriting-style font; the less computer-generated it looks, the better. Type your test, apply whatever distortions, et cetera, you’d like, and rasterize your layer. We’ll be using black text for this example, but you can alter the color later.
2. Choose Filter -> Blur -> Gaussian Blur… Be careful! Even for a large image you won’t want to blur your text by more than a pixel or two. The goal is to create a slight halo of fuzz around solid, readable text, not to actually make your text seem blurry.
3. Duplicate your layer of text.
4. Choose Filter -> Stylize -> Wind… The default settings should suffice.
5. Merge your two layers of text together.
6. Choose Filter -> Distort -> Ripple… The exact amount of distortion you choose to apply here will depend on how large your image is and where on the Canvas your text is located, but you will want to keep it subtle; the goal is to apply a bit of randomness and shakiness to your ‘handwriting’, not to actually see ripples.

You may be done here, if you are simply looking to replicate the marker look on a clean background. If you’re trying to make the marker texture appear as if you actually wrote or drew on the underlying layer, continue with the steps on the next page of this tutorial.

If you’re trying to make the marker texture appear as if you actually wrote or drew on the underlying layer, continue with the steps below :

• Change the text layer’s blending mode to Soft Light.
• Duplicate it two to four times, each time leaving the blending mode on Soft Light.

These individual layers may be adjusted for color and opacity as you see fit, to create the effect that suits your particular image and your personal taste. Below is a sample output of what this effect can do. Your mileage may very as you are probably using a different font :

This is more a simple share than a tutorial. Back in 2004 I was working on a site that had a relatively small database (MYSQL), with about 50K records.

The DB was indexed so that full text searching could be used, but I found that whenever a user would search for common words under a certain length (in this case under 4 letters), no results would be returned. An example of a query that I tested was “ASP”, which of course returned zero results.

This is simply because by default, MYSQL fulltext is setup to allow only indexing of 4 letters. I’ve never had to change my maximum word length, but according to the MYSQL documentation – the length varies by version. Anyone have more insight on this?

To change your minimum word length, you must simply edit the ft_min_word_length by adding it to an options file like this :

[mysqld]
ft_min_word_len=3

Once you have done this – you must rebuild your indexes, or like me, not read the documentation and wonder why it isn’t working for 2 hours. In addition to changing the word length, you may have to over ride the installed default stopword list. You can find more information on how to do this at the MYSQL Fulltext doc page.

I haven’t had a need to use fulltext searching since that project in 2004, but I thought I would save someone out there a couple of hours of hair pulling. You will also notice on the MYSQL documentation pages, information on search thresholds. I didn’t find the need to tweak these parameters, but for fun times sake – I will have to do so in the near future and share my results. Most people find that the default stoplist and thresholds meet their needs, but I can imagine a few scenarios where you would want the fulltext features of MYSQL to work quite different.

For example – an acronym database. What a project to tackle – getting the search threshold and stop list to NOT return every result for AAA, and also to NOT return zero sets.

Interesting.