Webmaster's Journal - Control-Escape

Instant CSS Layouts with YUI Grids

2007-01-21T10:06:00.000-05:00

Part 2 of the series Resurrecting a Dead Site

Modern Layout Techniques

Having decided that Control-Escape needed some work, it was now time to figure out what to do about it. The content itself was written in very basic HTML, which was wrapped in a template that generated the navigation and layout. I had been using a rigid, table-based layout originally created, oh, probably back in 2000 or maybe 2001. It was heavy and difficult to edit without causing ugly layout breakage. So my first step would be to update the layout to be lighter, easier to edit, and more standard-compliant.

I spent a few Google-hours researching CSS-based layout techniques. I was able to generate what I thought was a fairly decent layout using gleaned knowledge, but when I viewed it in a different browser, everything was misaligned and slightly off. After tweaking that for a while and making no progress, I went in search of some code I could ~~steal~~ emulate.

A long and boring trail lead me to the Yahoo! User Interface Library, where the experts who design one of the worlds largest web sites had decided to share their knowledge and, lo, some of their code too!

I quickly settled on using YUI Grids CSS to generate my standards-based layout. I figured, it has already been tested by Yahoo! engineers far smarter than me to work in multiple browsers, even ones I don't have. It's very easy to use, and it makes the HTML code nice and clean.

There really is no need for me to go into detail. The documentation is so straight-forward that further explanation is unnecessary. If you are in the market for a simple way to create cross-browser CSS layouts, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

The Easy Way To Gather Web Statistics

2006-12-26T18:04:00.000-05:00

Part 1 of the series Resurrecting a Dead Site

Motivation

When I started Control-Escape as a resource for the Linux hobbyist, it was partially from self-interest and partially from a desire to help others like myself. Eventually, though, I got comfortable using Linux on a daily basis, and many companies grew up to provide support around Linux systems, and I moved on to other things.

I had been hauling Control-Escape around from server to server, experimenting with various web technologies and basically treating it as a personal toy, without updating it or improving it, for a few years. I started to ask myself, is this site even useful to anyone anymore? And if it is, shouldn't I put some work into it to make it usable and timely again? The answer to my second question was obviously "yes", but how to answer the first?

Statistics and Analytics

What I needed was what web junkies call a "stats package", or in modern enterprise parlance, web analytics. Some software that would tell me whether anyone was visiting my site, and if they were, who were they and what did they want? A quick search on Google turned up some hideously expensive "enterprise solutions" (I cannot believe anyone pays that much money for web statistics, it's absurd), and a few open-source packages. You can guess which way I went.

I evaluated several packages, and if this is a problem you need to solve, I recommend you perform your own evaluations, since everyone's needs are different. Some of the programs I looked at include Webalizer, Analog, and AWStats. Ultimately, all of these programs just seemed like too much work for me. Dealing with rotating and archiving log files, making a cron job to process the logs at the correct time, making the reports available while keeping my web site secure, all this just to find out whether I even have a web site or just a collection of files that nobody looks at.

Instead I decided to go in another direction. Google had recently purchased an analytics company, Urchin, and started providing an analytics service for its Adwords customers. When I heard that Google had opened the service to all comers for free, branding it Google Analytics, I had to check it out.

Google Analytics works by inserting a small javascript tag into your site. When the client downloads the javascript and executes it, the script reports back to Google's servers all kinds of interesting information about the client. Of course, you have to get the javascript tag into every page, and if you maintain all your HTML files manually that might be tricky. Fortunately, I was using HTML::Mason to compose my pages at request time using templates (one of the many server-side technologies I have tried), so it was easy to make one change to the template that effected all pages.

Google Analytics is a pure javascript solution. This means on the one hand that you can collect more and richer information on the client, but on the other hand clients with javascript disabled will not be recorded at all, nor will impressions of images and other non-HTML files. The down side is that if you expect to have a lot of legitimate visitors who have javascript disabled, or if you need to track things other than page views, your statistics will be skewed. The up side is that it's really easy. Google hosts the reporting interface on their servers, and you don't have to deal with log files or cron jobs at all.

I decided to take the easy way out. I installed the Google Analytics script, and within hours I was seeing results. Not only did I discover that I was getting 300-400 page views each day, but I also found that 85% of my traffic comes from Google, because I have the number one search result for a couple of key phrases. I had my answer: the site did indeed have some value. The next step was to do something about it.

But that's another article.

Improve LAMP security with mod_proxy

2006-12-14T14:25:00.000-05:00

If you are a webmaster who hosts sites for other people, whether they are customers or just friends and family, you may have been in the situation where one person's bad code brought down the whole server. Even if that hasn't happened, there are security risks inherent in shared hosting.

Nick Maynard at IBM has written Improve LAMP security with Apache Proxy's directive (mod_proxy), showing how virtual hosting with multiple user IDs is possible. The article takes as its premise that you are using Apache's mod_php rather that plain CGI scripts, and therefor the "suExec" option will not work for you. The techniques that he describes are not limited to use in a PHP environment. I have used a similar setup to host multiple mod_perl developers on the same system without stomping on each other.

This is an excellent how-to for webmasters, complete with example configuration files, detailed explanation, and numerous links to additional sources. Highly recommended.

Configuring Apache 2 on Debian, Ubuntu

2006-12-12T22:02:00.000-05:00

I've just posted a new how-to article on Control-Escape.com: Configuring Apache 2 on Debian, Ubuntu, in which we explore the peculiar configuration layout of Apache version 2.0 on Debian systems. I read somewhere (sorry, I have lost the link) that this layout is something of a consternation to the upstream Apache folks who try to give support. I hope this article will throw a little light on the subject and help budding webmasters help themselves a little better. Happy reading!

ApacheCon Europe 2007 Call for Papers

2006-12-02T07:08:00.000-05:00

For those in Europe, or those who will be in Europe the first week of May, ApacheCon Europe has just announced their call for papers. The conference will be held in Amsterdam 1-4 May 2007 and may cover not only the Apache web server but any project of the Apache Software Foundation and related technologies. Webmasters are encouraged to attend, this will be a rich learning (and networking) experience.

The deadline for submitting papers is 12 January 2007, so you'd better get cracking if you hope to present.

Learn About Postfix Email Server

2006-11-24T18:12:00.000-05:00

Postfix is an MTA, a server for sending and receiving email. Postfix was designed to be faster, more secure, and easier to configure than the ancient and widely used Sendmail MTA. If you are planning to run your own small email server, you should definitely be looking seriously at Postfix.

Linux Journal (subscribe [with $5 Bonus]) has just posted on their web site Chapter 5 of an excellent book on Postfix, uncryptically called The Book of Postfix: State-of-the-Art Message Transport.

The article itself is an overview of the Postfix architecture, which is made up of many separate programs all operating in concert to get email delivered when and where it belongs. The article may be a bit technical, especially taken outside the context of the book, but it is certainly a representative sample of the expertise that went into the book. If Chapter 5 fails to convince, you can also read Chapter 25 from the book's official web site. Recommended if you are looking to run your own email server.

For those can't eat just one, you may also want to check out Postfix: The Definitive Guide from O'Reilly. O'Reilly's definitive guides never fail to impress, and although this one is a few years old, it is still packed with valuable knowledge that remains valid.

Of course, after reading what's involved, you may decide to give up the dream of running your own email server. Often it's easier to pay someone else to worry about spam and security issues. But for the control freak, there is no substitute for root.

How To Waste 25 Developers With One Simple Task

2006-11-25T20:11:00.000-05:00

Usually, I try to be nice to folks. I mean, you never know when you are going need a favor from somebody you once insulted, right? And there's enough negative in this world already without people adding randomly to the bad-pool. But I can't hold my tongue on this one, because what Web 2.0 needs is another online to do list.

Oh no, that's not the end of it. Clearly, none of those guys know how to build a proper to-do list application, because solutionwatch.com has a list including twenty more. And people say there is no second bubble. Is this ingenuity? Is this innovation?

The mind boggles. I mean, I can feel my whole mind boggling right now. Listen, if you are a webmaster who wants to show off your swank programming skills, do the world a favor and come up with an idea that has not been done literally hundreds of times. If you are hoping to start a web-based business, I can absolutely promise you that creating another online to-do list web site will earn you less money than a free blog at blogger.com where you make 20 posts a day randomly generated from Lorem Ipsum.

And if you are looking for a way to organize your to-do list, get yourself a hipster PDA and move on.

Root Access to Dedicated Server: $20

2006-11-22T08:16:00.000-05:00

Maybe I'm a bit of a control freak, but I don't like shared web hosting. Yes, it is cheap, and if you are really scraping on your budget then it's wise to opt for the tiny bill. In fact there are plenty of places out there on the Web that will host your files for free. You probably get some web space with your Internet access account, and that's a great pace to start if you really want to stay cash-flow neutral or positive. You could start there and only move up when you have enough revenue from your site to pay for your own domain name and better hosting.

For me, though, it isn't a good fit. I run about 9 different domains, including web and email. I like being able to experiment with new server technologies. In short, I want root. Now, there are plenty of places out there that will lease you dedicated hardware, but usually for a pretty steep price. If you have $100 a month to spend, you probably can find what you want at The Planet. I have worked with them before and always got good support. But my sites were not making $100 a month in revenue, and I don't like being cash flow negative.

If you have broadband and your provider allows it, you might be able to build a machine yourself and host it at home. If you have an old PC lying around, you can install Linux on that old codger and put it back to work. I had trouble with this solution, though, because my provider was not quite as reliable as I wanted, and seemed to randomly change firewall rules to block my traffic. (Plus, that old box could flame out at any moment!)

The solution to the problem is virtualization. The technology behind it is pretty high tech. I don't fully understand it myself. But what it basically means is that your hosting provider builds a big server farm, and then subdivides it into virtual machines, which he leases out to you. This is a sort of hybrid approach. Although you do not get truly dedicated hardware, you do get a "server instance" of your own, to which you and only you have full access. Other virtual servers on the same hardware are kept completely separate, and you won't even know they exist. Because virtualization allows the hardware resources to be divided up into smaller pieces, you only have to pay for part of the hardware.

There are a few places where you can get a virtual server. I think the two best choices are Linode and OpenHosting. OpenHosting uses what they call utility pricing, billing you only for what resources you use, and expanding resources dynamically as your server demands them. Linode, on the other hand, dedicates resources to your use, and limits your access to those resources for which you have paid. Linode allows you to install any number of different Linux distributions on your virtual server, where OpenHosting gives you Fedora Core 4.

I have not used OpenHosting, but I have used Linode and I can tell you that the tools and service that they provide are good quality. I heartily recommend Linode to anyone looking for this kind of service. (If anyone out there has a review of OpenHosting or another virtual server provider, please post a comment.) Both services have virtual servers starting at $20 a month.

All the providers mentioned in this article rent month-to-month, no long term contract required. I'm not getting paid for these links, I just like the companies and wanted to spread the word. I hope it helps you with your own hosting needs.

The Webmaster is dead - Long live the webmaster!

2006-11-20T08:18:00.000-05:00

The Webmaster is dead - Long live the webmaster!

For twenty years, my perspective on information technology has been one of individual empowerment. I have always thought of computers and the Internet (once I discovered it) as the lever Archimedes was asking for, the one long enough to move the world. Likewise, I have always been interested in "publishing". At one time I thought I might become a writer. I may yet one day, but it may have to wait until my old age, should I reach it alive. Then again, if a writer is one who writes, then I am a writer already. I tried my hand at running my own personal publishing business, and learned the important lesson that I am not a salesman. Failure is good for the soul.

I made my first web site in 1997. This means I was not one of those edgy, ahead of his time kind of guys. Never really was ahead of my time, just trying to keep up. But I loved the web from the beginning, because I felt it gave me a voice. In 1997 I was an avid movie-goer, and I was a bit miffed because the 1996 Oscar nominations made no sense to me. I knew I had seen tons of movies that I had liked that year, and none of them had been nominated for anything. So I resolved that in 1997 I would rate and review every movie I saw, tracking them all through the end of the year, so that next year, I would know exactly which movies deserved to get awards and which did not. Amazingly, I reviewed 75 theatrical release movies that year, not counting theatrical re-releases of older films (Das Boot, Bridge on the River Kwai, Star Wars). Did I say "avid"? Perhaps "obsessive" would be more accurate.

Because I had fallen in love with the web, I decided to post all my reviews on a web site. I didn't have a domain name then, I just posted the page to the space provided with my AOL account. I taught myself to code HTML with the help of a thin book and a web browser. I got a little thrill when I received an email from Hollywood movie director Michael Caton Jones, who complimented me on my insightful (though brief) review of his film, The Jackal. That was when I knew that the web was cool!

In those days there was a job title known as "Webmaster". The webmaster was the guy (or gal) who ran the web site. Usually it was some geeky college kid. The webmaster did everything for the web site. He managed the server, administered the web server software, wrote the content, coded the pages "by hand" in emacs (or vi if he was less dexterous or more masochistic), and wrote CGI scripts in Perl (or, God bless him, in C).

As the web commercialized and the bubble inflated, the job of webmaster fractured and divided. A commercial web site needed a system administrator, a graphic designer, a copywriter, a programmer, a usability expert; basically, the webmaster was dead, replaced by a whole corporate department.

Now, I'm okay with the web being commercialized. Hey, I like money myself, I'm not going to begrudge anyone else trying to make their own. Especially if it means I can get my books and DVDs delivered to me at a discount. But something got lost here. I liked the idea of the webmaster, the one man band, the person who is writer, programmer, designer, and system administrator, all at the same time.

Back on technology and the empowerment of the individual, the beauty of our swank new computers and our shiny Internet is that, yes, you can do it all. Using the technology and our own knowledge as leverage we can move the world. Each of us can be a webmaster, if we are crazy enough to want to be. That's what I'm doing, and that's what I'll try to help others do by publishing as much as I can of my knowledge and experiences here on Control-Escape. Long live the webmaster in all of us!